THERE IS NO NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS

Yasha Levine
OCTOBER 12, 2012
http://exiledonline.com/the-nobel-prize-in-economics-there-is-no-nobel-prize-in-economics

This article was first published on AlterNet

It’s Nobel Prize season again. News reports are coming out each day sharing the name of the illustrious winner of the various categories — Science, Literature, etc. But there’s one of the prizes that’s a little different. Well, that’s putting it lightly… you see, the Nobel Prize in Economics is not a real Nobel. It wasn’t created by Alfred Nobel. It’s not even called a “Nobel Prize,” no matter what the press reports say.

The five real Nobel Prizes—physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and medicine/physiology—were set up in the will left by the dynamite magnate when he died in 1895. The economics prize is a bit different. It was created by Sweden’s Central Bank in 1969, nearly 75 years later. The award’s real name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” It was not established by Nobel, but supposedly in memory of Nobel. It’s a ruse and a PR trick, and I mean that literally. And it was done completely against the wishes of the Nobel family.

Sweden’s Central Bank quietly snuck it in with all the other Nobel Prizes to give retrograde free-market economics credibility and the appearance of scientific rigor. One of the Federal Reserve banks explained it succinctly, “Few realize, especially outside of economists, that the prize in economics is not an “official” Nobel. . . . The award for economics came almost 70 years later—bootstrapped to the Nobel in 1968 as a bit of a marketing ploy to celebrate the Bank of Sweden’s 300th anniversary.” Yes, you read that right: “a marketing ploy.”

Here’s a Nobel family member describing it: “The Economics Prize has nestled itself in and is awarded as if it were a Nobel Prize. But it’s a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation,” Nobel’s great great nephew Peter Nobel told AFP in 2005, adding that “It’s most often awarded to stock market speculators. . . .  There is nothing to indicate that [Alfred Nobel] would have wanted such a prize.”

Members of the Nobel family are among the harshest, most persistent critics of the economics prize, and members of the family have repeatedly called for the prize to be abolished or renamed. In 2001, on the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes, four family members published a letter in the Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet, arguing that the economics prize degrades and cheapens the real Nobel Prizes. They aren’t the only ones.

Scientists never had much respect for the new economic Nobel prize. In fact, a scientist who headed Nixon’s Science Advisory Committee in 1969, was shocked to learn that economists were even allowed on stage to accept their award with the real Nobel laureates. He was incredulous: “You mean they sat on the platform with you?”

That hatred continues to simmer below the surface, and periodically breaks through and makes itself known.  Most recently, in 2004, three prominent Swedish scientists and members of the Nobel committee published an open letter in a Swedish newspaper savaging the fraudulent “scientific” credentials of the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics. “The economics prize diminishes the value of the other Nobel prizes. If the prize is to be kept, it must be broadened in scope and be disassociated with Nobel,” they wrote in the letter, arguing that achievements of most of the economists who win the prize are so abstract and disconnected from the real world as to be utterly meaningless.

The question is: Why would a prize that draws so much hatred and negativity from the scientific community be added to the Nobel roster so late in the game? And why economics?

To answer that question we have to go back to Sweden in the 1960s.

Around the time the prize was created, Sweden’s banking and business interests were busy trying to ram through various free-market economic reforms. Their big objective at the time was to loosen political oversight and control over the country’s central bank.

According to Philip Mirowski, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in the history economics, the “Bank of Sweden was trying to become more independent of democratic accountability in the late 60s, and there was a big political dispute in Sweden as to whether the bank could have effective political independence. In order to support that position, the bank needed to claim that it had a kind of scientific credibility that was not grounded in political support.”

Promoters of central bank independence made their arguments in the language of neoclassical market efficiency. The problem was that few people in Sweden took their neoclassical babble very seriously, and saw their plan for central bank independence for what it was: an attempt to transfer control over economic matters from democratically elected government and place into the hands of big business interests, giving them a free hand in running Sweden’s economy without pesky interference from labor unions, voters and elected officials.

And that’s where the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economic Sciences came in.

The details of how the deal went down are still very murky. What is known is that in 1969 Sweden’s central bank used the pretense of its 300th anniversary to push through an  independent prize in “economic science” in memory of Alfred Nobel, and closely link it with the original Nobel Prize awards. The name was a bit longer, the medals looked a little different and the award money did not come from Nobel, but in every other way it was hard to tell the two apart. To ensure the prize would be awarded to the right economists, the bank managed to install a rightwing Swedish economist named Assar Lindbeck, who had ties to University of Chicago, to oversee the awards committee and keep him there for more than three decades. (Lindbeck’s famous free-market oneliner is:  “In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.”)

For the first few years, the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics went to fairly mainstream and maybe even semi-respectable economists. But after establishing the award as credible and serious, the prizes took a hard turn to the right.

Over the next decade, the prize was awarded to the most fanatical supporters of theories that concentrated wealth among the top 1% of industrialized society of our time.

In 1974, five years after the prize was first created, it was awarded to Friedrich von Hayek, the leading laissez-fair economist of the 20th century and the godfather of neoclassical economics. Milton Friedman, who was at the University of Chicago with Hayek, was not far behind. He won the prize just two years later, in 1976.

Both Hayek and Friedman were huge supporters of the political independence of central banks. In fact, they built their careers on bashing government intervention in economic matters. Hayek developed a whole business cycle theory that blamed government and government-controlled banking systems for all economic problems. Friedman came out with a whole new subsection of neoclassical economics called “Monetarism” that had a scientific formula worked out, specifying exactly how much money central bankers needed to keep floating around in the economy to keep inflation low and unemployment high enough to keep big business happy. No democratic control over banking policies needed, just let the free-market do its thing!  The Swedish central bankers couldn’t get better spokesmen for their cause.

But Hayek and Friedman’s usefulness went way beyond Sweden.

At the time of the prizes, neoclassical economics were not fully accepted by the media and political establishment. But the Nobel Prize changed all that.

What started as a project to help the Bank of Sweden achieve political independence, ended up boosting the credibility of the most regressive strains of free-market economics, and paving the way for widespread acceptance of libertarian ideology.

Take Hayek: Before he was won the award, it looked like Hayek was washed up. His prospect of ever being a mainstream economist was essentially over. He was considered a quack and fraud by contemporary economists, he had spent the 50s and 60s in academic obscurity, preaching the gospel of free-markets and economic darwinism while on the payroll of ultra-rightwing American billionaires. Hayek had powerful backers, but was stuck way out on the fringes of reactionary-right subculture.

But that all changed as soon as he won the prize in 1974. All of a sudden his ideas were being talked about. Hayek was a celebrity. He appeared as a star guest on NBC’s Meet the Press, newspapers across the country printed his photographs and treated his economic mumblings about the need to have high unemployment as if they were divine revelations. His Road to Serfdom hit the best-seller list. Margret Thatcher started waving around his books in public, saying “this is what we believe.” He was back on top like never before, and it was all because of the fake Nobel Prize created by Sweden’s Central Bank.

"Unemployment iz necessary karmic price ov past inflationary policies"

Billionaire Charles Koch brought Hayek out for an extended victory tour of the United States, and had Hayek spend the summer as a resident scholar at his Institute for Humane Studies. Charles, a shrewd businessman, quickly put the old man to good marketing use, tapping Hayek’s mainstream cred to set up Cato Institute in 1974 (it was called the Charles Koch Foundation until 1977), a libertarian thinktank based on Hayek’s ideas. [Read eXiled eXclusive: Charles Koch told Hayek to use Social Security.]

Even today, Cato Institute pays homage to the Swedish Central Bank Prize’s marketing role in the mainstreaming of Hayek’s ideas and Hayek’s influence on the outfit:

The first libertarian to receive the Nobel Prize was F.A. Hayek in 1974. In the years leading up to the prize announcement, Hayek had reached a professional and personal nadir. Unable to maintain an appointment in the United States, Hayek had returned to Austria to take up a position at the University of Salzburg, Austria. With the announcement of the prize in 1974, however, Hayek’s work, and the fortune of Austrian economics, took a remarkable turn.

Hayek’s influence on Cato is profound. Two of Cato’s first books were by Hayek: A Tiger by the Tail: The Keynesian Legacy of Inflation & Unemployment and Monetary Policy: Government as Generator of the “Business Cycle.” Perhaps more than any other intellectual in the twentieth century, Hayek has inspired Cato and its researchers to develop policies that ensure a free society. When Cato moved into its current location in 1992, its auditorium was named in Hayek’s honor.

Friedman’s Nobel Prize had a similar impact. After getting the prize in 1976, Friedman wrote a best seller, got his own 10-part PBS series “Free to Choose” and became President Ronald Reagan’s economic advisor, where he had a chance to put the free-market policies he developed in Chile under Pinochet.

Like Hayek, Friedman was a big Pinochet fanboy. He would spend the rest of his time denying it, but he was deeply involved and invested in the Pinochet’s totalitarian free-market experiment. Chilean economist Orlando Letelier published an article in The Nation in 1976 outing Milton Friedman as the “intellectual architect and unofficial adviser for the team of economists now running the Chilean economy” on behalf of foreign corporations. A month later Letelier was assassinated in D.C. by Chilean secret police using a car bomb.

Friedman’s monetary theory was used by Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict the money supply, plunging American into a deep recession, doubling the unemployment rate, and had the added bonus of getting Reagan elected President. . . . And Hayek and Friedman were just the beginning.

For instance, in 1997 two economists won an award for their derivative risk models that minimized risk, just before derivatives would explode in the 2000s real estate-bubble.

The award was shared by economists Robert Merton and Myron Scholes for their work in figuring out how to value derivatives so as to minimize risk. The two economists used their Nobel-worthy economic models to run “the world’s biggest hedge fund,” which was called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). And the fund really lived up to its name. Nine months after winning the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics, LTCM went belly-up, racking up over $1 billion in losses over a period of just two days. It was of course bailed out by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who considered LTCM “too big to fail.”

Then there’s Vernon Smith. In 2002, Vernon Smith, adored and funded by Libertarians like Charles Koch, won the “Nobel” — his patron looked at the money he spent funding Smith’s academic career as a successful speculatory venture, saying simply: “The Koch Foundation’s gift was an excellent investment.” Smith’s research basically entailed setting up theoretical “wind tunnels” to test how free-markets would respond in various conditions—all in a way that has nothing to do with reality.

As of 2011, 10 out of the 69 economists who’ve won the fake Nobel prize are Koch-connected libertarians.

It will take a brave act to bring this sham to the attention of the public. One year, one of the prize winners will have to speak out, and explain this ruse to the public as he wins the award.

Full list of 2011 Ig Nobel Prize Laureates

Source: MSNBC
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/29/8002625-silly-science-prizes-highlight-beer-loving-bugs-pee-pressure

Physiology prize: Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber for determining that when a red-footed tortoise yawns, other tortoises don't yawn in response.

Chemistry prize: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.

Medicine prize: Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe and Luk Warlop. and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman, Robert Pietrzak, David Darby and Paul Maruff for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.

Psychology prize: Karl Halvor Teigen for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

Literature prize: John Perry for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.

Biology prize: Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle.

Physics prize: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne, Bruno Ragaru and Herman Kingma, for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.

Mathematics prize: Dorothy Martin (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping (who predicted the world would end on Sept. 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on Oct. 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

Peace prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

Public safety prize: John Senders for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

Beam My DNA Up, Scotty

A Nobel prizewinner is reporting that DNA can be generated from its teleported "quantum imprint"

A STORM of scepticism has greeted experimental results emerging from the lab of a Nobel laureate which, if confirmed, would shake the foundations of several fields of science. "If the results are correct," says theoretical chemist Jeff Reimers of the University of Sydney, Australia, "these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry."

Luc Montagnier, who shared the Nobel prize for medicine in 2008 for his part in establishing that HIV causes AIDS, says he has evidence that DNA can send spooky electromagnetic imprints of itself into distant cells and fluids. If that wasn't heretical enough, he also suggests that enzymes can mistake the ghostly imprints for real DNA, and faithfully copy them to produce the real thing. In effect this would amount to a kind of quantum teleportation of the DNA.

Many researchers contacted for comment by New Scientist reacted with disbelief. Gary Schuster, who studies DNA conductance effects at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, compared it to "pathological science". Jacqueline Barton, who does similar work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, was equally sceptical. "There aren't a lot of data given, and I don't buy the explanation," she says. One blogger has suggested Montagnier should be awarded an IgNobel prize.

Yet the results can't be dismissed out of hand. "The experimental methods used appear comprehensive," says Reimers. So what have Montagnier and his team actually found?

To read the entire article:

Scorn over claim of teleported DNA
12 January 2011 by Andy Coghlan
Magazine issue 2795.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927952.900-scorn-over-claim-of-teleported-dna.html

The Stiglitz Budget Plan

http://bigthink.com/ideas/25547
The Stiglitz Budget Plan
Robert de Neufville
December 16, 2010

With the Senate voting 81-19 on an $858 billion deal to extend all the Bush tax cuts—as well as extend unemployment benefits and reduce the payroll tax—it’s hard to take seriously the idea that anyone in Congress cares about reducing the deficit. That we shouldn’t worry about cutting the deficit may actually be the one thing both parties can agree on. In short term, as I have argued, this deal may make sense as a way to stimulate the economy. But at the same time, as I have also argued, we shouldn’t pretend that we cutting taxes is a way to reduce the deficit.

Nevertheless, Joseph Stiglitz argues that there should be a way to cut the deficit that would stimulate the economy. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, writes that the trick would be to address several key economic inefficiencies. The first is that the defense budget has ballooned, so that we are spending an enormous amount overseas—where it doesn’t do anything for our economy—and on weapons with little use. The second is that we give subsidies to a wide range of businesses, which makes the market less efficient and is often in violation of our treaty obligations. The third is that we invest too little in the public goods like the infrastructure necessary for our economy to function. And the last inefficiency is that an increasingly large share—more than 20%—of our national income goes to the top 1% of earners, which means less money goes to the middle class—the real engine of economic growth.

So, Stiglitz says, the trick to reducing the deficit in a way that benefits the economy is simple:

• cut wasteful military spending, in part by no longer funding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

• eliminate corporate subsidies, particularly to the banking, agricultural, and pharmaceutical sectors

• spend money on high-return public investments, increasing long-term economic growth

• increase the capital gains tax, which effectively allows the rich to pay a lower tax rate than the middle class

• raise taxes slightly on the rich—who can afford to pay more in taxes—effectively transferring more money back to the middle class

Cutting the defense budget, eliminating corporate subsidies, and raising taxes for the rich are all contractionary taken by themselves, but by spending the money instead on higher-return investments and eliminating market inefficiencies, we can actually save money and stimulate economic growth at the same time. “A deficit-reduction package crafted along these lines would more than meet even the most ardent deficit hawk’s demands,” Stiglitz says. “It would increase efficiency, promote growth, improve the environment, and benefit workers and the middle class.”

The problem with this plan? As Stiglitz himself says, it’s simply not going to happen. The plan works entirely at the expense of wealthy, corporate interests. If you doubt their influence, consider that over the last two years the Republican Party has really fought for just one policy: the extension of Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. And while extending those tax cuts angered some Democrats, the tax cut deal still passed the Senate with a solid majority of both parties. But if Stiglitz’ plan is a fantasy, it should show us just how much it costs us to cater to the interests of big corporations and the very rich.

Wall Street quietly seeks to undo new financial rules

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/16/103833/wall-street-quietly-seeks-to-undo.html

Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Wall Street quietly seeks to undo new financial rules
Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The heavy hitters of finance lost big battles earlier this year during the overhaul of financial regulation, but they're working hard to win the war. They're quietly trying to soften, if not kill, some of the more controversial provisions.

Lobbyists for Big Finance are working hardest to neutralize the so-called Volcker Rule, which would force big banks to spin off their lucrative proprietary trading operations, in which they invest their own capital in speculative deals.

The measure_ named after its proponent, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — seeks to prevent big banks from betting against trades they made on behalf of their customers, a popular practice until the financial crisis exploded in 2008. For example, big investment banks such as Goldman Sachs sold customers overvalued mortgage bonds even as they bet secretly that those bonds would default.

Financial lobbyists also are working to soften requirements that Wall Street firms put more "skin in the game" by retaining more mortgage bonds on their books to guard against shoddy lending. They're also trying to undercut the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Through Republican lawmakers who will soon hold leadership positions in the House of Representatives, big banks are backing proposals that could lead to its being defunded or subject to conditions that weaken it.

The financial sector is also pushing to have the bureau headed by a board rather than a strong single leader.

"Taken all together, these are all proposals that were considered (by Congress) and rejected . . . these don't look like proposals that were designed to help the agency do better, but rather proposals designed to gut it," said Travis Plunkett, the director of legislative affairs for the Consumer Federation of America. "This agency hasn't opened its doors yet, and already the House Republican leadership is carrying a lot of proposals that Wall Street and big financial interests have offered to eviscerate the consumer agency."

Big global banks already succeeded in softening new global rules that would have required banks to set aside considerably more funds in reserve to guard against future losses — generally called capital requirements or loan-loss reserves.

This happened at international banking negotiations held earlier this year in Basel, Switzerland. There, powerful banks weakened a proposal for a new international standard governing how much banks must keep in reserve.

These big banks also pressured global regulators to back off a mandatory requirement that would have forced banks to set aside even more capital during good times, on the premise that economic booms lead to excessive risk taking. This so-called countercyclical reserve requirement is now voluntary.

"I think the answer is they (global regulators) caved in to the pressures of the industry," said Morris Goldstein, a former top economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "I'd like to say that things are more positive, but I have to say a lot of the momentum is fading. . . . I think on the whole, we're losing steam."

Implementing the Volcker Rule falls to the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council, whose members include regulators over banks, stock and commodities markets. The Treasury Department is first among equals on the council, which began taking comment in October on how to implement the rule.

Big Finance argues that the new rules are job killers.

"We believe that the Volcker Rule is in fact harmful to the ability of the United States to sustain vibrant capital markets and . . . to create private sector jobs," David Hirschman, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, wrote to the council. "In its current form, the Volcker Rule will likely add to regulatory uncertainty for banking entities and will hurt the global competitiveness of the financial services industry at a time when growth is most needed."

Volcker wrote a letter to the council, urging regulators to stand pat.

"Clear and concise definitions, firmly worded prohibitions, and specificity in describing the permissible activities will be of prime importance for the regulators," he wrote. "Bankers and their lawyers and lobbyists will no doubt search for and discover seeming ambiguities within the language of the law."

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from Columbia University, reminded council members in a letter that proprietary trading helped cause the near meltdown of the U.S. financial system.

"Through the rise of proprietary trading at our nation's banks and the largest non-bank financial firms, firms doubled down on the accumulation of risk, much of it with little benefit to the real economy," Stiglitz wrote. He added that "the financial system in this country and around the world became disconnected from its fundamental purposes."

Some experts warn, however, that the Volcker Rule might be harmful if other countries don't echo it.

"I'm not aware of any other country, certainly of significance, that plans to follow. This is a purely American mistake," said Douglas Elliot, a researcher at Washington's center-left Brookings Institution.

Elliot, a former investment banker, supports most of the sweeping new regulation of finance, but thinks the Volcker Rule is too vague and lacks global support.

"It requires regulators to look into the hearts of bankers and see if their motive for a particular investment was pure or not," he said. "There is a huge subjective element here."

Financial firms are also fighting the requirement that they retain 5 percent of the pool of mortgage bonds that they sell as a way of discouraging excessive risk. They're trying to expand the definition of "plain vanilla" mortgages that would be exempted from the risk-retention requirements.

"I think there's a concern about what would be defined as a plain-vanilla mortgage," said Tom Deutsch, head of the American Securitization Forum, which represents companies that package pools of mortgages into complex mortgage bonds, which now are considered toxic.

The ASF and its members want to exempt interest-only mortgages, which caused many unsophisticated borrowers to lose their homes.

"Certain types of loans aren't standard, but are appropriate for high creditworthy borrowers," Deutsch said in an interview, pointing to wealthy borrowers who seek to maximize their mortgage-interest deductions at tax time.

Why Philip Roth Deserves the Nobel Prize

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/opinion/nobel-prize-literature-2010

October 7, 2010
Why Philip Roth Deserves the Nobel Prize
Because the man is a legend — a legend who's 77 years and 31 books deep. And when you spend as much time with him as I just did, you get to thinking the man deserves another prize.
Scott Raab

The meatballs of Sweden awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature to Peru's Maria Vargas Llosa on Thursday "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat," marking the first time the award has been given to a writer who has punched a fellow Nobel Laureate in the face — which Vargas Llosa did to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1976 — and the umpteenth time the committee has managed to avoid honoring Philip Roth.

Roth is 77 years old; Nemesis, his thirty-first book, has just been released, and he's working on his next. He hardly needs me to pimp his work — he already has won every major literary award that his native land can bestow — and if those mealy-mouthed Nordic twits haven't seen fit to honor him by now, then it probably won't help to remind them of the time that Roth smashed a bottle of Slivovitz over Bernard Malamud's head during a post-seder brawl at Saul Bellow's place.

Still, it can't hurt to say this much: The beauty, depth, and richness of Roth's body of work is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Which isn't to suggest that Vargas Llosa is an undeserving pisher, or to dismiss the judges' conflation of literature with politics, gender and otherwise, is pure bullshit. I'm just what you call a homer; I want to see the Newark Jew get his due.

3 professors share Nobel Prize in chemistry

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/06/sweden.nobel.chemistry

3 professors share Nobel Prize in chemistry
fOctober 6, 2010
The 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry went to Richard Heck, Ei-Ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
They invented a tool to make carbon-carbon bonds in organic chemistry
The tool is called palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling
It has applications in a range of fields from medicine to electronics

(CNN) -- The 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to three professors for a tool to make carbon-carbon bonds in organic chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

The professors are Richard Heck of the University of Delaware, Ei-Ichi Negishi of Purdue University and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University.

The tool the professors devised is called palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling.

"This chemical tool has vastly improved the possibilities for chemists to create sophisticated chemicals, for example carbon-based molecules as complex as those created by nature itself," the committee said.

Negishi told reporters by phone from the United States that he was asleep when he heard the news an hour earlier. He said winning the prize was a dream of his, but he didn't know whether he would win.

"I may have accomplished roughly half of my goal," he said of winning the Nobel, "and definitely I would like to keep on working for several more years."

The tool has applications in a wide range of fields, from agriculture and pharmaceuticals to coatings for electronic components, like chips, the Nobel committee said.

"The key word here is versatility," Negishi said. "One of our dreams is to be able to synthesize any organic compounds of importance, whether it is medicinally important compounds ... or important from the point of view of material science. And we believe that our technology or our chemistry will be applicable to a very wide range of compounds, without knowing what they might be."

Carbon-based, or organic, chemistry is the "basis of life" and responsible for fascinating natural phenomena including color in flowers, snake poison and bacteria-killing substances like penicillin, the committee said.

Organic chemistry has allowed humans to build on nature's chemistry and has given mankind new medicines and "revolutionary" materials like plastics, it said.

"In order to create these complex chemicals, chemists need to be able to join carbon atoms together," the Nobel committee said. "However, carbon is stable and carbon atoms do not easily react with one another."

The first methods used by chemists to bind carbon atoms together were based on various techniques for rendering carbon more reactive, the committee said. The methods worked to create simple molecules, but scientists ended up with too many "unwanted by-products" when synthesizing more complex molecules, they said.

"Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling solved that problem and provided chemists with a more precise and efficient tool to work with," the committee said. "In the Heck reaction, Negishi reaction and Suzuki reaction, carbon atoms meet on a palladium atom, whereupon their proximity to one another kick-starts the chemical reaction."

Graphene Researchers Geim and Novoselov Win Nobel Prize in Physics

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geim-novoselov-physics-novel
Graphene Researchers Geim and Novoselov Win Nobel Prize in Physics
Sheets of one-dimensional carbon have been on the scene for just six years but have already drawn a wealth of research interest
John Matson |October 5, 2010

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two research pioneers working on graphene, a material that could have myriad high-tech applications, which they first produced by decidedly low-tech means. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both of the University of Manchester in England, won the prize for their work producing and characterizing the material, which is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon resembling a nanoscale chicken wire. Graphene is transparent, strong, and a good conductor of electricity, making it an attractive material for a number of electronics applications.

Novoselov was a postdoctoral fellow working in Geim's lab in 2004 when the researchers discovered that they could form such thin slabs of carbon by repeatedly cleaving graphite—essentially pencil lead—with Scotch tape. Their 2004 Science paper describing the material and its the electrical properties has already been cited more than 3,000 times, according to Thomson Web of Science.

The Nobel Prize comes with a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor, equal to about $1.5 million U.S. dollars.

Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for In Vitro Fertilization

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101004-nobel-prize-medicine-ivf-science-health/

Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for In Vitro Fertilization
U.K. scientist Robert G. Edwards pioneered "test-tube baby" technique
Kate Ravilious in York, United Kingdom
National Geographic News
October 4, 2010

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Robert G. Edwards, an 85-year-old British scientist who pioneered the fertility treatment in vitro fertilization.

Today nearly four million people have been born thanks to in vitro fertilization, which occurs when sperm is injected into an egg cell outside the body and the resulting embryo is implanted back into the womb.

Edwards first envisioned IVF during the 1950s and went on to develop and hone the technique in the 1960s and '70s.

He achieved his first success on July 25, 1978, when Louise Edwards, the world's first "test-tube baby" was born in the United Kingdom. Louise is unrelated to the scientist.

"This is a wonderful achievement and a great testimony to Edwards's pioneering work in reproductive science," said Richard Kennedy, a fertility expert at University Hospital in Coventry, U.K., and secretary general of the International Federation of Fertility Societies.

"The development of IVF has enabled many millions of couples to have a child who might not otherwise have been able to," he said in a telephone interview.

The Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, which awarded the 10-million-Swedish-krona (1.5 million-U.S.-dollar) prize, described IVF as a "milestone of modern medicine, which brings joy to infertile people all over the world."

Robert Edwards was too ill to speak to the media about his award, Nobel committee member Goran Hansson told a news conference in Stockholm Monday.

But, Hansson added, "I spoke to his wife, and she was delighted. She was sure he would also be delighted."

Birth of a Nobel-Worthy Technique

More than 10 percent of couples worldwide are infertile. In the past medical help was limited, but today IVF therapy results in successful births for roughly one in five of every fertilized egg implanted.

The odds for a healthy couple conceiving naturally are about the same.

Edwards's initial inspiration came from the work of other scientists, which showed that egg cells from rabbits could be fertilized in test tubes when sperm was added.

The scientist realized that this could be a potential treatment for human infertility and began to experiment with human egg cells.

Along with colleagues, Edwards clarified how human eggs mature, how different hormones regulate their maturation, and at what point the eggs are ready to be fertilized.

In 1969, while at the University of Cambridge, Edwards and his team managed to fertilize a human egg in a test tube for the first time.

However, this fertilized egg didn't develop beyond single cell division, so Edwards suspected that he needed to use eggs that had matured in the ovaries before removal for IVF.

Working with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe, he safely extracted matured eggs from ovaries, using laparoscopy—an optical technique developed by Steptoe—to look at eggs in the ovaries.

This time the pair were able to fertilize an egg and get it to divide several times, though the embryo stopped growing at only eight cells.

In Vitro Fertilization "Here to Stay"

At this point controversy erupted, with opposition to the technique coming from religious leaders and various governments. The U.K.'s Medical Research Council decided not to continue funding the project.

However, a private donation enabled the pair to continue their research, which ultimately led to their first complete success—Louise Edwards's birth.

Since 1978 the technique has been further refined, resulting in easier and more comfortable methods of egg removal.

However, in vitro fertilization treatments often lead to multiple pregnancies, which can pose risks to both the babies and the mother. For instance, multiple pregnancies can increase the likelihood for premature delivery and low birth weight, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Even so, "IVF is here to stay," said University Hospital's Kennedy.

"I expect it will be combined with genetic screening in the future, to lessen the likelihood of inherited diseases, and there will be refinements to improve the success rates and reduce the chances of multiple births."

Nobel Laureate Stiglitz Says EU Austerity Is Wrong Bet

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/09/07-5

Published on Tuesday, September 7, 2010 by Reuters
Nobel Laureate Stiglitz Says EU Austerity Is Wrong Bet

BUDAPEST - The European Union will prolong the global downturn if policymakers in the bloc's big economies insist on austerity measures to cut budget deficits, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Tuesday.

Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, said austerity as a policy to end the global crisis was a 'disaster', adding that Europe was heading towards more economic difficulties if politicians meant what they say when they promised to cut back spending rather than just trying to calm down markets. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, said austerity as a policy to end the global crisis was a 'disaster', adding that Europe was heading towards more economic difficulties if politicians meant what they say when they promised to cut back spending rather than just trying to calm down markets.

'If that (austerity) happens I think it is likely that the economic downturn will last far longer and human suffering will be all the greater,' he said.

Historical evidence showed that increased state spending rather than austerity measures can help economies emerge from recession, he said.

'In spite of all that evidence there is a drumbeat, particularly from many of the economists who were responsible for the crisis ... to focus on austerity,' Stiglitz told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.

He said the example of Ireland, a small economy, showed that austerity leads to declining output, rising unemployment and high bond spreads, instead of renewed investor.

'I feel sorry for the Irish people who have to suffer from this policy ... but it doesn't have global or European consequences,' he said.

'But if the UK, Germany or other countries do it, then it is going to have systemic consequences for Europe and the whole world,' he added.

Stiglitz said the real question Europe and the world faced was not whether the global economy was on track to a double dip.

'From the perspective of the world, or workers, there is very little difference between growth of a quarter point of a percent and a decline of a quarter point of a percent,' he said.

'What workers care about is if growth will be strong enough to reduce the high level of unemployment in the U.S. or Europe.'

(Reporting by Sandor Peto; Editing by Susan Fenton)

"Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy"

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/2102

Noble Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz's New "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy" (Hardcover)
By Joseph Stiglitz
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

After you read this book, you'll know what a mistake it was not to appoint Stiglitz (or Krugman for that matter -- both Nobel Laureates in economics) to high White House positions, instead of Wall Street Geithner and the gang.

If you want to know what our financial crisis is really about in accessible terms, this is the book for you. Stiglitz and Krugman are the people BuzzFlash would have hoped would have been steering America's economic strategy.

Freefall is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the roots of the financial crisis. Stiglitz brilliantly analyzes the economic reasons behind the banking collapse, but he goes much further, digging down to the wrongheaded national faith in the power of free markets to regulate themselves and provide wealth for all. (Chuck Leddy - Boston Globe )

Mr. Stiglitz uses his experience teaching to give the lay reader a lucid account of how overleveraged banks, a shoddy mortgage industry, predatory lending and unregulated trading contributed to the meltdown, and how, in his opinion, ill-conceived rescue efforts may have halted the freefall but have failed to grapple with more fundamental problems…. His prescience lends credibility to his trenchant analysis of the causes of the fiscal meltdown. (Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times )

Stiglitz is the world's leading scholarly expert on market failure, and this crisis vindicates his life's work. There have been other broad-spectrum books on the genesis and dynamics of the collapse, but Freefall is the most comprehensive to date, grounded in both theory and factual detail…. the definitive critique to date of how the Summers-Geithner strategy fails, both as economics and as politics…. The tone of this book is good-humored and public-minded. (Robert Kuttner - The American Prospect )

Buy more progressive premiums to support BuzzFlash progressive news and commentary (we accept no advertising, corporate or otherwise to maintain our complete independence) by going to The BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

Stiglitz Says Federal Reserve System 'Corrupt'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/03/stiglitz-nobel-prize-winn_n_484943.html
Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, Says Federal Reserve System 'Corrupt'
3-3-10

One of the world's leading economists said Wednesday that the very structure of the Federal Reserve system is so fraught with conflicts that it's "corrupt."

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, said that if a country had applied for World Bank aid during his tenure, with a financial regulatory system similar to the Federal Reserve's -- in which regional Feds are partly governed by the very banks they're supposed to police -- it would have raised alarms.

"If we had seen a governance structure that corresponds to our Federal Reserve system, we would have been yelling and screaming and saying that country does not deserve any assistance, this is a corrupt governing structure," Stiglitz said during a conference on financial reform in New York. "It's time for us to reflect on our own structure today, and to say there are parts that can be improved."

Stiglitz made the remarks at a conference held by the Roosevelt Institute. He and other speakers, including Harvard Law Professor and federal bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren and legendary investor George Soros, had bold ideas about reforming the nation's financial system.

After the conference, Stiglitz said that his remarks on the Fed were "maybe a little hyperbole," but then again made the case that if another country had presented a plan to reform its financial system, and included a regulatory regime that copied the makeup of the Federal Reserve system, "it would have been a big signal that something is wrong."

To Stiglitz, the core issue is that regional Fed banks, such as the New York Fed, have clear conflicts of interest -- a result of the banks being partly governed by a board of directors that includes officers of the very banks they're supposed to be overseeing.

The New York Fed, which was led by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during the time leading Wall Street firms like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, AIG, and Goldman Sachs were given hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, presently has on its board of directors Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase. He's been there for three years. He replaced former Citigroup chairman Sanford "Sandy" Weill.

"So, these are the guys who appointed the guy who bailed them out," Stiglitz said. "Is that a conflict of interest?" he asked rhetorically.

"They would say, 'no conflict of interest, we were just doing our job,'" he answered. "But you have to look at the conflicts of interest."

A message left for a New York Fed spokeswoman after regular business hours was not returned.

"The reason you talk about governance is because in a democracy you want people to have confidence," Stiglitz said. "This is a structure that will undermine confidence in a democracy."

Sarah Palin & The Nobel Prize...

Sarah Palin has just won the Nobel Prize for literature thanks to her inspiring promise that she may one day actually read a book...

'Masters of Light' Get Nobel

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125481670211367051.html

TECHNOLOGY OCTOBER 7, 2009
'Masters of Light' Get Nobel
Physicists Honored for Breakthroughs That Play Key Roles in Internet, Digital Cameras
By GAUTAM NAIK

Three scientists who harnessed the power of light in ways that helped turn the Internet into a global phenomenon and launched the digital-camera revolution were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday.

Charles Kao, who received half the total prize money of $1.4 million, was lauded for a breakthrough that led to fiber-optic cables, the thin glass threads that carry a vast chunk of the world's phone and data traffic and make up the circulatory system of the Internet.

The other half of the prize was shared by Willard Boyle and George Smith for work that led to the charge-coupled device, the "electronic eye" of a digital camera that turns light into electrical signals. The device, which eliminates the need for capturing images on film, paved the way for both today's point-and-shoot digital cameras and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Nobel committee described the three physicists as "masters of light."

Optical fibers, developed in the 1950s, had great theoretical potential because light can carry a lot more data than microwaves or radio waves. But impurities in the glass fibers of the time absorbed much of the light.

In 1966, Dr. Kao, while working at Standard Telephones and Cables' laboratory in Harlow, England, tackled the problem.

"His insight was that if you could get rid of the impurities, you could transmit light over many kilometers," said Jeff Hecht, who wrote a history of fiber optics in 1999.

Dr. Kao, who was born in Shanghai and has both U.K. and U.S. citizenships, figured out a way to increase the distance information could be sent to about 60 miles. Manufacturing breakthroughs then opened the way for moving signals over far greater distances, and the first ultrapure fiber was made in 1970.

Industry experts were skeptical. But, eventually, they were won over by Dr. Kao's vision of how fiber optics could substantially alter communication.

Today, fiber-optic cables transport words, sound and images from one end of the planet to the other in a split second. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel prizes, estimates that if all the glass fibers around the world were unraveled they would stretch to more than 600 million miles.

Work by Drs. Boyle and Smith at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., transformed photography. The CCD technology they pioneered is now used in digital cameras, camcorders, high-definition TV, satellites and medical endoscopes. The Hubble Space Telescope uses a CCD as its main imaging device.

In 1969, Drs. Boyle and Smith were trying to come up with new memory-chip ideas for data storage. Dr. Boyle was working on a device called PicturePhone. He was struggling to improve the screen image via clunky electronic tubes.

The pair met one day, stood at a blackboard in Dr. Boyle's office and tossed ideas about. Within an hour, they had their answer -- an image sensor that could gather and read out the signals in a large number of pixels, or image points, very quickly. They sketched out the design of a CCD, and within a week they had built a prototype.

In an interview from his home in Barnegat, N.J., Dr. Smith recalled: "There was no rule book, we just did what we thought was interesting and might prove fruitful. You can't write a book on how to do that."

Drs. Smith, 79 years old, and Boyle, 85, are American; Dr. Boyle also holds Canadian citizenship.

At International Business Machines Corp., scientists want to build on the work of Dr. Kao, 75. Optical fibers form the basis of virtually all long-distance communications, and IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer uses the same technology. Because it is cheaper and more efficient to send signals via glass fibers than electrical wires, IBM now aims to put fiber optics inside everyday computers.

Write to Gautam Naik at gautam.naik@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A3

Harold Pinter: A master of the sound of silence

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h4T2iunwaPPHtSKbTnHFtyzyD6ogD959VHC00

Harold Pinter: A master of the sound of silence
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
12-25-8

NEW YORK (AP) — No one made the sound of silence more ominously theatrical than Harold Pinter.

The influential British playwright, who died Christmas Eve after a long battle with cancer, created unforgettable moments of quiet, often filled with terror, outrage or the blackest of humor.

The "Pinter pause," as those silences were known, could send a shiver through an audience, jolting it into an unease that permeated many of his best plays, particularly such classics as "The Caretaker" and "The Homecoming."

"Pinter-esque" became an adjective bandied about in all the best drama schools and playwriting classes.

Yet Pinter knew how to make words count. As he grew older, his plays became leaner, more succinct in their language and frequently ferociously political.

There was an economy to his writing, a paring away that suggested an affinity with another Nobel Prize-winning playwright, Samuel Beckett, who often examined the human condition in the most terse and terrifying way possible.

It took a while for theatergoers, especially American audiences, to get used to Pinter. He made his Broadway debut in 1961 with "The Caretaker," which starred Alan Bates, Robert Shaw and Donald Pleasence.

The play, a bleak treatise on identity and possessiveness set in a squalid London attic, puzzled theatergoers who were unnerved by its menace and bewildered by its seemingly inconclusive tale of cat-and-mouse games.

No such problem greeted "The Homecoming," usually considered Pinter's masterwork. A best-play Tony winner in 1967, it has had several New York revivals since then, including a critically acclaimed Broadway production last year.

This distinctly atypical family drama of a tyrannical father, his dysfunctional sons and an obliging, sexually provocative daughter-in-law has become a contemporary masterwork.

In Pinter, linguistic clarity is all. From such early works as "The Room" and "The Birthday Party" right up through more recent efforts such as "Moonlight" and "Ashes to Ashes," his preciseness of language is imperative even if an exact meaning can't always be discerned.

It's that ambiguity which has posed a special challenge to actors, a challenge readily accepted by many on both sides of the Atlantic. Pinter's plays have provided memorable stage performances by a diverse parade of mesmerizing actors such as John Gielgud, Jason Robards, Ian McShane, Christopher Plummer, Eve Best, Ralph Richardson, Raul Esparza and Vivien Merchant, among others.

Pinter's best writing wasn't limited to theater. He wrote several elegant screenplays, particularly "The Go-Between" (1970), the tale of an illicit romance which starred Julie Christie and Alan Bates, and "The French Lieutenant's Woman," starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons (1981).

In recent years, he found a renewed vigor and moral passion as politics bubbled to the surface of many of his later plays. A vociferous critic of the American and British involvement in Iraq, he often wrote of political violence, particularly in such works as "One for the Road."

In 2005, when Pinter won the Nobel Prize, he was too frail to travel to Sweden to accept the award. But in a recorded lecture presented at the Swedish Academy, he said: "The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law." He castigated both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

Right to the end, Pinter's outrage remained undiminished.

Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Economics Prize

Robalini's Note: In many ways, this has more long-term impact than anything which will happen in November. With Stiglitz having already won in 2001, all that is needed is Robert Reich winning to make a liberal economist hat trick. Just as important, we're starting to see a rejection of the Milton Friedman cult and the University of Chicago school of thought.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axpy67IVqPj8

Princeton's Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Economics Prize
By Benedikt Kammel

Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on trade theory.

Krugman, 55, received the prize ``for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity,'' said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which selects the winners. His work explained how economies of scale influence trade and urbanization.

``It's a total surprise,'' Krugman said in a telephone interview.

Krugman gained his reputation in economics by contributing to strategic trade theory, contending that countries could steal a march on other nations by subsidizing strategic industries. He has found broader fame with his newspaper columns that regularly criticize President George W. Bush's policies.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Oct. 10, Krugman said the current financial turmoil had similarities with the Great Depression. ``The parallels are stronger than I thought they would be,'' he said. ``We developed a financial system that is out of control. The only things people want to buy are T-bills and water.''

The Nobel laureate said today he saw little danger of a move toward protectionism in the U.S., no matter which party wins in next month's elections.

Protectionism

``There may be a standstill, or slowdown at least, on new trade agreements, but I find reversal on trade agreements implausible,'' he said in remarks via telephone to a group of reporters in Stockholm. ``Full-scale protectionism I don't see.''

He has argued the benefits of subsidies are generally marginal. He has also been praised for his work on the development of industrial clusters and his equations on the impact of economic shocks on the current account, exchange rates and capital flows.

In 1991, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association, which is awarded to the best economist under the age of 40.

Krugman was born in Long Island and studied economics at Yale University. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 before joining Princeton University. From 1982 to 1983 he served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He has published a series of books and his ability to turn complicated economic theory into understandable prose led to him write an opinion column for the New York Times for the past eight years.

Previous Winners

Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, in his will in 1896 established awards for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature. The economics prize was set up by Sweden's central bank in 1968. Former winners include Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen and Friedrich August von Hayek.

The award's official name is ``The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.'' The prize consists of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.41 million), a gold medal and a diploma.

To contact the reporters on this story: Rich Miller in Washington o rmiller28@bloomberg.net; Simon Kennedy in Washington at skennedy4@bloomberg.net

French author Le Clezio wins Nobel Prize

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/09/nobel.prize.literature/

French author Le Clezio wins Nobel Prize
Story Highlights
French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio wins Nobel Prize for Literature
Committee: Le Clezio is "author of new departures" and "sensual ecstasy"
Nobel award ceremonies take place in Stockholm, Sweden on December 10

(CNN) -- French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, the Nobel Foundation announced Thursday.

The committee said Le Clezio was an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Le Clezio has written some 30 books including novels, essays, and short stories. Critics have found him hard to define, with his writing and subject matter having changed considerably over time, according to an article in Label France, a magazine published by the French government.

His work reflects ecological concerns, rebellion against the intolerance of Western nationalist thought, and his fascination with Native Americans, according to the magazine.

Le Clezio told the interviewer his books were less a matter of expressing ideas, and more an expression of his beliefs.

"When I write I am primarily trying to translate my relationship to the everyday, to events," he said. "We live in a troubled era in which we are bombarded by a chaos of ideas and images. The role of literature today is perhaps to echo this chaos."

Le Clezio's first novel, "Le Proces-Verbal" (Minutes of a Meeting) was published in 1963 and won Le Clezio the prestigious Theophraste Renaudot prize when he was just 23.

His fascination with Native Americans started when he did his military service in Mexico, Le Clezio told the magazine. He traveled to Panama and spent four years with the Emberas Indian forest population.

Le Clezio described it as a "deeply moving experience" that was completely different to the life he knew in Europe, the magazine said.

The author now divides his time between Albuquerque, New Mexico; his family's native Mauritius; and the French city of Nice, where he grew up, the magazine said.

Le Clezio said he has always felt like an exile in his own country because of his family's roots in Mauritius, a mixed culture with Indian, African, and European influences.

"I grew up telling myself that there was a somewhere else which embodied my true homeland," he told the magazine. "One day I would go there and I would know what it was. So in France I always thought of myself a little bit of an 'outsider.' On the other hand, I love the French language, which is perhaps my true country! But thinking of France as a nation, I must say I have rarely identified with its priorities."

The Nobel award ceremonies take place in Stockholm, Sweden on December 10. The only Nobel Prize not awarded in Sweden is the one for peace, which is presented in Oslo, Norway.

2 AIDS researchers receive Nobel Prize

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-nobel-medicine-07-oct07,0,5388041.story

2 AIDS researchers receive Nobel Prize
3rd scientist wins for finding papilloma virus, cervical cancer tie
By Jeremy Manier
Chicago Tribune reporter
October 7, 2008

Two French researchers who discovered the AIDS virus were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday, capping a long-running dispute over who should get credit for the historic finding.

The scientists shared the prize with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who found that certain human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women worldwide.

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of France were cited for their discovery of HIV in 1983. The award brought historical closure to an HIV controversy in which Tribune reporter John Crewdson played a prominent role starting in the late 1980s.

An American researcher, Dr. Robert Gallo, an expert on retroviruses, also contributed to discovery of the AIDS virus but was not included in Monday's award. Gallo and the French team argued for years over who deserved credit for the discovery, though since the 1980s both sides have largely put aside the old disagreement.

Reached in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, Montagnier told the Associated Press he wished Gallo had been included in the prize.

"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said.

Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, told the AP that it was "a disappointment" not to share the Nobel but that all three winners deserved the honor.

AIDS posed a horrifying mystery when it was first identified in 1981. No one understood exactly what caused the disease, how it spread or all the groups that might be at risk.

Scientific groups raced to isolate the cause of the disease, including the French team and Gallo, then a prominent researcher at the National Cancer Institute. The group led by Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi announced in 1983 that it had discovered the virus that caused AIDS, followed by Gallo's competing claim the next year.

The two groups squabbled in scientific journals, meetings and in courtrooms over who had been first to isolate the virus. Prestige aside, the question was pivotal because it would decide who got royalties from AIDS tests based on the discovery.

The political debate largely ended in 1987, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac agreed that the two teams should get equal recognition for the discovery and share proceeds from any AIDS tests. But that agreement did not settle the scientific question.

Journalists continued to chronicle the dispute, including writer Randy Shilts in his 1987 book "And the Band Played On." In 1989 the Tribune published a 50,000-word investigative report by Crewdson suggesting that Gallo had not independently discovered the virus at all, and that his lab results were contaminated by samples he received from the French.

Gallo later confirmed that a viral strain from the French lab had contaminated his work, but he said it was an honest mistake. A federal investigation in 1993 exonerated Gallo and concluded: "One might anticipate that from all this evidence, after all the sound and fury, there would be at least a residue of palpable wrongdoing. That is not the case." In 1994 the U.S. government agreed to give France more royalties, acknowledging that Gallo had relied on the French virus.

Many scientists view Gallo as a controversial figure, but few question his significant contribution to the field of virology.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

jmanier@tribune.com

Gore sets 'moon shot' goal on climate change

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080717/D91VH6B00.html

Gore sets 'moon shot' goal on climate change
Jul 17, 2008
By RON FOURNIER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create "a new political environment" that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

"I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that's emerging now," Gore told The Associated Press in an interview previewing a speech on global warming he was to deliver Thursday in Washington.

Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

"This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over," Gore said. "It's an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels."

Called an alarmist by conservatives, Gore has made combatting global warming his signature issue, a campaign that has been recognized worldwide - from an Academy Award to a Nobel Prize. He portrayed Thursday's speech as the latest and most important phase in his effort to build public opinion in favor of alternative fuels.

He knows politicians fear to act unless voters are willing to sacrifice - and demand new fuels.

"I hope to contribute to a new political environment in this country that will allow the next president to do what I think the next president is going to think is the right thing to do," Gore said. "But the people have to play a part." He likened his challenge to Kennedy's pledge in May 1961 to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Gore narrowly lost the presidential race in 2000 to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush after a campaign in which his prescient views on climate change took a back seat to other issues. While dismissing a suggestion that he pulled his punches eight years ago, Gore said his goal now is to "enlarge the political space" within which politicians can "deal with the climate challenge."

To meet his 10-year goal, Gore said nuclear energy output would continue at current levels while the nation dramatically increases its use of solar, wind, geothermal and so-called clean coal energy. Huge investments must also be made in technologies that reduce energy waste and link existing grids, he said.

If the nation fails to act, the cost of oil will continue to rise as fast-growing China and India increase demand, Gore said. Sustained addiction to oil also will place the nation at the mercy of oil-producing regimes, he said, and the globe would suffer irreparable harm.

Government experts recently predicted that, at the current rate, world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next two decades. The Energy Information Administration also said in its long-range forecast to 2030 that the world is not close to abandoning fossil fuels despite their effect on global warming.

While electricity production is only part of the nation's energy and climate change problem, Gore said, "If we meet this challenge we will solve the rest of it."

Gore unveils $300m climate ads

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/31/algore.uselections08.climate

Gore unveils $300m climate ads
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday March 31 2008

Al Gore, elevated to almost prophetic status for his campaign against global warming, on Sunday night unveiled a new $300m advertising blitz intended to force a debate on climate change during the presidential elections.

The Nobel laureate, who appeared with his wife, Tipper, on the CBS programme 60 Minutes to roll out the effort, is to donate a share of his personal fortune to the campaign.

The couple told 60 Minutes that they would donate his Nobel prize money as well as a matching sum in addition to their profits from the book and the movie of An Inconvenient Truth. The movie brought the issue of global warming home to millions of Americans, as well as winning Gore an Oscar.

In this latest campaign, Gore said he hopes to persuade Americans that protecting the planet transcends the usual political divisions.

"We all share the exact same interest in doing the right thing on this," he told CBS. "Are we destined to destroy this place that we call home, planet earth? I can't believe that that's our destiny. It is not our destiny. But we have to awaken to the moral duty that we have to do the right thing and get out of this silly political game-playing about it. This is about survival."

The first television advertisements, which are to begin airing on broadcast networks as well as cable starting on Wednesday, will pair up the most unlikely partners in the movement to address global warming.

A clip aired on CBS showed the Reverend Al Sharpton sharing a sofa with the conservative preacher Pat Robertson. The two men acknowledge they agree on almost nothing - barring the need to deal with global warming.

Other spots will feature the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, alongside Newt Gingrich, the conservative Republican who once held the same post.

The support from such conservative figures as Gingrich and Robertson marks a victory for Gore in his efforts to make global warming a cause for all Americans: evangelical Christians and fiscal conservatives as well as those on the left.

The recognition for his work in the Nobel prize and the Oscar had helped overcoe scepticism about whether climate change is man-made.

By this point, Gore argued, the doubters - which include the vice-president, Dick Cheney - had been isolated as a fringe group.

"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view," he told CBS. "They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."

The 60 Minutes segment marked a rare appearance from Gore in the presidential race. After the crushing experience of losing the White House to George Bush despite winning the popular vote in the 2000 elections, Gore has become a cult hero for his passionate advocacy on the environment.

A swathe of Democrats continue to hope that Gore will return to politics - despite his protestations - or that he will weigh in to bring an end to the bruising contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Gore, despite his eight years as Bill Clinton's vice-president, has so far remained neutral in the race.

He also made it clear he has no intention of intervening to bring the contest to a close. "I'm not applying for the job of broker," he told CBS.

The advertising campaign is being created by an advertising agency whose work is familiar to American television viewers. The same agency produced advertisements for Geico car insurance using talking lizards and spoof of Planet of the Apes.

Gore acknowledged that so far Clinton and Obama have devoted relatively little time to discussing their platforms on climate change. But, as he told CBS: "I'm not finished yet."