Magwa Primary School

30/12/2022

Remembering biochemist Kary Mullis, who discovered polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Mullis was tired. He was out driving a distance he had driven so many times that he could drive it in his sleep. It was dark and his thoughts wandered. After a while, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. He finally had to stop his car to think properly.

Mullis was awarded the chemistry prize for his invention of the process known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), in which a small amount of DNA can be copied in large quantities over a short period of time. By applying heat, the DNA molecule's two strands are separated and the DNA building blocks that have been added are bonded to each strand. With the help of the enzyme DNA polymerase, new DNA chains are formed and the process can then be repeated. PCR has been of major importance in both medical research and forensic science.

Read more about how Mullis discovered PCR: https://bit.ly/2F53qwS

13/09/2022

Now on display: A signed portrait photograph given to President and Mrs. Kennedy by Queen Elizabeth II after their state visit to the United Kingdom in 1961.

https://jfk.artifacts.archives.gov/objects/17045/photograph-of-queen-elizabeth-ii

04/08/2022

On this week's blog, learn about how John Singer Sargent's travels to Spain may have influenced Isabella and her husband's interest in and travel to the region. Read over at the link https://bit.ly/3zNrocK

Image: The Spanish Cloister, John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925), El Jaleo, 1882. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
http://bit.ly/2zQb4Zg

04/08/2022

Mary Jackson was NASA's first black female engineer – her story was told in the "Hidden Figures" book and film. After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available, then went on to influence the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering, and mathematics careers.

04/08/2022

"Tiningo’ si Sirena" (2021), which recently joined the MFA's collection, is a nearly life-size painting by artist Gisela Charfauros McDaniel of her mother, scholar Antoinette CHarfauros McDaniel. The title means “knowledge of Sirena” in CHamoru, the Indigenous language of Guåhan (Guam) and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. “Sirena” (Spanish for mermaid) is an important CHamoru legend 🧜‍♀️

This month on our blog, Ellyn McColgan Assistant Curator of Native American Art Marina Tyquiengco—the MFA’s first CHamoru curator—sits down with the artist and her mother to discuss the process of making this multimedia artwork that honors matrilineal histories. Read their conversation and listen to the sound piece: https://bit.ly/3BzttKF

🎨: "Tiningo’ si Sirena" (2021), oil on canvas, clothing, objects from subject-collaborator, shells, pearls, sound

04/08/2022

Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, known as ‘Chandra’, photographed on 19 October 1983, the day he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the evolution of stars.

Chandrasekhar adopted a highly unusual approach to his research, investigating a fresh field of study each decade, such as how stars die, how radiation passes through a star’s atmosphere and the theory of black holes. Each decade he followed a similar routine; writing a series of papers that solved the unsolved problems in that field, before finally publishing a book that summarised his results and presented the whole field in a new and clearer light. However, it is mainly for an early triumph, a theory developed while on a long sea voyage from India to the UK and that began his voyage through the stars, that Chandrasekhar was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/2KdbjEL

04/08/2022

"This in effect is, the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze."

As a 14-year-old boy, science genius Abdus Salam gained the highest marks ever recorded for the Matriculation Examination at the University of the Punjab in the beginning of the 1940s. When he cycled home from Lahore the whole town welcomed him.

In 1949, Salam was awarded a scholarship to study a double bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics at University of Cambridge. In 1950 he received the Smith’s Prize from University of Cambridge for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to physics.

During his career in science, Salam presented many scientific breakthroughs and innovative theories such as the Pati–Salam model, Grand Unified Theory and research on supersymmetry.

In 1979, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg. They made significant contributions to the electroweak unification theory.

Read more about Abdus Salam: https://bit.ly/3dbeQx6

04/08/2022

04/08/2022

On this day in 1912 Nobel Prize laureate Niels Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund. Their partnership would extend into Bohr's work as he often wrote papers through a process of dictation, which Margrethe would type up for him.

One of their sons, Aage Bohr, would go onto receive a Nobel Prize in Physics, just like his father. Niels received the 1922 physics prize for his model of the structure of the atom and Aage Bohr was awarded the 1975 physics prize for work on the structure of the atomic nucleus.

04/08/2022

Today we lost a trailblazer, pioneer and a true space advocate who navigated tough challenges with great determination and grace. Thank you for your help to carve a path for a diverse future in the world and at NASA.

Fair winds and following seas, Lt. Uhura.

Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

04/08/2022

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2022/06/10/the-soma-cube-again/

The Soma Cube brings back memories.ContentsPiet HeinBill McKeemanThe original soma demoA new Soma demoSoftwareUpdatePiet HeinPiet Hein (1905-1996) was an extraordinary Danish inventor, mathematician, poet and philosopher. He invented the Soma Cube puzzle in 1933. I wrote a blog post about Hein and s...