SCIENCE with Ms Lun
Today in Science
5th : World Environment Day (UN)
This year's theme is biodiversity
#ForNature.
Biodiversity encompasses the 8 million plant and animal species on Earth, their ecosystems and their genetic diversity.
How much do you know about biodiversity? Take the quiz on the UN website
8th : World Oceans Day (UN)
11th : Jacques-Yves COUSTEAU born in 1910
French oceanographer. Inventor of the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or SCUBA. This invention is also known as the Aqua lung. Cousteau worked with Emile Gagnan on this device to enable divers to breathe underwater.
His research vessel, Calypso, was a modified WWII minesweeper. Cousteau made numerous documentaries and wrote numerous books. Cousteau died 25 June 1997 (87 years old).
14th: World Blood Donor Day (WHO)
Today we thank blood donors around the world and encourage new donors to give blood.
If you want to learn about the different types of blood donation or find out what is the most common blood type in NZ, click on the link on the left. To find out why Emma-Rose Meagher is thankful for blood donations, click the green button.
16th June: Barbara McCLINTOCK was born in 1902
McClintock was an American geneticist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize (Physiology and medicine) in 1982 for discovering gene transposition. McClintock studied genetics in maize and developed a method to stain microspore cells during cell division so she could see them under the microsope. Her observations showed that some genes can move between chromosomes (transposition). McClintock died on 3 September 1992, aged 90.
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Barbara McClintock in 1947.
16th June: Georg WITTIG was born in 1897
Wittig was a German chemist. His work with compounds called ylides could react with other compounds (aldehydes and ketones) to produce alkenes. This forms the basis of the Wittig reaction.
This reaction enables biologically active compounds to be synthesized (produced) artificially such as vitamin A, vitamin D derivatives, steroids, and biological pesticides.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize (Chemistry) in 1979 (which he shared with Herbert Brown). Wittig died on 26 August 1987, aged 90.
Georg Wittig in 1979.
June
20th June: Reginald Crundall PUNNETT was born in 1875
Reginald Punnett and William Bateson were the first English Mendelian geneticist (Gregor Mendel is considered the father of genetics). You may remember the Punnett square from high school biology. Punnett devised his Punnett square to depict the possible genetic combinations (genotypes) of offspring in sweet peas. Punnett was asked how a dominant allele, such as brown eyes, doesn't become fixed and ubiquitous in a population. To help answer this, Punnett asked his friend G H Hardy (a mathematician) and the Hardy-Weinberg law was developed showing how population affects genetics. Incidentally, Weinberg (from the old Austrian Empire) described this law independently of Hardy. Punnett died on 3 January 1967, aged 91.
How does a Punnett square work?
On the left is a Punnett square for heterogyzous Bb sweet peas. Both parents have the dominant purple allele (B) and the recessive white (b) allele. We want to see what the possible offspring could be.
Results/interpretation:
Offspring have a 25% chance of being purple with both dominant BB alleles (homozygous).
Offspring have a 50% chance of being purple with one dominant B allele and one recessive b allele (heterozygous Bb like the parents).
Offspring have a 25% chance of being white with both recessive bb alleles (homozygous).
Reginald Punnett
23rd : Alan Matheson TURING born in 1912. Died 7 June 1954 (aged 41)
English mathematician. Turing had an IQ of 185 (a super genius in the top 0.1% in the world). He is considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
In WWII, Turing worked at Bletchley Park (government code and cipher school), the code breaking centre. He was in charge of Hut 8, a team that worked on cracking the German Enigma code machine. They helped decipher messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis, helping to win the war. This work is depicted in the 2014 movie "The Imitation Game".
After the war, he developed the Automatic Computing Engine, one of the first storage-program computers.
Replica of Turing's code breaking bombe machine (on display at Bletchley Park). By the end of the war, 200 of these electromechanical logic machines were in use.
26 June : Roy J PLUNKETT born 1910
In 1938, Plunkett made an accidental discovery while working for DuPont. He was working on a new chlorofluorocarbon for use as a refrigerator coolant. The tetrafluoroethylene gas bottle he was working with stopped flowing before the indicator showed it was empty. When Plunkett sawed the bottle open, he noticed there was a waxy, slippery substance coating the inside of the bottle. The substance was Teflon (or polytetrafluoroethylene). It was patented in 1941 and Teflon was trademarked in 1945. Originally, it was produced to coat valves and seals in the pipes that held radioactive uranium hexafluoride during the Manhattan project (nuclear weapons project). In the 1954, Collette Grégoire, the wife of French engineer Marc Grégoire, encouraged her husband to use Teflon on her cooking pans (he was using it on his fishing tackle) and the first Teflon cookware was born.
An ad from the 1960s for Teflon coated pans
Starts 26 June - 4 July : NZ Garden Bird survey
30 June : World Asteroid Day (UN)
A celebration of all things asteroids! The asteroid organisation based in Luxembourg even has asteroid TV, 30 days of content dedicated to asteroids (it started on June 1.)
