Cancer’s Chromosomal Chaos

By Geert Kops, University Medical Center Utrecht

This year, 2014, marks the 100th anniversary of an astonishing prediction by one of the great biologists of the past. Theodor Boveri had been observing the many ways in which the development of a sea urchin embryo could go awry when an egg was fertilized by multiple sperm cells. He noticed that those eggs made many errors in how they distributed the chromosomes during the first cell divisions and he deduced that the problems with development were caused by the wrong combination of chromosomes ending up in cells of the embryo. Surely, he thought, these chromosomes must contain information that dictates how a cell should behave. Knowing that another German biologist, David von Hansemann, had seen tumor cells with abnormal amounts of chromosomes, Boveri did what all great scientist do: he merged the two seemingly unrelated observations. Boveri realized that tumor cells might be tumor cells because they lost certain chromosomes that carried information on how to behave.

Scattered Mural Painting Fragments: Putting the Pieces Back Together

 

By Carles Mancho, University of Barcelona

Virtual tools are helping art historians in Barcelona to “reconstruct” the isolated church interiors where romanesque murals once appeared, in order to visualize their scattered pieces as an integral whole. With the new tools and the creation of the Virtual Romanesque Documentation Centre (Ars Picta), Spain’s cultural heritage is now viewable by everyone everywhere. Problems of remote location, difficult access and dispersal to the world’s museums and similar obstacles are being minimized.

Catalan painter Joan Vallhonrat had an unpleasant surprise in the summer of 1919. He was making his second visit to the castle and church of Santa Maria de Mur (Pallars Jussà, Catalonia) to finish the colour reproduction of the magnificent 12th century Romanesque paintings there. The trip was difficult and long because there were no roads. Yet when he arrived in the isolated location he was surprised — and shocked — to discover an antiquarian and his team doing something unexpected: they were removing the mural paintings from the walls.

Quantum Mechanics Returns to Ancient Greece

 

By Frédéric Chevy, Ecole Normale Supérieure

Image: Artist's view of atoms in an optical lattice. When the atomic density is extremely high, the atoms block each other’s way, and atoms are stuck at the bottom of their optical wells.

For a hundred years now, we have known that some compounds lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures, a phenomenon known as superconductivity. Electrical current flows without resistance in these materials, offering unique possibilities such as carrying electrical current without loss or storing electrical energy for a nearly infinite time. However, even for the “hottest” compounds (known as high critical temperature superconductors), superconductivity only happens below about 150 degrees Celsius, a temperature way too low for large-scale practical applications.

Evaluating the Quality of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

By Alessandra Bendini, University of Bologna

Have you ever found yourself looking to buy a bottle of vegetable oil at the supermarket only to find yourself staring at the display of many different products without being able to choose one? If you look long enough, you may find yourself going from seed oil to pomace olive oil, to olive oil, and in the end, to extra virgin olive oil. Consumers from the Mediterranean area, based on their cultural heritage and traditions, may choose to buy a type of oil derived from olives. Similarly, well-informed consumers may choose virgin olive oil for its nutritional, health and sensory properties.

How to Be on Time: Internal Clock Lessons from Blue-Green Algae

By Stefanie Hertel and Anne Rediger, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

“Turn the night into day!” Are these not the mottos of our modern times? To party the night away or, for unfortunate individuals, to work at night is now the norm. In doing so, however, we encounter an opponent that should not be underestimated — the internal clock — which governs the daily rhythm, from gene expression and metabolism to behavior of not only humans but also insects, plants, and unicellular cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae). As such, the internal clock is biologically fundamental — a part of life like reproduction or cell divisions. Therefore, an understanding of the underlying mechanism is highly relevant to human health and quality of life.