…they may wish to spice up their public image with something provocative. Well, it seems that the codiscoverer of DNA James Watson has always had the wrong definition of “provocative”, and this time he seems to have really done it and positively inflamed everyone with his comments about people of African descent being less smarter [...]
A very disappointing piece of news has just emerged; the most promising vaccine for HIV has just failed to show any significant effects. Researchers had pinned their hopes on the trial of the vaccine, which involved more than a thousand volunteers. The titlehead of the news piece announcing this in Science was a revealing photo- [...]
Curcuminised Chicken
There are two articles in the journal Cell this week, which talk about the value of traditional medicine, especially Ayurveda, in modern drug discovery and medicine. The articles are encouraging, and they essentially say that modern pharma is now actively pursuing the development of some of the medicines. There are five molecules cited which [...]
Vignettes in Science: 1
One of the thrilling moments of my life was when Freeman Dyson replied to my email. When the great Nobel Prize winning physicist Hans Bethe died in March 2005, I had sent my own perception of Bethe in the form of a small biography to Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study [...]
I am going to start writing a series of (hopefully) short posts about scientists that I have read about and/or whose work I am familiar with. These will include members of all branches of science, past and present. Some of them are my favourites since childhood, others I got to know about much later. One [...]