• Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.

Milestones

Go to CruxDreams.com
February 28th 1953: James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick announced in Cambridge that they had determined the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes. Their failure to credit Rosalind Franklin (whose x-ray photo confirming their theory had been shown to them without her knowledge) was despicable, the credit certainly belonged to all three, and to others who'd contributed too. Still, an epoch-making discovery in the history of life sciences.
 
Eulalia said:
February 28th 1953: James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick announced in Cambridge that they had determined the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes. Their failure to credit Rosalind Franklin (whose x-ray photo confirming their theory had been shown to them without her knowledge) was despicable, the credit certainly belonged to all three, and to others who'd contributed too. Still, an epoch-making discovery in the history of life sciences.
Click to expand...
A great achievement of Franklin. These X-ray diffraction records of those days were difficult to interpret.

https://physicsopenlab.org/2019/10/01/double-helix-optical-diffraction-pattern/

DNA.jpg
 
Eighty years ago, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) was killed when is plane was shot down by US aircraft.

Yamamoto had been naval attaché in Washigton and deputy minister of the Japanese naval department. His cautious view on Japanese foreign (imperialist) policy was not liked by nationalists and the Japanese Army in particular, which put a threat on his life. Therefore, he was transferred back to the Imperial Navy, and in 1939, he became Commander-in-Chief of the combined fleet. A strong supporter of the naval air arm, he developed a more offensice strategy than the traditional Japanese views on the role of the navy.

Nevertheless, it was against is views that, during that assignment, he worked out a plan to take control over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, by conquering US controlled territory and the French, British and Dutch colonies in that area. This plan included the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th, 1941, which caused lots of damage to the US Navy, but failed to knock out the latter's aircraft carriers.

Annoyed by the Doolittle raid (April 18th 1942), which showed that US carriers could still penetrate within striking distance of homeland Japan, he planned the capture of Midway, hoping to enlarge japan's perimeter of control and luring the US carriers into a final battle, all in one strike. But the attack on Midway was badly conceived, and by a combination of bad reconnaissance, good US intelligence, confusion and a good dose of luck, the battle ended into a disaster for the Japanese Imperial Navy.

In April 1943, Yamamoto traveled to the south Pacific, on an inspection tour to assess the morale of the Japanese Navy in that area, after their defeat in the Batlle of Guadalcanal . US intelligence discovered the plan, and on April 18th 1943 (exactly one year after the Doolittle Raid), an ambush awaited him above the island of Bougainville.
 
The intelligence was the breaking of the Japanese naval cipher (accomplished largely by Commander John Rochefort, who was instrumental in the victory at Midway but was transferred because his work had exposed the errors of Naval Intelligence in Washington). The decision itself was supposedly made by Nimitz without consulting Washington.
In 1979, an abridged translation of a 1969 biography of Yamamoto by Hiroyuki Agawa (translated by John Bester) was published by Kondasha International entitled "The Reluctant Admiral". It is always interesting to get a Japanese point of view, even if there is a risk of a little sanitizing of the record (I did not find that in this book, although it is flattering to Yamamoto).
 
Eighty years ago, on April 19th 1943, an armed revolt broke out in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw Poland. It would be violently crushed by German SS-troops. Thousands of Jewish fighters were killed in the fights that lasted about a month. Ten thousands were deprted to concentration camps. The ghetto was put on fire and erased after the uprise was over.

On the same day, in occupied Belgium, between Mechelen and Leuven, resistance fighters stopped a train, underway with prisoners to Auschwitz. Tens of prisoners could escape. It was the only attack on a transport to the death camps during the war.
 
Loxuru said:
Eighty years ago, on April 19th 1943, an armed revolt broke out in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw Poland. It would be violently crushed by German SS-troops. Thousands of Jewish fighters were killed in the fights that lasted about a month. Ten thousands were deprted to concentration camps. The ghetto was put on fire and erased after the uprise was over.

On the same day, in occupied Belgium, between Mechelen and Leuven, resistance fighters stopped a train, underway with prisoners to Auschwitz. Tens of prisoners could escape. It was the only attack on a transport to the death camps during the war.
Click to expand...
Even though one could argue resistance was futile, it gives dignity to the victims to know that people fought back. (It is also noteworthy that despite rampant antisemitism in Catholic Poland the Polish Resistance aided the ghetto.) There were several groups of Jews (notably the Bielski partisans) who went into the forests in Poland an Belarus and fought as guerillas, and they were effective enough that the Nazis spent resources to try to root them out. The Czech government in exile sent troops to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the "butcher of Prague". It almost failed, but succeeded in the end but was a suicide mission and there were savage reprisals. I read that Audrey Hepburn, living in Holland during the war, was as a teenager a runner for the Dutch underground. The Danish underground smuggled Neils Bohr, the famous physicist, out of Denmark and he got to Los Alamos. It is true that none of this would have mattered at all without the Allied armies (the Soviets liberated Auschwitz) but it does honor the victims of the war that people did what they could to fight back.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals
 
Loxuru said:
A great achievement of Franklin. These X-ray diffraction records of those days were difficult to interpret.

https://physicsopenlab.org/2019/10/01/double-helix-optical-diffraction-pattern/

View attachment 1280760
Click to expand...
X-ray diffraction was also difficult to do back then (easier today). Above all you needed a good, pure crystal. You had to worry about positioning. When I was in a chemistry department long ago they had hired a guy who got his PhD there as the X-ray crystallographer (so it is a very important technique that requires considerable skill). That was in pre-software days. Much later, John was commenting on software advances. "Today, you could do my whole thesis in an afternoon."
 
Frank Petrexa said:
X-ray diffraction was also difficult to do back then (easier today). Above all you needed a good, pure crystal. You had to worry about positioning. When I was in a chemistry department long ago they had hired a guy who got his PhD there as the X-ray crystallographer (so it is a very important technique that requires considerable skill). That was in pre-software days. Much later, John was commenting on software advances. "Today, you could do my whole thesis in an afternoon."
Click to expand...
Back in the 1970's already, a technique was used, to bring a grind sample on a 1 cm x 1 1cm object glass slide. These slides were inserted into a holder, and the machine processed them automatically one by one, overnight. The diffractions were recorded as peaks on paper, with the angle of diffraction as a scale. Very easy to interpret, with a transparent overlay to pick out peaks of common substances and mark the angles of the other peaks. All you needed more was a box with hundreds of identification cards for the unknowns.
 
Last edited:
Today is Coronation Day, and to celebrate, I have this awesome crown, specially made by my mum's partner :)
20230504_160839.jpg

The basic structure is 3D printed and decorated with acrylic jewels and fur fabric. Also, it's sized to fit my head, so about 20% smaller than the real thing :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom