Crystallography is a tool that is often employed in materials science. The understanding of crystal structures is needed to understand crystallographic defects.
A number of other physical properties are linked to crystallography. For example, the minerals in clay form small, flat, platelike structures. Clay can be easily deformed because the platelike particles can slip along each other in the plane of the plates, yet remain strongly connected in the direction perpendicular to the plates. Such mechanisms can be studied by crystallographic texture measurements.
Crystallography includes the symmetry patterns which can be formed by atoms in a crystal.
X-ray crystallography was the primary method for determining the 3-D molecular structure of biological macromolecules. The most important of these are enzymes, and nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA. In fact, the double helix structure of DNA was worked out from crystallographic data.
The first crystal structure of a macromolecule was solved in 1958 The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is a freely accessible repository for the structures of proteins and other biological macromolecules. Computer programs can be used to help visualize biological molecular structures.
X-ray crystallography has now given way to electron crystallography for macromolecules which do not form large 3-D crystals.
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party is an American populist political movement. Most people say it is conservative and libertarian.
The Tea Party:
The name "Tea Party" comes from the Boston Tea Party, a protest by colonists who objected to a British tax on tea in 1773. They demonstrated by dumping British tea taken from docked ships into the harbor. Some say that the "Tea" in "Tea Party" also stands for "Taxed Enough Already".
The Tea Party movement has caucuses (groups) in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States. Many of the members of the Tea Party caucus were first elected in the 2010 midterm elections. Some of them had never held any public office before.
The Tea Party movement has no central leadership but is composed of a loose linking of national and local groups that decide their own platforms and agendas. The Tea Party movement has been cited as an example of grassroots political activity, although it has also been cited as an example of .
The Tea Party's most famous national figures include Republican politicians such as Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, and Michele Bachmann. As of 2010, the Tea Party movement is not a national political party, but has endorsed Republican candidates.
A Gallup poll shows almost 80% of Tea Partiers say they are Republicans. Commentators, including Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport, have suggested that the movement is not a new political group but simply a rebranding of traditional Republican candidates and policies. An October 2010 "Washington Post" canvass of local Tea Party organizers found 87% saying "dissatisfaction with mainstream Republican Party leaders" was "an important factor in the support the group has received so far". Though many are opposed to GOP leadership, they are even more opposed to President Obama. Some members believe that President Obama was not born in the United States (despite a birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii).
One of the main positions the Tea Party took was against the debt ceiling (the amount of money the U.S. is allowed to borrow). Many voted against any raising of the debt ceiling. Others demanded large spending cuts and a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Maurice Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins CBE FRS (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born English physicist and molecular biologist.
Wilkins was born in New Zealand to a family from Dublin. When he was six, he moved to Birmingham.
His research contributed to the understanding of phosphorescence, isotope separation, light microscopy and X-ray crystallography.
He worked on the development of radar during World War II, and was a member of the Manhattan Project.
He is best known for his work at King's College London on the structure of DNA.
In recognition of this work, he, Francis Crick and James Watson were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". His obituary provides extensive information on the topics mentioned here.
Wilkins was the Assistant Director of the Biophysics Unit at Kings College, and responsible for work on the structure of DNA. Wilkins and a graduate student, Raymond Gosling, got the first X-ray diffraction photos of DNA in 1950. He introduced Francis Crick to the importance of DNA, and hired Rosalind Franklin on a three-year grant. Franklin made progress with the crystallography, and produced some better photographs of the structure.
In 1953 Watson visited King's, and Crick got sight of a progress report. This report included useful information from Franklin about features of DNA she had deduced from her X-ray diffraction data.
Watson and Crick published their proposed DNA double helix structure in a paper in the journal "Nature" in April 1953. In this paper Watson and Crick acknowledged that they had been "stimulated by... the unpublished results and ideas" of Wilkins and Franklin.
By this time Franklin was suffering from cancer of the ovary. She died in 1958, which explains why she was not included in the 1962 Nobel Prize. A controversy exists as to the relative contributions of her and Wilkins.
Adolf Eichmann
Otto Adolf Eichmann (19 March 1906 in Solingen - 31 May 1962 in Ramla) was a German SS officer (he had the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer, comparable with lieutenant colonel).
Eichmann was an important person of Nazi Germany during the Third Reich. As head of a subdivision of the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Referat IV B4") he was the architect of The Holocaust who organized the death camps, like the Auschwitz concentration camp, that were used to kill 11 million people during World War 2.
After the war he escaped and in 1960 was discovered to be living in Argentina. The Israeli secret service, the Mossad, kidnapped him and took him back to Israel. Eichmann was put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was found guilty on 11 December 1961, and executed by hanging in Ramla. His body was cremated in an unusually hot furnace, and the ashes were scattered in the sea. Eichmann is one of the few people to ever be executed by Israel.
The trial of Adolf Eichmann was broadcast on radio in Israel, and millions of people around the world watched it on television. This was the first time that victims of the Holocaust talked openly about what had happened. This was an event that helped bring together and unify the many people who had come to live in the new nation of Israel.
Phat Wilson
Gordon Allan "Phat" Wilson (December 29, 1895 – July 26, 1970) was a Canadian amateur ice hockey forward who won the Allan Cup three times as a member of the Port Arthur Bearcats. Seen as one of the top amateur players of his time, Wilson was added into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1963.
A native of Port Arthur, Ontario, Wilson did not even know how to skate when he joined the town's church league in 1914. Serving as a substitute, he improved his skating enough that he earned a full-time role on his team the following year and played two seasons of junior hockey before joining the Port Arthur War Veterans senior team at the age of 18.