The universe revealed by observations is spectacularly simple: spatially flat, with nearly scale-invariant fluctuations. Nevertheless, there are major puzzles: what happened at the singularity? what are the dark energy and dark matter? where is the universe heading? Until LHC tells us otherwise,...

Laura Landweber, Princeton University, Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Global DNA rearrangements occur in many cells, including several forms of cancer. The phenomenon is most exaggerated in some single-celled organisms known as ciliates. I will show how RNA molecules can provide a...

Synthetic life, defined as life that did not arise from preexisting life, spontaneously emerged when the first cell-like structures assembled from mixtures of organic molecules on the early Earth. These structures, referred to as protocells, exhibited certain properties of living systems and...