[h=1]21st Century is the Age of Biology: Prof[/h]
By Express News Service
Published: 07th April 2015
CHENNAI:The 21st century is clearly the age of biology, unlike the 20th century, which was the age of Physics and Chemistry, said chemist Jim Heath, delivering IIT-Madras’s Second Institute Lecture on the topic ‘Science at the Interface: Physics, Chemistry and Biomedicine’ at the college campus.
The lecture was sponsored by the 1985 batch students of IIT-Madras.
Heath, who is the Elizabeth Gilloon Professor and professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology and professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at University of California, Los Angeles, told the audience comprising students and professors of IIT-Madras, as to how the various physics laws guided physicists in the 20th century. “But today, biologists and physicists have differing opinions,” he pointed out.
“This is not to say that biophysics does not exist,” he clarified adding that the biologists and physicists might actually have different ways of looking at a particular situation.
Showing one of the slides that had the image of a cat falling from a building in a slideshow, he stated that physicists would be interested in getting answers questions like ‘Can I approximate the cat as a spherical particle?’ and ‘Mass of cat?’, while the biologists would actually be concerned about a more fundamental question— ‘How is the cat doing?”
In the lecture, Heath, who directs the National Cancer Institute funded NSB Cancer Center, also spoke about the positive changes brought in by nanotechnology, things focused on by both physicists and biologists on any given situation, how the cell in human body functions, cellular state transitions, and how cancer immunotherapy had altered the investigation on cancer therapies.
“Immunotherapy already worked for certain cancers,” he stated and added that half of the patients exposed to immunotherapy responded and half the respondents appeared to have been cured.
Subsequently, he also gave away the three conclusions that had been derived
based on the research done on immunotherapy. The talk was followed by a question-answer session with the students.
21st Century is the Age of Biology: Prof - The New Indian Express
By Express News Service
Published: 07th April 2015
CHENNAI:The 21st century is clearly the age of biology, unlike the 20th century, which was the age of Physics and Chemistry, said chemist Jim Heath, delivering IIT-Madras’s Second Institute Lecture on the topic ‘Science at the Interface: Physics, Chemistry and Biomedicine’ at the college campus.
The lecture was sponsored by the 1985 batch students of IIT-Madras.
Heath, who is the Elizabeth Gilloon Professor and professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology and professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at University of California, Los Angeles, told the audience comprising students and professors of IIT-Madras, as to how the various physics laws guided physicists in the 20th century. “But today, biologists and physicists have differing opinions,” he pointed out.
“This is not to say that biophysics does not exist,” he clarified adding that the biologists and physicists might actually have different ways of looking at a particular situation.
Showing one of the slides that had the image of a cat falling from a building in a slideshow, he stated that physicists would be interested in getting answers questions like ‘Can I approximate the cat as a spherical particle?’ and ‘Mass of cat?’, while the biologists would actually be concerned about a more fundamental question— ‘How is the cat doing?”
In the lecture, Heath, who directs the National Cancer Institute funded NSB Cancer Center, also spoke about the positive changes brought in by nanotechnology, things focused on by both physicists and biologists on any given situation, how the cell in human body functions, cellular state transitions, and how cancer immunotherapy had altered the investigation on cancer therapies.
“Immunotherapy already worked for certain cancers,” he stated and added that half of the patients exposed to immunotherapy responded and half the respondents appeared to have been cured.
Subsequently, he also gave away the three conclusions that had been derived
based on the research done on immunotherapy. The talk was followed by a question-answer session with the students.
21st Century is the Age of Biology: Prof - The New Indian Express
