Posts Tagged ‘double helix’
“Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder”*…
After two days of posts on the state of our civil society, a palette-cleanser: Jordana Cepelewicz with a possibly-consoling reminder…
When he died in 1930 at just 26 years old, Frank Ramsey [see here] had already made transformative contributions to philosophy, economics and mathematics. John Maynard Keynes sought his insights; Ludwig Wittgenstein admired him and considered him a close friend. In his lifetime, Ramsey published only eight pages on pure math: the beginning of a paper about a problem in logic. But in that work, he proved a theorem that ultimately led to a whole new branch of mathematics — what would later be called Ramsey theory.
His theorem stated that if a system is large enough, then no matter how disordered it might be, it’s always bound to exhibit some sort of regular structure. Order inevitably emerges from chaos; patterns are unavoidable. Ramsey theory is the study of when this happens — in sets of numbers, in collections of vertices and edges called graphs, and in other systems. The mathematicians Ronald Graham and Joel Spencer likened it to how you can always pick out patterns among the stars in the night sky…
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… In fact, Ramsey theory isn’t just about inevitable patterns found in graphs. Hidden structure emerges in lists of numbers, strings of beads and even card games. In 2019, for example, mathematicians studied collections of sets that can always be arranged to resemble the petals of a sunflower. That same year, Quanta reported on research into sets of numbers that are guaranteed to contain numerical patterns called polynomial progressions. And last year, mathematicians proved a similar result, about sets of integers that must always include three evenly spaced numbers, called arithmetic progressions.
In its hunt for patterns, Ramsey theory gets to the core of what mathematics is all about: finding beauty and order in the most unexpected places…
Finding order in chaos: “Why Complete Disorder Is Mathematically Impossible,” from @jordanacep in @QuantaMagazine.
* Paul Valery
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As we ponder patterns, we might send paradigm-shaping birthday greetings to a woman who found order and pattern of a different– and world-changing– sort: Rosalind Franklin; she was born on this date in 1920. A biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer, Franklin captured the X-ray diffraction images of DNA that were, in the words of Francis Crick, “the data we actually used” when he and James Watson developed their “double helix” hypothesis for the structure of DNA. Indeed, it was Franklin who argued to Crick and Watson that the backbones of the molecule had to be on the outside (something that neither they nor their competitor in the race to understand DNA, Linus Pauling, had understood). Franklin never received the recognition she deserved for her independent work– her paper was published in Nature after Crick and Watson’s, which barely mentioned her– and she died of cancer four years before Crick, Watson, and their lab director Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for the discovery.
“Geographers never get lost. They just do accidental field work.”*…
A Facebook friend recently noted that Turkey was “a remarkably rectangular country.” I wondered how it compared to other countries, and this post shows my answers (Turkey is 15th; Egypt is the most rectangular; full table below). I defined the rectangularness of a country as its maximum percentage overlap with a rectangle of the same area, working in the equirectangular projection (i.e., x = longitude, y = latitude). Ideally each country would get its own projection, but equirectangular rectangles feel at least linguistically thematic and are easier to code…
David Barry‘s ranking of “The rectangularness of countries.”
* Nicholas Chrisman, Professor of Geomatic Sciences, Université Laval
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As we get square, we might send paradigm-shaping birthday greetings to a woman who enabled mapping of an altogether different– and world-changing– sort: Rosalind Franklin; she was born on this date in 1920. A biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer, Franklin captured the X-ray diffraction images of DNA that were, in the words of Francis Crick, “the data we actually used” when he and James Watson developed their “double helix” hypothesis for the structure of DNA. Indeed, it was Franklin who argued to Crick and Watson that the backbones of the molecule had to be on the outside (something that neither they nor their competitor in the race to understand DNA, Linus Pauling, had understood). Franklin never received the recognition she deserved for her independent work– her paper was published in Nature after Crick and Watson’s, which barely mentioned her– and she died of cancer four years before Crick, Watson, and their lab director Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for the discovery.
Connections…
Everyone knows the old saw that “no technology exists in a vacuum.” Less clear to our linear-narrative-obsessed culture is the fact that no technology was invented in one, either. The strands that connect the dots of a technology’s path from invention to deployment to adoption criss and cross much more than we give them credit for, even in TED Talks. History Mesh is an interactive timeline tracing the interconnected history of four technology megatrends over the past four millennia, using the London Tube Map as graphic inspiration. Think the history of computation started in the 1950s and has nothing to do with “water puppet theater” in the third century B.C.E.? Think again…
Read the whole story here, then explore History Mesh.
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As we appreciate the shoulders of those on whom we stand, we might send paradigm-shaping birthday greetings to Rosalind Franklin; she was born on this date in 1920. A biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer, Franklin captured the X-ray diffraction images of DNA that were, in the words of Francis Crick, “the data we actually used” when he and James Watson developed their “double helix” hypothesis for the structure of DNA. Indeed, it was Franklin who argued to Crick and Watson that the backbones of the molecule had to be on the outside (something that neither they nor their competitor in the race to understand DNA, Linus Pauling, had understood). Franklin never received the recognition she deserved for her independent work– her paper was published in Nature after Crick and Watson’s, which barely mentioned her– and she died of cancer four years before Crick, Watson, and their lab director Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for the discovery.
“Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry”*…
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
—Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature
Benoit Mandelbrot, Sterling Professor of Mathematics at Yale and the father of fractal geometry, died last Thursday at age 85. As Heinz-Otto Peitgen, professor of mathematics and biomedical sciences at the University of Bremen, observed, “if we talk about impact inside mathematics, and applications in the sciences, he is one of the most important figures of the last 50 years.”
“I decided to go into fields where mathematicians would never go because the problems were badly stated,” Dr. Mandelbrot once said. “I have played a strange role…” Indeed, one hopes that Mandelbrot had the consolation of his own fascination as he contemplated the diffusion pattern of the pancreatic cancer that killed him.
At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 — the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.
* Richard Feynman
In other sad news, Barbara Billingsley, the avatar of American motherhood in her role as Mrs. Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver, passed away on Saturday.
As we marvel at patterns nested within themselves, we might recall that it was on this date in in 1962 that In 1962, Dr. James D. Watson, Dr. Francis Crick, and Dr. Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
Who you callin’ “Cupcake”?…
Cupcakes are, of course, all the vogue. And as their popularity has exploded, they’ve begun to speciate…
There are Periodic Table Cupcakes…
Elmo cupcakes…
Watchmen Cupcakes…
And oh so many others (for a nifty selection, starting with the ones above, poke around at Laughing Squid and at Friday Foodie)…
But cupcakes, in their mainstream “chocolate or vanilla” manifestations, or in these more elaborate guises, have remained… well, dainty.
No longer! Now the formidable folks at Butch Bakery (“Where butch meets buttercream”) offer cupcakes in 12 flavors and six “styles”: Woodland Camo, Wood Grain, Houndstooth, Plaid, Checkerboard or Marble.
Got beer?
As we bench press a baker’s dozen, we might recall that it was on this date in 1953 that James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced to friends that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement took place on April 25 following publication in the April issue of Nature (published April 2). The not-yet-Nobel-laureates walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge and announced, “We have found the secret of Life.”
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