On March 15, in the “Bookvoed” on Vosstaniya, the first scientific meeting “Science is NOT flour” was held on the New Science book series

The meeting was attended by:
Alexander Krivtsov - the founder of the New Science series. Chief editor of the journal "Engineering Systems", "If";
Alexey Pasechnik (astronomy) - translator for physics, astronomy, scientific editor;
Natalia Lentsman - (biology) - translator of the New Science series;
Julia Sergienko - chief editor of the New Science series;
Oleg Sivchenko - translator, project manager of the New Science series, participant in the television game-quiz “Own Game” on NTV.


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The creators of the New Science book series from the Peter publishing house talked about how the genre of popular science literature is developing, the features of translation and, in general, the adaptation of scientific knowledge to a wide audience. And also presented a number of new series.

The public and experts ascertained an increase in interest in science and, as a consequence, in literature, which presents the latest achievements or given an insight into the development of scientific theories.

The problem is that the bulk of the published literature is translated editions, which speaks of the weakness of Russian science and the lack of an adequate number of Russian-speaking authors. The New Science series is another confirmation of this: the only author of the series, which can be attributed to the Russian scientific tradition, is Edward Frenkel, who is in the book Love and Mathematics. The heart of the hidden reality "describes its scientific ordeals even when he was the USSR. The book Edward wrote already successfully working in the USA. His white-toothed smile on the cover is another confirmation of the fact that a successful scientific nursery is exported to us with the participation of our former compatriots from abroad, and this trend is difficult to reverse. Although the editor-in-chief of the series, Yulia Sergienko, noted that the publishing house is open and interested in cooperation with domestic authors.

After consulting for stagnation in the Russian academic community, the experts began to talk about specific books published in the series. A detailed description, due to time constraints, received only two books.

About the new book in the series Energy, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life Nick Lane was told by the translator, biologist Natalia Lentsman. Natalia noted that it was interesting to work with the project, since the author himself is a biologist and enthusiast of his work; the book was written with enthusiasm, lightness, and the images and comparisons that the author allows would have seemed not quite appropriate some time ago - now some author's freedom is a sign of the entire genre of popular science literature. Anyway, the book by Nick Lane reveals the important role of mitochondria in the structure of living organisms, and the more complex they are, the more important this role is.



Next, Natalia briefly explained what these mitochondria are in the presentation of Nick Lane and with which they, in fact, “eat”. It turns out that the mitochondria, according to the latest data, are ancient bacteria that about two billion years ago adapted to life inside the cells. As a sign of former independence, they retained a fragment of the genome. The uneasy relationship between mitochondria and host cells defines many aspects of cell life — from energy production, sexual process and reproduction to suicide, aging, and death. Mitochondria are also "famous" for their role in forensic medicine. They were often used to identify people, living or dead, and some such stories had a wide resonance. As in the case of the definition of our ancestors, the method of identification is based on the fact that mitochondria have their own genes.


Some have heard of mitochondria in connection with one of the methods for treating infertility, which has been fiercely controversial. Its essence is that the fragment of ooplasm containing the mitochondria from the egg of a healthy female donor is transferred to the egg of an infertile woman (the so-called transfer or transplantation of ooplasm). When information about this method was first leaked to the media, one British newspaper published an article under the catchy headline: "Infants from two mothers and one father." This statement is true because the child receives the “usual” genes from the “real” mother, and a certain number of mitochondrial genes from the woman - the donor of the ooplasm. So, strictly speaking, babies really got the genes from two different women. In connection with ethical issues, this method was banned in the UK and the USA, but in 2015 the British Parliament voted to allow its use.

Mitochondria even got into the series "Star Wars" as a rather vague justification of the famous Force, which "may be with you." In the first episodes, it was assumed that this power has if not religious, then at least a spiritual nature, but in the fourth episode it was associated with the "midi-chlorians". Midichlorians, as one Jedi popularly explained, are “microscopic life forms that live in all living cells. We live with them in a mutually beneficial symbiosis. Without midichlorians there would be no life, and we would never know what Power is. ” Both in the explanation and in the title itself there is a transparent, intentional allusion to the mitochondria.

After a brief review of Natalie Lentsman of the book Energy, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, the smallest parts of cells grow in our eyes so that we can say: MITOHONDRIA is not a small bacterial creature to you, but our natural strength! Therefore, keep your mitochondria in favorable conditions.



About the book “5 000 000 000 years of loneliness. Search for life among the stars. ” Lee Billings told the translator, astronomer and scientific editor Alexei Pasechnik. A fascinating journey into the background of the development of the Solar System, stages and possible options for the development of physical events performed by Alexey was drawn to a whole lecture, from which we learned not only when and how life developed on Earth, but also caught the cosmic context of this development, from which Earth's isolation may come to an end. Over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Some of these exoplanets may be quite comparable in terms of the conditions of our world. The problem is that the means of detection are not yet so perfect as to obtain exhaustive data: now the new planets in the pictures are vague spots, which you can only guess about rather than say something, but these fortune telling is the standard way of developing scientific knowledge.



Alexey also said that it is necessary to search in space to confirm the presence of rational intervention or biological organisms - this is “complexity” —complicated matter, garbage — a necessary attribute of civilization, and also methane with oxygen, which do not accumulate in themselves without organic matter. )

After the presentation of the books, the experts answered questions, among which more than once there was a request to hold such an event again. We also hope that the meetings "Science is NOT flour" on popular science books and theories will become permanent, we are now negotiating with sites, and not only in St. Petersburg.

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