Nobel Prize for Medicine Awarded

[trysail]

Hausen, Barre-Sinoussi, Montagnier Win Medicine Nobel
By Eva von Schaper and Dermot Doherty

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- German scientist Harald zur Hausen and France's Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were awarded the Nobel Prize for identifying viruses that cause cervical cancer and AIDS.

Zur Hausen's discovery of the human papillomavirus led to an understanding of the causes of the malignancy, the Stockholm- based Nobel Foundation said today in an e-mailed statement. Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier were recognized for their discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Zur Hausen's discovery paved the way for the development of Merck & Co.'s Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Cervarix vaccines. The shots could help protect the 500,000 women who are affected by cervical cancer every year, the Foundation said.

``It was his vision that the virus causes cancer and he persistently searched for proof,'' Matthias Duerst, one of Zur Hausen's former students, said in a telephone interview. Duerst is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Jena.

The French researchers' discovery hasn't led to a protective medicine yet, but was instrumental in the development of drugs that enable HIV-infected patients to live almost as long as those who don't carry the virus in their bodies...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Hausen, Barre-Sinoussi, Montagnier Win Medicine Nobel
By Eva von Schaper and Dermot Doherty

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- German scientist Harald zur Hausen and France's Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were awarded the Nobel Prize for identifying viruses that cause cervical cancer and AIDS.

Zur Hausen's discovery of the human papillomavirus led to an understanding of the causes of the malignancy, the Stockholm- based Nobel Foundation said today in an e-mailed statement. Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier were recognized for their discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Zur Hausen's discovery paved the way for the development of Merck & Co.'s Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Cervarix vaccines. The shots could help protect the 500,000 women who are affected by cervical cancer every year, the Foundation said.

``It was his vision that the virus causes cancer and he persistently searched for proof,'' Matthias Duerst, one of Zur Hausen's former students, said in a telephone interview. Duerst is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Jena.

The French researchers' discovery hasn't led to a protective medicine yet, but was instrumental in the development of drugs that enable HIV-infected patients to live almost as long as those who don't carry the virus in their bodies...

Paved the way for big-pharma to develop some more meds... wtg, guys.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Paved the way for big-pharma to develop some more meds... wtg, guys.

Hey, it's a vaccine for cervical cancer, for Christ's sake. Give the guys some credit! So someone makes some money off it. Believe me, they earned it. Developing vaccines is a very tricky and labor intensive business.

The AIDS drugs were found by trial-and-error though, another labor-intensive effort, but not all that scientific. They found AZT when they were looking at old cold sore medicines or something.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Hey, it's a vaccine for cervical cancer, for Christ's sake. Give the guys some credit! So someone makes some money off it. Believe me, they earned it. Developing vaccines is a very tricky and labor intensive business.

The AIDS drugs were found by trial-and-error though, another labor-intensive effort, but not all that scientific. They found AZT when they were looking at old cold sore medicines or something.

It's yet another pushed-through-way-too-fast and untried vaccine that can be mandated (and has, in states like TX) on YOUNG GIRLS, for pete's sake, that has now cause paralysis in some patients. That's worth a few people saved from ONE type of cervical cancer caused by the virus these guys found?

Seems to me that this discovery should have started a HUGE push in schools for sex education, diseases and how to PROTECT YOURSELF. Instead it prompted big-pharm to develop something to attempt to prevent this thing with yet another dangerous vaccine.

To me, this is a no-brainer. I mean, what a concept... protecting yourself from disease, without risking something like, oh I don't know, paralysis!

 

[trysail]

The award to Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier (of the Pasteur Institute) is being reported by some in the media as a bit of a further repudiation of the claims of Dr. Robert Gallo of the (U.S.) National Cancer Institute. Both the French and the American originally claimed to have been the first to isolate the human immunodeficiency virus.

From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier ):
By 1983, this group of scientists and doctors, headed by Montagnier, had discovered the causative virus (Barré-Sinoussi et al., 1983). It was named lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV. A year later, a team led by Robert Gallo of the United States confirmed the discovery of the virus, but renamed it human T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III) (Popovic et al., 1984).

Montagnier's research was conducted at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Whether his or Gallo's group was first to isolate HIV was for many years the subject of an acrimonious dispute. The controversy arose, in part, from the striking similarity between the first two human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates, Lai/LAV (formerly LAV, isolated at the Pasteur Institute) and Lai/IIIB (formerly HTLV-IIIB, reported to be isolated from a pooled culture at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute), and the high degree of variability found among subsequent HIV-1 isolates. The controversy included accusations that Gallo improperly used a sample of HIV produced at the Pasteur Institute.

In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health commissioned a group at Roche to analyze archival samples established at the Pasteur Institute and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute between 1983 and 1985. They concluded that the origin of the HIV-1 Lai/IIIB isolate discovered by Robert Gallo was the same as that discovered by Montagnier. The two scientists continued to dispute each other's claims until 1987, and it was not until President Mitterrand of France and President Reagan of the USA met that the major issues were ironed out. The scientific protagonists finally agreed to share credit for the discovery of HIV, and in 1986, both the French and the US names (LAV and HTLV-III) were dropped in favor of the new term human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Coffin, 1986).

 

[epiphany65]

It's yet another pushed-through-way-too-fast and untried vaccine that can be mandated (and has, in states like TX) on YOUNG GIRLS, for pete's sake, that has now cause paralysis in some patients. That's worth a few people saved from ONE type of cervical cancer caused by the virus these guys found?

Seems to me that this discovery should have started a HUGE push in schools for sex education, diseases and how to PROTECT YOURSELF. Instead it prompted big-pharm to develop something to attempt to prevent this thing with yet another dangerous vaccine.

To me, this is a no-brainer. I mean, what a concept... protecting yourself from disease, without risking something like, oh I don't know, paralysis!

The side-effects of Gardasil have been more serious than paralysis, including death. Plus it only protects women from a small number of the strains of HPV (I think it's a couple dozen starins out of 100+). Besides, using a condom will protect women from HPV and shouldn't most be practicing safe sex anyway...? More on the side-effects and dangers of Gardasil here:

http://www.ennislaw.com/gardasil.html

 

[trysail]

http://www.enislaw.com/gardasil.html

Is it really necessary to cite "facts" from a tort law firm?

I, for one, prefer citations and references from slightly less biased sources, like f'rinstance, the scientific literature and scholarly journals.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Is it really necessary to cite "facts" from a tort law firm?

I, for one, prefer citations and references from slightly less biased sources, like f'rinstance, the scientific literature and scholarly journals.

Yeah, like the scientific literature is so unbiased.

 

[neonlyte]

The Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine (awards based upon real research projects) announced on Thursday 2nd October went to:
Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore) for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine..

The full Ig Nobel Prize List: http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2008

 

[epiphany65]

Is it really necessary to cite "facts" from a tort law firm?

I, for one, prefer citations and references from slightly less biased sources, like f'rinstance, the scientific literature and scholarly journals.

Fair enough. If you follow the links provided at the website I gave the link for you'll find citations and references to unbiased sources. It's all there if you take the time to click and read.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Fair enough. If you follow the links provided at the website I gave the link for you'll find citations and references to unbiased sources. It's all there if you take the time to click and read.

Those aren't scientific studies. They're reports of cases suspected of being linked to Gardisil. That's not proof. (e.g.: "Mother suspects Gardasil as reason for her daughter's serious reaction...")

I don't know about the safety of Gardisil, but these aren't scientific proof of anything. These are anecdotal stories of suspected links, like the link between pertussis vaccine and autism which has never been verified.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Those aren't scientific studies. They're reports of cases suspected of being linked to Gardisil. That's not proof. (e.g.: "Mother suspects Gardasil as reason for her daughter's serious reaction...")

I don't know about the safety of Gardisil, but these aren't scientific proof of anything. These are anecdotal stories of suspected links, like the link between pertussis vaccine and autism which has never been verified.

The National Vaccine Information Center, which is linked in the article, reports adverse effects.

Anecdotal? Yes... but what other "proof" or recourse does the public have after the FDA has approved the drug as "safe?"

Perhaps if they hadn't pushed it through as quickly as they did, with as few trials as they had, they might have picked up on these "adverse effects?" Or maybe they did and they just didn't care?

Mainstream media has reported on this: HPV Vaccine could come with bad side effects


Judicial Watch has also been monitoring the situation.

 

[epiphany65]

Those aren't scientific studies. They're reports of cases suspected of being linked to Gardisil. That's not proof. (e.g.: "Mother suspects Gardasil as reason for her daughter's serious reaction...")

I don't know about the safety of Gardisil, but these aren't scientific proof of anything. These are anecdotal stories of suspected links, like the link between pertussis vaccine and autism which has never been verified.

You're right, but I think that once enough anecdotal evidence piles up it warrants investigation. These reports aren't proof, but I feel they are alarming and need to be followed-up on. To be honest, I just didn't have the time to search out legitimate studies by doctors, universities, etc. but I have heard people in radio interviews refer to them, so they have been done. My whole point in posting the link was to let people know about the alleged dangers of Gardisil so they could research it on their own if they were interested or had concerns -- not to spoon-feed people medical advice or overwhelm them with studies.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

You're right, but I think that once enough anecdotal evidence piles up it warrants investigation. These reports aren't proof, but I feel they are alarming and need to be followed-up on. To be honest, I just didn't have the time to search out legitimate studies by doctors, universities, etc. but I have heard people in radio interviews refer to them, so they have been done. My whole point in posting the link was to let people know about the alleged dangers of Gardisil so they could research it on their own if they were interested or had concerns -- not to spoon-feed people medical advice or overwhelm them with studies.

Better safe than sorry, and in the case of this particular drug, there is another, better alternative than a possibly dangerous and unproven vaccine.

 

[epiphany65]

The National Vaccine Information Center, which is linked in the article, reports adverse effects.

Anecdotal? Yes... but what other "proof" or recourse does the public have after the FDA has approved the drug as "safe?"
.

Exactly. Mothers were told that Thalidomide was safe and harmless too.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Exactly. Mothers were told that Thalidomide was safe and harmless too.

Damn. Good one. *high five*

 

[Safe_Bet]

Those aren't scientific studies. They're reports of cases suspected of being linked to Gardisil. That's not proof. (e.g.: "Mother suspects Gardasil as reason for her daughter's serious reaction...")

I don't know about the safety of Gardisil, but these aren't scientific proof of anything. These are anecdotal stories of suspected links, like the link between pertussis vaccine and autism which has never been verified.

Doc, this isn't "proof" either, but it sure as hell is damn odd that, as reported by the Washington Post, approvals and donations go hand in hand. This just doesn't pass the sniff test very well.

Vaccine Meeting, Merck Donation Coincide

 

[jomar]

The Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine (awards based upon real research projects) announced on Thursday 2nd October went to:
Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore) for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine..

The full Ig Nobel Prize List: http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2008

LOL...reminds of the early days of NIKE (maybe Reebok, don't recall) when the reasonably low priced shoes wouldn't sell. Someone had the bright idea to double or triple the price and the perceived value took off and they flew off the shelves.

 

[trysail]

Nobel Prize for Chemistry

(Fair Use Excerpt)
Scientists Win Nobel for Jellyfish Protein That Tracks Genes
By Eva von Schaper and Frances Schwartzkopff

A Japanese scientist and two Americans won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for research that has turned a luminous green substance first found in jellyfish into one of the most important tools in bioscience.

Until the discovery, the tens of thousands of proteins that regulate everything from hunger to sexual drive were invisible and impossible to track. Now, scientists can watch processes such as the development of Alzheimer's disease in the brain and the spread of cancer cells.

Japan's Osamu Shimomura first isolated Green Fluorescent Protein from the jellyfish off North America's west coast, the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation said today in an e-mailed statement. Martin Chalfie demonstrated the use of the protein in roundworms and Roger Y. Tsien developed different colors to enable scientists to follow several biological processes at once.

``You can see how immune cells invade tissue, and you can visualize the structure of nerve cells,'' said Oliver Griesbeck, a biologist and research group leader specializing in cell dynamics at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry who worked in Tsien's lab in 1997-2001. ``This has made our lives so easy and convenient.''

Shimomura, born in Kyoto, Japan, is professor emeritus at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, while Tsien is a professor at the University of California, San Diego. Chalfie is a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University...

 

[trysail]

Nobel Prize for Physics

(Fair Use Excerpt)
'Broken Symmetry' of Particles Yields Physics Nobel
By Frances Schwartzkopff

An American and two Japanese physicists shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing how subatomic particles that are supposed to act similarly sometimes don't, leading to a better explanation of how the universe was formed and helping to identify new particles.

The winners were American Yoichiro Nambu, 87, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute; Makoto Kobayashi, 64, who works at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan; and Toshihide Maskawa, 68, of Kyoto University.

The three scientists helped define the concept of ``broken symmetry,'' influencing the standard model used by physicists to describe interactions between the tiniest particles in the universe, the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation said. Kobayashi and Maskawa helped explain the origin of broken symmetry, while Nambu discovered how it works, the foundation said.

``The standard model relies on this mechanism,'' said Ties Behnke, a senior scientist at the Deutsches Elektronen- Synchrotron, a research center in Hamburg, in a telephone interview. ``Without it, the model couldn't explain our observations.''

A piece of matter may be like a set table in which each particle, in choosing a direction to spin, is represented by a dinner guest who must choose whether to use a bread plate to the left or the right. Spontaneous broken symmetry occurs when one guest uses the dishes only to one side, and the rest of the guests follow suit, Behnke said.

Forming the Universe

The theory helps to explain how the universe was formed, the Nobel Foundation said. The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter that canceled each other out under the fundamental law of symmetry. Instead, the tiniest building blocks of the universe somehow bucked the laws, leading to the creation of more matter than antimatter.

Nambu, in 1960, was the first to apply the theory of spontaneous broken symmetry, already used to describe how magnetism works, to elementary particles.

He successfully explained why particles known as quarks can't float freely outside of protons and, in the process, proved the validity of applying the idea to the field. His mathematical theories now permeate the so-called standard model of quarks and leptons, the building blocks of atoms, and the forces that govern them.

Nambu's Work

Nambu's ``work was the basis for a series of developments that led to the construction of the standard model,'' said Sheldon Glashow, a Boston University professor who won the 1979 Nobel for physics. ``It really contributed to our understanding of physics in many domains.''

Nambu came to the U.S. from Japan in 1952, to the Institute for Advanced Study, the Princeton, New Jersey, research center where Albert Einstein had been a faculty member until his death in 1955. Nambu joined the University of Chicago as a research associate in 1956 and has been a professor emeritus since 1991. He became a U.S. citizen in 1970.

``It was a surprise, I didn't expect it,'' Nambu said today during a press briefing. ``My wife didn't believe it for 30 minutes.''

Kobayashi and Maskawa studied other subatomic deviations from the law of symmetry, applying the theory to the Big Bang and correctly predicting in 1972 that an undiscovered, third family of quarks existed.

Matter and Anti-Matter

``This work explains there is a small flaw in the symmetry between matter and anti-matter, that they're not perfect mirror images of each other,'' said Andy Parker, a professor of high energy physics at Cambridge University, in a telephone interview. ``The world could have been made entirely of antimatter if the symmetry had been the other way. This tells us that there is a real difference.''

Using the world's biggest magnetic loop, physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research aim to identify that difference, Parker said. The project is among four experiments that scientists will conduct using the Large Hadron Collider. The 27-kilometer long (16 mile) magnetic loop will seek to generate conditions similar to what happened one thousandth of a millionth of a second after the start of time.

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was the first to receive the Nobel Prize for physics, in 1901, after discovering X-rays. Last year's prize went to Albert Fert of France and Peter Gruenberg of Germany for their independent discovery of giant magnetoresistance, a technology that has made it possible to miniaturize hard disks for computers and music players...

 

[trysail]

2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine

( Fair Use Excerpt )
Christmas Discovery on Cancer, Aging Brought Nobel To Two Women [ and Man ]
By John Lauerman, Michelle Fay Cortez and Rob Waters

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- It was Christmas Day, 1984, and Carol Greider, a 23-year-old first-year graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, couldn’t stay away from the lab where she and assistant professor Elizabeth Blackburn were trying to untangle a genetic mystery.

Greider had been testing an enzyme, one of the proteins that start chemical reactions in the body, and was impatient to check results. What she saw was “the first clear evidence” of how cells make telomeres, small parts of human DNA that allow genes to be replicated without the loss of protein-making information, Greider said in an interview yesterday. Her comments came just hours after she and Blackburn became the first two women to share a Nobel Prize for medicine.

The enzyme, which Greider and Blackburn named “telomerase” is key to controlling unbridled cellular growth, the hallmark of cancer, as well as to age-linked disease, subsequent research has found. Blackburn, already an established scientist at age 35, often debated with her student how best to proceed. In the end, they created scientific history.

“A brave student was needed to make this project drive along, and Carol was very willing to do that,” Blackburn said yesterday in an interview. “It was a great, fun kind of adventure because we didn’t know the answer. There was no chart telling us what to do.”

Greider, now 48, is a molecular biologist with her own lab at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Blackburn, 60, is at the University of California, San Francisco. The two women shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Jack Szostak, 56, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who began collaborating with Blackburn on the telomere research in 1980.

Sharing the Prize
The three scientists will share the 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million) prize equally, the Nobel Assembly in Stockholm said.

Blackburn said the honor for her and Greider is “a hopeful sign” for women. In the future, people will say, “Oh yes, it’s not too unusual to have women getting Nobel prizes,” Blackburn said in an interview. “Two got one this year. I hope it becomes very normal.”

Research over the past decade suggests that telomeres are just one component in the complicated process of aging, said Leonard Guarente, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On the other hand, cancer cells, which divide and grow indefinitely, may be highly dependent on telomerase, he said.

Combating Cancer
“The biology of telomerase is critical to the cancer cell,” said Guarente, a scientific adviser to London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Sirtris Pharmaceuticals unit, the developer of anti-aging drugs, in a telephone interview. “Understanding this and developing ways to intervene may be one of the viable ways to combat cancer.”

Diseases that have been linked to defects in telomerase activity include inherited forms of aplastic anemia, when the bone marrow doesn’t produce enough blood cells, and genetic forms of skin and lung ailments. The most intense research has been in cancer, where malignant cells have the ability to divide indefinitely, and in aging, which has been linked to short telomeres.

Merck & Co., a drugmaker based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, and Menlo Park, California-based biotechnology company Geron Corp. began testing a cancer vaccine last year that targets telomerase in patients with solid tumors, including lung and prostate cancer. Geron is testing another telomerase inhibitor in breast and plasma cell cancer.

Repeating Pattern
Blackburn, born on the island of Tasmania in Australia, became curious about telomeres in 1970s. She found they had a repeating pattern of six DNA building blocks, called bases, and wanted to find out how they were made.

“The DNA was acting in ways that were completely unprecedented according to the textbooks, and so we knew something new was going on,” she said yesterday in an interview in San Francisco.

The collaboration between her and Harvard’s Szostak began when Blackburn was studying a single-celled organism, called Tetrahymena, with an unusually large nucleus that made it easy to observe the DNA. Blackburn was studying the telomeres at the end of their chromosomes, trying to understand their structure.

Szostak heard Blackburn present her findings at a medical meeting in 1980, and the two decided to combine their efforts. Blackburn isolated the DNA sequence from the single-cell pond organism, which Szostak linked to genetic strands called mini- chromosomes he had been working with.

DNA Cap
Blackburn’s DNA cap, now called a telomere, protected the mini-chromosome from damage, the researchers found.

That was when Greider entered the picture, looking for the unknown enzyme that could be responsible for making telomeres. A native of Davis, California, Greider had overcome dyslexia to study biochemistry, according to her biography in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The student worked 12-hour days and learned DNA cloning techniques to find the enzyme. She and Blackburn frequently debated research problems. They would eventually learn that the enzyme seen by Greider that Christmas day allows the entire chromosome to be copied before cell division begins.

“This really is a tribute to curiosity-driven basic science,” Greider said yesterday in a press conference at John Hopkins. “We didn’t know at the time that there were any particular disease implications, we were just interested in the fundamental biology.”

Stopwatch on Lifespan
Some scientists hypothesized that telomeres, in effect, put a stopwatch on the lifespan of an organism by limiting the number of times that its cells can replicate before DNA damage ensues. Michael West founded Menlo Park-based Geron in 1990 with the goal of extending extend human life expectancy into the hundreds of years.

“I used to say at Geron that between 5 and 95 percent of human aging is in the telomere,” said West, now president and chief executive officer of BioTime Inc., in Alameda, California. “Now I’d say it’s probably about 80 percent.”

MIT’s Guarente credited Blackburn for making the study of telomeres one of the scientific fields that is most friendly to women. About half of the researchers in the field are women, said Titia de Lange, a professor of cell biology and genetics at Rockefeller University in New York, who studies aging...

******​

Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aJEmVLLYq._w

 

[trysail]

( Fair Use Excerpt )
Masters of Light,’ Digital Images Win Physics Nobel
By Michelle Fay Cortez and Trista Kelley

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Three scientists whose work gave birth to fiber-optic networks and digital cameras won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.

Charles K. Kao, who worked at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in Harlow, U.K., and taught at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, will share the 10 million-krona ($1.4 million) prize with Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, formerly of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the Nobel Assembly said today in Stockholm. Kao will get half of the amount while Boyle and Smith split the remainder.

Kao calculated how to transmit light over long distances through optical glass fibers in 1966, a breakthrough that means people today can exchange text, music and images around the world within seconds. Three years later, Boyle and Smith designed the first imaging technology using a digital sensor, paving the way for the digital camera.

The research “affects our everyday lives,” Joseph Nordgren, professor of physics at Uppsala University in Sweden and chairman of the Nobel prize committee in the field, said in a telephone interview. The scientists’ work altered “the way we are connected today, the way we can image things that happen in the universe and transmit them easily.”

Asked why the three physicists didn’t get rewarded earlier, Nordgren said the Nobel prize “is not really given to lifetime achievements” but rather to a single body of work in which you can “see the impact.” “The way we are connected today, the way communication works, that wasn’t evident 20 years ago.”

Purity of Glass
The findings “helped to shape the foundation of today’s networked societies,” the Nobel committee said in a statement that called the three scientists “the masters of light.”

Kao’s discovery in fiber optics set the stage for the technological revolution that underpins today’s global communication systems, powering broadband Internet connections and carrying data transmissions around the world. In 1966, he figured out how to transmit light for more than 100 kilometers using optical glass fibers, five times the length of the most advanced fibers then available, the Nobel committee said.

The key was the purity of the glass, Kao found. The first ultra-pure fibers were made just four years after his discovery, in 1970. Now the glass fibers snake throughout the world in utility and computer cables, and the light that flows through the thin threads instantaneously transmit text, music, pictures and video globally.

Everyday Lives
“Kao was the first to understand the impurities of glass and how to get rid of them,” said Sir Peter Knight of Imperial College London. “He was a revolutionary and his work is a fine example of how fundamental research can have a massive impact on our everyday lives.”

Kao, 75, was born in Shanghai and has British and U.S. citizenship. He worked as an engineer while studying at the University of London, where he received his doctorate degree in 1965. He married May Wan Wong in 1959 and has two children.

“I am absolutely honored,” Kao said in an e-mailed statement today. “The Nobel has never been given out for applied sciences before. Fiber optics has changed the world of information so much in these last 40 years. It certainly is due to the fiber optical networks that the news has traveled so fast.”

The other half of the prize was awarded to Boyle and Smith for an invention that still dominates sophisticated digital photography.

Hubble Telescope
Their imaging technology used a digital sensor, known as a charge-coupled device, to transform light into electric signals. Building on the theories of Albert Einstein, who won the same award in 1921, they designed a sensor that could quickly capture and display tiny dots of composition called pixels, which form a picture when joined.

With the invention of their electronic eye for a digital camera, light could be captured and distributed electronically. It is still used in sophisticated devices including the Hubble Telescope, and in medical tools to peer inside the human body to diagnose disease and perform microsurgery, the Nobel committee said.

“Digital photography has become an irreplaceable tool in many fields of research,” the committee said. “The CCD has provided new possibilities to visualize the previously unseen. It has given us crystal-clear images of distant places in our universe, as well as the depths of the oceans,” they said.

‘Out Sailing’
Boyle, 85, was born in a log cabin in Canada’s Nova Scotia province and home-schooled by his mother until his early teens. A Canadian and U.S. citizen, he trained as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Navy, according to an interview posted on science Web site science.ca. He received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at McGill University in Montreal, and has four children.

Smith, 79, was born in White Plains, New York. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and received his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1959. He has two daughters and a son.

“This is really quite exciting, but is it real?” Boyle said when reached via telephone by the prize press conference today. “I haven’t had my morning cup of coffee yet.”

Smith, who completed a round-the-world trip in a sail boat called the Apogee in 2005, did not answer a phone call or e-mail seeking comment. Nordgren also said the committee hadn’t been able to reach him to let him know about the prize.

“Maybe he’s out sailing,” Nordgren said...

*****​

Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a31u_A2Dc9f0

 

[trysail]

2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

( Fair Use Excerpt )

U.S., Israeli Scientists Win Nobel for Laying Ribosome Bare
By Andrea Gerlin

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Two Americans and an Israeli won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on how the DNA code is translated into life, findings that have been used to fight infectious disease.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, 57, who heads the Structural Studies Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz , 69, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in Connecticut, and Ada E. Yonath, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, will share the 10 million-krona ($1.4 million) award, the Nobel Assembly said at a press conference in Stockholm today.

Their work revealed what ribosomes, which produce proteins that control the chemistry in all living organisms, look like and how they function at the atomic level. The Laureates also created three-dimensional models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome, research that has been used to develop new anti-infective medicines. Yonath is the first woman to win the chemistry accolade in 45 years.

“An understanding of the ribosome’s innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life,” the Nobel committee said in a statement. “These models are now used by scientists to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering.”

Ramakrishnan, reached at his office five minutes after being told of his achievement, said he was happy and surprised to be chosen. The three winners know each other well though they work separately, he said.

‘Fundamental Biology’
“It must have been a difficult decision; it’s been the subject of study by many groups over 40 years,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s fundamental biology.”

Ramakrishnan, a U.S. citizen, was born in India in 1952. His parents were also scientists. He holds a doctorate in physics from Ohio University and is a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England.

Steitz, also an American, was born in 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has a doctorate in molecular biology and biochemistry from Harvard University and teaches molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale. His son Jon Steitz is a former pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team.

Yonath was born in 1939 in Jerusalem and holds a doctorate in X-ray crystallography from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she now teaches and conducts research.

“The research behind these prizes shows how the transforming power of chemistry can improve peoples’ lives,” said Thomas H. Lane, president of the American Chemical Society, in an e-mailed statement...

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Full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a8zWyWdR09dY

 

[Handley_Page]

Exactly. Mothers were told that Thalidomide was safe and harmless too.

I'm not sure of that. As I recall, Thalidomide (a very useful drug), was not for Morning Sickness, but for the older person. That it was given to the pregnant woman was a side issue.
Thalidomide is very good at doing things with Leprosy and some blood cancers.

 

[freshface]

I'm not sure of that. As I recall, Thalidomide (a very useful drug), was not for Morning Sickness, but for the older person. That it was given to the pregnant woman was a side issue.
Thalidomide is very good at doing things with Leprosy and some blood cancers.

Thalidomide is very effective for morning sickness and also as a sleep aid. It is also used to treat other conditions, but pregnant women did not receive it as a side issue.