tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/nobel-prize-2017-44177/articles
Nobel Prize 2017 – The Conversation
2017-10-09T18:52:43Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85430
2017-10-09T18:52:43Z
2017-10-09T18:52:43Z
Economist who helped behavioral ‘nudges’ go mainstream wins Nobel
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189440/original/file-20171009-6960-9uqy7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As a founder of behavioral economics, Thaler has helped change the way economists look at the world.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Paul Beaty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.kva.se/en/startsida">2017 Nobel Prize in economics</a> was awarded to University of Chicago’s <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/index.html">Richard Thaler</a> for his work in <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/behavioral-economics-14384">behavioral economics</a>, which is the integration of economics with psychology. </p>
<p>While the award was not a total surprise, since Thaler’s name was floated earlier on the <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2017/10/03/who-will-win-the-2017-nobel-prize-in-economics/">list of potential winners</a>, it highlights the growing importance of incorporating how humans actually behave into economic thinking. It marks the second time a pioneer in the burgeoning field of behavioral economics – which hardly existed a few decades ago – has won a Nobel, the first being psychologist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/">Daniel Kahneman</a> in 2002. </p>
<p>It may be hard to believe, but before these scholars came along, many economists assumed that humans acted like <a href="http://www.startrek.com/database_article/spock">Spock</a> on “Star Trek.” People were supposed to be perfectly rational calculating machines that looked at all the information and made correct choices. However, even a most casual view of the real world suggests this is not a good assumption.</p>
<p>So who is Thaler and what’s so important about his work?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before Thaler and his peers came along, economists assumed people behaved a lot like Spock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bob Galbraith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Thaler’s impact</h2>
<p><a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/vitae/CV.pdf">Richard Thaler</a> was born in 1945 in East Orange, New Jersey. He studied at Case Western and the University of Rochester, where he earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1974. </p>
<p>His doctoral thesis offered one of the earliest <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Value_of_Saving_a_Life.html?id=luXjtwAACAAJ">estimates of the value of saving a life</a>, calculations that <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Viscusi_517.pdf">governments</a> and businesses use to determine how much they should spend to prevent fatalities. For example, when the government is considering new air quality regulations that will cost companies money, it compares the price tag against the value of lives saved if the changes are implemented. </p>
<p>Thaler estimated that a life saved was worth about <a href="http://www.nber.org/chapters/c3964.pdf">US$200,000</a> in 1967 dollars, or about <a href="https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm">$1.5 million</a> in 2017 terms. Today, government agencies value a life <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html">five to six times higher</a> than that. </p>
<p>Thaler may be best-known for the bestselling book “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122237/nudge">Nudge</a>,” which he co-wrote with Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein. “Nudge” is credited with inspiring former Prime Minster David Cameron to create the U.K.’s <a href="http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk">Behavioral Insights Team</a>, which uses psychological principles to improve the effectiveness of public services. Former President Barack Obama <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-science-of-human-behavior-is-beginning-to-reshape-the-us-government-48145">set up a similar group</a> in the White House.</p>
<p>Thaler and Sunstein argue people should not be forced to do things with bans or laws. Instead, small interventions, or nudges, that make the right choice easier are the best way to go. They offer examples such as putting healthy food where people can see and reach it easily while relegating unhealthy options to out-of-the-way spots. Since people usually make the easy choice, moving food around will result in less junk food being eaten.</p>
<p>Another example is making automatic retirement contributions the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-science-of-human-behavior-is-beginning-to-reshape-the-us-government-48145">default choice</a> when someone begins a new job. This means new employees will have to fill out paperwork to stop contributions instead of to start them. As a result, more people save for retirement.</p>
<p>More specifically, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selected Thaler for his <a href="http://www.kva.se/en/pressroom/pressmeddelanden/ekonomipriset-2017">work in three areas</a>: “limited rationality,” “social preferences” and “lack of self-control.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Thaler and Sunstein showed how making healthier options more visible makes it more likely people will choose them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Hans Pennink</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Limits of our reason</h2>
<p>Thaler pointed out that because people often can’t solve many problems in their economic lives, they simplify and use rules of thumb. These simplifications, however, lead to strange and sometimes bad choices.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051900316.html">Mental accounting</a> is one area of strange choices that Thaler was the first to identify. Because our financial lives are complex, we mentally put money in separate buckets and spend only the money available in that bucket. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.economiapsicologica.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/thaler-mental-accounting-and-consumer-choice.pdf">Thaler describes a couple</a> who receives $300 in cash compensation from an airline for lost baggage. The couple takes the $300 and spends it on a fancy dinner. They splurged for the dinner only because, in their heads, they classified $300 as a windfall. But if their salaries had simply increased by a total of $300, they would likely not have splurged on eating out but instead mentally classified the extra money as spending for rent and other bills.</p>
<h2>Adding emotion to economics</h2>
<p>He also won the Nobel for his work on social preferences and fairness. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1806070">Thaler, with co-authors Kahneman and Canadian economist Jack Knetsch</a>, showed in 1986 how customers don’t expect companies to maximize profits in all situations. For example, when there’s a blizzard, people don’t expect stores to raise the price of shovels, even though demand will naturally soar as the snow piles up. Thaler and his co-authors showed that customers will tend to punish businesses that do. This is a surprising result since it shows that businesses that maximize <a href="http://businessmacroeconomics.com/">profits</a> in the short term, as many do, can be penalized in the long term if customers think the companies are acting unfairly.</p>
<p>This work has relevance today for understanding consumers’ reactions to drug companies pushing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/insider/insider-high-drug-prices-opioids.html">prescription drug prices ever higher</a> and to businesses <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/price-gouging-in-texas-gas-prices-hurricane-2017-9">price-gouging</a> after hurricanes. Thaler points out <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647056">that emotions</a>, like feelings about fairness, are an important but overlooked area of economics.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Kahneman makes a toast with his wife Anne Treisman after winning the Nobel Prize in economics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Paying for self-control</h2>
<p>A third area cited by the Swedish Academy was the contribution Thaler and economist Hersh Shefrin made on ideas about <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1806070?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">self-control</a>.</p>
<p>The economists noted that people spend money to avoid making poor choices or to avoid engaging in the wrong kinds of behaviors. For example, Thaler and Shefrin wrote that people “pay to go to ‘<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/04/22/americas-top-10-weight-loss-resorts.html">fat farms</a>’ which essentially are resorts that promise not to feed their customers.”</p>
<p>Individuals not only pay for self-control but also create special rules to ensure they don’t go beyond self-imposed limits. Smokers, for instance, often buy cigarettes by the pack instead of by the carton. This ensures they smoke less each day, even though they pay more per cigarette. </p>
<p>Thaler’s work on self-control is becoming more important as the internet and almost instant delivery make more of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Temptation-Finding-Self-Control-Age-Excess/dp/0143120808">world’s temptations easier to access</a> without waiting. Understanding how people actually operate results in better public policies that can achieve the same results without costing people money.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even though regular smokers would save money by buying cigarettes by the carton, many purchase one pack at a time as a means of self-control.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ed Wray</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s all about us</h2>
<p>The award is worth <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/about/amounts/prize_amounts_17.pdf">9 million Swedish kronor</a>, which at today’s exchange rate is about $1.1 million. Unfortunately for Thaler, since he is an American, the <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/nobel-prize-award-subject-income-taxation/">entire award is taxable</a> income – unless it is donated to a charity.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/business/nobel-economics-richard-thaler.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">Asked how he would spend the money</a>, he said: “This is quite a funny question… I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible.”</p>
<p>The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, the only award not created by <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/">Alfred Nobel in his will</a>, also brings enormous prestige to the winner. Economist Friedrich Hayek, who won the prize in 1974, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-speech.html">said it confers</a> on an individual an “influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.”</p>
<p>Beyond this influence, why should you care? The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/">list of past economics Nobel Prize winners</a> contains many people whose work is fascinating to economists but whose relevance to the lives of regular people is tenuous. </p>
<p>Richard Thaler’s work, however, has direct relevance for pretty much everyone. His early research helps save lives. His later research helps people save for retirement and helps save us from our own worst tendencies. The Swedish Academy made an astute choice in lauding his work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay L. Zagorsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics for his groundbreaking work incorporating how humans actually behave into economic thinking.
Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85386
2017-10-09T05:26:23Z
2017-10-09T05:26:23Z
How Melbourne activists launched a campaign for nuclear disarmament and won a Nobel prize
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189310/original/file-20171009-25775-2y6e5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tilman Ruff (back centre) and a group of ICAN campaigners protest outside Australia's permanent mission to the UN at Geneva.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/30835738@N03/26919314551/">Tim Wright, ICAN</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Friday, the <a href="http://www.icanw.org/au/">International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons</a> (ICAN) was awarded the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2017/">2017 Nobel Peace Prize</a>, “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”. </p>
<p>The prize comes after ICAN played a pivotal role in an historic <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/ptnw/">UN treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons</a>. The treaty was adopted in July by an overwhelming vote of 122 to one. ICAN was the driving force behind it, working closely with governments to get it over the line.</p>
<p>The treaty’s significance lies in its power to influence governments: those that actually support nuclear disarmament will sign it; those that don’t will be shown to be insincere in their disarmament rhetoric.</p>
<h2>From little things…</h2>
<p>Malaysian obstetrician and former co-president of <a href="http://www.ippnw.org">International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War</a> (IPPNW) Ron McCoy first proposed the idea of ICAN in 2005.</p>
<p>McCoy put out a call to colleagues through IPPNW advocating “lateral thinking and a new approach to nuclear disarmament”. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We can call it an International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, with the acronym ICAN. Let’s start working on this right now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea struck a deep chord in Melbourne among colleagues active in the medical, peace and nuclear-free movements. </p>
<p>We hatched a plan to build a broad campaign coalition of diverse partner organisations around the world with a clear compelling goal – one that is working for biological and chemical weapons, cluster munitions and landmines: a comprehensive, binding treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons and provide for their elimination. </p>
<p>We knew that it needed to be global, to engage young people, and to be rooted in the unacceptability of nuclear weapons – the catastrophic indiscriminate consequences that would inevitably follow any use. </p>
<p>We needed to include and provide a platform for the courageous voices of survivors of nuclear weapons use and testing. They tell the human story of lived transgenerational suffering of people under the mushroom cloud, and they are the most compelling advocates that what happened to them must never again happen to anyone, anywhere. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bikini-islanders-still-deal-with-fallout-of-us-nuclear-tests-more-than-70-years-later-58567">Bikini islanders still deal with fallout of US nuclear tests, more than 70 years later</a>
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<p>And we needed money. At the first meeting with the Poola Foundation in early 2006 in Leicester Street, Carlton, they could see merit in an idea that seemed wildly optimistic to many, and their confidence in us was empowering. </p>
<p>Our co-founder, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/bill-williams-passionate-for-improved-health-outcomes-for-aboriginal-people-20160921-grkyev.html">Bill Williams</a>, sadly passed away before he could celebrate the wonderful developments of this year with us. But it was Williams who so eloquently summed up our brief, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need a determined worldwide movement to outlaw and abolish nukes. To get there in this generation, we need to build the wave of public opinion into a mighty crescendo: a massive, surging, irresistible force which carries us all the way to absolutely zero nukes. Without it, even the most inspirational of leaders will falter on the way.</p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189325/original/file-20171009-6956-13tp6px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Williams speaking at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl just prior to the launch of ICAN.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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<h2>Building a movement from the ground up</h2>
<p>From the outset we were up against the harsh reality that none of the nuclear-armed countries were serious about fulfilling their binding obligation to disarm. In fact, they were doing the opposite. </p>
<p>Many of these countries were arguing that conditions were not right to disarm, and they were investing more than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/us/us-ramping-up-major-renewal-in-nuclear-arms.html">US$100 billion per year</a> in modernising their nuclear arsenals, making them more accurate, deadly and “usable”. </p>
<p>So, a game-changing breakthrough needed to come from the countries without the weapons. Most of them were despairing and frustrated about being indefinitely held under a nuclear threat by governments that refused to fulfil a legally binding disarmament commitment they made under the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/">Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty</a>, which had been in force since 1970. </p>
<p>Governments that don’t possess nuclear weapons can’t eliminate them. So what’s the most feasible significant step they could take? Fill the legal gap that sees the worst of all weapons, the only ones that pose an existential threat to all humanity, the only weapons of mass destruction not yet outlawed. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-must-sign-the-prohibition-on-nuclear-weapons-heres-why-83951">Australia must sign the prohibition on nuclear weapons: here's why</a>
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</em>
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<p>With or without nuclear-armed and dependent countries, they could ban nuclear weapons under international law. Thus, by 2010, ICAN strategy had sharpened around a nuclear weapons ban treaty as the next best step that could be taken. </p>
<h2>Taking it to Europe and beyond</h2>
<p>Towards the end of 2010, an office was established in Oslo. In the same year ICAN secured an initial grant from the Norwegian government to establish an international campaign office in Geneva, reaching out to the Middle East and Africa. </p>
<p>Through ICAN and partners across the globe, survivors’ voices were joined by the many voices of those who would not have their suffering happen again – medicos, scientists, legal experts, artists, witnesses, thinkers, campaigners, spiritual leaders and defence experts.</p>
<p>When a majority of the world’s governments came together earlier this year to negotiate the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/ptnw/">Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a>, ICAN campaigners across the globe stood strong alongside the <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/who-we-are">International Red Cross</a> and the <a href="http://www.ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/the-movement/">Red Crescent movement</a> and other partners to ensure the formation of the strongest treaty possible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189330/original/file-20171009-6947-1og9n03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The signing ceremony for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
at UN headquarters in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/30835738@N03/with/37184677032/">Darren Ornitz/ICAN</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When that treaty opened for signature on September 20, 2017, many of us here in Australia sat up late into the night watching the ceremony live-streamed from the UN. And now, just weeks later, the announcement of the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2017/">Nobel Peace Prize</a> has swept the work into high profile and sharp focus. </p>
<h2>The work of ICAN isn’t over</h2>
<p>ICAN was always intended to be a coalescing, not a reinvention. From the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945 to today, millions of people have worked to eliminate them. </p>
<p>The hard work of pushing for the elimination of nuclear weapons must not only continue but ramp up. The new treaty provides a powerful tool in this work, and the opposition of the nuclear-armed and dependent countries to the treaty is the strongest evidence that the treaty matters and cannot be ignored. </p>
<p>The Nobel Peace Prize shines a bright light on the urgent unfinished business of getting nuclear weapons off the table. It is a huge shot in the arm, and encouragement for governments to sign and ratify the treaty and then implement it, and for people around the world to press their governments to do so. </p>
<p>It could not have come at a better or more urgent time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189331/original/file-20171009-6971-1ezmqnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ICAN campaigners in front of the Central Park skyline in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/30835738@N03/34921916204/">ICAN/Ralf Schlesener</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tilman Ruff received funding from the Swiss government for expert testimony at a side event at the nuclear non-proliferation treaty meeting in Vienna in 2012, travel support from the Australian government in 2009 in his role as a civil society advisor to the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, and travel support as an expert advisor to a High-Level Expert Meeting of the Interaction Council in 2010.
He is a co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and founding international and Australian chair of ICAN, and serves currently on its International Steering Group and Australian Committee.He is a past president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dimity Hawkins was a co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN). She has previously worked for the organisation as Campaign Director (2009-2010) and has been a member of the Australian Board (2006-2009 and 2013-2017). She does not currently hold a position with the organisation but continues to volunteer her time. She is a full time PhD Candidate with Swinburne University. </span></em></p>
A grassroots movement with its genesis in Melbourne has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor, International Education and Learning Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
Dimity Hawkins, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85299
2017-10-06T22:52:06Z
2017-10-06T22:52:06Z
The ‘inevitable sadness’ of Kazuo Ishiguro’s fiction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189199/original/file-20171006-25784-1ghvr4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro listens to a question during a press conference at his home in London on Oct. 5, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Nobel-Literature/922e06cc4c894917bcd41a453328e0a3/14/0">Alastair Grant/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a damp October day in 2006, I followed Kazuo Ishiguro and my 10-year-old daughter Grace to a back table at a bustling cafe in London for an interview. As Ishiguro answered my questions, he explained how he “auditions” his characters’ voices and personalities in his head before they appear in his fiction. He spoke candidly about a writer’s messy work.</p>
<p>Now he is the laureate for the Nobel Prize in literature, for what the Swedish Academy praised as his unapologetic portrayals of “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” </p>
<p>It’s a nod to the self-delusion that many of Ishiguro’s characters possess. One, for example, rationalizes his service to a fascist loyalist. Others see their past through the cloudy lens of trauma. If we were to peel back the warped self-deception, we might find a bottomless pit of despair. </p>
<p>At that interview years ago, Ishiguro talked about his characters’ painful chasms, the way they protected themselves by concealing their mistakes. But when everything seems hopeless, his characters often courageously turn to their imagination to forge a connection to life and meaning. </p>
<p>In doing so, they beckon readers to imagine something better, too.</p>
<p>When I asked Ishiguro about his 2005 dystopic novel “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1003852733">Never Let Me Go</a>,” his tone shifted. He lowered his voice when he told me about the students in that novel, and how they eventually perish. But he was surprised when I said that I found the novel sorrowful.</p>
<p>“There is an inevitable sadness,” he admitted. “On the other hand, it’s not a bleak view of human nature.” </p>
<p>I could sense Ishiguro’s concern for how my daughter might take his observations about death and despair. </p>
<p>He continued: “The question, ‘What are we useful for?’ is the question that your daughter Grace asks, and one Tommy and Kathy ask in ‘Never Let Me Go.’ Some cold system says to Tommy and Kathy that they will be useful [to the world], and it’s the same as another system saying to Grace that someday she will be useful to the world economy.”</p>
<p>Human systems figure in all of Ishiguro’s novels, whether these are governments, communities or families. Often, these systems are damaged, and humans still must move through them. They try to repair them or save themselves. Ishiguro has examined many facets of what it means to live among and within countless systems. </p>
<p>The first-person narrators of Ishiguro’s first three novels, “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/758853238">A Pale View of Hills</a>,” “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/930830001">An Artist of the Floating World</a>” and “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/938658779">The Remains of the Day</a>,” reflect on personal losses in the context of world events: friends and families dead from atomic bombings in Japan, unrealized romances, wrong choices and lives founded on delusion. These characters long for clarity, retribution or forgiveness.</p>
<p>The narrators of his next three novels are, variously, a pianist (“<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/902919677">The Unconsoled</a>”), a London detective (“<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/957162505">When We Were Orphans</a>”) and a roving hospice-type worker (“Never Let Me Go”). Whether they’re situated in Japan, Great Britain, some unnamed European city or even a medieval village, Ishiguro’s characters beguile his readers with their disclosures. His eloquent prose expresses their anguish or their repressed longings. We sense time passing darkly for these characters. We see how they face disappointments and ache for dignity. </p>
<p>Ishiguro explained that to probe the emotional force of his novels, we must understand that the characters are set within “an internal world [and] it’s an emotional logic that is being played out.” </p>
<p>In narrating their sorrows and their fruitless optimism, Ishiguro gives his readers a way to empathize with his characters’ situations. </p>
<p>Ishiguro’s capacity for compassion was cultivated during his university gap year, when he worked with the homeless. He also studied piano and guitar and dreamed of a career in music before he detoured to the creative writing program at the University of East Anglia. He still writes musical lyrics and works with musicians as an avocation. </p>
<p>By his own admission, Ishiguro is a slow writer; he produces a novel every few years. In 2015, when he came to Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop to promote his latest novel, I was able to catch up with him. He remarked that he may have only a couple more books forthcoming. </p>
<p>“We’re not immortal,” he said. “We’re here for a limited time. There is a countdown.” </p>
<p>The Swedish Academy honors a laureate for a lifetime of achievement. To date, Ishiguro has published eight books as well as many short stories, television and film scripts. His career may seem disjointed when focusing on only the best-known novels, “The Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go.” </p>
<p>But few contemporary authors have dared to take as many risks as Ishiguro. The more complicated, Kafka-esque novel “The Unconsoled” is a book some critics <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jan/27/kazuo-ishiguro-reading-group">called disappointing</a>. A different sort of writer might have quit, but Ishiguro persisted.</p>
<p>Similarly, even though some readers responded coolly to “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/944075352">The Buried Giant</a>,” Ishiguro had taken yet another <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/books/review/kazuo-ishiguros-the-buried-giant.html?_r=0">literary leap</a>: The highly metaphorical story is set in an early English era that predated historical records. Memory, repression of pain and the resolve to protect oneself and loved ones return as themes, but in unusual, allegorical ways.</p>
<p>Each novel is a singular achievement; each successive undertaking enriches a broader canvas of Ishiguro’s portraits of alienated lives. </p>
<p>During that 2006 London interview, I watched Ishiguro banter with my daughter during a break. They were laughing about what it means to “snarf” food, and they were picking up some biscuits and spooning melted ice cream to demonstrate. Ishiguro’s ease and humor when speaking with my child captivated me.</p>
<p>In spite of the sadness in his books, Ishiguro is a gracious guardian of humanity. He is a fine curator of emotions and a skilled storyteller. </p>
<p>We don’t know how many more books Ishiguro will publish. But we can be certain that in his literary explorations, he will remain undaunted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia F. Wong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
After learning of Ishiguro’s Nobel win, a literature professor recalls her 2006 interview with the writer in a London cafe.
Cynthia F. Wong, Professor of English, University of Colorado Denver
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85191
2017-10-05T18:07:24Z
2017-10-05T18:07:24Z
Kazuo Ishiguro wins Nobel Prize in Literature for ‘novels of great emotional force’
<p>An annual cycle of intrigue and speculation, followed by the denouement – at which point the whole knotty process come to a head. Not the sagas of the political party conference season, but the perennially shocking announcement of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41513246">Nobel Laureate in Literature</a>. The same questions often follow. Who is that? From where? For what? Last year’s decision, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bob-dylans-nobel-prize-and-what-really-defines-literature-67079">honouring Bob Dylan</a>, generated more headlines than ever – and a different question. What is “literature”, asked many commentators, if a songwriter wins?</p>
<p>It drew further attention to the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/">workings of the Swedish Academy</a>. Its 16 members draw up a shortlist from the longlist nominated by previous Nobel laureates, experts in the field and national writers’ associations. The somewhat random process is further complicated by the criterion that the winner should be “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/">the most outstanding work in an ideal direction</a>”. How do these 16 academicians respond to work in so many genres, in so many languages, in any meaningful way? And what is their ideal direction?</p>
<p>This year’s choice, Kazuo Ishiguro, like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/09/patrick-modiano-wins-nobel-prize-for-literature">Patrick Modiano</a> and Dylan, has written for music, but is best known for his two novels which have been turned into movies: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/07/the-remains-of-the-day-by-kazuo-ishiguro-book-to-share">The Remains of the Day</a> (1989), which won the Booker Prize, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/26/bookerprize2005.bookerprize">Never Let Me Go</a> (2005). </p>
<h2>Return to type</h2>
<p>Following Dylan’s success, and the success of the oral historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/svetlana-alexievich-exposes-the-deep-contradictions-of-the-literature-nobel-48866">Svetlana Alexievich</a>, this year’s announcement means that the prize has returned to a more conventional writer, a novelist who is easily read alongside predecessors such as VS Naipaul, Doris Lessing, Herta Muller and Orhan Pamuk.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"915972380828196864"}"></div></p>
<p>Like Naipaul and Lessing, Ishiguro is a naturalised British citizen: born in Nagasaki, Japan, his family moved to the UK when he was a child. He studied at Kent and then took an MA in Creative Writing at UEA, where his London-based tutor Angela Carter, herself shortly returned from time spent living in Japan, was a powerful example of the independent literary life.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"915904577257578496"}"></div></p>
<p>When Ishiguro first began to publish in the 1980s he was identified with the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/17/fiction.features3">Granta Generation</a>” of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and Julian Barnes. The books treated the fixed manners and social norms of British and Japanese society with coolly understated prose, generating pathos and tragedy from the ways in which their subjects’ good manners and expectations were overwhelmed by events.</p>
<h2>Experiments in genre</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n_ap4Czeo4Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The success of The Remains of the Day seems to have given Ishiguro pause and his fourth novel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jan/13/kazuo-ishiguro-the-unconsoled-questions">The Unconsoled</a>, published in 1995, was more abstract, featuring an unnamed protagonist, a pianist, whose dreamy, self-questioning wanderings invited comparisons with Kafka and also put clear water between Ishiguro and his more social realist contemporaries. Like Lessing before him – and like Jeanette Winterson and other fabulists of his own generation – Ishiguru’s work has increasingly veered from the recognisable worlds of his childhood to more fantastical realms. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189005/original/file-20171005-15464-19ptbyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Critically acclaimed: Never Let Me Go.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Faber & Faber</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Never Let Me Go typically confused reviewers who sought to identify its genre: its story of clones raised for organ donation was read as horror, science fiction <em>and</em> parable (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award), although its tender illustration of adolescent uncertainty and powerlessness was what made it both a critical and popular favourite.</p>
<p>Continuing his experiments in genre, his most recent novel, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/the-uses-of-oblivion">The Buried Giant</a> (2015), is a fantastical account of Arthurian Britain, whose travelling protagonists must negotiate tribal politics and feudal hierarchies. It makes for an uncomfortable perspective on the Brexit referendum – and the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK – which also drew Ishiguro into an unusually political intervention, calling for a second referendum in an <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7877a0a6-3e11-11e6-9f2c-36b487ebd80a?mhq5j=e5">essay written for the Financial Times</a>. </p>
<p>The essay is, as readers might expect, carefully attuned to the ways in which societies can be suddenly transformed, when yesterday’s norms no longer apply and sections of a population suddenly find themselves stranded under a new dispensation. Given that the Nobel academicians <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2012/10/the-politics-of-the-nobel-prize-for-literature/">often read poetry and fiction for its political idealism</a> as much as for its stylistic innovation and integrity, what Ishiguro wrote in that essay may well be the “ideal direction” they use as a compass when they look for what is best in contemporary literature.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Britain I know – and deeply love – is a decent, fair-minded place, readily compassionate to outsiders in need, resistant to hate-stoking agitators from whatever political extreme – just as it was in the first half of the 20th century when fascism rampaged across Europe. If that view has now become outdated, if it has become naive, if today’s Britain is one I should no longer recognise as the one I grew up in, then let me at least hear the bad news loud and clear. Let us find out what we’re dealing with. Let us find out who we are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ishiguro is an interesting and – in his experiments with genre – original novelist. He is also a relatively young recipient of the Nobel Prize. Winning the Booker propelled his writing in a new direction, so this award may likewise encourage what is most ambitious about his work. This time next year, when the bookies start quoting odds on his contemporaries, he may well have the look of a classic choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Mcauliffe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The prize committee has opted for a more traditional laureate this year, nominating a traditional novelist after last year’s controversial choice of Bob Dylan.
John Mcauliffe, Professor of Creative Writing and Modern Literature, University of Manchester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85034
2017-10-05T12:06:47Z
2017-10-05T12:06:47Z
The ancient clock that rules our lives – and determines our health
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188765/original/file-20171004-18533-1vz6v53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/440570470?size=medium_jpg">Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our lives are ruled by time; we use time to tell us what to do. But the alarm clock that wakes us in the morning or the wristwatch that tells us we are late for supper are unnatural clocks. Our biology answers to a profoundly more ancient beat that probably started to tick early in the evolution of all life. </p>
<p>Embedded within the genes of us, and almost all life on earth, are the instructions for a <a href="https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/circadian-rhythms-a-very-short-introduction-9780198717683?cc=gb&lang=en&">biological clock</a> that marks the passage of around 24 hours. Biological clocks or “circadian clocks” help time our sleep patterns, alertness, mood, physical strength, blood pressure and much more. </p>
<p>Under normal conditions, we experience a 24-hour pattern of light and dark, and our circadian clock uses this signal to align biological time to the day and night. The clock is then used to anticipate the differing demands of the 24-hour day and fine-tune physiology and behaviour in advance of the changing conditions. Body temperature drops, blood pressure decreases, cognitive performance drops and tiredness increases in anticipation of going to bed. While before dawn, metabolism is geared-up in anticipation of increased activity when we wake. </p>
<p>A circadian clock also stops everything happening at the same time, ensuring that biological processes occur in the appropriate sequence. For cells to work properly they need the right materials in the right place at the right time. </p>
<p>Thousands of genes have to be switched on and off in order and in harmony. Proteins, enzymes, fats, carbohydrates, hormones, nucleic acids and other compounds have to be absorbed, broken down, metabolised and produced in a precise time window. Energy has to be obtained and then allocated to growth, reproduction, metabolism, locomotion and cellular repair. </p>
<p>All of these processes, and many others, take energy and all have to be timed to the correct time of the day. Without a clock, our biology would be in chaos. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2017/press.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=twitter_tweet">pioneering research</a> of Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young – awarded the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2017/">2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine</a> earlier this week – provided our first clear understanding of how a biological clock ticks in any organism; in this case, a fruit fly. </p>
<h2>How the clock works</h2>
<p>At the heart of the clock is a “negative feedback loop” which consists of the following sequence of events. The clock genes produce messages that are translated into proteins. The proteins then interact to form complexes and move from the cytoplasm of the cell into the nucleus and then inhibit their own genes. These inhibitory clock protein complexes are then broken down and the clock genes are then once more free to make more messages and fresh protein – and the cycle continues day after day.</p>
<p>This negative feedback loop generates a near 24-hour rhythm of protein production and degradation that drives the internal biological day. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"914786230658887680"}"></div></p>
<p>Based on the findings of Hall, Rosbash and Young in the fruit fly, very similar clock genes were then discovered in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3815553/">mice</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12452483">humans</a> and many other animals. So the biological clocks that “tick” in us are broadly similar to the clocks found in insects, worms, fish and birds. </p>
<p>We now know that the morning and evening preferences of individuals who describe themselves as either “larks” or “owls” also appear to be related to <a href="http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30346-X">small changes in some of these clock genes</a> that either speed up or slow down our circadian rhythms. </p>
<h2>Do not disturb</h2>
<p>An understanding of how circadian clocks work and the central role they play in our biology has led to advances in many areas, not least an appreciation that when circadian rhythms are disrupted our overall health and well-being can be severely affected. </p>
<p>Shift workers try to sleep during the day, but sleep is usually shorter and of poorer quality than when sleep occurs at night because, although desperately tired, the circadian system is instructing the body that it should be awake. They then work during the night at a time when the circadian system has prepared the body for sleep, and alertness and performance are low. In effect, they work when they are sleepy and sleep when they are not. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188585/original/file-20171003-31655-rfi7sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Working shifts has serious implications for your health.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/568203484?src=Ev4HJSl8NPatGoGgfgki-Q-1-1&size=medium_jpg">Dmitry Bunin/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Short-term circadian rhythm disruption can have a big negative impact on <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/">memory</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/">problem solving</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24639663">emotional responses</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/">attention</a>. And years of night-shift work has been shown to increase the risk of <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5210.long">heart disease</a>, <a href="http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/content/autoimmune/art2361.html">infection</a>, <a href="http://www.sjweh.fi/show_abstract.php?abstract_id=3666">cancer</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4370346/">type 2 diabetes</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4370346/">obesity</a>. So we ignore our circadian rhythms at our peril. </p>
<p>Circadian rhythm disruption is also a feature shared by some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Sufferers of mental illnesses such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22194182">schizophrenia</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28902457">bipolar disorder</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28902457">depression</a>; neurological conditions like <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28890168">Alzheimer’s</a>, <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5210.long">stroke</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25698167">multiple sclerosis</a>; developmental disorders such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28902457">autism</a>; and serious disorders of the eye (<a href="http://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2128937">including the development of cataracts</a>) all exhibit circadian-rhythm disruption. </p>
<p>The future of circadian rhythms research is to understand how this disruption comes about, and, based on this knowledge, develop new drugs and treatments that will help us regulate internal time across the health spectrum. We truly live in exciting times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Foster receives funding from BBSRC and Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>
Biological clocks set the pace for nearly all living things, and Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young – awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – helped us understand how.
Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85209
2017-10-05T08:54:06Z
2017-10-05T08:54:06Z
Trio behind method to visualise the molecules of life wins 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
<p>Three scientists have won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a technique that helps image biological molecules in unprecedented detail. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Dubochet">Jacques Dubochet</a>, from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, <a href="http://biology.columbia.edu/people/frank">Joachim Frank</a>, from Columbia University in the US, and <a href="http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/h-to-m/richard-henderson/">Richard Henderson</a>, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK, will share the prize sum of £831,000.</p>
<p>A predecessor of their method – which is known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryo-electron_microscopy">cryo-electron microscopy</a> – has been recognised by the Nobel committee before. The 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics was given in part to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/ruska-bio.html">Ernst Ruska</a> for inventing the electron microscope.</p>
<p>As a concept, the electron microscope is similar to a light microscope – a beam is shone through a series of lenses, then through the sample and more lenses, to form an image on a piece of film or camera sensor. Of course, in the electron microscope we are shining a beam of electrons rather than light through our sample.</p>
<p>Unlike light, electrons can’t travel through air – they would collide with the air molecules and get diverted away. This means the electron beam must be contained within a high vacuum system so there are no stray particles to interact with the beam. The lens system is formed of coils of copper rather than the glass lenses of a light microscope – like air, glass would scatter our beam of electrons, rather than focusing it. Instead, we can apply current through the coiled-copper lenses to create a magnet, and we can focus and shape our beam using this magnet instead.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188821/original/file-20171004-21045-wrkdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Henderson from the UK is one of this year’s chemistry winners.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MRC/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>However, the need for a high vacuum within the microscope affects what samples can be imaged. Samples need to be dry as liquids would instantly evaporate in the vacuum. Methods for preparing a biological sample like this are to dry them in a protective stain layer or embedding it in resin. However, such dehydration techniques don’t allow us to make the most of the microscope and see the finest details in our sample.</p>
<h2>A new era of biochemistry</h2>
<p>Cryo-electron microscopy eliminates the need for dehydration. Biological samples such as cells, viruses or proteins are simply frozen within the liquid they are in. As long as we keep the sample frozen in the microscope, the ice protects it from the harsh effects of the vacuum. However, we can’t form just any type of ice. It must be <a href="https://mogadalai.wordpress.com/2006/02/01/vitreous-ice-and-electron-microscopy/">vitreous ice</a>. </p>
<p>This ice doesn’t form crystals, like in a home freezer, where the water molecules rearrange into an ordered pattern. Instead, they are frozen fast enough that they stop moving as they were. It is as if we hit the pause button on liquid water. It was the discovery of how to create vitreous ice that earned Dubochet his share of the prize.</p>
<p>Since then, many laboratories around the world have adopted the technique of cryo-electron microscopy, aided by semi-automated machines for preparing samples within vitreous ice. The earliest work began with looking at viruses, but advances in microscopy and related technologies has seen this expand across a whole size range from tiny individual proteins (around a millionth of a centimetre), through to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-muscles-to-motors-2016-chemistry-nobel-goes-to-creators-of-the-worlds-tiniest-machines-66596">molecular machines</a>” consisting of proteins assembled together. “Motor proteins”, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myosin">myosin</a>, are examples of molecular machines – they are responsible for muscle contraction. It is also possible to image bacteria and sections of human cells.</p>
<p>By analysing these images with computers we can calculate how the particle would have looked in 3D in order to produce that image. It’s similar to looking at a shadow and working out how the object that made it looks. Devising methods to do this is part of what Frank was honoured for. </p>
<p>Once we have a 3D model for how a virus or molecular machine is structured, we use that to understand how it functions. Henderson was the first to show that cryo-electron microscopy could be used to obtain the most detailed of 3D models – at atomic resolution. Often, other laboratory methods can tell us “what” a molecular machine does, but with detailed 3D models, we can look inside these machines and understand “how” they do it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188842/original/file-20171004-21045-dtgumt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">3D image of the Giant Mimivirus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Structural Studies of the Giant Mimivirus. PLoS Biol 7(4): e1000092. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000092</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Having a basic understanding of how these machines work, we can start investigating diseases. What happens when such machines don’t work? Or in the case of bacterial or viral infection, what can we do to disrupt their molecular machines? A recent example of this is the Zika virus: scientists used cryo-electron microscopy to rapidly <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7603/full/nature17994.html">determine the structure of the Zika virus last year</a>. This has already led to <a href="http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)31051-6">follow-up research</a> looking at how to find drugs against the virus. Scientists have also managed to look at proteins involved in antibiotic resistance using this method.</p>
<p>The technique is already achieving results that were unthinkable a few years ago – both in terms of the small size of biological molecules that can now be imaged, and in the detail that can be seen in them. Future advances will continue to widen the possible samples that the microscope can be applied to: small, irregularly shaped objects, molecules only present in small amounts, looking at mixtures of particles or even molecules still present within cells.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85209/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Streetley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The technique is helping scientists to look for drugs against the Zika virus.
James Streetley, Post-doctoral researcher, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85246
2017-10-05T03:09:31Z
2017-10-05T03:09:31Z
Life frozen in time under an electron microscope gets a Nobel Prize
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188905/original/file-20171005-21985-15evuaj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The electron microscope’s resolution has radically improved in the last few years, from mostly showing shapeless blobs (left) in 2013 to now being able to visualise proteins at atomic resolution (right) in the present.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Martin Högbom/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scientists who developed the ability to see some of the building blocks of life under the electron microscope have been awarded the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/press.html">2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/dubochet-facts.html">Jacques Dubochet</a>, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/frank-facts.html">Joachim Frank</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/henderson-facts.html">Richard Henderson</a> pioneered cryo-electron microscopy, which the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said both simplifies and improves the imaging of biological molecules, known as biomolecules.</p>
<p>The 9 million Swedish kronor (A$1.4 million) prize is split equally between Dubochet, at Switzerland’s University of Lausanne, Frank, at New York’s Columbia University, and Henderson, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge in the UK.</p>
<p>The Academy said the method developed by the three researchers had moved biochemistry into a new era. The technology now allows researchers to generate a high resolution view of biomolecules while they exist in their natural state.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-award-with-real-gravity-how-gravitational-waves-attracted-a-nobel-prize-66491">An award with real gravity: how gravitational waves attracted a Nobel Prize</a>
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<h2>The biological lock and key</h2>
<p>The human body is amazingly complex and requires the cooperation of a range of biochemical mechanisms, such as digestion and energy production, in order to function well. These intricate processes involve the use of biomolecules, typically large entities made from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/amino-acid">amino acids</a> – the building blocks of life.</p>
<p>Importantly, just like the construction of any brick-built house, the configuration or placement of the blocks is critical to how well our construction stands up, or how well our biomolecules function. </p>
<p>Furthermore, biomolecules present their capacity to perform tasks by interacting with other entities, such enzymes, in the body. These are based on a specific configuration, much like how only one key can open a particular lock.</p>
<p>The significant challenge overcome by the award-winning team was to develop the capacity to observe the biomolecules in their natural state. Before the advent of cryo-electron microscopy, they were visualised with <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-x-ray-crystallography-22143">X-Ray crystallography</a>.</p>
<p>It was also thought that electron microscopes were only suitable for imaging dead matter, because the powerful electron beam destroys biological material. </p>
<p>The key breakthrough came with the development of a process to rapidly freeze a sample. This enabled the biomolecules to be captured in their bespoke configuration.</p>
<p>The team identified early on in their work that freezing a sample prior to visualisation may afford the improvement required to fully interrogate the biomolecules.</p>
<h2>Frozen in time</h2>
<p>Here is where the fun starts. While sounding inherently simple, rapidly freezing a sample is particularly challenging.</p>
<p>If the process removes the water from the sample then the biomolecule collapses, losing the natural configuration desired by the researchers. If the sample is frozen too slowly then ice crystals form, which also interferes with the biomolecule’s configuration.</p>
<p>The team developed a process known as <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/fig_ke_en_17_dubochetspreparationmethod.pdf">vitrification</a>. This freezes the sample at -190°C while it is placed on a wire mesh, an elegantly simple approach to solving a difficult problem.</p>
<p>Like most Nobel prizewinning scientific achievements, the development was incremental. Changes by the team over many years enabled the combination of the freezing process (developed in 1978) and the microscopy technology which was only fully realised in 2013. </p>
<p>This combination and advancement in technology enabled the high-resolution imaging of biomolecules.</p>
<h2>Unlocking a virus</h2>
<p>So what does all this mean? Well, understanding the configuration of the lock enables scientists to cut a particular key.</p>
<p>Viruses are large biomolecules. Once visualised, scientists can identify molecules or develop pharmaceutical keys that can fit into their structure in order to break them apart or disrupt their function.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188901/original/file-20171005-21959-1461wit.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Over the past few years, researchers have published atomic structures of numerous complicated protein complexes: (left, a) a protein complex that governs the circadian rhythm, (centre, b) a sensor of the type that reads pressure changes in the ear and allows us to hear, and (right, c) the Zika virus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/press.html">The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</a></span>
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<p>An example of the power of cryo-electron microscopy is seen through the rapid characterisation of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/zika-18991">Zika virus</a> soon after it was first identified as a major global health risk. </p>
<p>The identification of the configuration of the virus and the pocket of the biomolecule that joins to its host will form the basis for ongoing studies on how best to combat this virus.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/error-correcting-the-things-that-go-wrong-at-the-quantum-computing-scale-84846">Error correcting the things that go wrong at the quantum computing scale</a>
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<p>The technology has also had an impact at the dinner table. A US research team has investigated the <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/04/124956/first-look-wasabi-receptor-brings-insights-pain-drug-development">heat-sensing component of the tongue</a>, highlighting the wasabi sensor. This may offer the potential to better understand new pain-management approaches. </p>
<p>In Australia, a <a href="https://www.massive.org.au/news/234-massive-research-stories-australia-s-most-powerful-biological-microscope">consortium</a> is exploiting the power of this technology to probe diseases related to the immune system in order to develop better treatment protocols.</p>
<p>Cryo-electron microscopy will be an exciting area to watch in the near future, for locksmiths and science enthusiasts alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xavier Conlan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to scientists who developed a way to study biological molecules under an electron microscope.
Xavier Conlan, Senior Lecturer Forensic Chemistry, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85229
2017-10-05T00:27:19Z
2017-10-05T00:27:19Z
Chilled proteins and 3-D images: The cryo-electron microscopy technology that just won a Nobel Prize
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188879/original/file-20171004-31791-6zhlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cryo-electron microscopy resolution continues to improve.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nihgov/24030250059">Veronica Falconieri, Sriram Subramaniam, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people will never have heard of cryo-electron microscopy before the announcement that Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson had won the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/press.html">2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry</a> for their work developing this technology. So what is it, and why is it worthy of this honor?</p>
<p>Cryo-electron microscopy – or cryo-EM – is an imaging technology that allows scientists to obtain pictures of the biological “machines” that work inside our cells. Most amazingly, it can reconstruct individual snapshots into movie-like scenes that show how protein components of these biological machines move and interact with each other.</p>
<p>It’s like the difference between having a list of all of the individual parts of an engine versus being able to see the engine fully assembled and running. The parts list can tell you a lot, but there’s no replacement for seeing what you’re studying in action.</p>
<p>What’s revolutionary about cryo-EM is not only that it lets scientists actually see and understand how important biological machines work, but that it allows us to study a vast array of important proteins that can’t be seen using any other structural biology technique.</p>
<p>Advances in both imaging technology and computing have really <a href="https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2016/01/14/got-it-down-cold-cryo-electron-microscopy-named-method-of-the-year/">pushed cryo-EM forward</a> over the last decade or so. Researchers are now able to generate atomic, or near-atomic, resolution 3-D models of challenging molecules – things like receptors that are therapeutic drug targets, molecular motors that deliver cargo to different parts of the cell and emerging viruses that lead to human disease.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188869/original/file-20171004-13096-b4vg6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cryo-EM structure of the enzyme beta-galactosidase.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EMDB-2984</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Frozen world of cryo-EM</h2>
<p>To obtain an image using cryo-EM, researchers take proteins that have been biochemically purified from cells and instantaneously freeze the sample on a cryo-EM grid at -180 degrees Celsius. The goal of this process is to trap many copies of a single protein or a protein complex in a thin layer of vitrified ice.</p>
<p>This ice is transparent to the microscope’s electron beam and allows the proteins to retain their natural shape and organization. If the sample is frozen too slowly, then ice crystals form, ruining the structure of the molecules being studied and disrupting the electrons traveling through the sample.</p>
<p>A major advantage of this technique is that it saves time and work. Cryo-EM’s ability to look at proteins in a near-native state is in stark contrast with X-ray crystallography, the longstanding gold standard for obtaining high-resolution biomolecular images. The older technique requires the formation of ordered crystals, where the proteins must first self-organize together in repeating patterns – at best a tricky challenge, at worst an impossible one for certain molecules. With cryo-EM, there’s no need to coax biological molecules into ordered arrays.</p>
<p>Once the cryo-EM sample has been frozen, a focused beam of electrons reveals the shape of these very small, nanometer-sized proteins. (A nanometer is about one million times smaller than the tip of a needle.) Each image contains all the information required to determine the 3-D structure. But these raw images are extremely “noisy” and hard to see, so large numbers of images for each sample must be collected using the microscope.</p>
<p>Specialized computer analysis then combines hundreds of thousands of individual, 2-D snapshots from different angles into a composite that can be viewed in 3-D. Many 3-D structures determined by cryo-EM are now at a high enough resolution that researchers can visualize individual atoms in the structures.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188863/original/file-20171004-31791-1qpxueu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noisy raw images are on the right. Individual complexes are computationally boxed out to create galleries of particles, based on millions of images (in the middle). These individual particles are then aligned and averaged to generate 2-D images based on thousands of individual particles trapped in the vitrified ice in similar orientations (on the right).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melanie Ohi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>Software can also sort out proteins that are in different stages of a biological process – thus helping piece together how a biological machine moves, changes and functions. Then researchers can further test how the machine’s organization leads to specific functions in a living cell.</p>
<p>For example, several years ago researchers here at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute obtained the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13423">first 3-D snapshots of the “assembly line”</a> within microorganisms that naturally produces a broad class of compounds <a href="https://youtu.be/IUw3fvpinSs">known as polyketides</a>, which includes antibiotics and other drugs. This information then gives investigators a solid blueprint for figuring out how they might redesign the microbial assembly line to produce new drugs.</p>
<p>One of the challenges of working with cryo-EM is that it requires massive amounts of computational power and data storage. One cryo-EM movie of 30 to 60 frames requires up to 8 gigabytes of storage – it would take only a couple of these movies to fill up most smartphones. About a thousand of these movies are collected in a day, requiring somewhere between one and eight terabytes of storage (or about 8,000 smartphones’ worth). A full data set for one 3-D structure can require 4,000 movies.</p>
<p>These data sets often take hundreds of thousands of hours of computer processor time to piece together. Researchers rely on supercomputers that use many processors working in parallel. The most advanced cryo-electron microscopes and accompanying computing tools require significant investments on the parts of universities, which is why they’re still relatively rare. For example, buying just the microscope and specialized camera needed to collect these cryo-EM images costs well over US$5 million.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188876/original/file-20171004-30164-zcgbuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Resolution of the technology has radically improved in the last few years, from mostly showing shapeless blobs to now being able to visualize proteins at atomic resolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/press.html">© Martin Högbom/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Putting the technology to work</h2>
<p>While the technology and technique are interesting, the true power of the tool is its ability to help us answer important biological questions.</p>
<p>In the Cianfrocco lab, for example, we’re using cryo-EM to look at the dynamic process of how molecular “motors” move along microtubular “tracks” inside cells. We want to figure out the basics of how cells know what to move, when. While much work has gone into identifying the necessary building blocks for moving cargo around the cell, the molecular details remain unknown.</p>
<p>It’s these motors that move things around the cell that aren’t working correctly in Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Learning more about how they’re malfunctioning will be critical for developing new therapeutics for these neurodegenerative diseases. Viruses also hijack these these motor proteins during infection, which means understanding more about how they walk will help researchers design effective treatments against viruses such as HIV and rabies.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melanie Ohi with grad student Amanda Erwin outside the cryo-electron microscope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lesia Thompson Photography for the University of Michigan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>And in the Ohi lab, we’re generating detailed 3-D structures of the molecular machines bacteria use to spread disease. Biological pathogens have evolved numerous ways to infect their hosts, including toxins that alter cellular functions and complex secretion systems that inject DNA and proteins into host cells. Using 3-D snapshots of these machines, we’re hoping to find new ways to target the processes bacteria use to cause disease, such as the bacteria <em>Helicobacter pylori</em>’s ability to trigger chronic inflammation, which is a major risk factor for stomach cancer. </p>
<p>One of the larger questions for the field is how to make the specialized and expensive resources required for cryo-EM more broadly available to researchers across the country and around the world. To this end, the Cianfrocco lab is developing two separate cloud computing resources with the goal to streamline cryo-EM data processing to allow structural biologists to focus on the biology, not the hardware. By removing the computing bottlenecks, these tools have the potential to continue the growth of cryo-EM into a mainstream technique for scientists worldwide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Cianfrocco has consulted on cryo-EM for pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms and is also a science advisor to Single Particle LLC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Ohi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to three scientists who revolutionized biochemistry by inventing a technology that can image the molecules of life without destroying them.
Melanie Ohi, Research Associate Professor, U-M Life Sciences Institute and and Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, U-M Medical School, University of Michigan
Michael Cianfrocco, Research Assistant Professor at U-M Life Sciences Institute and Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry, U-M Medical School, University of Michigan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85161
2017-10-04T00:42:09Z
2017-10-04T00:42:09Z
How fair is it for just three people to receive the Nobel Prize in physics?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188682/original/file-20171003-18916-171bnxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alfred Nobel didn't foresee the current era of mega scientific collaboration.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/press/#/image-details/584fbf368409c20d00efa01f/552bd85dccc8e20c00e7f979?sh=false">© Nobel Media AB Pi Frisk</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Nobel Foundation statutes decree that “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/">in no case</a>” can a Nobel Prize be divided between more than three people. So it may not raise many eyebrows that the 2017 award in physics went to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html">just three scientists on the LIGO team</a> for their “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”</p>
<p>But <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/497557a">science is increasingly collaborative</a> across teams (including scientists and engineers), across nations and across disciplines. The majority of all scientific articles <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1136099">are co-authored</a>. Of these, over 25 percent are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131816">internationally co-authored</a>. LIGO – more than most projects – represents these trends. One of the group’s most important papers involves <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102">355 co-authors from at least 20 countries</a>.</p>
<p>So with cutting-edge science being carried out in large international collaborations, who actually winds up on the rostrum in Stockholm? As a student of science dynamics, I have tracked how and why scientists link up with one another, in what fields, and how it improves the outcomes. These allegiances have an impact on who receives an award like a Nobel Prize, since international collaborations are more highly cited than national or sole-authored work. </p>
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<span class="caption">A LIGO optics technician who is not a recipient of the Nobel Prize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20151214">Matt Heintze/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Shifting norms around collaboration and credit</h2>
<p>Scientific discoveries these days typically rely on advances in the underlying technology and equipment used in experimentation. To enable breakthroughs, LIGO, CERN, the Human Genome Project and others rely on new technologies, which in turn are built often by large international teams. And within science, it’s becoming standard to more broadly recognize contributions like these than in the past. </p>
<p>This is a shift in social behavior, since scientists have always had collaborators and helpers – they just didn’t grant them a place on the “author” list. Now, there is a greater tendency to list the technical people who make discoveries possible. At CERN, for example, new discoveries, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803">such as the Higgs Boson</a>, are claimed in articles that list engineers and computer scientists as well as the theorists who develop the experiments.</p>
<p>And the fact that the Nobel Prize is offered specifically for physics is out of step with the tendency for interdisciplinary contributions to be fundamental to breakthroughs. A quick glance at the list of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.042006">contributing institutions for LIGO</a> shows collaborators from a school of mathematics, space science, departments of informatics, as well as cosmologists, astrophysics observatories, supercomputing centers and many others.</p>
<p>While practitioners have expanded the way contributions are credited, awards like the Nobel Prizes haven’t caught up. The little bit of science history taught in school still focuses on individual contributors such as Marie Curie and Albert Einstein. Harder to explain or visualize are the cross-disciplinary collaborations that constitute most of science today.</p>
<h2>The rich get richer</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134164">study I conducted with the Nobel Library in Sweden</a>, we compared Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine to a matched group of scientists to examine productivity, impact, coauthorship and international collaboration patterns. The laureate’s co-author network reveals significant differences from the non-laureate network. Laureates are more likely to build bridges across a network by reaching out to a non-obvious collaborator, such as <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/">physicist Jack Kilby</a> working with a materials scientist to develop new materials for microprocessors. They were more likely to exploit “structural holes” – gaps between fields that offer enticing but unrealized possibilities. </p>
<p>This process builds their reputation within as well as across scientific fields. (For example, both physicists and materials scientists read Kilby’s paper.) In science, reputation is the coin of the realm. It’s gained through cooperation as well as attention to the outputs of science – <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2091085">the journal article</a>.</p>
<p>When publishing any scientific article, there is a basic conundrum – someone must receive the prime place on the list of authors. In some fields, authors covet the first place; in others, the last place. And the benefits of being the primary author go far beyond a single article. There’s a phenomenon called the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56">“Matthew Effect” in science</a>, referring to the observation in the Gospel of Matthew that the “rich get richer.” The noted author of an article is much more likely to receive attention into the future.</p>
<p>Creative networkers like Jack Kilby grow their network in several fields as a result of their work, enhancing citations and reputation.</p>
<p>Searchable databases such as Google Scholar accentuate the Matthew effect, since a search will prioritize the articles with lots of citations. It has long been noted that <a href="http://www.enid-europe.org/conference/abstract%20pdf/Klavans_Boyack_superstars.pdf">only a few “superstars” in science emerge over time</a> – but current practices have supercharged the process because of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.98.2.404">agglomerating effects of being listed as the primary author</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Nobel stage in Stockholm doesn’t have space for everyone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/press/#/image-details/585104ccffb1110d00062b3e/552bd85dccc8e20c00e7f979?sh=false">© Nobel Media AB Pi Frisk.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who stays behind</h2>
<p>The Matthew Effect is likely part of the reason that three white men came out “on top” in the case of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. The downside of needing a primary author on a collaborative paper means that collaborators, such as notable women who also worked on LIGO, sit in the shadows. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.1097">Women’s names are much more likely</a> to be listed second, third or farther down the list of authors on scientific papers. It can be difficult for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001003">women to claim to top spot</a>.</p>
<p>No doubt when the current Nobel Prize winners in physics accept their award, they will point to “others” who have been instrumental in helping. Yet, the essentially collaborative nature of the work – many paying nations, many collaborating disciplines, a multitude of people – begs the question: Can the award fairly be claimed by three (white, American, male) people? The Nobel Prize, developed to recognize 19th-century creativity, may no longer reflect the true contributions within 21st-century science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Wagner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Today’s scientific research is characterized by interdisciplinary, international collaboration. Awards like the Nobel Prizes haven’t caught up.
Caroline Wagner, Milton & Roslyn Wolf Chair in International Affairs, The Ohio State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66491
2017-10-03T11:33:06Z
2017-10-03T11:33:06Z
An award with real gravity: how gravitational waves attracted a Nobel Prize
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188490/original/file-20171003-14213-qgtfak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An illustration of the collision of two black holes, an event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20160211d">The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html">awarded overnight in Sweden</a> by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, began with a discussion 42 years ago between two scientists in a hotel room in Washington DC.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Ekip/index.html/">Kip Thorne</a>, a theoretical physicist from Caltech, and <a href="http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/weiss_rainer.html">Rainer (Rai) Weiss</a>, an experimentalist from MIT, debated what would have seemed to most physicists like a far-fetched, borderline crazy idea: the detection of ripples in the fabric of spacetime called <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/gravitational-waves-9473">gravitational waves</a>.</p>
<p>But the two young men were serious. Weiss had written a <a href="https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0038/P720002/001/P720002-00.pdf">detailed technical paper</a> outlining a proposal for an experiment that would go on become <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/">LIGO</a> (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gravitational-waves-arrive-in-europe-84635">Gravitational Waves arrive in Europe</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Thorne, meanwhile, had thought a lot about potential sources of gravitational waves and had developed a deep appreciation of just how much their detection would tell us about exotic astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars.</p>
<p>A great collaboration was forged that night. And it was soon strengthened by <a href="http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-mourns-passing-ligo-co-founder-ronald-w-drever-54336">Ronald Drever</a>, a brilliant experimental physicist who joined the faculty at Caltech. The three came from very different cultural backgrounds.</p>
<p>Thorne grew up in a Mormon family in the US state of Utah. Weiss was born in Berlin, Germany, and when he was a child, his half-Jewish family escaped the Nazis by first moving to Prague and then fleeing Czechoslovakia just before it was invaded. Drever hailed from Glasgow, in Scotland, and had a thick Scottish accent.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ronald Drever, a LIGO co-founder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">American Physical Society</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They were united by their passion to “hear” the universe with gravitational waves. </p>
<p>Gravitational waves are emitted from some of the universe’s most catastrophic events such as exploding stars and colliding black holes. Every source emits gravitational waves differently. For sources detectable by LIGO, these waves have the same frequencies as the sound waves we can hear.</p>
<p>By studying the precise “sound” of a gravitational wave, it is possible to reconstruct the event that created it. They offer a unique window on the universe, allowing us to probe black holes and other extreme objects.</p>
<p>Together, they developed the ideas behind LIGO, obtained the support of Caltech and MIT, and secured research funding from the US National Science Foundation. Most importantly, they inspired two generations of physicists around the world to devote their lives to the quest for gravitational waves. </p>
<h2>The chirp heard round the world</h2>
<p>It took many years of dedicated teamwork to realise the vision of LIGO. The laboratory took shape under the leadership of experimental physicist <a href="http://pma.caltech.edu/content/barry-c-barish">Barry Barish</a>, now an emeritus professor at Caltech.</p>
<p>He created the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, an international team now numbering more than 1,000 scientists working on all aspects of LIGO science and technology, from laser physics to data analysis algorithms to astrophysics.</p>
<p>Australia was an early international partner in the consortium, and Australian scientists made important contributions to LIGO instrumentation, theoretical modelling and data analysis.</p>
<p>The instrument was so complex that it had to be built in two stages. The first stage of LIGO operated through the 2000s, demonstrating the technology that would be needed to detect gravitational waves. Not until the second stage, Advanced LIGO, was the equipment sensitive enough to detect the gravitational waves themselves.</p>
<p>The newly refurbished Advanced LIGO was ready to go in late 2015. Then, on September 14 that year, days after Advanced LIGO was switched on, a burst of gravitational waves shook the mirrors used to monitor the curvature of spacetime by a distance of about one-thousandth of the size of a proton.</p>
<p>While this seems unimaginably small, LIGO is an instrument of unimaginable sensitivity. Even without the aid of a computer algorithm, scientists could see in the data the telltale signature of a merging pair of black holes, each 30 times more massive than the Sun.</p>
<p>They could also “hear” it: the gravitational-wave signal of LIGO’s black hole merger, converted into audio, makes a characteristic chirping sound.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="11" data-image="" data-title="The sound of two black holes colliding" data-size="166960" data-source="LIGO" data-source-url="https://soundcloud.com/newyorktimes/the-sound-of-two-black-holes-colliding" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/320/ligo-chirp-1080p.m4a" type="audio/mp4">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
The sound of two black holes colliding.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://soundcloud.com/newyorktimes/the-sound-of-two-black-holes-colliding">LIGO</a><span class="download"><span>163 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/320/ligo-chirp-1080p.m4a">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>When news of the discovery broke, science enthusiasts took to social media to celebrate with their <a href="https://twitter.com/BBC_WHYS/status/697841364956909568">own renditions</a>.</p>
<p>By the time of the first announcement, Ron Drever was in a nursing home back in Scotland, sick with dementia. Nonetheless he was cognisant of the LIGO discovery, and was able to enjoy Kip Thorne’s visit sharing memories of LIGO’s early days. <a href="http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-mourns-passing-ligo-co-founder-ronald-w-drever-54336">Ron Drever died</a> in March this year.</p>
<p>This year’s prize, to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/">Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne</a>, “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”, continues the Nobel tradition of honouring astronomical discoveries of extreme phenomena in which Einstein’s general relativity plays a major role. </p>
<p>One of us (Levin), was fortunate to carry out dissertation research under Kip Thorne’s supervision. As much as he must be savouring this great Nobel honour, we’re certain that the feeling pales in comparison to the moment he set eyes on LIGO’s detection data for the first time. </p>
<p>A century after Albert Einstein’s prediction, and after a lifetime of searching, there it was: the gravitational waves from two ill-fated black holes.</p>
<h2>A new era in astronomy</h2>
<p>The discovery is a milestone in 21st-century science. While the detection of gravitational waves confirmed Einstein’s theory, it also marked the beginning of a new way of gazing up at the heavens: gravitational-wave astronomy.</p>
<p>Since the first detection, the collaboration has published on detections from more black holes, and is yet to publish all of the exciting results from the <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20170825">second advanced LIGO observation run</a> that finished in late August.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/expect-the-unexpected-from-the-big-data-boom-in-radio-astronomy-84059">Expect the unexpected from the big-data boom in radio astronomy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/gravitational-waves-arrive-in-europe-84635">For the latest published discovery</a>, the two LIGO instruments were joined by another experiment in Italy called Virgo. This allowed for a far better understanding of the direction to the colliding black holes, forging the way for conventional telescopes to try to catch a glimpse of these violent events. </p>
<p>Australia continues to play an important role in gravitational-wave astronomy. The newly funded Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational-wave Discovery (<a href="http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2016/09/new-arc-centre-of-excellence-for-gravitational-wave-discovery-announced.php">OzGrav</a>) will make the most of LIGO discoveries while laying the groundwork for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors. One day, we might even have our own gravitational-wave lab Down Under.</p>
<p>With LIGO and other detectors, we can explore Einstein’s hidden universe. But for all the gravitational waves we anticipate, the most exciting prospect to us is that we might see something that no one has predicted. So watch this space.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Thrane receives funding from the ARC. He is affiliated with OzGrav.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lasky receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yuri Levin received funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>
The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to scientists who helped pioneer the discovery of gravitational waves. Australia is playing an important role in gravitational-wave astronomy.
Eric Thrane, Senior Lecturer in Physics & Astronomy, ARC Future Fellow, Node Leader, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), Monash University
Paul Lasky, Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow, Monash University
Yuri Levin, Professor at Columbia University, Group Leader at Flatiron Institute, and Adjunct Professor at Monash University, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66457
2017-10-03T10:12:00Z
2017-10-03T10:12:00Z
Scientists behind the discovery of gravitational waves win the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188580/original/file-20171003-30864-3m2a82.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This year's winners</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Illustration by N. Elmehed. NobelPrize.org</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Swedish Academy of Sciences <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html">has announced</a> that the 2017 Nobel prize in Physics goes to three scientists for their foundational work leading to the discovery of ripples in the fabric of space and time known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-gravitational-waves-and-why-their-discovery-is-such-a-big-deal-53239">gravitational waves</a>. </p>
<p>Half of the £825,000 prize sum will go to <a href="http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/weiss_rainer.html">Rainer Weiss</a> of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the other half will be be shared by <a href="https://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Ekip/index.html/">Kip Thorne</a> of Caltech and <a href="https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/%7EBCBAct/">Barry C Barish</a>, also at Caltech. The scientists, all from the LIGO/VIRGO collaboration, conceived and played major roles in realising the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which first detected the waves in September 2015. I’m pleased to see this achievement recognised on behalf of the thousands of scientists who work on LIGO, including <a href="https://www.shef.ac.uk/physics/research/pppa/gwrg">the University of Sheffield group</a>. I also know the recipients personally, in particular Weiss, who is a friend as well as a colleague.</p>
<p>Gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein in 1916, travel across our universe at the speed of light – stretching space in one direction and shrinking it in the direction that is at right angles. LIGO <a href="https://theconversation.com/gravitational-waves-discovered-how-did-the-experiment-at-ligo-actually-work-54510">measures these fluctuations</a> by monitoring two light beams travelling between pairs of mirrors down pipes running in different directions. </p>
<p>The source of the first detected signals was a pair of black holes, each being about 30 times the mass of the sun. These bodies once collided and converted in to one large spinning black hole – emitting three sun masses worth of pure energy in about a tenth of a second. For that short time, the source outshines the rest of the energy sources in the observable universe – combined! It’s quite something to try and imagine. Despite being such a violent event, it is so far away that the effects on our local fabric of space and time here on Earth are very subtle – which is why a sophisticated detector like LIGO was needed to make the first detection.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140280/original/image-20161004-20228-1v5siz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aerial view of the facility.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/23925401@N06/24342686634">Kanijoman/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Several more binary black hole signals have been detected by the LIGO detectors since, and one announced just days ago was detected by the Virgo detector in Italy as well. Now that we know these signals exist and can be detected, a new field of gravitational wave astronomy will grow up, enabling us to probe the dark and puzzling universe – phenomena in the cosmos that don’t emit much light but have a lot of mass. It’s an exciting time.</p>
<h2>Unconventional, sharp and fun</h2>
<p>Those of us at LIGO who know Weiss will agree he is an unconventional fellow in the best sense of that description who has inspired a generation of experimental physicists, myself included. </p>
<p>The first time I met Weiss properly was when he interviewed me for my first postdoc, at MIT. I was in my only smart suit, he walked in wearing a woolly hat, baggy sweater and jeans. I had to reassure him that this was the last time he’d see me dressed up that way. He looked relieved. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188562/original/file-20171003-12163-gttxkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rainer Weiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Hauser/wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Weiss has a refreshingly informal approach to physics, which is particularly helpful in encouraging others in their work, especially the young. But this informality and enthusiasm only just conceals his razor-sharp instinct for physics, particularly for sources of background noise and for electronics. </p>
<p>And, because he is what I would call “scientifically sociable”, Weiss naturally tends to learn things quickly by talking to people. When I was working at the LIGO lab at Livingston, I did an early systematic comparison of seismic noise between the two LIGO sites in a key frequency range. The tough thing back then was just gathering enough data from the seismometers to be able to make a meaningful comparison between the noise levels. </p>
<p>I’d just made a graph of the results, and I was in the control room staring at it when Weiss walked in. He walked out a few minutes later with a copy of that plot, and the next thing I knew, he was using it in talks to the National Science Foundation when arguing for an upgrade to LIGO Livingston’s seismic isolation system. That’s Weiss in a nutshell. He’s quick on the uptake, good at spotting the key points and problems, and authoritative enough to get others – physicists, engineers and funders on his side. </p>
<p>We also share a love of music. Once when I was invited to dinner at his house, I was asked to bring my cello and had to sight-read several cello sonata movements (rather shakily) with Weiss at the piano. He also showed up to a particularly memorable “hoodoo party night” at a club called Tabby’s blues box in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I was playing in a band. He brought along Gaby Gonzalez, who until recently was chairperson of the LIGO scientific collaboration and Peter Saulson, a professor of physics and thermal noise pioneer from Syracuse. A more unlikely crowd on the dance floor at Tabby’s has probably not been seen before or since. They had a great time.</p>
<p>The future of gravitational wave physics is now intimately tied up with the future of astronomy. The field is set to expand rapidly, with more sensitive instruments needed to sense smaller signals and larger scale instruments needed to probe lower frequencies where many of the astronomical signals lie. We also need observers of the heavens, both to interpret the signals we measure, and to make the link between gravitational waves and other sources of information, such as gamma ray and neutrino bursts, and visible transients. We are hoping to continue to play an important role in the research here at Sheffield.</p>
<p>But, for now, it’s time to enjoy the moment of a very well deserved Nobel prize for a great group of physicists. They have played a long game; the project started in 1972, and I didn’t even join until 1997. It’s a lesson to us all to keep both eyes on the science, to be prepared for a protracted struggle with Mother Nature, but ready in the end to step back and admire the edifice we have constructed, and go on to apply the tools we have created to achieving an ever expanding knowledge of our universe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ed Daw works for the University of Sheffield. He receives funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). </span></em></p>
Razor-sharp, unconventional and fun on the dance floor. A colleague paints a colourful portrait of one of this year’s Nobel Laureates in physics.
Ed Daw, Reader in Physics, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85061
2017-10-03T02:29:40Z
2017-10-03T02:29:40Z
Nobel winners identified molecular ‘cogs’ in the biological clocks that control our circadian rhythms
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188462/original/file-20171003-12163-1cgw877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=414%2C0%2C3835%2C2459&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The key fourth awardee here is ... the little fly,' Hall said.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonstateuniversity/8725460037">Lynn Ketchum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Circadian rhythms control when we’re at our peak performance physically and mentally each day, keeping our lives ticking in time with Earth’s day/night cycle. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2017/press.html">awarded to three American scientists</a>, Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University and Michael Young of Rockefeller University, for shedding light on how time is measured each day in biological systems, including our own bodies.</p>
<p>From Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos Islands to modern city dwellers, organisms adapt to their environment. Regular 24-hour cycles of day and night on Earth led to the evolution of biological clocks that reside within our cells. These clocks help us unconsciously pick the best time to rest, search for food, or anticipate danger or predation.</p>
<p>The field of modern circadian biology got its start in the 1970s, when geneticist Seymour Benzer and his student Ron Konopka undertook a revolutionary study to track down the genes that encode biological timing in fruit flies. With that gene in their sights, the labs of Hall, Rosbash and Young ushered in the molecular era of circadian biology as they untangled the molecular mechanisms of biological timekeeping.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188468/original/file-20171003-12146-1i5swxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"><em>Drosophila</em> larvae were the lab subject for the early circadian clock research.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/larvae-drosophila-flies-test-tube-nutrient-93720691">IrinaK/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<h2>Why flies?</h2>
<p>To get started, Benzer and Konopka performed a simple experiment: tracking when the fruit fly <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em> would emerge from its pupal case. This developmental process, called eclosion, served as a powerful tool to study the complicated biological process of circadian rhythms. Because <em>Drosophila</em> pupae emerge only at a specific time of the day, Konopka could measure the timing between rounds of eclosion for different strains of flies and identify those that had a bad clock. By isolating fly strains with timing problems, they hoped to be able to zero in on the relevant genes that controlled this internal clock.</p>
<p>In the end, Konopka found three mutant strains: one that had a short, 19-hour day; one with a long, 28-hour day; and one mutant that appeared to have no clock at all. Using genetic tools, he was able to show that each of the responsible mutations lay remarkably close on the same chromosome, suggesting that they were all located within a single gene, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/68/9/2112.short">which Benzer and Konopka named <em>period</em></a> for its apparent control over clock timing.</p>
<p>Then the race was on, and in 1984, two teams finally identified this so-called clock gene <em>period</em> in flies: the labs of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-8674(84)90015-1">Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash</a> working in close collaboration at Brandeis, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/312752a0">and Michael Young’s</a> lab at Rockefeller.</p>
<p>With the gene in hand, these groups then aimed to figure out how <em>period</em> fit into a biological clock. The first clue came when Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash discovered that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0896-6273(88)90198-5">the protein encoded by this gene (called PER)</a> increased during the night and decreased during the day, suggesting that levels of the protein might somehow communicate time information to the rest of the cell. </p>
<h2>Biological loops and timers</h2>
<p>If you just imagine how a biological clock might best keep track of time over a day, you might jump to a mental picture of an hourglass timer. Sand gradually disappears over time; when all the sand is gone, it could signal the process to begin again. Was PER the substance that kept biological time by gradually changing throughout the day?</p>
<p>One key insight came when Hall and Rosbash reasoned that this PER protein might actually block the activity of the <em>period</em> gene, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/343536a0">turning itself off each day</a>. As levels of PER build up over the course of the night, less and less new PER protein would be made. Eventually the protein levels drop and the process starts over again. This is called a negative feedback loop. It’s the same type of biological balancing act that keeps everything from your blood sugar levels to your circadian rhythms in line throughout your body. </p>
<p>This kind of negative feedback system is similar to how a thermostat controls the temperature of a room. If the temperature drops below the set point, the thermostat turns on the heater. When the room gets too toasty, the thermostat turns off the furnace. Here, negative feedback – a buildup of heat – works to control the heater and maintain a constant temperature.</p>
<p>Now imagine having to repeat this process over and over each day with nearly exact timing. Biological clocks use negative feedback from clock proteins like <em>period</em> to turn themselves on and off again each 24 hours. Additional studies in the Young lab identified other key genes – dubbed <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.8128247">Timeless</a></em> and <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81224-6">Double-Time</a></em> – that fit into this puzzle by controlling how PER travels around the cell to turn itself off each day. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188467/original/file-20171003-12115-1gmh23w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Piece by piece, starting to understand the biological mechanisms of our living clockworks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/11271766325">William Warby</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Fitting the cogs together into molecular clocks</h2>
<p>Work over the last two decades has rounded out a much deeper understanding of circadian rhythms to show how most organisms have clocks based on feedback loops similar to <em>Drosophila</em>. Rosbash’s lab identified part of the PER protein <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/364259a0">known as the PAS domains</a> that we now find in many clock proteins from fungi and plants to humans. PAS domains help clock proteins like PER <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7855598">pair up with their partners</a> to control the negative feedback loop.</p>
<p>By <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000094">comparing differences in the structures</a> of PER PAS domains of <em>Drosophila</em> and mice, scientists are now beginning to learn how the protein “cogs” of the molecular clock fit together to tell time. Understanding circadian rhythms at atomic resolution like this allows us to explain how newly identified mutations in PER <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517549113">lead to changes in clock timing</a> and open the door to therapeutics that could harness the power of circadian rhythms to improve human health.</p>
<h2>Living with your clock and its natural rhythms</h2>
<p>We now have a much greater appreciation for the central role that circadian rhythms play in coordinating our lives with Earth’s day, controlling everything <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.011">from your metabolism to the timing of sleep</a>. Young’s lab recently identified a prevalent mutation in a human clock gene, <em>cryptochrome 1</em>, that lengthens the cellular clock and makes it difficult to get to bed before midnight. This <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2017.03.027">inherited “night owl” gene</a> is estimated to be pretty common, found in nearly 1 out of 75 of us. </p>
<p>Understanding the powerful regulation of biology by circadian rhythms is beginning to lead to far-reaching changes in policy. For example, rather than arbitrarily forcing our sleep schedules into routines that require early morning wake times, some researchers are showing that adjusting our schedules to fit our natural rhythms may pay off at work and school. This is particularly true for adolescents, who have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2007.07.005">a natural “night owl” tendancy</a> – <a href="https://theconversation.com/sleepy-teenage-brains-need-school-to-start-later-in-the-morning-82484">delaying school start times</a> by even just one hour can significantly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12056">improve academic performance</a>.</p>
<p>The science is now far enough along in our understanding of circadian clocks that researchers are working to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38479">optimize work and sleep schedules</a> with our biology in mind. And all these policy innovations are built on the foundation of the Nobel Prize-winning research with those tiny fruit flies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carrie L. Partch receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>
Americans Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young share the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work that explained how our cells keep track of time.
Carrie L. Partch, Associate Professor of Physical & Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.