Maya Weaver

Atomic Bombs in the News Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has captured the imaginations of thousands of viewers with over six hundred million dollars of revenue made in the global box office. Depicting the work of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the film powerfully captures the construction of the atomic bombs used to end the second World War. However, what many viewers might not know is that the two atomic bombs, “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” had profound genetic implications.   Effects of the Bombs Although the immediate consequences of the atomic bombs were devastating, decades later, the effects of radiation continue to affect the…

Who was M.S. Swaminathan? M.S. Swaminathan was an Indian geneticist born August 7th, 1925, who played a contributing role in India’s Green Revolution. As a former student of genetics and plant breeding at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Swaminathan became a reputable cytogeneticist that identified chromosomal structure and alterations of various plants.  India's Green Revolution In the 1960s, India was one of the highest populated countries in the world with the second largest agricultural land in the world. That said, at this time, food production was so bad that India was on the precipice of major famine and hosted around…

What is the Human Genome Project? In 1984, the US Department of Energy and other significant governmental and environmental agencies convened to discuss the feasibility of generating the first sequence of the human genome. Nearly twenty years later, in 2003, biomedical researchers across the world completed this project and sequenced over 90% of the human genome. As one of the most collaborative and ambitious scientific projects in history, the Human Genome Project set a precedent for biomedical research going into the 21st century.  How was the Human Genome Project completed? The mission of sequencing the entire human genome was highly…

Over 150 years after his assassination, Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most iconic figures of United States history. Serving as the sixteenth president of the country, Lincoln played an essential role in leading a divided nation during the Civil War. Today, his image lives on in the penny and his infamous memorial at the National Mall in Washington D.C. However, as ubiquitous as Lincoln is, a few mysteries remain surrounding his life. Most peculiarly, people have been speculating for decades whether the former president had Marfan Syndrome.  What is Marfan Syndrome? Marfan Syndrome is a relatively rare genetic disorder…