3.134 - AMICOR (25)

 3.134 - AMICOR (25)

#Dra. Valderês Antonietta Robinson Achutti (*13/06/1931+15/06/2021)

1992

#Slideshow: 105 fotos de abertura Clicar em apresentação de slides

#Nature

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

• Matthew Cobb & 
• Nathaniel Comfort

• 
  
  
  

  James Watson and Francis Crick are two of the twentieth century’s most renowned scientists. The seminal paper from the pair at the University of Cambridge, UK, detailing the discovery of the DNA double helix, was published as part of a trio in Nature 70 years ago this week1–3. They are also widely believed to have hit on the structure only after stealing data from Rosalind Franklin, a physical chemist working at King’s College London.

  Lore has it that the decisive insight for the double helix came when Watson was shown an X-ray image of DNA taken by Franklin — without her permission or knowledge. Known as Photograph 51, this image is treated as the philosopher’s stone of molecular biology, the key to the ‘secret of life’ (not to mention a Nobel prize). In this telling, Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at just 37, is portrayed as a brilliant scientist, but one who was ultimately unable to decipher what her own data were telling her about DNA. She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance.

  This version of events has entered into popular culture. It is the subject of Photograph 51, a play by Anna Ziegler that starred Nicole Kidman on the London stage in 2015. The image graces a British 50 pence coin that marked the centenary of Franklin’s birth, in 2020. The whole affair has provided fodder for scornful Twitter jokes (“What did Watson and Crick discover in 1953? Franklin’s data.”) and even a marvellous rap battle by seventh-grade students in Oakland, California.

  But this is not what happened.

  

  How Rosalind Franklin was let down by DNA’s dysfunctional team

  One of us (N.C.) is writing a biography of Watson, the other (M.C.) is writing one of Crick. In 2022, we visited Franklin’s archive at Churchill College in Cambridge, UK, and went through her notes together, reconstructing the development of her ideas. We also found a hitherto unstudied draft news article from 1953, written in consultation with Franklin and meant for Time, a US magazine with international reach — as well as an overlooked letter from one of Franklin’s colleagues to Crick. Together, these documents suggest a different account of the discovery of the double helix. Franklin did not fail to grasp the structure of DNA. She was an equal contributor to solving it.

  Getting Franklin’s story right is crucial, because she has become a role model for women going into science. She was up against not just the routine sexism of the day, but also more subtle forms embedded in science — some of which are still present today./.../

  #Techmundo
   30.000 tipos de vírus escondidos em micróbios 
  História por Jorge Marin • Ontem 14:30

  

  

  Cientistas descobrem 30.000 tipos de vírus escondidos em micróbios© Fornecido por TecMundo

  Enquanto pesquisava um novo grupo de microrganismos nas águas do lago Gossenköllesee, nos Alpes Tiroleses na Áustria, um grupo de pesquisadores liderados pelo ecologista Christopher Bellas, da Universidade de Innsbruck, se deparou com uma descoberta surpreendente: cerca de 30 mil tipos de vírus desconhecidos "escondidos" no DNA dos micróbios analisados.

  Em um novo estudo, publicado dia 10 de abril na revista Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, os pesquisadores explicam que essa "invasão em larga escala" ocorre em genomas eucarióticos unicelulares de protistas. Esse grupo não se encaixa nas categorias de plantas, animais ou fungos e é encontrado em uma larga variedade de formas de vida presente em diversos ambientes terrestres.  

  Leia mais...

  Salve 30/04/2023 - Júlia Belardinelli Achutti.

  
  Minha querida, primeira e única neta (os outros três são varões...)
  #Collins

  7 Shakespearean words to add to your vocabulary

  April 23rd was English Language Day! The annual event where language lovers come together to celebrate the great William Shakespeare and a chance to celebrate multilingualism in English-speaking countries around the globe. We’re celebrating with this list of 7 Shakespearean words to weave into your vocabulary. Without further ado, let us go forth. Read the blog

#WHO

Recomendado pela AMICOR Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja
1 in 6 people globally affected by infertility: WHO

4 April 2023 

News release

 

Geneva, Switzerland

 

Reading time: 2 min (617 words)

Large numbers of people are affected by infertility in their lifetime, according to a new report published today by WHO. Around 17.5% of the adult population – roughly 1 in 6 worldwide – experience infertility, showing the urgent need to increase access to affordable, high-quality fertility care for those in need.

The new estimates show limited variation in the prevalence of infertility between regions. The rates are comparable for high-, middle- and low-income countries, indicating that this is a major health challenge globally. Lifetime prevalence was 17.8% in high-income countries and 16.5% in low- and middle-income countries.

“The report reveals an important truth: infertility does not discriminate,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General at WHO. “The sheer proportion of people affected show the need to widen access to fertility care and ensure this issue is no longer sidelined in health research and policy, so that safe, effective, and affordable ways to attain parenthood are available for those who seek it.”

Infertility is a disease of the male or female reproductive system, defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse. It can cause significant distress, stigma, and financial hardship, affecting people’s mental and psychosocial well-being./.../

#MEDSCAPE

24, 2023 Secadores de esmalte com luz ultravioleta podem aumentar risco de câncer de pele Novo estudo sugerem que a radiação dos secadores de esmalte com luz UV pode induzir a morte celular e desencadear, em células humanas, alterações moleculares relacionadas ao câncer. Saiba mais › #LiveScience World's heaviest Schrödinger's cat made in quantum crystal visible to the naked eye News By Ben Turner  published about 22 hours ago Physicists have placed part of a sapphire crystal into a quantum superposition, making it the heaviest object to show quantum effects, in a new take on Erwin Schrödinger's famous cat experiment. An artist's illustration of three Schrödinger's cats. (Image credit: Yiwen Chu/ETH Zurich) Physicists have created the world's heaviest Schrödinger's cat, bringing the bizarre behavior of the quantum world to larger scales than ever before. The trick, performed by vibrating 100 million billion atoms inside a sand-grain-sized sapphire crystal, created the world's heaviest quantum superposition as the crystal simultaneously oscillated in two different directions. Despite weighing just 16 micrograms (16 millionths of a gram), the crystal is trillions of times heftier than the molecules put into previous large-scale quantum states, and is visible to the naked eye.  Taking its name from Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment, the new Schrödinger's cat crystal could be used to design more robust quantum computers and reveal clues behind why quantum effects are not seen in the real world, according to the researchers. Their findings were published April 20 in the journal Science(opens in new tab).  # BIODIVERSITY | ALL TOPICS   How Pools of Genetic Diversity Affect a Species’ Fate By ANNA FUNK A new, deeper understanding of how the breeding structure of species affects their genetic diversity is giving conservationists better tools for saving animals. Read the article Q&A   The Computer Scientist Peering Inside AI’s Black Boxes By ALLISON PARSHALL In school, we’re often asked to solve problems and to show our work. Cynthia Rudin teaches neural networks to explain their reasoning. Read the interview Related:  The Researcher Who Would Teach Machines to Be Fair By Sheon Han NUMBER THEORY   Why Mathematicians Re-Prove What They Already Know By ANNA KRAMER It’s been known for thousands of years that the primes go on forever, but new proofs give fresh insights into how theorems depend on one another. Read the blog Related:  Mathematicians Will Never Stop Proving the Prime Number Theorem By Susan D'Agostino (2020) SOLAR PHYSICS   Tiny Jets on the Sun Power the Colossal Solar Wind By THEO NICITOPOULOS A new analysis argues that ubiquitous eruptions in the sun’s corona explain the vast flow of charged particles seen streaming out through the solar system. Read the blog QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST   Scientists Rethink the Causes of Alzheimer’s (Part 1) Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT; Story by YASEMIN SAPLAKOGLU After decades in the shadow of the reigning model for Alzheimer’s disease, alternative explanations are finally getting the attention they deserve. Listen to the podcast Read the article Around the Web Schrödinger’s Sapphire Researchers have put a piece of sapphire about half as massive as an eyelash into a quantum “Schrödinger’s cat” state. It’s more than 100 trillion times as massive as any test object in previous experiments, reports Emily Conover for Science News. Physicists want to push at the boundaries of the quantum regime to understand the transition between the microscopic world of quantum mechanics and the macroscopic world of everyday experience. Phil Ball wrote about their efforts for Quanta in 2021. Free-Floating New research reveals that fish and mammals navigate the world in different ways, reports Kate Golembiewski for The New York Times. Monitored brain activity in goldfish showed that they only keep track of their proximity to boundaries. The navigational systems of humans and other mammals, on the other hand, take on the more sophisticated and comprehensive challenge of building a mental map of their 3D environment. In 2021, Jordana Cepelewicz wrote for Quanta about a new study that showed how rats do it. #Medium #Nature Books Sensational Ashley Ward Profile (2023) Aristotle is credited with the ‘discovery’, in the fourth century bc, that humans have five senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch. But animal behaviourist Ashley Ward says the true number might be more than 50, including “a host of underappreciated but crucial senses”, such as those of balance and of time. To explore the science behind them, and how they work together to create our perception as a whole, he engagingly interweaves diverse evidence from biology, psychology, ecology, medicine, economics and even engineering. Design for a Better World Don Norman MIT Press (2023) Don Norman has worked in electrical engineering, cognitive psychology, computer science and design, in academia and industry. Now in his eighties, he draws on this experience to explain how designers, governments and industry must “broaden the notion of design from human centred to humanity centred”. In other words, they must emphasize quality of life, not monetary rewards, and reject harmful economic metrics. Only thus, he argues, will we survive the current environmental and economic crises. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01466-3

#Medium how-do-you-cope-with-cosmic-anxiety

 

HISTORY Who Invented the Measurement of Time? The first timekeeping devices were probably natural materials lost to the ages, but the ancient Egyptians were the first to leave records of their timekeeping methods

By Stephanie Pappas