Multiple personalities in the Watson vs. Crick strand controversy

Dan Gaur, a member of the Luxuriant Former Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS), and a colleague published a paper on the (little-known) Watson-Crick controversy: “The Multiple Personalities of Watson and Crick Strands,” Reed A. Cartwright and Dan Graur, Biology Direct, vol. 6, no. 7, 2011. The authors, at the University of Houston, explain: “Background: In genetics it is […]

A loving, applied mathematical tribute across a generation

L. Mahadevan, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in physics for studying how sheets get wrinkled, wrote a loving tribute, a few months ago, to his teacher Joseph Keller [pictured here]. Keller is a two-time Ig Nobel Prize winner. The entire essay appears in SIAM News. Here are snippets: Joe Keller’s contributions to the […]

Bicycle tracks – still being covered

As Sherlock Holmes aficionados will know, in the 1903 story ‘The Adventure of the Priory School’, Holmes determined the direction in which a bicycle was travelling simply by observing the tyre tracks which it had made – asserting that the deeper of the two wheel marks must have come from the heavier rear wheel … […]