Friday, October 12, 2007
The week began with three scientists sharing the Nobel Prize in Medicine
for "discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications
in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells." It produced a revolution in
mammalian biology, buts it's also a reminder of Bush obstruction of human
embryonic stem cells. The week ended with the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change and Al Gore jointly winning the Nobel Peace Prize for
spreading awareness of man-made climate change. Gore has also won an Emmy
and an Oscar. He even won the popular vote for President, only to be
defeated by the Supreme Court.
We're almost scraping the bottom now. Quantum size effects were first
seen 30 years ago in layered films of dissimilar metals a few atoms
thick. This week, Albert Fert, at CNRS in France and Peter Grunberg at
Julich in Germany shared the Physics Prize for independently discovering
giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in layered nickel and chromium films. Both
credited Stuart Parkin of IBM with applying GMR to drastically reduce the
size of hard drives. Media reports said it made iPods possible, but it
also has important applications. Many felt Parkin should have shared the
Prize, but it put the U.S. on notice that the days of sweeping the prizes
are past - and nano is the future. The Chemistry Prize announced the next
day bore this out. Gerhard Ertl of the Max Planck Institute in Germany
won the Prize for advancing the ultra-clean, single-crystal surface
approach to the study of individual gas molecules interacting with metals,
pioneered by the late Harry Farnsworth at Brown. Everyone in the field
applauded the choice of Ertl to receive the prize.
Familiar? (WN 13 Mar 98) Fred signs
his note as "Past President, NAS." That should be "Way Past." He now
heads the Board of the George C. Marshall Institute. Look that up in
Wikipedia. Click on its funding sources - that will explain a lot. Also
see the Oregon Institute of Science and Technology http://www.oism.org/ .
The OISM is supported mostly by sale of home-schooling materials,
including McGuffey Readers, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica, and the 1913
Noah Webster Dictionary. Don't trust your kids with anything more
recent. The CISM Home Page lists a faculty of six, but at least two of
them are dead. Well, who could tell?
|
