It is exactly 50 years since one of the greatest scientific
breakthroughs of the twentieth century - the working out of the
structure of the DNA molecule . This represented the culmination of
fifty years research in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology, a
milestone on the road started by Darwin’s...
AS 15,000 delegates attended the International Aids Conference in
Barcelona, the United Nations estimates that 68 million people could die
of the Aids disease by 2020.
DNA IS universal to all living things - bacteria, fungus, plant or
animal. Using ’cut and paste’ techniques, it is possible (sometimes) to
transfer a desirable feature from one organism’s DNA into another
organism, or an undesirable feature could be replaced.
SOUTH AFRICA 24 April 2002. A giant faced a dying man in court. The
giant told the man that he could not have the lifesaving drugs he needed
because it had profits to protect. The giant was GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),
the second biggest pharmaceutical company in the world.
Cecilia Payne, working in the 1920s, was the first person to show how
the mechanics of Einstein’s energy conversion formula (e = mc2
) applied beyond our planet - that the process we now call nuclear
fusion powered not only our Sun but also the billions of stars in the
Universe.
IT IS a tragic irony that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima occurred
within weeks of the 25th anniversary of the catastrophe at Chernobyl in
the former Soviet Union, the world’s worst nuclear accident.
