Scientific Romanticism

With this somewhat "hanging" question, our reporter went from the award ceremony of Hangzhou pineapple science award to the science laboratory in Beijing and interviewed a number of scientific research and science popularization workers, and got both positive and negative answers Is science romantic or not? The answer reflects not the contradiction between reason and sensibility, but a kind of feeling and a kind of attachment of science and technology workers to science cause Romance is love in the blood On April 12, Zhejiang science and Technology Museum on the West Lake of Hangzhou welcomed a "big brand" scientist, Aron chehanovo, who won the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry On the same day, the "pineapple Science Award", known as the Chinese version of the funny Nobel Prize, was announced in Hangzhou The purpose of Aaron's visit was to participate in the third pineapple Science Forum and award party To this end, he almost became a "flying man in the air", one day, one day, one day back Xu didn't get jet lag, and just accepted the "examination" from the audience on the science forum for two consecutive hours At four o'clock in the afternoon, when the reporter saw him, a long's face was not good "Please buy me some medicine for headache later!" He whispered to the staff next to him in English and jokingly said, "no Chinese herbal medicine." Nevertheless, he was interviewed by China Science Daily When the reporter threw out the topic of science and romance, he was obviously interested "For me, science must be romantic! I don't do science because I want to develop a drug or treat a disease, but because it's my love " He said like a barrage of bullets A long told reporters that he was not from a scientific family, but an ordinary intellectual family His father is a lawyer and his mother is an English teacher Their influence on Aaron is to try to make him do what he likes His parents' free and easy growing environment and love for Science finally led him into the temple of Nobel Prize In 2004, Aron, together with Israeli scientist Avram hershko and American scientist Owen Ross, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of ubiquitin regulated protein degradation, and became the first Israeli to win the Nobel Prize in science "Ubiquitin is a kind of polypeptide in the body It's like a label Any protein with this label will be transported to the" waste treatment plant "in the cell and then degraded So, what I'm studying is actually the 'waste treatment' process of proteins in the body " He explained his work as easily as he could A long stressed that although love for Science flowed in his body like blood, he could not blindly carry out scientific research For example, in the choice of scientific research direction, he should be accurate and have a strategy like fighting a war "I'm from a small country, and I don't have much research funding, so I have to make smart choices so that we can reduce our competitors a little bit." He admitted In the 1970s and 1980s, the whole scientific community was studying how proteases were produced, but no one cared about how they apoptosis It was because of the reverse that he unexpectedly won the Nobel Prize The path of scientific exploration has never been smooth, as it is for Aaron "I have also experienced many setbacks, and it is inevitable that I will make mistakes, but the key is to treat with the right attitude, learn from the mistakes and gain from them." "My hobby is science, nothing else." To this day, the 67 year old scientist is still attached to the job For him, science is not a career, but a whole hearted hobby "So, do you think science loves you?" The reporter asked "I don't know Unlike humans, science is neutral But I think it's love! " After a little thought, a long replied Nowadays, thousands of people have studied ubiquitin regulated protein degradation, and a large number of pharmaceutical companies are engaged in drug development In this regard, a long is very pleased to say: "in any case, I think only love, can be successful!" Science communication can also be romantic In the winter of 1615, Galileo, a 39 year old Italian astrophysicist, was severely threatened by the Holy See to give up his Copernican theory 400 years later, the story of Galileo, which is familiar to the world, was incorporated into the Beijing Opera Aria and made its debut on the West Lake On the evening of December 12, the pineapple Science Award opened the audience's eyes again with its "unusual way" of science popularization At the award ceremony, the "three auditions Galileo" in the form of traditional Chinese Peking Opera made many audiences refreshing "Good looking is the first, popular science is the second, and the promotion of traditional culture is the third This form of popular science plays should be more promoted." Said a local media source sitting in the audience Ten minutes on stage, half moon work on stage Wang Yami, the planner of pineapple Science Award, told the China Science Daily that the popular science skit took more than half a month from screenwriting, rehearsal to final performance "We just hope that through science popularization, the public and scientists can communicate with each other, understand each other, and no longer be strangers to each other." Wang Yami said Seeing the reaction of the audience, she and the screenwriter Wang Jitao both felt that the previous efforts were not in vain The whole award ceremony lasted more than two hours, and the staff from guoke.com and Zhejiang science and Technology Museum prepared nearly three months "In this way, we hope to encourage those imaginative and interesting research results and arouse the public's curiosity and enthusiasm for science." Ji shisan, founder of Apple shell and founder of pineapple Science Award, said in an interview with China Science Daily "In fact, the romance of science popularization depends on whether you can enjoy it At present, a lot of work lacks communication between people On the contrary, science popularization work is sharing something with the public If there is sharing, there will be feedback If there is feedback, you will be happy " Ji shisan said In his opinion, it is not difficult to diversify the forms of science popularization There are many experiences in other fields that can be used for reference, such as drama, magic, etc to put these experiences on the stage of science popularization can also make science popularization more original and attractive "However, one of the differences in science communication is that it needs more rigor than other industries." Ji shisan admits that in the future, he hopes to "have more money", so as to better promote and spread science popularization "In the past, people regarded science as a cold and serious thing, which has a lot to do with our inadequate science popularization." Li Xiangyi, winner of the karinga prize, a "Nobel Prize" in science circle, told China Science Daily In his view, no matter engaged in science or science popularization, they are innovative and have a romantic or even "obsessed" side Li pointed out that China's current hardware and policy environment for science popularization are no worse than those of other countries For example, China has the science and technology popularization law, which is dedicated to promoting the development of science and technology work, with the active guidance of the government, and China's top five science and technology museums are the largest in the world, but at the same time, we should also see the hidden gap with developed countries "At present, in terms of the nature of education, the work of popular science in our country is still centered on the dissemination of knowledge, which is far from the guidance of the work of popular science in developed countries on ideology and values Therefore, we need to continue to work hard to serve the improvement of the scientific foundation and quality of the whole people." He said At the same time, how to promote the innovation and development of science popularization is also a major task in the future Romance is not everyone's feeling As usual, this pineapple science award has once again made a batch of "cold bench" research "hot", and this year's Chemistry Award is a little unusual, its research content is full of rich romantic atmosphere In modern society, love is almost synonymous with romance However, scientists want to study love, which is also penetrating This year's Pineapple Science Prize Chemistry Award is just like this Its award content is: A Study on love In order to explore the truth behind the chemical reaction of love, Xue Lei's team from the school of life science and technology of Tongji University did experiments with Drosophila They first put a male and a female in a test tube and found that no matter how old the female was, the male would choose to mate with her When a male flies and two females of different ages are put together, the male flies will give priority to the young females "This mode of choice and decision is influenced by neurons in the brain." Xue Lei told China Science Daily However, after the results of the study were published, some women expressed great regret and were hard to accept They hoped that the team could transfer the sex of fruit flies to re experiment, or the male scientists could experience the experiment in person, and publicize the results as soon as possible The reporter of China Science Daily asked Xue Lei about this question However, existing experiments may make more women regret the research results He said that it has been proved that female flies will passively wait for the pursuit of male flies, and the final outcome depends on which male flies love attack the battle longer When it comes to the romanticism of scientific research, Xue Lei said: "a scientific idea can be very romantic at the beginning, but when it comes to the real research of this problem, it needs to be carefully operated step by step." But not necessarily There are also scientists who believe that there is not much relationship between science and romance Wang Sijia, the winner of this pineapple Science Award and researcher of the Institute of computational biology, Shanghai Academy of life sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, holds the opposite attitude "Science is a work, it can also increase human knowledge, I also like to do it very much This research has been done for many years, but I feel that science is not a romantic thing!" Wang Sijia thinks Wang Sijia participated in a study jointly completed by Fudan University and the partnership Institute of computational biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Mapu society He found that the reason why East Asians prefer to sweat is that there was a gene mutation edar370a in Central China about 30000 years ago, which led to a 15% increase in the density of sweat glands Most East Asians carry the variant gene The research was published as a cover paper in the journal Cell During the interview, many scientific research and science popularization workers told reporters that as long as you like to do science related work, enjoy it, or enter a selfless realm, you will have a chance to taste the romantic taste This seems to be quite similar to this year's Pineapple Science Prize in mathematics Wang Zhe's team from the psychology department of Ohio State University found that genes can affect a person's math ability and anxiety