ESO’s fleet of telescopes in Chile have detected the first visible counterpart to a gravitational wave source. These historic observations suggest that this unique object is the result of the merger of two neutron stars. The cataclysmic aftermaths of this kind of merger — long-predicted events called kilonovae — disperse heavy elements such as gold and platinum throughout the Universe. This discovery, published in several papers in the journal Nature and elsewhere, also provides the strongest evidence yet that short-duration gamma-ray bursts are caused by mergers of neutron stars.
.. As night fell in Chile many telescopes peered at this patch of sky, searching for new sources. These included
- ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) and VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the Paranal Observatory, the
- Italian Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, the
- LCO 0.4-meter telescope at Las Cumbres Observatory, and the
- American DECam at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.
- The Swope 1-metre telescope was the first to announce a new point of light.
It appeared very close to NGC 4993, a lenticular galaxy in the constellation of Hydra, and VISTA observations pinpointed this source at infrared wavelengths almost at the same time. As night marched west across the globe,
- the Hawaiian island telescopes Pan-STARRS and Subaru also picked it up and watched it evolve rapidly.
.. “ESO’s great strength is that it has a wide range of telescopes and instruments to tackle big and complex astronomical projects, and at short notice. We have entered a new era of multi-messenger astronomy!” concludes Andrew Levan, lead author of one of the papers.
A Nobel prize for medicine for the understanding of body clocks
This year, three of the prize-winners may be particularly appreciative of that, for they are some of the scientists who have helped to explain why jet lag exists in the first place.
.. Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young are, between them, responsible for working out how the endogenous clocks of fruit flies—and, by extension, of other organisms—run what is known as the circadian rhythm. This is the internal cycle (circa is the Latin for “about” and dies the Latin for “day”) that matches the body’s physiology to the alternation of light and darkness caused by Earth’s rotation. In human beings it controls, among many other things, sleep patterns.
.. Between them, studying mutated fruit flies, they put together an explanation of what is going on at a molecular level.
..Their first step, in 1984, was the isolation within the fruit-fly genome of a gene called period, which had previously been found to be important in controlling circadian rhythms
.. Dr Hall and Dr Rosbach then went on to measure the concentration in fly brains of the protein this gene encodes. They discovered that the protein’s concentration cycles predictably over the course of 24 hours, peaking at night. They also measured levels of the messenger molecule, produced by period genes, which carries the recipe for the protein to a cell’s protein-making machinery. That, too, cycles daily—peaking a few hours before concentration of the protein itself is at its highest.
.. The crucial part of the story is that the protein inhibits the action of periodgenes. The more of the protein there is, the less active the genes are. That reduces production of the messenger molecule, which reduces production of the protein, which permits the gene to reactivate. And so on.
Want Geniuses? Welcome Immigrants
If immigrants to the United States were considered their own country, Najam wrote, their tally of Nobels would exceed that of every country but the United States.
.. An article about immigrants in The Atlantic just a few years ago noted that the four United States-based physicists who sounded the 1939 warning about nuclear weapons that led to the Manhattan Project were born outside the United States. The article went on to point out that “immigrants or the children of immigrants have founded or co-founded nearly every legendary American technology company, including Google, Intel, Facebook, and of course Apple (you knew that Steve Jobs’s father was named Abdulfattah Jandali, right?).”
.. among graduates of American colleges, immigrants are twice as likely to receive patents as native-born Americans. Her research further suggests that this doesn’t come at the expense of native-born Americans but in fact stimulates their innovation, too. “You’re bouncing ideas off each other,” Hunt told me.
.. if the foundation took into account children of immigrants as well as immigrants themselves, the percentage of its geniuses that reflects the benefits of immigration would be higher than 21.7. It’s also worth noting that for most of the grant’s history, foreign-born people constituted less than 10 percent of the United States population.
.. I asked her what she made of immigrants’ prevalence among MacArthur geniuses. “I think most of us feel very lucky to be here, so we work extremely hard,” she said. “I think maybe trauma is part of what drives us.” She added that in terms of innovation, “Having the different perspectives, having the different life experiences, makes you see things differently.” Fresh ideas and great art are often born that way.
.. They come with a sort of hunger and a kind of gaze that don’t subtract from what those of us already here have but, instead, add to it. They give us insights, inventions, art. Embracing their genius is the genius of America.
Ignaz Semmelweis
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician of ethnic-German ancestry,[2][3][4] now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the “saviour of mothers”,[2] Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as “childbed fever”) could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital‘s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards.
.. Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist‘s research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.