One of the greatest achievements of 21st century science was due to this American-French alliance (the only time two women shared a Nobel prize). But there were other aspects of the story of the discovery of CRISPR-CAS that are worthy of note. Francisco Mojica was the first
researcher who discovered and named CRISPR (a family of DNA sequences used by some bacteria to defend themselves from viruses) but his breakthrough paper was rejected by 4 major scientific journals before finally being published (after 2 years) by a less prestigious one. And
the same thing happened when in 2012 Lithuanian biochemist Virginijus Šikšnys submitted his paper on programmable DNA cleavage, the same idea that gave Charpentier and Doudna their Nobel prize. His work was rejected and published after a long delay. Charpentier and Doudna
submitted their paper to Science - it was reviewed and published two weeks after submission. Šikšnys did not share the Nobel prize.
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Latynina on the Russian military moves against Ukraine:
This leads us to another topic - to the concentration of troops on the Ukrainian border and a bunch of videos in the social media of movement of Russian armour. e "potentially imminent crisis".
And an increase in the level of alert of the European command of the US Armed Forces, which has been raised this level to "potentially imminent crisis".
And everyone began to play the game of guess whether there will be a new invasion of Ukraine or not. Frankly, I find it somehow hard to imagine that Putin will order an invasion while he is negotiating with Macron and Merkel about exporting to the west the Sputnik V vaccine.
Latynina on America's first "Five Year Plan":
Well, and, of course, I cannot but congratulate the United States on the announcement of its first Five-Year Plan. They already had introduced commissars some time ago. I mean the Department of Equity and Inclusion, which was
created by the States Department. But now they also have a Five-Year Plan, which assignes, among other things, 20 billion dollars for elimination of racist highways". By the way, did you know that highways can be racist? And it turns out, such highways do happen. The New York
Times and other organs of the Democratic Party greeted this plan with headlines that remind us of the best examples of North Korean art.
Here is Yulia Latynina on this:
"And all sorts of oppositionists began to scoff at these heroes, who spent a whole day battling one guy. And I want to explain one simple thing to you. Of course, perhaps, it could have been eliminated as quickly as possible.
But understand, all these people - "Thunder", "Lynx", "Bulat", "Zubr" - what do they want? Of course, they want to receive a medal for their participation in this operation.
Because, on the one hand, when you beat up a crowd of girls in an alley who shout “We are without weapons,” on the one hand, it is pleasant, but, on the other hand, it is difficult to get many medals for it.
Napoleon said that had it not been for the Revolution, he would have become a scientist. He also stated that would have like to solve the problem that troubled Newton - or as he put it “Newton explained how the planets attract one another but not why they do so”. Laplace, who had
taught young Napoleon and probably wrote the famous characterization of him (see below) thought him intellectually completely capable of this.
Indeed, on a famous occasion Napoleon surprised Lagrange & Laplace by telling them of mathematical discoveries he learnt about in Italy, they had not heard about.
For those who understand Russian are are interested both in history of WWII and details of military technology (both engineering and science behind it) there is a fantastic new series of talks by Mark Solonin on his YouTube channel
Mark Solonin is the
most important independent historian of WWII on the Eastern Front, as well as a professional aviation engineer and aircraft designer. He begins with a detailed account of the history of the development of the atom bomb, with technical details of the science behind it and
the engineering of making one. As he says, the basic details of the first generation of atomic weapons are on Wikipedia (based mostly on reverse engineering) but there is also a lot of disinformation about the working of later technology. This is the first of the series,
“Biden's assessment of Putin has been widely quoted.
However, few people seem to have read his answer in full.
If you get acquainted with the full, uncut text of Biden's interview then the meaning of what was said becomes clear.
“Yes, he's a killer. He will pay a price. You will see it soon. He has done bad things. I will not say what I will do, but he will understand. We must be able to "walk and chew gum at the same time" at the same time.