@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (1/n) At least in the relevant physics communities among members publishing in the peer reviewed literature, the acceptance of Einstein's special theory of relativity was rapid. A matter of a few years.
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (2/n) This was in part thanks to the efforts of individuals such as a Lorentz and Planck. And despite the complexity of his theory of gravity, it's acceptance in the peer reviewed literature was even more rapid.
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (3/n) There were of course antisemite scientists, particularly in Germany with the rise of Nazism, but there protests were almost entirely a matter of the popular press and politics, not peer reviewed literature.
Darwin? His case is a little more interesting.
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (4/n) Roughly at the time that Darwin, it was considered a recognised fact that the earth and the sun couldn't be more than a few million years old: the only fires known were chemical fires, ...
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (5/n) ... and alternatively, the only other source of energy which we could conceive of for the sun was due energy being released as the result of gravitational collapse. On the basis of the latter, Lord Kelvin calculated that the age of the sun...
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (6a/n). ... had to be in the range of millions of years, not thousands of millions. This required evolution to take place at a rate which seemed unlikely.
Similarly, a geologist discovered evidence that the rocks of the earth were in many cases older than the limit..
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (7/n) In addition, the theory of continental drift was proposed to account for similarities in the shapes of the continents: these enormous land masses seemed to have shapes which could fit together like pieces of a puzzle, but the fit was not perfect, ...
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (8/n) ...and once again the apparent age of the earth seemed to count against the theory. Another problem with this theory was that there existed no known engine for the hypothesised movement of the continents: as far as scientists of the time knew, the earth was essentially...
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (9/n) ... one giant, solid rock. Volcanos were simply a small, irrelevant side-issue.
However, special relativity, which was originally put forward to account for experimental results involving the motion of light, required an equivilence between mass and energy which...
The study of subatomic particles lead to the recognition that nuclear fires could exist which would be much more efficient than chemical fires. Nuclear fusion made it possible for us to recognise that...
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (11/n)... the sun is much older than we originally thought it was. Nuclear fission explained the generation of heat internal to the earth's surface, and this made it possible for us to recognised the fact that the continents are afloat on a sea of molten rock...
This provided us with a means to explain continental drift. In addition, both botany and zoology discovered similar populations at just the places the theory of continental drift argued were where the continents...
New evidence and once highly-controversial theories were fitting together like the continents once had. They were providing us with a unified view of our world. Whereas Karl Popper's fallibilism viewed distinct theories...
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 (14/n) ... as being tested against evidence independently of one-another, the history of science has shown a remarkable degree of interdependence between distinct theories existing in highly disparate areas of human knowledge.
@beuchelt@GYamey@rjar1980 Anyway, I have a confession to make. That wasn't off the top of my head but largely from a paper I wrote years ago. But it seemed appropriate.
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@lalani_safina@macroliter Lambda first found in Peru had the Pango lineage name of C.37. The deletion you are looking for is likely what the following paper refers to as the novel deletion Δ246-252 .
@lalani_safina@giorgilab (1/n) Actually the T478K mutation is found in "Delta" B.1.617.2. as you can tell was the substitution from T to k we are looking at a neutrally charged amino acid being replaced by a positively charged amino acid which means that it will be more difficult...
@lalani_safina@giorgilab (2/n) for the immune system to create antibodies that will counteract it. However at least with the variant discovered in Mexico we found that this mutation has an especially high free binding energy to the ACE2 receptor. As such it binds much more tightly to the receptor and...
"In particular, the Spike protein contained 9
mutations, when compared to the D614G strain (belonging to the basal B.1 lineage) used here as a reference, including five mutations..."
(1/n) #B1617#variants (dropping the dots for the hashtag) "... the B.1.617.2 variant has mutations called 452R and 478K, which Tang says are both linked to increased transmissibility. Both mutations alter the spike protein...." nature.com/articles/d4158…
(2/n) [L]452R is believed to result in the spike binding more closely to the ACE2 receptor and may simultaneously result in a degree of Immune escape. From analysis of B.1.429 which has the same mutation...
(3/n) "This replacement is predicted to create a much stronger attachment of the virus to the human cells and also might allow it to avoid the neutralizing antibodies that try to interfere with this attachment." (2021 Feb 26)