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US duo share Nobel chemistry prize
THIS year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry is shared by two US scientists.
Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon are being honoured by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their work on channels in cell membranes.
The Academy described the pair’s work as being of “great importance for our understanding of many diseases”. They share a prize worth 10 million Swedish Kronor (equivalent to £800,000 or $1.3m).
Discovering how substances pass into and out of cells is crucial to understanding very basic processes of life.
And when scientists understand how cells relate to the world around them in a healthy body, they can begin to understand what goes wrong in diseases such as cancer.
“These are discoveries that are of fundamental importance for the understanding of life processes, not just among humans and higher organisms, but also for bacteria and plants,” said Bengt Norden, chairman of the Nobel committee for chemistry.
In 1991 Professor Agre discovered a way in which water molecules can pass into and out of cells.
“This decisive discovery opened the door to a whole series of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies of water channels,” the Swedish academy said.
The discovery had enhanced medical understanding of kidney disease, it said.
Professor Agre works at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
Professor MacKinnon was honoured for his work on the way salts pass into and out of cells.
He highlighted the role of microscopic doughnut-shaped ion channels which act as gatekeepers on the wall of a cell, allowing salts to pass or blocking their way.
“Thanks to this contribution we can now ‘see’ ions flowing through channels which can be opened and closed by different cellular signals,” the academy said.
Professor MacKinnon works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of the Rockefeller University in New York. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
EXTRAORDINARY talent and innovation were displayed at the annual NasCon’03 — an All-Pakistan software exhibition and competition — by 172 students. The competition was organized by the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad, last Saturday.
A quiz competition and seminars were also arranged to give the participants an insight into the latest technologies, trends and research works in IT. To highlight creativity and ingenuity among students, a poster competition for children from schools and colleges was also introduced.
Among the software competitors were Nosheen Akram and Omeir Zahid, computer software students from FAST, Lahore. Teaching the computer to create on its own had merged fine arts with computer science using artificial intelligence. Their software called “Intuition” produced music created by the computer entirely by itself.
“The user can just hum into the microphone and the software will interpret and create music according to the mood and taste of the user,” said Ms Akram.
Students from the Fatima Jinnah Women University developed a Pulse Doppler Radar, using re-configurable computing. The product is a miniature device for defence. It could be installed in a camera or watch, said Sandeela Sumeem, and detects an object, its velocity, direction and range.
Federal Minister for Water and Power Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao was the chief guest. Chancellor Wasim Sajjad and Director Dr Aftab Ahmad Maroof were also present on the occasion. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
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