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"The Fly Room"

01/13/2023
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Pictured below is the "Fly Room," a Drosophila (fruit fly) research lab at Columbia University, where in the early twentieth century, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan and "the Fly Boys" made important discoveries about modern genetics. While Mendel founded the field of genetics, the "gene" was still an abstraction. Morgan was able to confirm that the chromosome is a physical unit of genetic material, and that the pairing of chromosomes results in genetic variance. This work also contributed to scientists' understanding of evolution. Morgan's work offered natural selection as a scientific explanation for evolution. 

      

Left: A luncheon held in "The Fly Room" in 1918. The Fly Room was reportedly small and cluttered. 

Right: The National Cancer Institute's diagram on DNA forming genes and chromosomes. 

 

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eBook Highlight: Graphic Medicine Manifesto
06/01/2023
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Title: Graphic Medicine Manifesto.
Published: 2015. 
Available: as an eBook in Academic eBook Collection.
 
Description: "This inaugural volume in the graphic medicine series establishes the principles of graphic medicine and begins to map the field. The volume combines scholarly essays by members of the editorial team with previously unpublished visual narratives by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec, and it includes arresting visual work from a wide range of graphic medicine practitioners. The book's first section, featuring essays by Scott Smith and Susan Squier, argues that as a new area of scholarship, research on graphic medicine has the potential to challenge the conventional boundaries of academic disciplines, raise questions about their foundations, and reinvigorate literary scholarship—and the notion of the literary text—for a broader audience. The second section, incorporating essays by Michael Green and Kimberly Myers, demonstrates that graphic medicine narratives can engage members of the health professions with literary and visual representations and symbolic practices that offer patients, family members, physicians, and other caregivers new ways to experience and work with the complex challenges of the medical experience. The final section, by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec, focuses on the practice of creating graphic narratives, iconography, drawing as a social practice, and the nature of comics as visual rhetoric. A conclusion (in comics form) testifies to the diverse and growing graphic medicine community. Two valuable bibliographies guide readers to comics and scholarly works relevant to the field."
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72 scientists' names engraved on the Eiffel Tower
05/09/2023
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Seventy two of France's notable scientists and engineers are remembered today on the Eiffel Tower. You can find the names engraved on the four sides of the tower near its four arches toward the ground. This list contains only men who contributed to science and invention between the French Revolution (1789) and the construction of the Eiffel Tower (1887). Here are screen shots from "La Tour Eiffel" (the site is linked below), where you can read whose name is engraved, their profession, and their location on the Eiffel Tower.  

Read more about these scientists: 

  • Augustin-Jean Fresnel (Created the Fresnel lens, which creates huge, bright beams of light and is used in lighthouses -- has saved countless lives)
  • Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (Discovered that water contains 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen molecules)
  • Henry Louis Le Chatelier (Created Le Chatelier's principle of chemical equilibrium) 
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Read more about the Eiffel Tower's 72 names: 

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How Braille was invented
01/05/2023
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Left: A portrait of Louis Braille. 

Right: The Braille alphabet.

Louis Braille was accidentally blinded in both eyes after an accident in his father's shop when he was three years old. He attended the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in France, where he excelled in his school work and started creating a new communication system for the blind and visually impaired. At the time, there were some resources for the visually impaired that made reading possible, including those made by Valentin Haüy, the founder of Louis Braille's school. However, these resources did not make writing and unspoken communication possible. These resources were also fragile, incredibly large and heavy (especially for youth), and expensive.  

By the age of fifteen, Louis Braille created the communication system that we know as Braille. He spent most of his life improving this system. Initially, he used both dots and dashes, but eliminated the dashes for simplicity. A passionate musician himself, Braille later added music symbols and syntax. 

Instructors and staff at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth effectively banned the use of Braille until 1854, two years after Louis Braille's death. Slowly, Braille was used throughout France, then Europe, and by 1916, the United States. It has since been improved and adapted to new technology, allowing the visually impaired to browse the Internet, complete homework and professional tasks, use computer software applications, and more. 

January 4th is celebrated as World Braille Day (for Louis Braille's birthday). 

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Medicine, Health sciences, Biology, Social science, Education, History, Technology, Literature