405: Chapter 855 Offline Pressure and Further Questioning

Leaving President Wang's office, Zhao Yang returned to his own office.

Wang Hong and Fiers were sitting at their respective desks flipping through literature, while He Changyan stood in front of the whiteboard writing something.

Zhao Yang walked over and took a look; He Changyan was organizing several boundary conditions for the indices and estimates in the Warings Problem, which was written quite well.

"Let's not lecture on new material today."

Zhao Yang clapped his hands, causing everyone to turn around.

"If you have any questions about the topics I assigned a few days ago, feel free to ask now."

Wang Hong raised her hand first.

"Teacher Zhao, I got stuck on Chapter 3 of Vinogradov's methodology on trigonometric sums. He used a recursive descent technique when dealing with high-power exponential sums, but I've read it several times and still can't figure out how the initial conditions for the recursion are derived from the integral kernel of the Circle Method."

"That's a good question."

Zhao Yang walked to the whiteboard and drew a new set of integration paths next to the formulas He Changyan had written.

"The initial conditions for Vinogradov's recursion aren't derived directly from the integral kernel. He first performed a variable substitution, converting the high-power exponential sum into a convolution of multiple lower-power exponential sums, and then performed a parity decomposition on the convolution kernel. He wrote this step quite briefly in his paper, only providing the final form, and skipped several steps in the derivation. If you perform the derivation yourself using this variable substitution, you'll be able to see how the initial conditions come about."

Wang Hong stared at the lines of formulas newly added to the whiteboard for a long while, then suddenly tapped her forehead.

"So that's the step he skipped! No wonder I couldn't get it to match up."

Fiers also raised his hand, asking about a convergence issue in Harmonic Analysis when dealing with smoothing remainder terms.

After Zhao Yang answered everyone's questions one by one, he added a few extended derivation directions on the whiteboard and then assigned the next stage of reading tasks to each person.

Upon leaving the office, Zhao Yang ran into Professor Wang Wenyuan in the hallway.

The old man was holding a thermos, and when he saw him, he raised the cup from afar.

"Zhao Yang, it's rare to run into you today. I saw the news a few days ago saying you got into it with an American professor named Ross again? You've been trending on hot searches again these past few days. For the past few years, I've heard your name every single day; it's hard not to know what you're up to."

Zhao Yang walked over and walked side-by-side with Professor Wang Wenyuan toward the stairwell, shaking his head as he said: "Professor Wang, please don't tease me. That Professor Ross questioned the data source of my paper, and I just responded with a few words."

Professor Wang Wenyuan turned his head to look at Zhao Yang and smiled.

"You call that just responding with a few words? After you replied, the entire internet exploded. But honestly, I found it quite satisfying. You wouldn't know, but in the past, those of us in mathematics were often nitpicked by foreigners. Someone would send you a pile of baseless questions in an email, and after you spent a month calculating everything clearly and replied, they wouldn't even give you a response—they just looked down on you. It's good that you can stand up to them directly."

"I just can't be bothered to go in circles with them."

"You can't be bothered to go in circles because you have the confidence to back it up."

Professor Wang Wenyuan stopped at the stairwell and looked at him.

"How is your research group doing lately? How far have you pushed the Warings Problem?"

"The literature review stage is basically over, and the students have already started their own independent derivations. Wang Hong has great intuition, Fiers has a solid foundation, and He Changyan is very steady in his work. We have already organized some preliminary results."

Professor Wang Wenyuan nodded approvingly.

"I've said it before, your ability to lead students is not bad at all. I noticed He Changyan back when he was a teaching assistant in my class; he is particularly good at staying calm. As for Wang Hong, I felt her thinking was very sharp during her graduate interview; she might have been wasted in someone else's hands, but with you, I am very reassured!"

"You flatter me!"

Zhao Yang smiled.

At this moment, Professor Wang Wenyuan paused and gave Zhao Yang a deep look.

He said slowly.

"Some things, if you can yield a step, it's better to yield. Our Long Country's scientific research community, after all, still exists by attaching itself to the global scientific research community. You have the capital to be willful, but the Long Country's scientific research community might not. I hope you understand."

Clearly, Professor Wang Wenyuan's appearance here was not an accident; perhaps he was intentionally waiting for Zhao Yang here.

After listening to Professor Wang Wenyuan, Zhao Yang nodded silently.

The two parted ways at the stairwell.

Zhao Yang went straight to the Biology laboratory in the Science Building Complex.

Several Biology master's students were performing cell culture, and Zhao Yang walked into the lab with some thoughts on his mind.

The words Professor Wang Wenyuan had just spoken had touched him somewhat.

"Teacher Zhao, you're here."

Zhou Ting, who was nearby, greeted him first.

"Hmm, I'm here."

Only then did Zhao Yang regain his focus, took a look at the experiment they were conducting, and subconsciously replied.

"How is the adherence rate of this batch of cells?"

"The KB-17 line passaged yesterday has an adherence rate of about eighty-five percent, which is a slight improvement over last week. I adjusted the trypsin digestion time, shortening it by about a few dozen seconds as you said last time."

Zhao Yang walked to the microscope to look at the cell morphology in the culture flask and nodded.

"The digestion time can be fine-tuned a bit more; the adherence speed of this batch of cells is slightly faster than the standard line. I'll mark a new time parameter for you to try next time."

As he spoke, he wrote a number in the experimental logbook nearby, then turned to look at the other two master's students.

"Have the results of the Western blot you ran a couple of days ago come out yet?"

One of the master's students pulled out a film that had just been developed from a drawer and handed it over.

"They're out. The position of the target band is correct, but the background is a bit high."

Zhao Yang took the film and held it up to the light to look.

"The blocking solution concentration isn't high enough. Next time, just increase the proportion of skim milk powder and it will be solved. Also, you can lengthen the membrane washing time."

He returned the film and chatted briefly with the students about the experimental design in that Directed Evolution paper, specifically regarding the choice of control groups and statistical methods.

As he explained, he casually drew a simple experimental flowchart on a piece of scratch paper nearby, noting the precautions for several key control nodes on the side.

Zhou Ting and the several master's students gathered around to listen for a long time, occasionally taking notes in their respective notebooks.

Then Zhao Yang returned to the villa and opened Twitter, only to discover that Professor Ross had posted a new tweet.

It had already reached the hot searches.

Zhao Yang's expression was one of disgust; these people were truly like flies, buzzing incessantly!

Calling from online to offline!

After finding that offline pressure didn't work, they switched back to online! Truly disgusting!

"I spent another full day cross-referencing the data tables in the paper one by one. Regarding the single-cell response speed, the value given in the paper is several times faster than the fastest known Nature mutation rate. If the experiment wasn't faked, then the key experimental conditions were deliberately concealed."

"As someone who has spent fifteen years in a cell Biology laboratory, I can responsibly say that this cell response speed cannot be replicated under any existing known culture system. Our laboratory used the exact same culture medium formula and temperature conditions as in the paper, but the results we ran were not even one-third of those in the paper. Dr. Zhao Yang needs to explain what exactly is special about his experimental materials."

"Frankly speaking, this paper has made the entire field of cell Biology very awkward. Admitting its conclusions means overturning the consensus accumulated over the past few decades, yet not admitting it makes it impossible to find any logical loopholes. I hope Dr. Zhao Yang can act on the principle of scientific transparency and release more raw data and experimental footage to allow global peers to verify it together."