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“Ingeborg Rapoport was denied her PhD at the University of Hamburg in 1938 for “racial reasons” due to her Jewish heritage. Last week, the 102-year-old Rapoport at long last had the opportunity to defend her doctoral thesis on diphtheria before an academic committee – 77 years after she completed it. After she aced her oral exam, her PhD was approved and the degree will be awarded to her in a ceremony next month in Hamburg. When this Nazi injustice from decades ago is finally righted, Rapoport will become the oldest person in the world to ever receive a doctoral degree. Rapoport was 25 years old when she submitted her thesis on diphtheria, an infectious disease that was a leading cause of death among children at the time. Her professor praised her work but, as Rapoport told The Wall Street Journal, “I was told I wasn’t permitted to take the oral examination.” Although she was raised as a Protestant, Rapoport’s mother was Jewish which, according to the Nazis, made her “a first-degree crossbreed” and ineligible for academic advancement. “My medical existence was turned to rubble,” she recalled. “It was a shame for science and a shame for Germany.“ That year, she emigrated penniless to the US where she did several internships at hospitals and eventually received her M.D. from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. After working for several years in the US and starting a family, she returned to Europe and founded the first neonatology clinic in Germany at Berlin’s Charité Hospital. Reflecting on her journey, she said, “I have never felt bitterness. I’ve been shockingly lucky in all this. For me it all came out well: I had my best teachers in the U.S., I found my husband, I had my children.” But in recent months, she began to wonder about the possibility of receiving her long-denied degree. A Hamburg colleague of her son learned about her story and presented her case to the current dean of the medical school, Dr. Uwe Koch-Gromus. Koch-Gromus was determined that Rapoport should complete her degree – and that she should earn it, not be granted an honorary Ph.D., even though the university’s legal department said that was the simplest solution. Koch-Gromus arranged for Rapoport to do an oral examination on diphtheria, the subject of her original paper, and she began studying up on the past 70 years of diphtheria research. After her exam, Koch-Gromus said, “Frau Rapoport has gathered notable knowledge about what’s happened since then. Particularly given her age, she was brilliant.” Rapoport will receive her doctorate at a ceremony in Hamburg on June 9, and in doing so will set a new world record for the oldest person to receive a PhD. Rapoport is thrilled to be receiving her degree at long last and pleased that the university is striving to amend this injustice. Koch-Gramus, she said, “has made a great effort to show that things are now different in Germany.” Most importantly to Rapoport, however, is the chance to reflect on the circumstances that preventing her from receiving her degrees decades ago: “I am happy and proud, but this is not about me. This is in commemoration of those who did not make it this far.” To read more about Rapoport’s life in The Wall Street Journal, visit http://on.wsj.com/1QLE3Oz As seen on the A Mighty Girl Facebook page Cosmovitral: Mexico’s Amazing Stained Glass Botanical Garden Photos by Lucy Nieto. Art deco building originally used as a large market transformed into a stained glass botanical garden in Toluca, Mexico. The biggest known diamond in the universe is a star named Lucy. This white dwarf has a carbon interior that crystallized as it cooled, which formed a giant diamond in the sky. Scientists couldn’t resist naming it after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. Source Let’s teach our children about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is so much more glorious and awesome and even comforting than anything offered by any scripture or God-concept that I know of. Carolyn Porco (via thedragoninmygarage) Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today. What is the genetic mutation “Originally, we all had brown eyes,” said Professor Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch,” which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes.“ The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin. The “switch,” which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris — effectively “diluting” brown eyes to blue. The switch’s effect on OCA2 is very specific therefore. If the OCA2 gene had been completely destroyed or turned off, human beings would be without melanin in their hair, eyes or skin colour — a condition known as albinism. Limited genetic variation Variation in the colour of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes. “From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” says Professor Eiberg. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” Brown-eyed individuals, by contrast, have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production. Professor Eiberg and his team examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye colour of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. His findings are the latest in a decade of genetic research, which began in 1996, when Professor Eiberg first implicated the OCA2 gene as being responsible for eye colour. Nature shuffles our genes The mutation of brown eyes to blue represents neither a positive nor a negative mutation. It is one of several mutations such as hair colour, baldness, freckles and beauty spots, which neither increases nor reduces a human’s chance of survival. As Professor Eiberg says, “it simply shows that nature is constantly shuffling the human genome, creating a genetic cocktail of human chromosomes and trying out different changes as it does so.” Chateau R., Greenhouse Photography Willem van Dijke I lost my shit at self-governing snakes. “Only thinks of you as a friend ” Many birds do not recognise its authority. Lost it at horny toad Watch: Bill Nye’s graduation speech was as fiery and inspiring as you’d expect Bill Nye is killing it!
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Svi plavooki ljudi su rođaci Novu boju očiju stvorila je genetska mutacija prije 10.000 godina Svi plavooki ljudi na planetu su daleki rođaci koji potječu od istog pretka, pokazalo je novo istraživanje profesora Hansa Eiberga sa Sveučilišta u Kopenhagenu, objavljeno u časopisu Human Genetics. Plava boja očiju genetska je mutacija koja se pojavila prije šest do deset tisuća godina, do kada su svi Zemljani imali smeđu boju očiju. Eiberg je ustanovio da se genetska mutacija zbila u sjeverozapadnom dijelu regije oko Crnog mora ili u području sjevernog Afganistana. Mutacija je, prema istraživanju, utjecala na gen OCA2, koji je uključen u proizvodnju melanina, pigmenta koji daje boju kosi, očima i koži. Mutacija je ograničila djelovanje gena, reducirajući proizvodnju melanina u irisu oka. Da je mutacija gena bila potpuna, prvi plavooki čovjek bio bi albino. Ipak, prva osoba kod koje se mutacija gena pojavila nije imala plave oči, a ni njezini direktni potomci, nego su prve plave oči nastale tek kad je došlo do stvaranja potomstva dvoje nositelja tog recesivnoga gena. Istraživanje profesora Eiberga provedeno je u Jordanu, Indiji, Danskoj i Turskoj a trajalo je više od desetljeća. Dok smeđooki ljudi imaju brojne individualne varijacije u DNK na mjestu koje kontrolira produkciju melanina, svi plavooki naslijedili su identičnu kombinaciju, što znači da svi imaju zajedničkog pretka, ustanovio je Eiberg. Od 800 ljudi obuhvaćenih istraživanjem, samo jedna osoba nije imala tu genetsku mutaciju, ali je imala smeđu pjegu u šarenicama. Profesor ističe kako mutacija ne nosi ni pozitivne ni negativne konotacije te nema utjecaj na sposobnost preživljavanja. John Hawks, profesor s američkog sveučilišta Wisconsin-Madison pohvalio je dansko istraživanje i dodao dobivenim rezultatima novu dimenziju. - Kako se dogodilo da u deset tisuća godina od jednog plavookog čovjeka danas imamo 20 do 30 posto Europljana s plavim očima? Čini se da taj gen na ljude utječe na dobar način, navodeći ih da imaju puno djece, rekao je Hawks.