Category: Science and Society

By Guadalupe Astorga More than 40% of the food in the United States ends up in the trash can. This is huge, and includes sea-food, meat, cereals fruits and vegetables, as well as dairy products. Surprisingly, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that for all categories, food waste is not primarily the result of…

Part XIV: George E. Palade, 1974 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna Nestled in the 3rd sub-basement of Smith Hall, around 1953, an electron microscope (EM) is briefly idle. The machine, an RCA model EMU-2A, resembles a spare part from some future space station: a long vertical steel tube adorned with studs and…

Some Valuable Facts about Meat     By Guadalupe Astorga This October 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared red meat and its processed derivatives a threat to human health, namely for its carcinogenic risk. Twenty-two experts from ten countries in the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that processed meat is “carcinogenic to humans”…

Part XIII: Albert Claude, 1974 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna On December 7, 1970, the moon-bound crew of the final Apollo mission swiveled their camera toward earth, some 28,000 miles distant, and took a picture. Three weeks later the resulting photograph revealed a delicate blue orb suspended in space, painted with swirling…

Part XII: Stanford Moore and William Stein, 1972 Prize in Chemistry By Joseph Luna “RNAse-free.” To most any molecular biologist working with RNA, these two seemingly unrelated words are as sweet sounding together as “passion-fruit.” This is because ribonucleases, those small hardy enzymes that chew up RNA, can be found everywhere, are more invasive than…

Part XI: Gerald M. Edelman, 1972 Prize in Physiology or Medicine By Joseph Luna To be immune is to be exempt. In the late 19th century, a physician named Paul Ehrlich gave a death-defying example of such an exemption by giving mice sub-lethal quantities of the deadly toxin ricin. Over time, these mice developed a…

Part X: H. Keffer Hartline, 1967 Prize in Physiology or Medicine By Joseph Luna While strolling along a beach one day in the summer of 1926, a young physiologist named Haldan Keffer Hartline came across a living fossil. Before him was a horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, with its domed carapace shell, spiked rudder tail and…

By Susan Russo Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1833. He is best remembered for the invention of dynamite and for leaving the major part of his fortune for the establishment of prizes for a person or persons who accomplished discoveries resulting in the “greatest benefit on mankind.” Nobel’s father was an engineer, manufacturer,…

Part IX: F. Peyton Rous, 1966 Prize in Physiology or Medicine  By Joseph Luna “Whatever you do, don’t commit yourself to the cancer problem.” These were ominous words for a young pathologist named Peyton Rous to hear from his famed mentor William Welch. In the early 1900s, it seemed accurate. Cancer, then as now, is…

By Aileen Marshall Who was Nikola Tesla? Does this name ring a bell somewhere in your brain but you can’t quite place him? Wasn’t he some sort of scientist? The showing of the movie “Tower to the People: Tesla’s Dream at Wardenclyffe” by the Rockefeller Science Communications and Media Group inspired me to find out.…