Nobel Prizes Animations

Dear followers,


This week, I would like to share with you a webpage on Nature.com.
It contains animations explaining the findings of 4 scientists who received the Nobel Prize:




1) Big box, small box, light-filled box with Serge Haroche
2) Tick-tock cold clock with Bill Phillips
3) Ain't no stopping them now with Art McDonald
4) No such animal with Dan Shechtman

I think it is a great initiative to break down complex research for everyone to understand and animation is a great way to illustrate.

Let me know what you think,

Have a nice week-end!

Map-reading can be difficult for women during ovulation

A team of scientists from Concordia University in Montreal studied the memory of women throughout their menstrual cycle. They found that oestrogen and progesterone cause the brain to favor one memory or strategy over the other.

As you may know, the menstrual cycles occurs with the variation of  two of the ovarian hormones called  estrogen and progesterone.

On the graph, we can observe a high increase of estrogen.

45 women who had regular tested where tested for two tasks. One group was asked to memorize a list of words and the other one was asked to find their way through a maze.
The results showed that women that were ovulation performed better in memorizing the list of words and women in their pre-menstrual phase were better at solving a maze.

This study's goal is to better understand the women brain. I hope it will not be used to discriminate more women at work.
Understanding the difference between women and men could trigger the research, notably pharmaceutical, to create targeted therapy.

What do you think ?

Changing the genetic code of life

In August, Science published a fascinating study from a team working in MIT.

The team has designed a synthetic Escherichia coli genome that could use a protein-coding scheme different from the one employed by all known life.

The team reduced the number of codons from 64 to 57 codons.

It is a new step in the engineering of E. Coli and synthetic biology.

The one of the overall goal of this kind of researcher is to create engineered bacteria for industrial purposes. But it also allow us to understand better our biology and its limits.

You can read more details on Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6301/819

Enjoy!