tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/nobel-prize-2018-60370/articles
Nobel Prize 2018 – The Conversation
2019-10-30T12:57:05Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125345
2019-10-30T12:57:05Z
2019-10-30T12:57:05Z
Super-soldier T-cells fight cancer better after a transformational DNA delivery
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298005/original/file-20191021-56194-145vhts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Delivering DNA to immune cells is the trickiest part of developing new gene-based therapies.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/dna-delivery-logo-icon-design-1020055285?src=tm7y2e5WjiSFAu5jUhfo-A-1-26">SAK Design/SHutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I enjoy online shopping. However, I often find myself fussing about the delivery options during checkout. This is because not all delivery services are equally efficient and stress-free. </p>
<p>This personal experience has also inspired my research. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=22Jx6scAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">postdoctoral scholar</a> at <a href="https://www.meloshgroup.com/">Stanford University</a>, I have engineered tiny nano-materials – objects about 10,000 times smaller than a grain of rice – to better deliver DNA into white blood cells called T-cells that defend us against cancer. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/adtp.201900133">My method</a> – which I think of as the equivalent of FedEx and UPS – delivers DNA efficiently to T-cells that then transforms them into super-soldiers for tracking and attacking cancer cells. </p>
<h2>The promise of immuno-medicine</h2>
<p>Despite decades of research, cancer remains a challenging disease to treat because cancer cells mutate rapidly, becoming resistant to treatments such as chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation. The World Health Organization estimates that in 2018, <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer">close to 10 million individuals died of cancer</a>. The estimated <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer">economic cost</a> due to treatments and lost productivity when patients couldn’t work during treatment was a whopping US$1.2 trillion, and this is expected to increase with an aging population.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297999/original/file-20191021-56211-skkuvh.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"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Tay</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297998/original/file-20191021-56207-19z5679.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"></a>
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<span class="caption">These are figurines from a toy kit called ‘Rainbow Heroes.’ I created the kit with the Stanford Design School to educate children with cancer aged 5-10 about cancer immunotherapy. The black figurines represent the ‘enemy’ cancer cells while the colorful figurines are the ‘hero’ immune cells.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Tay</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>In the 1990s James Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who won the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/summary/">2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology</a> for cancer immunotherapy, discovered that cancer cells can inhibit T-cells and prevent them from detecting tumor cells. They pioneered a strategy using proteins called antibodies to bind to cancer cells. This prevents the cancer cells from interfering with T-cells and suppressing them.</p>
<p>The second type of cancer immunotherapy, which I study, involves genetically engineering T-cells with tailored DNA. The DNA I insert into T-cells encodes proteins that function like weapons that kill cancer cells faster before they get a chance to develop new mutations.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to deliver DNA into cells, and the existing methods are inadequate and may compromise the cancer-fighting functions of T-cells. Some T-cells may become hyperactive after DNA delivery and attack the patients’ own organs.</p>
<h2>Improving DNA delivery</h2>
<p>There are two predominant ways to deliver DNA into T-cells. The first uses viruses to deliver DNA. The second uses bulk electroporation, a technique that uses electricity to punch holes in the cells allowing the DNA to enter. However, both are inefficient and have several disadvantages. </p>
<p>Viruses insert their own viral DNA into host cells alongside the therapeutic DNA during delivery. This is dangerous, as the long-term consequence of having viral genes in our body is unknown. Viruses can also trigger <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-7258(98)00020-5">toxic immune responses</a> such as persistent fever and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/the-biotech-death-of-jesse-gelsinger.html">death</a>. Another disadvantage is that viruses can carry only small packages of DNA, making it difficult to cram the latest gene editing tools inside them. </p>
<p>These shortcomings paved the way for electroporation. This method works by subjecting cells to strong electric fields that create holes in cells’ membrane and allow DNA to pass through. However, this technique is akin to a courier blasting holes in a person’s home to deliver packages. I and others have shown that this approach <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/adtp.201900133">harms the T-cells</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809671115">dampens their cancer-fighting ability</a>. </p>
<h2>The power of nano-engineering</h2>
<p>To bridge this technological gap, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/adtp.201900133">I have developed a new technique</a> named magnetic nano-electro-injection, or MagNEI, that can deliver DNA into T-cells up to four times more efficiently than virus and bulk electroporation. This is necessary to produce high numbers of genetically engineered T-cell soldiers – one billion or so – needed to fight cancer. </p>
<p>This is how MagNEI works. I first decorate the T-cells with FDA-approved magnetic particles to activate them and make them more receptive to DNA delivery. Then I use magnets to secure these cells onto hollow nano-tubes. These tubes are 10,000 times smaller in diameter than a grain of rice. Next, electric fields are applied through the nano-tubes to create small pores, or tunnels, into the cell membrane for DNA to enter cells. Magnetic forces then direct DNA into the nucleus of the cell. This is a much gentler procedure than electroporation.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298974/original/file-20191028-113987-kmkci7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=343&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">Left: T-cell decorated with magnetic particles that activate it, preparing it for DNA delivery. Right: Scanning electron microscopic image of hollow nano-tubes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Tay</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>New metrics to assess delivery techniques</h2>
<p>Besides looking at DNA delivery efficiency – the percentage of cells that are successfully transformed with genetically engineered DNA – it is also important to consider the other consequences of various delivery methods. For example, I have found that the ability of engineered T-cell soldiers to migrate and hunt down cancer cells can be weaker after DNA delivery. </p>
<p>In my opinion, the cancer immunotherapy community needs to expand beyond simple assessments such as efficiency and cell survival to evaluate the utility of new DNA delivery techniques. </p>
<p>Therefore, in a recent review, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.9b00272">I proposed a framework with new criteria</a> for evaluating which DNA delivery methods are most effective. One way to assess the impact of DNA delivery is to measure how the activity of specific genes are altered by the delivery of foreign DNA. </p>
<p>For instance, I found that bulk electroporation causes significant changes in the activity of genes linked to metabolism. That may explain why cells treated with this method grow slowly. This reduction in cell growth can increase manufacturing costs of these engineered T-cells and lengthen the treatment time for patients. </p>
<p>Magnet-based nano-scale methods such as mine offer advantages over virus and bulk electroporation for DNA delivery, but thus far, I have tested them only in animal studies and in experiments outside of human bodies. In the future, I hope to use nano-materials for delivering DNA to create cell-based therapies.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Tay 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>
Researchers are trying to boost the power of our immune system by genetically altering our white blood cells and transforming them into super-soldiers to fight cancer.
Andy Tay, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125096
2019-10-10T23:32:58Z
2019-10-10T23:32:58Z
Why don’t more women win science Nobels?
<p>All of the 2019 Nobel Prizes in science were awarded to men. </p>
<p>That’s a return to business as usual, after <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/arnold/facts/">biochemical engineer Frances Arnold</a> won in 2018, for chemistry, and Donna Strickland received the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/strickland/facts/">2018 Nobel Prize in physics</a>. </p>
<p>Strickland was only the third female physicist to get a Nobel, following <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/facts/">Marie Curie in 1903</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/facts/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer 60 years later</a>. When asked how that felt, she noted that at first it was surprising to realize so few women had won the award: “But, I mean, I do live in a world of mostly men, so seeing mostly men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653779921/donna-strickland-becomes-first-woman-in-more-than-50-years-to-win-physics-nobel-">doesn’t really ever surprise me either</a>.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-10-09/only-20-nobels-sciences-have-gone-women-why">rarity of female Nobel laureates</a> raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science. Female researchers have come a long way over the past century. But there’s overwhelming evidence that women remain underrepresented in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.</p>
<p>Studies have shown those who persist in these careers face explicit and implicit barriers to advancement. Bias is most intense in fields that are predominantly male, where women lack a critical mass of representation and are often viewed as tokens or outsiders.</p>
<p>When women achieve at the highest levels of sports, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00402.x">politics</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1002790/">medicine</a> and science, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2011.607313">serve as role models</a> for everyone – especially for girls and other women. </p>
<p>As things are getting better in terms of equal representation, what still holds women back in the lab, in leadership and as award winners?</p>
<h2>Good news at the start of the pipeline</h2>
<p>Traditional stereotypes hold that women “don’t like math” and “aren’t good at science.” Both <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math">men and women report these viewpoints</a>, but researchers have <a href="https://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/share.aspx">empirically disputed them</a>. Studies show that girls and women avoid STEM education not because of cognitive inability, but because of early exposure and experience with STEM, educational policy, cultural context, stereotypes and a lack of exposure to role models. </p>
<p>For the past several decades, efforts to improve the representation of women in STEM fields have focused on countering these stereotypes with <a href="http://www.apsbridgeprogram.org/igen/">educational reforms</a> and <a href="https://girlswhocode.com/">individual</a> <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383">programs</a> that can increase the number of girls entering and staying in what’s been called the STEM pipeline – the path from K-12 to college to postgraduate training.</p>
<p><iframe id="qE27X" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qE27X/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These approaches are working. Women are increasingly likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2012002908">express an interest in STEM careers and pursue STEM majors</a> in college. Women now make up half or more of workers in psychology and social sciences and are increasingly represented in the scientific workforce, though computer and mathematical sciences are an exception. </p>
<p>According to the American Institute of Physics, women earn about 20% of bachelor’s degrees and 18% of Ph.D.s in physics, <a href="https://www.aip.org/taxonomy/term/155">an increase from 1975</a> when women earned 10% of bachelor’s degrees and 5% of Ph.D.s in physics.</p>
<p>More women are graduating with STEM Ph.D.s and earning faculty positions. But they encounter glass cliffs and ceilings as they advance through their academic careers.</p>
<h2>What’s not working for women</h2>
<p>Women face a number of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">structural and institutional barriers</a> in academic STEM careers.</p>
<p>In addition to issues related to the gender pay gap, the structure of academic science often makes it difficult for women to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135943974">get ahead in the workplace</a> and to balance work and life commitments. Bench science can require years of dedicated time in a laboratory. The strictures of the tenure-track process can make maintaining work-life balance, responding to family obligations and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-todays-long-stem-postdoc-positions-are-effectively-anti-mother-51550">having children</a> or taking family leave difficult, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711417730">if not impossible</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, working in male-dominated workplaces can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">leave women feeling isolated</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2777808">perceived as tokens</a> and susceptible to <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment-of-women-climate-culture-and-consequences-in-academic">harassment</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010344929577">Women often are excluded</a> from networking opportunities and social events, left to feel they’re outside the culture of the lab, the academic department and the field.</p>
<p>When women lack a critical mass in a workplace – making up about 15% or more of workers – they are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2884712">less empowered to advocate for themselves</a> and more likely to be perceived as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb08353.x">a minority group and an exception</a>. When in this minority position, women are more likely to be pressured to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2">take on extra service</a> as tokens on committees or <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Ghost-Advising/242729">mentors to female graduate students</a>.</p>
<p>With fewer female colleagues, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735900">women are less likely</a> to build relationships with female collaborators and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0256-y">support and advice networks</a>. This isolation can be exacerbated when women are unable to participate in work events or <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/02/07/conferences-should-be-more-family-friendly-women-scholars-children-opinion">attend conferences because of family or child care</a> responsibilities and an inability to use research funds to reimburse child care.</p>
<p>Universities, <a href="https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2002/10000/Increasing_Women_s_Leadership_in_Academic.23.aspx">professional associations</a> and federal funders have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20225">worked to address a variety</a> of these structural barriers. Efforts include creating family-friendly policies, increasing transparency in salary reporting, enforcing Title IX protections, providing mentoring and support programs for women scientists, protecting research time for women scientists and targeting women for hiring, research support and advancement. These programs have mixed results. </p>
<p>For example, research indicates that family-friendly policies such as leave and onsite child care <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu006">can exacerbate gender inequity</a>, resulting in increased research productivity for men and increased teaching and service obligations for women.</p>
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<span class="caption">People haven’t really updated their mental images of what a scientist looks like since Wilhelm Roentgen won the first physics Nobel in 1901.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sftaf5z8">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Implicit biases about who does science</h2>
<p>All of us – the general public, the media, university employees, students and professors – have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-people-think-man-when-they-think-scientist-how-can-we-kill-the-stereotype-42393">ideas of what a scientist</a> and a Nobel Prize winner looks like. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13039">That image</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2002.tb18217.x">predominantly male, white and older</a> – which makes sense given 97% of the science Nobel Prize winners have been men.</p>
<p>This is an example of an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-implicit-bias-peanut-butter-jelly-and-racism/">implicit bias</a>: one of the unconscious, involuntary, natural, unavoidable assumptions that all of us – men and women – form about the world. People make decisions <a href="https://theconversation.com/measuring-the-implicit-biases-we-may-not-even-be-aware-we-have-74912">based on subconscious assumptions, preferences and stereotypes</a> – sometimes even when they are counter to their explicitly held beliefs.</p>
<p>Research shows that an implicit bias against women <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-a-scientist-looks-like/">as experts and academic scientists</a> is pervasive. It manifests itself by valuing, acknowledging and rewarding men’s scholarship over women’s scholarship. </p>
<p>Implicit bias can work against women’s hiring, advancement and recognition of their work. For instance, women seeking academic jobs are more likely to be viewed and judged based on <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/nZ24K7b2">personal information and physical appearance</a>. Letters of recommendation for women are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9541-1">more likely to raise doubts</a> and use language that results in negative career outcomes.</p>
<p>Implicit bias can affect women’s ability to publish research findings and gain recognition for that work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117738903">Men cite their own papers 56% more</a> than women do. Known as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">Matilda Effect</a>,” there is a gender gap in recognition, award-winning and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/16/new-research-shows-extent-gender-gap-citations">citations</a>. </p>
<p>Women’s research is less likely to be cited by others, and their <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R7AQT1">ideas are more likely to be attributed to men</a>. Women’s solo-authored research takes <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/20/study-finds-women-economics-write-papers-are-more-readable-face-longer-publication">twice as long</a> to move through the review process. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06678-6">Women are underrepresented</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12950">journal editorships</a>, as senior scholars and lead authors and as peer reviewers. This marginalization in research gatekeeping positions works against the promotion of women’s research.</p>
<p>When a woman becomes a world-class scientist, implicit bias works <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00739-17">against the likelihood</a> that she will be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/women-are-invited-to-give-fewer-talks-than-men-at-top-us-universities/548657/">invited as a keynote or guest speaker</a> to share her research findings, thus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12198">lowering her visibility in the field</a> and the likelihood that she will be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">nominated for awards</a>. This gender imbalance is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517000580">notable in how infrequently</a> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/2017/11/17/we-need-more-womens-voices-in-the-news.html">women experts</a> are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/lack-female-sources-ny-times-front-page-stories-highlights-need-change">quoted in news stories</a> on most topics.</p>
<p>Women scientists are afforded less of the respect and recognition that should come with their accomplishments. Research shows that when people talk about male scientists and experts, they’re more likely to use their surnames and more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805284115">refer to women by their first names</a>. </p>
<p>Why does this matter? Because experiments show that individuals referred to by their surnames are more likely to be viewed as famous and eminent. In fact, one study found that calling scientists by their last names led people to consider them 14% more deserving of a National Science Foundation career award.</p>
<p>Seeing mostly men has been the history of science. Addressing structural and implicit bias in STEM will hopefully prevent another half-century wait before the next woman is acknowledged with a Nobel Prize for her contribution to physics. I look forward to the day when a woman receiving the most prestigious award in science is newsworthy only for her science and not her gender.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-women-dont-win-science-nobels-104370">an article originally published</a> on Oct. 5, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary K. Feeney receives research funding from the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, ASU.</span></em></p>
Progress has been made toward gender parity in science fields. But explicit and implicit barriers still hold women back from advancing in the same numbers as men to the upper reaches of STEM academia.
Mary K. Feeney, Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs and Associate Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Studies, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109554
2019-01-13T14:13:44Z
2019-01-13T14:13:44Z
Reflections from a Nobel winner: Scientists need time to make discoveries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253104/original/file-20190109-32154-1q2pb8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Physics laureate Donna Strickland receives the prize from King Carl Gustaf of Sweden during the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10, 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pontus Lundahl/Pool Photo via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the announcement that I won the Nobel Prize in physics for <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6318/7a2d68b6d94887cec2ddcbe4fc0b88bda77b.pdf">chirped pulse amplification</a>, or CPA, there has been a lot of attention on its practical applications. </p>
<p>It is understandable that people want to know how it affects them. But as a scientist, I would hope society would be equally interested in fundamental science. After all, you can’t have the applications without the curiosity-driven research behind it. Learning more about science — science for science’s sake — is worth supporting. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.polytechnique.edu/en/content/gerard-mourou-2018-nobel-prize-winner-physics">Gérard Mourou,</a> my co-recipient of the Nobel Prize, and I developed CPA in the mid-1980s. It all started when he wondered if we could increase laser intensity by orders of magnitude — or by factors of a thousand. He was my doctoral supervisor at the University of Rochester back then. Mourou suggested stretching an ultrashort pulse of light of low energy, amplifying it and then compressing it. As the graduate student, I had to handle the details.</p>
<h2>A goal to revolutionize laser physics</h2>
<p>The goal was to revolutionize the field of high-intensity laser physics, a fundamental area of science. We wanted the laser to show us how high-intensity light changes matter, and how matter affects light in this interaction. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253107/original/file-20190109-32121-19syto8.jpg?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">Noble Prize winner Donna Strickland in her lab at the University of Waterloo. She was awarded the prize for her groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics which has a variety of applications, including corrective laser eye surgery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It took me a year to build the laser. We proved that we could increase laser intensity by orders of magnitude. In fact, CPA led to the most intense laser pulses ever recorded. Our findings changed the world’s understanding of how atoms interact with high-intensity light. </p>
<p>It was about a decade before practical uses common today eventually came into view. </p>
<h2>Many practical applications</h2>
<p>Because the high-intensity pulses are short, the laser only damages the area where it’s applied. The result is precise, clean cuts that are ideal for transparent materials. A surgeon can use CPA to slice a patient’s cornea during laser eye surgery. It cleanly cuts the glass parts in our cell phones. </p>
<p>Scientists are taking what we know about high-intensity lasers and are working on a way to use the most intense CPA lasers to accelerate protons.</p>
<p>Hopefully, one day these accelerated particles will help surgeons remove brain tumors that they can’t today. In the future, CPA lasers might remove space junk by pushing it out of our orbit and to the Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up and not collide with active satellites. </p>
<p>In many cases, the practical applications lag several years or even decades behind the original findings.</p>
<p><a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/a-century-ago-einstein-sparked-the-notion-of-the-laser/">Albert Einstein</a> created the equations for the laser in 1917, but wasn’t until 1960 that <a href="https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/maiman.cfm">Theodore Maiman</a> first demonstrated the laser. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1944/rabi/biographical/">Isidor Rabi</a> first measured nuclear magnetic resonance in 1938. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for his research, which led to the invention of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. The <a href="https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200607/history.cfm">first MRI exam on a human patient</a> took place in 1977. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sI_e7c085LM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Prof. Donna Strickland delivers the Nobel Lecture in Physics 2018.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Certainly, applications deserve a lot of attention. Before you can get to them though, researchers first have to understand the basic questions behind them.</p>
<p>The term fundamental science may give some the false impression that it doesn’t really affect their lives because it seems far removed from anything relatable to them. What’s more, the term <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/basic">basic</a> has the non-scientific definition of simple that undermines its importance in the context of basic science. </p>
<p>We must give scientists the opportunity through funding and time to pursue curiosity-based, long-term, basic-science research. Work that does not have direct ramifications for industry or our economy is also worthy. There’s no telling what can come from supporting a curious mind trying to discover something new.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donna Strickland 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 winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics says scientists shouldn’t feel pressured to do research that has economic or commercial ramifications. Science for the sake of science is more important.
Donna Strickland, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104606
2018-10-11T10:31:26Z
2018-10-11T10:31:26Z
Nobel Prize should be just the start of making women scientists more visible
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240080/original/file-20181010-72100-15vbbdh.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/image-photo/chinese-asian-female-medical-scientific-researcher-88351879">Darren Baker/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until this year, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/nobel-prize-awarded-women-3/">only 19 women</a> had won a Nobel Prize for science – just 3% of the total winners. But the Nobel Committee’s decision to recognise <a href="https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-three-finally-another-woman-awarded-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-104323">Donna Strickland</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-winners-of-the-nobel-prize-in-chemistry-have-transformed-research-and-saved-lives-104351">Frances Arnold</a>, respectively, with the 2018 chemistry and physics prizes, suggests this imbalance is finally being addressed.</p>
<p>The Nobel recognises outstanding contributions to humankind, so it should go without saying that the outstanding women working in the fields of science and medicine should be recognised for their contributions. And there are many who deserve to be seen through awards and media representations. But perhaps more importantly, the image we see of women in science from things like the Nobel Prizes can make a difference to what happens within the field.</p>
<p>Women laureates are grossly underrepresented in all of the Nobel Prize categories, especially when you consider their participation in these areas today. Globally, women still represent <a href="http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs51-women-in-science-2018-en.pdf">less than a third</a> of the science workforce, but that’s far more than the 3% recognised by the Nobels.</p>
<p>Even in the last few years, as more women have entered scientific fields, they have been notably absent among Nobel prize winners. The last woman to win the chemistry prize was <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2009/yonath/auto-biography/">Ada Yonath</a> in 2009. And before Donna Strickland there hadn’t been a female physics laureate since <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/auto-biography/">Maria Goeppert Mayer</a> in 1963. The Nobel Committee has said it is taking steps to improve its record on women but that it would likely be <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/nobel-prize-winners-men-no-women-committee-response-years-a7991406.html">five to ten years</a> before we see a significant change in distribution.</p>
<p>The reality is that women are still under- and misrepresented in almost every facet of science. The numbers start with a lower proportion of female science students at secondary level and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/jun/13/how-well-are-women-represented-in-uk-science">gradually decline</a> at every stage of education and leadership. For example, women <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/bibliometrics-global-gender-disparities-in-science-1.14321">are underrepresented</a> as first authors of scientific research papers and their papers are much less likely to be cited by others. By the time it gets to candidates for the Nobel Prize, there are very few women left to choose from.</p>
<p>You can add to that the persistence of outdated ideas around gender differences within science. Just recently, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/01/physics-was-built-by-men-cern-scientist-alessandro-strumia-remark-sparks-fury">CERN professor</a> was suspended for sexist comments linked to <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/10/defending-sexist-cern-lecture-you-re-endorsing-bad-science-not-freedom-speech">debunked science</a> made to a room full of women scientists. In many ways, it made Strickland’s winning of the physics Nobel all the more sweet but demonstrates the lingering mischaracterisation of women in science both inside and outside of the profession.</p>
<h2>Representation matters</h2>
<p>With all this mind, it’s important to remember that media representation matters. It gives women and girls opportunities to <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/09/18/improved-representation-of-female-scientists-in-the-media-can-show-future-generations-of-women-that-they-belong">literally see themselves</a>, in this case, as scientists. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2372732214549471">We know</a> <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/2018/04/25/62509/">from research</a> that female role models can make a difference to women’s decisions about whether or not to start a scientific career. And more generally, media representations help us to understand ourselves and others. So, if images of successful women are missing from the picture girls and women have of science through the media, it can limit the extent to which they will see themselves as scientists. </p>
<p>We need to normalise the representation of all women in science. More women winning the Nobel Prize, and more news articles celebrating those women’s achievements, are just the start. Changing how women scientists are seen can also be achieved through film and television representations, news articles, Wikipedia entries and so on. </p>
<p>Globally, for example, women <a href="http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/global/gmmp_global_report_en.pdf">made up only 19% of experts</a> appearing in television, radio and print news reports. When women scientists are made less visible in this way, they are, in the words of feminist thinker <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493636?journalCode=signs">Gaye Tuchman</a>, “symbolically annihilated”. In other words, they are effectively omitted, trivialised and condemned by the mass media.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240085/original/file-20181010-133328-19wzjph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women scientists are moving to the centre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chief-project-engineer-holds-briefing-team-741648175">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there are many examples of women scientists in film and television, they’re now starting to appear <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-scientists-are-more-than-capable-of-leading-blockbuster-storylines-93779">more often as lead characters</a> rather than as sidekicks to men – for example, Sandra Bullock’s Ryan Stone in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/">Gravity</a>. Recent films such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Hidden Figures</a> and the reboot of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Ghostbusters</a> have made the female leads’ role as scientists a key focus and driver of the storylines. This kind of change is important for moving women scientists from, as feminist critic bell hooks puts it, the “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.1987.9674676?journalCode=ragn20">margins to the centre</a>”.</p>
<p>Even the number and content of Wikipedia entries about women scientists is important, as the crowd-edited encyclopedia helps document what society values and exposes people to cultural heritage. But research shows that Wikipedia has a poor record on gender equality in terms of <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444818779080">including women’s biographies</a>.</p>
<p>This was highlighted when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/03/donna-strickland-nobel-physics-prize-wikipedia-denied">it emerged that</a>, before her Nobel win, Strickland’s contributions to science had been deemed not significant enough to warrant her own Wikipedia page. Such examples underline the importance of efforts like those of <a href="https://twitter.com/jesswade?ref_src=twsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor">Jessica Wade</a> to increase the number of Wikipedia entries about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jul/24/academic-writes-270-wikipedia-pages-year-female-scientists-noticed">women scientists’ contributions</a>.</p>
<p>Changing all these media representations together can help more people to see women as scientists and to value the contributions that they make. This will empower women scientists today and inspire more girls to join the next generation. Perhaps then, a Nobel Prize winner being female won’t be such big news and the focus will be on their science rather than their gender.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shelley Thompson 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>
Female role models can inspire the next generation through many different media.
Shelley Thompson, Head of School of Journalism, English & Communication, Bournemouth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104520
2018-10-09T10:46:10Z
2018-10-09T10:46:10Z
Nobel award recognizes how economic forces can fight climate change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239835/original/file-20181008-72130-jhyqk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">William Nordhaus argues markets can help curb climate change.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nobel-Economics/7292f0f3d4e843ad8061efeaf9743d64/5/0">AP Photo/Craig Ruttle</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yale economist William Nordhaus has devoted <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1-lLv0QAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">his life’s work</a> to <a href="http://carbon-price.com/william-nordhaus/">understanding</a> the costs of climate change and advocating the use of a carbon tax to curb global warming. </p>
<p>It’s no small irony, then, that on the same day his research <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economics/2018/summary">shared</a> in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/paul-romer-and-william-nordhaus-why-they-won-the-2018-economics-nobel-104588">Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences</a>, a United Nations panel released its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2018/oct/08/ipcc-climate-change-report-urgent-action-fossil-fuels-live">latest report</a> on the mounting dangers of climate change. In fact, the report builds upon much of Nordhaus’ work and warns that we have only about a dozen years to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid environmental catastrophe. </p>
<p>This warning – and the award – come at a time when it appears that some Americans are not listening. The U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-decision-to-leave-paris-accord-hurts-the-us-and-the-world-78707">is no longer a signatory</a> of the Paris accord to address climate change, a <a href="http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2018/?est=happening&type=value&geo=national">broad swath of the country</a> still denies the existence of the problem, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/us/north-carolina-coast-hurricane.html">some state</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/fema-disaster-recovery-climate-change.html">federal policymakers</a> don’t incorporate climate science into their decision-making. </p>
<p>But Nordhaus’ work is not about whether or not people and policymakers “believe” in climate change. It’s about the market and its ability to address the most serious issue facing humanity in the coming years. </p>
<p>As scholars of <a href="https://energy.umich.edu/leadership/profile/ellen-hughes-cromwick/">economics</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wGt9rX8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">management</a> who are passionate about finding smart solutions to the challenge of a changing climate, we believe his research offers hope that humans can still prevent global calamity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239842/original/file-20181009-72127-b6nshx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nordhaus’ research offers hope that humanity can avert catastrophe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/South-Korea-Climate-Ambitious-Goal/0f33d60ba8a2407b96264f8d722faa74/12/0">AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The economics of climate change</h2>
<p>One of Nordhaus’ most significant contributions was perhaps his ability to unpack and explain the complex issues surrounding climate change. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300212648/climate-casino">Climate Casino</a>,” for example, Nordhaus explained the many interrelated topics when talking about climate change, from science and energy to economics and politics, while clearly identifying the steps necessary to prevent catastrophe. Or as The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/business/climate-casino-an-overview-of-global-warming.html">put it</a>, “It is a one-stop source on global warming, seen through the prism of a brilliant economist.”</p>
<p>Although his writing was accessible, he showed that he was still grappling with the uncertainty of his and other projections, allowing us to see the honest complexity of outcomes related to how humans harm the environment through greenhouse gas emissions. </p>
<p>A premise of his research was that the environment is a <a href="http://www.econ.yale.edu/%7Enordhaus/homepage/OldWebFiles/DICEGAMS/dice_mss_072407_all.pdf">public good</a>, shared by all and yet not paid for in any adequate or appropriate way. </p>
<p>In other words, we all benefit from it, though we don’t necessarily pay for it. And we are all harmed by its degradation though the value of that damage is not captured in standard market exchange. </p>
<h2>Modeling the economy and climate</h2>
<p>Nordhaus argued a <a href="http://carbon-price.com/william-nordhaus/">tax on carbon</a> – say US$25 a ton – or a <a href="https://www.c2es.org/content/cap-and-trade-basics/">cap and trade</a> scheme that allows companies to exchange pollution credits – offers the best and most economically efficient way of putting a value on that public good and thus doing something about the problem. </p>
<p>Nordhaus showed this by perfecting models that simulated how such taxes and other inputs affect both the economy and climate, depicting how they co-evolve – known as <a href="http://www.nber.org/reporter/2017number3/nordhaus.html">“integrated assessment” models</a>.</p>
<p>A noteworthy example is his <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1009.html">Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy Model</a>, which provides a consistent framework for using knowledge borne from economics, ecology and the earth sciences. The model allowed for a deeper understanding of how certain policy changes affect long-term economic and environmental outcomes.</p>
<p>This is how he realized that schemes that rely on markets with some guidance from governments – such as by instituting carbon taxes – would work best to tackle the problem. </p>
<p>And thus he was able to show, with great clarity, that the most cost effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is by lifting the price of fossil fuels with a carbon tax. This in turn would provide the appropriate incentives for consumers and businesses to use less of those fuels. </p>
<p>Nordhaus was also able to estimate the economic damage from climate change if such policies weren’t adopted. He found that the people who would lose the most were the poor and those living in tropical regions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239841/original/file-20181009-72106-aycgjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nordhaus showed how putting a carbon tax on fossil fuels would be one of the most efficient ways to fight climate change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Carbon-Tax-Washington/6cc9cb04214e4a458dbf8db88c8952bb/2/0">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Markets and a guiding hand</h2>
<p>Fundamentally, Nordhaus recognized that solutions to the great challenge of climate change can most efficiently and effectively come from the market, one of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/capitalism-must-evolve-to-solve-the-climate-crisis-47338">most powerful systems</a> on earth. </p>
<p>While he understood markets needed to take the lead, at the same time, they needed assistance from informed government policy. Carbon pricing, Nordhaus found, is one powerful tool for bringing those solutions to the fore. </p>
<p>Even Adam Smith, the 18th-century economist who coined the “invisible hand of the market,” knew that market capitalism needed “rules imposed upon it by legislators who understand its workings and its benefits.” As National Affairs editor <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/recovering-the-case-for-capitalism">Yuval Levin</a> reminded us in 2010, markets need a guiding hand.</p>
<p>That is, Nordhaus has showed how <a href="https://theconversation.com/capitalism-must-evolve-to-solve-the-climate-crisis-47338">capitalism is capable of rising to the challenge</a> of climate change, just as it has to other problems in the marketplace, such as <a href="https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/markets/regulation-monopoly/">monopolies</a>, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/history/epa-history-montreal-protocol">ozone depletion</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050338">dangers of cigarette smoking</a>.</p>
<p>On a day when the world’s leading scientists have issued their latest dire warning on the impending doom of climate change, Nordhaus’ deeply thoughtful, methodical work – for which we are thankful – is a reminder that there is hope. That human ingenuity and resourcefulness can guide the market to a solution and a better form of capitalism for structuring our commerce and interaction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Hughes-Cromwick is affiliated with
Member of the National Assn for Business Economics (NABE) ; American Economic Assn; Chair of NABE Foundation; Board member of the Clark University; Member of the Int'l Energy Economics Assn; Senior Advisor of Macro Policy Perspectives LLC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew J. Hoffman 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>
William Nordhaus showed that the market offers the best chance for preventing global catastrophe form climate change.
Andrew J. Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor at the Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan
Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, Senior Economist and Interim Associate Director of Social Science and Policy, University of Michigan Energy Institute, University of Michigan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104456
2018-10-08T13:41:08Z
2018-10-08T13:41:08Z
No black scientist has ever won a Nobel – that’s bad for science, and bad for society
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239718/original/file-20181008-133328-xvv2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black scientists lack role models who look like them.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/closeup-portrait-young-confused-business-man-193917758?src=ytxtsKEtk29_gf1VU3OuLQ-5-4">pathdoc/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many in the scientific world are celebrating the fact that two women received this year’s Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry. Donna Strickland and Frances Arnold are only the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/nobel-prize-awarded-women-3/">20th and 21st female scientists</a> to be recognised by the Nobel Committee. Yet in over 100 years, we have never seen a black scientist become a Nobel laureate. </p>
<p>Every year, the annual October Nobel Prize announcements coincide with Black History Month, which is a painful reminder that of the more than 900 <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/">Nobel laureates</a>, only 14 (1.5%) <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/List_of_black_Nobel_laureates.html">have been black</a> and none in science. Almost all black laureates have been awarded for work in the fields of peace (ten) and literature (three). During that time the closest a black scientist has come to winning has been social scientist <a href="https://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/economics/about/people/arthur-lewis/">Arthur Lewis</a> for his work economics in 1973.</p>
<p>By contrast there have been over 70 Asian laureates, the majority in the sciences, and since 2000 that number has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/oct/01/nobel-prizes-asian-scientists-us">significantly increased</a>. This is partly due to the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academic-ranking-world-universities-2018-asian-universities-climb">increasing influence and power</a> of Japanese, Chinese, Korean universities and the success of the Asian American academy. To win a Nobel Prize for science, it helps if you are in a prestigious institution and in a position to lead big expensive science.</p>
<p>The main reason why no black scientist has won a Nobel prize is simply a matter of numbers. Not enough bright young black people are choosing science. Alongside the more limited opportunities for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/oct/26/africa-produces-just-11-of-global-scientific-knowledge">black Africans</a>, black people in Western countries are less likely <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45007879/ns/us_news-life/t/declining-numbers-blacks-seen-math-science/#.W7b76xNKh8c">to study science</a>, less likely to <a href="https://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/student-recruitment-retention-attainment/student-attainment/degree-attainment-gaps/">achieve a top degree</a> and less likely to <a href="https://royalsociety.org/%7E/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/leading-way-diversity/picture-uk-scientific-workforce/070314-diversity-report-executive-summary.pdf?la=en-GB">progress to scientific careers</a>.</p>
<p>To even be considered as a possible Nobel laureate you must become a principal investigator or a professor in a leading institution. Yet, once a black science graduate makes it to the first rung on the academic ladder they face the same challenges as any other black academic around access to promotion and access to resources. For example, we know black scientists in the US are less likely to receive <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1015.full">funding for health research</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239715/original/file-20181008-72117-q6lk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black people are less likely to study or work in science.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/black-scientists-sitting-modern-laboratory-talking-1036687324">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To become a professor you need support from your institution and to find at least four existing professors at other institutions who will support your application and certify that you are a leader in your field with an international reputation. This requires building large internal and external networks. <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-fewer-than-100-black-professors-in-britain-why-24088">For many reasons</a>, not enough black academics work in institutions where such reputations and networks are made, significantly reducing the possibility of being promoted to professors.</p>
<p>This is also something of a circular problem. It seems highly likely the perception that black people don’t reach the highest level in science has in some ways affected the success of black people in science. <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/2018/04/25/62509/">Research suggests</a> <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2372732214549471">female role models</a> can encourage women to pursue careers in science, and the same seems <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/under-represented-and-underserved-why-minority-role-models-matter-in-stem/">likely to be true</a> for black people. Having a black Nobel laureate would inspire more black students to <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/why-my-professor-still-not-black">become black professors</a>, which in turn would inspire more young black people to study science. </p>
<p>During my own undergraduate studies, many courses began with a professor describing the inspirational work of a Nobel laureate, who was usually a white man. These individuals were elevated to superhuman status, people we should aspire to be like because their work had <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/connect/influential-articles-for-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-lindau-nobel-laureate-meeting">transcended the field</a>. This clearly appealed to me as it reinforced my desire to become a scientist. </p>
<p>But at the same time, as a black student, achieving that level of success or even anything along that path appeared far more distant as there was never a black laureate on the list. Although I was not deterred by this fact, I have no doubt it had an impact, not just on me but on my fellow white students and more importantly my tutors, and later my university employers and those awarding research grants. A black Nobel laureate would have made it easier for them to see me as a potential high achiever and treat me accordingly.</p>
<h2>Why we need action</h2>
<p>More black scientists wouldn’t just be a victory for equality but would benefit wider society. For example, conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and many others have a <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180102134830.htm">higher incidence</a> in people of black or African heritage. Yet research is often biased towards <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/08/genetics-research-biased-towards-studying-white-europeans">studying white people</a>. More black scientists, especially in leading positions, could bring greater focus, understanding and different insights to investigating these conditions. They could also help lead the decolonising of science, again with wider <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonise-science-time-to-end-another-imperial-era-89189">advantages to society</a>.</p>
<p>So how can we increase the chances of a black scientist becoming a Nobel laureate? We cannot wait for Africa to have the same political and economic power as Asia. Looking at the 49 women Nobel Prize winners, of which only 21 were scientists and only three in physics, we see a similar challenge. But with the advent of many <a href="https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-017-0177-9">successful campaigns</a> backed by political action to increase the number of women in science, particularly in the leading institutions and in leading positions, the number of women laureates is likely to increase significantly. If we want more black scientists and eventually Nobel laureates, then similar direct strategic action is urgently needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Winston Morgan 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>
We need action to increase the number of black scientists if we’re ever to see a black Nobel winner.
Winston Morgan, Reader in Toxicology and Clinical Biochemistry, University of East London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104370
2018-10-05T23:38:00Z
2018-10-05T23:38:00Z
Why more women don’t win science Nobels
<p>One of the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/strickland/facts/">2018 Nobel Prizes in physics</a> went to Donna Strickland, a major accomplishment for any scientist. Yet much of the news coverage has focused on the fact that she’s only the third female physicist to receive the award, after <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/facts/">Marie Curie in 1903</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/facts/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer</a> 60 years later.</p>
<p>Though biochemical engineer <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/arnold/facts/">Frances Arnold</a> also won this year, for chemistry, the rarity of female Nobel laureates raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science. Female researchers have come a long way over the past century. But there’s overwhelming evidence that women remain underrepresented in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.</p>
<p>Studies have shown those who persist in these careers face explicit and implicit barriers to advancement. Bias is most intense in fields that are predominantly male, where women lack a critical mass of representation and are often viewed as tokens or outsiders.</p>
<p>When women achieve at the highest levels of sports, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00402.x">politics</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1002790/">medicine</a> and science, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2011.607313">serve as role models</a> for all of us, especially for girls and other women. But are things getting better in terms of equal representation? What still holds women back in the classroom, in the lab, in leadership and as award winners?</p>
<h2>Good news at the start of the pipeline</h2>
<p>Traditional stereotypes hold that women “don’t like math” and “aren’t good at science.” Both <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math">men and women report these viewpoints</a>, but researchers have <a href="https://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/share.aspx">empirically disputed them</a>. Studies show that girls and women avoid STEM education not because of cognitive inability, but because of early exposure and experience with STEM, educational policy, cultural context, stereotypes and a lack of exposure to role models. </p>
<p>For the past several decades, efforts to improve the representation of women in STEM fields have focused on countering these stereotypes with <a href="http://www.apsbridgeprogram.org/igen/">educational reforms</a> and <a href="https://girlswhocode.com/">individual</a> <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383">programs</a> that can increase the number of girls entering and staying in what’s been called the STEM pipeline – the path from K-12 to college to postgraduate training.</p>
<p><iframe id="qE27X" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qE27X/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These approaches are working. Women are increasingly likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2012002908">express an interest in STEM careers and pursue STEM majors</a> in college. Women now make up half or more of workers in psychology and social sciences and are increasingly represented in the scientific workforce, though computer and mathematical sciences are an exception. According to the American Institute of Physics, women earn about 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 18 percent of Ph.D.s in physics, <a href="https://www.aip.org/taxonomy/term/155">an increase from 1975</a> when women earned 10 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 5 percent of Ph.D.s in physics.</p>
<p>More women are graduating with STEM Ph.D.s and earning faculty positions. But they go on to encounter glass cliffs and ceilings as they advance through their academic careers.</p>
<h2>What’s not working for women</h2>
<p>Women face a number of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">structural and institutional barriers</a> in academic STEM careers.</p>
<p>In addition to issues related to the gender pay gap, the structure of academic science often makes it difficult for women to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135943974">get ahead in the workplace</a> and to balance work and life commitments. Bench science can require years of dedicated time in a laboratory. The strictures of the tenure-track process can make maintaining work-life balance, responding to family obligations, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-todays-long-stem-postdoc-positions-are-effectively-anti-mother-51550">having children</a> or taking family leave difficult, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711417730">if not impossible</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, working in male-dominated workplaces can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">leave women feeling isolated</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2777808">perceived as tokens</a> and susceptible to <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment-of-women-climate-culture-and-consequences-in-academic">harassment</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010344929577">Women often are excluded</a> from networking opportunities and social events and left to feel they’re outside the culture of the lab, the academic department and the field.</p>
<p>When women lack critical mass – of about 15 percent or more – they are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2884712">less empowered to advocate for themselves</a> and more likely to be perceived as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb08353.x">a minority group and an exception</a>. When in this minority position, women are more likely to be pressured to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2">take on extra service</a> as tokens on committees or <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Ghost-Advising/242729">mentors to female graduate students</a>.</p>
<p>With fewer female colleagues, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735900">women are less likely</a> to build relationships with female collaborators and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0256-y">support and advice networks</a>. This isolation can be exacerbated when women are unable to participate in work events or <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/02/07/conferences-should-be-more-family-friendly-women-scholars-children-opinion">attend conferences because of family or child care</a> responsibilities and an inability to use research funds to reimburse child care.</p>
<p>Universities, <a href="https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2002/10000/Increasing_Women_s_Leadership_in_Academic.23.aspx">professional associations</a>, and federal funders have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20225">worked to address a variety</a> of these structural barriers. Efforts include creating family-friendly policies, increasing transparency in salary reporting, enforcing Title IX protections, providing mentoring and support programs for women scientists, protecting research time for women scientists, and targeting women for hiring, research support and advancement. These programs have mixed results. For example, research indicates that family-friendly policies such as leave and onsite child care <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu006">can exacerbate gender inequity</a>, resulting in increased research productivity for men and increased teaching and service obligations for women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People haven’t done a good job updating their mental images of what a scientist looks like since Wilhelm Roentgen won the first physics Nobel in 1901.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sftaf5z8">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implicit biases about who does science</h2>
<p>All of us – the general public, the media, university employees, students and professors – have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-people-think-man-when-they-think-scientist-how-can-we-kill-the-stereotype-42393">ideas of what a scientist</a> and a Nobel Prize winner looks like. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13039">That image</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2002.tb18217.x">predominantly male, white and older</a> – which makes sense given 97 percent of the science Nobel Prize winners have been men.</p>
<p>This is an example of an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-implicit-bias-peanut-butter-jelly-and-racism/">implicit bias</a>: one of the unconscious, involuntary, natural, unavoidable assumptions that all of us, men and women, form about the world around us. People make decisions <a href="https://theconversation.com/measuring-the-implicit-biases-we-may-not-even-be-aware-we-have-74912">based on subconscious assumptions, preferences and stereotypes</a> – sometimes even when they are counter to their explicitly held beliefs.</p>
<p>Research shows that an implicit bias against women <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-a-scientist-looks-like/">as experts and academic scientists</a> is pervasive. It manifests itself by valuing, acknowledging and rewarding men’s scholarship over women’s scholarship. Implicit bias can work against women’s hiring, advancement and recognition of their work. For instance, women seeking academic jobs are more likely to be viewed and judged based on <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/nZ24K7b2">personal information and physical appearance</a>. Letters of recommendation for women are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9541-1">more likely to raise doubts</a> and use language that results in negative career outcomes.</p>
<p>Implicit bias can affect women’s ability to publish research findings and gain recognition for that work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117738903">Men cite their own papers 56 percent more</a> than women do. Known as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">Matilda Effect</a>,” there is a gender gap in recognition, award winning and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/16/new-research-shows-extent-gender-gap-citations">citations</a>. Women’s research is less likely to be cited by others and their <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R7AQT1">ideas are more likely to be attributed to men</a>. Women’s solo-authored research takes <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/20/study-finds-women-economics-write-papers-are-more-readable-face-longer-publication">twice as long</a> to move through the review process. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06678-6">Women are underrepresented</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12950">journal editorships</a>, as senior scholars and lead authors, and as peer reviewers. This marginalization in research gatekeeping positions works against the promotion of women’s research.</p>
<p>When a woman becomes a world-class scientist, implicit bias works <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00739-17">against the likelihood</a> that she will be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/women-are-invited-to-give-fewer-talks-than-men-at-top-us-universities/548657/">invited as a keynote or guest speaker</a> to share her research findings, thus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12198">lowering her visibility in the field</a> and the likelihood that she will be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">nominated for awards</a>. This gender imbalance is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517000580">notable in how infrequently</a> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/2017/11/17/we-need-more-womens-voices-in-the-news.html">women experts</a> are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/lack-female-sources-ny-times-front-page-stories-highlights-need-change">quoted in news stories</a> on most topics.</p>
<p>Women scientists are afforded less of the respect and recognition that should come with their accomplishments. Research shows that when people talk about male scientists and experts, they’re more likely to use their surnames and more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805284115">refer to women by their first names</a>. Why does this matter? Because experiments show that individuals referred to by their surnames are more likely to be viewed as famous and eminent. In fact, one study found that calling scientists by their last names led people to consider them 14 percent more deserving of a National Science Foundation career award.</p>
<h2>Female physics laureate No. 3</h2>
<p>Strickland winning a Nobel Prize as an associate professor in physics is a major accomplishment; doing so as a woman who has almost certainly faced more barriers than her male counterparts is, in my view, monumental.</p>
<p>When asked what it felt like to be the third female Nobel laureate in physics, Strickland noted that at first it was surprising to realize so few women had won the award: “But, I mean, I do live in a world of mostly men, so seeing mostly men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653779921/donna-strickland-becomes-first-woman-in-more-than-50-years-to-win-physics-nobel-">doesn’t really ever surprise me either</a>.”</p>
<p>Seeing mostly men has been the history of science. Addressing structural and implicit bias in STEM will hopefully prevent another half-century wait before the next woman is acknowledged with a Nobel Prize for her contribution to physics. I look forward to the day when a woman receiving the most prestigious award in science is newsworthy only for her science and not her gender.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary K. Feeney receives research funding from the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, ASU. </span></em></p>
Progress has been made toward gender parity in science fields. But explicit and implicit barriers still hold women back from advancing in the same numbers as men to the upper reaches of STEM academia.
Mary K. Feeney, Associate Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs and Associate Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Studies, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104494
2018-10-05T11:14:30Z
2018-10-05T11:14:30Z
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege for campaigns against sexual violence
<p>Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege have been <a href="https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/Uten-foreldre/The-Nobel-Peace-Prize-2018">awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize</a> for their work in trying to end sexual violence during war and armed conflict. There are many tragedies in war and among the worst are victims of sexual violence. Women’s bodies have become battle sites and sexual violence a weapon of war.</p>
<p>Murad is one such victim, developing a global witness as a UN Goodwill Ambassador to the abuse she suffered as a Yazidi at the hands of Islamic State. She has campaigned for the protection of survivors of human trafficking. </p>
<p>Denis Mukwege is a medic based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and he and his staff have helped thousands of victims abused in its prolonged and bloody wars - and many more forcibly removed people besides. Mukwege also speaks, at much risk to himself, against Congolese governments and others who shield military rapists.</p>
<p>It is a comment frequently made that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-curious-history-of-the-nobel-peace-prize-66609">Nobel Peace Prize</a> is a contradiction, founded for “the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” by an armaments manufacturer, notable for inventing dynamite. </p>
<p>Handing over the awarding of the Peace Prize to a five-person committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament, rather than to Sweden, reflects Norway’s long-established engagement in facilitating peace negotiations. Well before the Peace Prize was inaugurated in 1901, the Norwegian government was assisting the European Inter-Parliamentary Union’s work on mediation, an involvement in conflict resolution that continues to this day. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-curious-history-of-the-nobel-peace-prize-66609">The curious history of the Nobel Peace Prize</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The right choice</h2>
<p>Peace is itself often politically controversial, especially when powerful nation states and multi-state alliances have conducted the war – and the award of the Peace Prize is invariably disputed. The Peace Prize is notable for the illustrious people omitted from its list of laureates as for those recognised by its award.</p>
<p>Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel and Eleanor Roosevelt are among a number who have failed to muster the prize – Gandhi was nominated five times to no avail. But politicians abound among its laureates – including those with dubious reputations, even at the time, such as <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2096389_2096388_2096386,00.html">Henry Kissinger</a>. </p>
<p>Barack Obama, who was awarded in his first year as US president, seemed to get one simply for being elected as the first black president (he was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/barack-obama-stephen-colbert-nobel-peace-prize-a7367321.html">still puzzled</a> himself at the award even at the end of his second term). Relatively unsuccessful politicians can be given the award – for example one-term US president Jimmy Carter and unsuccessful presidential candidate Al Gore. People from Northern Ireland, with only 1.8m people, have won it twice. The US and the UK dominate the countries of recipients. It has also been won by 16 women – more than any other Nobel category.</p>
<p>It has been awarded to organisations on several occasions: the European Union won it for not being at war with itself since 1945, the International Committee of the Red Cross has won it three times, and the Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees twice. Only one nominee declined the prize, the Vietcong’s chief negotiator <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/tho/facts/">Le Duc Tho</a>, who described it as bourgeois sentimentality. Two members of the awarding committee resigned in protest when it was determined to make the 1973 award to Le Duc Tho and Kissinger, while the results of the peace negotiations were still uncertain. Kissinger gave his prize money to charity and did not attend the ceremony.</p>
<p>Political controversies aside, the award committee has often got it right and the recipient is met with general acclaim. The 2018 recipients are such a case. As the prize committee said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad have both put their personal security at risk by courageously combating war crimes and seeking justice for the victims.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Courage – in speaking out against sexual violence and in speaking for its countless victims – is the word that catches my eye in the <a href="https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/Uten-foreldre/The-Nobel-Peace-Prize-2018">committee’s comments</a>. I think this word apt, for it applies as much to the victims themselves who have to live daily – if they survive at all – with the consequences of sexual violence. </p>
<p>I like to think the award is as much in honour of those victims as the two deserving recipients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Brewer receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, Forces in Mind Trust</span></em></p>
The prize recognises that violence against women has become a weapon of war.
John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies, Queen's University Belfast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104369
2018-10-04T10:29:04Z
2018-10-04T10:29:04Z
2018 Nobel Prize for chemistry goes to scientists who learned to ‘hack’ evolution in the lab
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239191/original/file-20181003-52666-1qu4ycq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scientists are now using evolution to create designer proteins for therapies and industrial processes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Johan Jarnestad / The Royal Academy of Sciences</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The three 2018 Nobel Prize winners for chemistry were recognized for inventing fast and reliable methods for “hacking” evolution – techniques that have transformed scientific research and have already led to better drug treatments, greener and more efficient chemical manufacturing processes, and more economical biofuels. </p>
<p>Thanks to these inventions, what nature takes millennia to do, can now be performed by chemists in weeks or less. What’s more, these prize-winning methods form what I regard as a final proof for the molecular basis for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.</p>
<p>The Nobel Prize in chemistry was split between Frances H. Arnold and George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter; the latter two received the
other half. I will admit my bias toward Frances H. Arnold whose technology the Nobel Committee recognized – on the directed evolution of enzymes, which are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions – because much of my own work has been built on it. Smith and Winter also used evolution to fast-track the development of proteins and antibodies with desirable properties. They harnessed the power of viruses to exponentially increase the scale of directed evolution envisioned by Arnold and expanded it to the development of protein-based therapeutics like Humira for chronic pain. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239232/original/file-20181003-52691-ehvmyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A stamp printed by Congo, shows an early ancestors of the modern elephant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/congo-circa-1994-stamp-printed-by-87988546?src=eIqV0Co7cKfgpgfVqvUpjA-1-7">rook76/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To explain it simply, both methods generate a broad variety of proteins in the lab and then use un-natural selection – that is, selecting the protein with the most desirable qualities – and then mutating this new protein in the lab to make it better and better. In that way, it’s a molecular version of evolution. Darwinian evolution created the modern elephant’s trunk from a stubby nose by the repeated processes of natural genetic mutation and survival of the fittest; directed evolution creates new enzymes from natural occurring ones by iterative cycles of mutation and selection.</p>
<h2>Survival of the fittest - molecules</h2>
<p>In high school biology, we learn about the “lock-and-key” concept of enzymes. In this model, enzymes, which are nature’s biocatalysts that speed up chemical reactions, are the “locks” evolved to connect with a natural target molecules – the “keys” – to complete a specific chemical reaction.</p>
<p>If you want an enzyme to do something new, something unnatural, like selectively insert an oxygen atom into a molecule to manufacture a valuable drug, you are unlikely to find that enzyme in nature. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239230/original/file-20181003-52660-2kcxg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&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 lock (red) and key (blue-orange) model of an enzyme. In nature, enzymes that fit only one key take millions of years to evolve. Arnold figured out how to speed up the evolution of the enzymes to perfectly match the target she was trying to alter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/245391454?size=huge_jpg">joshya/shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arnold’s approach is to take an enzyme from nature and then transform it – through laboratory evolution – into one that performs the reactions that interest her. She does this by taking the gene that encodes the enzyme and putting it through the biological equivalent of an error-prone Xerox copier, which then duplicates the gene millions of times but inserts mutations randomly throughout.</p>
<p>Arnold then took these millions of poorly copied genes and inserted each one into a different bacterium. This collection of bacteria is called a gene library. Because each of the genes is mutated in a different way, the enzyme each bacterium produces when it is fed and grows will be slightly different. The challenge is to find the bacterium that carries the enzyme with the most desirable qualities.</p>
<p>For example, say you have an industrial process that requires an enzyme that works at high temperatures, but the natural enzyme falls apart under these extreme conditions. You would make thousands of random copy mutants, test them each to see if they perform at a high temperature, pick the winners and repeat the process with the winner. That’s an iterative process of mutation and selection, just like natural evolution. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239225/original/file-20181003-52695-1npt1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frances Arnold, George Smith and Gregory Winter won the 2018 Nobel Prize for chemistry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caltech | MU News Bureau | LMB News</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not unlike what it took to breed wolves into miniature dachshunds over the last tens of thousands of years. In this case, sexual reproduction is used by breeders to create gene variations and then selected traits they wanted, over many generations to arrive at the various dog breeds. Arnold figured out how to do that on a single-enzyme scale. In this way, the enzyme lock ends up changed to fit a new molecular key.</p>
<p>One of the first examples Arnold demonstrated as proof of concept was a little scary. She started with an enzyme responsible for drug resistance that chews up penicillin drugs and forced it to evolve to chew up a newer generation of penicillins, in this case, a more advanced antibiotic. </p>
<p>In this way she sped up the evolutionary clock for antibiotic resistance in a test tube. Since then, the same principle of directed evolution has been adopted to create enzymes with many useful new functions, for instance to evolve enzymes to make biofuels and drugs. Drugs now made using enzymes generated by directed evolution include the blockbuster cholesterol lowering drug atorvastatin (lipitor) and the diabetes drug sitagliptin (Januvia).</p>
<h2>Evolution with help from viruses</h2>
<p>Arnold shares the Nobel Prize with Smith and Winter, who invented ways to attach or “display” proteins and antibodies of interest on the surface of special virus particles, called bacteriophage. Using viruses rather than bacteria, as Arnold had done, was a different approach for identifying a gene that encoded a protein with particularly valuable qualities. This method is particularly useful for finding proteins that bind to a target protein, such as the target of a drug.</p>
<p>Each virus in a phage library displays a different protein on its surface. The viruses expressing the most desirable proteins are identified through several complex steps. The “winning” viruses then go through multiple cycles of mutation and testing and selection to yield proteins that fit and bind perfectly to their target.</p>
<p>The advantage of using viruses to display the proteins with the desired properties miniaturizes the selection process and allows you to process millions of mutated genes to find the one that best fits the job, as compared to only thousands of mutated genes using bacteria. </p>
<p>This technology has had the greatest impact on antibody therapies. Antibodies are molecules our immune system uses to bind and kill pathogens and naturally clear dying cells. But scientists are increasingly using them to bind to drug targets to treat various diseases. Adalimumab (Humira) is an example of a therapeutic antibody used in treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=181&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=181&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=181&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239227/original/file-20181003-52660-18bjpz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With each subsequent generation, the antibodies evolve and and better fit their target protein. With each generation, the fit between antibody and target grows stronger and more specific.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/10/press-fig4-antibodyEvolution.pdf">Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From single enzymes to evolving concerts of enzymes</h2>
<p>I started off my own career in chemical synthesis, which is developing ways to make chemicals atom by atom in a round-bottomed flask. This is challenging work and I came to realize that organisms makes complex chemicals seemingly effortlessly as they grow, so I wanted to learn how to adapt nature’s enzyme catalysts – the tools that life uses to do chemistry – to synthesize useful unnatural molecules. </p>
<p>Around the mid-1990s, Arnold’s research showed me that we could ultimately use this nature-inspired method of directed evolution to improve the function of single enzymes to get them to perform chemistry they could not do naturally, millions of times faster, and get them to perform chemistry we could not do by any means. </p>
<p>I wondered: If doing a single biotransformation, converting A to B, is a powerful thing, could we find a way to generate pathways to connect three, four or even five or more steps, converting steps A to E and beyond in a single test tube? If one biocatalyst is a good thing, how about a molecular assembly line inside of cells for a non-natural molecule such as an AIDS drug. We called our pathway directed evolution technique bioretrosynthesis, because we start with the last step and work to the first. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239229/original/file-20181003-52681-15tegea.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/make-things-better-motivational-quote-written-296051639?src=HlKb--kfAgEc1x3_hTEv_w-2-89">Emil Durov/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a paper published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nchembio.1494">Nature Chemical Biology</a>, we described how we reverse engineered a five-step molecular production line to synthesize the AIDS drug Didanosine using Arnold’s bacterial method. </p>
<p>Currently this drug is made using chemical processes and is very expensive. Our proof of principle showed the cost could be lessened by using a starting material that is 30-fold less expensive and using enzymes created through directed evolution to do the hard work.</p>
<p>One of the most exciting things to me about this Nobel breakthrough is that it provides a direct proof of Darwin’s theory of evolution, at the molecular scale, from gene to physical trait. This theory, supported by the observations of gradual changes in the fossil record over geological timescales, can now be witnessed in the lab over the course of just a few weeks to make incredibly useful tools that benefit humanity.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lSrPOWgtkh4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Frances Arnold, after she received the news learning she won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, explains how she mimics nature and began using evolution to design powerful proteins.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104369/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Bachmann 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>
Nature doesn’t always make the things we need so three Nobel Prize winners figured out how to fast-track evolution in the lab to create medicines, biofuels and industrial chemicals for modern life.
Brian Bachmann, Professor of Chemistry, Vanderbilt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104351
2018-10-03T17:24:32Z
2018-10-03T17:24:32Z
How the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry have transformed research and saved lives
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239167/original/file-20181003-52663-1s36p01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frances Arnold, George Smith and Gregory Winter have won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ill. Niklas Elmehed/ Nobel Media</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/summary/">has been awarded</a> to three researchers for their work on “harnessing the power of evolution” to create compounds that are of benefit to humanity. One half of the nine million Swedish kronor (£770,686) prize will go to the American <a href="https://www.che.caltech.edu/faculty/arnold_f/">Frances Arnold</a> from the California Institute of Technology, US. The other half will go jointly to the American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Smith_(chemist)">George Smith</a> from the University of Missouri, US, and the Brit <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/sir-greg-winter-wins-the-2018-nobel-prize-in-chemistry">Gregory Winter</a> from the <a href="https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/">MRC lab in Cambridge</a>, UK.</p>
<p>Their work centres on techniques of “directed evolution” – a method which imitates natural selection. This can help to create new powerful proteins that achieve specific tasks.</p>
<p>The method is now widely used in the production of new synthetic drugs, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_antibodies">recombinant antibodies</a>, to process or produce biofuels and medical treatments. By engineering new molecules, the 2018 Nobel laureates have – according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – “taken control of evolution and used it for purposes that bring the greatest benefit to humankind”. </p>
<h2>Useful mutations</h2>
<p>One of the most crucial characteristics of evolving organisms – life as we know it – is the ability to replicate and mutate. All organisms can make copies of their genes and undergo changes that are passed to their progeny. In other words, we are totally dependent of evolving chemicals. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239195/original/file-20181003-52666-1gh25or.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frances Arnold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arnold’s work focused on the directed evolution of enzymes – proteins that accelerate chemical reactions. Because they are so useful, scientists had long tried to create enzymes with desired properties artificially, but with little success. </p>
<p>Arnold – who is the fifth to join an important group of women to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry – instead developed a method to produce mutations in the genes that produced certain enzymes in order to select the best ones. Different mutations will produce slightly different versions of the enzyme in each cell so, over time, one can select the one which works the best for a specific task. </p>
<p>Arnold’s discovery was hugely important – creating a completely new way to design and produce pharmaceuticals and renewable fuels for a greener transport sector. </p>
<h2>Phage revolution</h2>
<p>Smith and Winter also managed to use evolution to the advantage of humankind by developing a technique called <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3656071/">phage display</a>. </p>
<p>Smith first made the groundbreaking discovery of how “bacteriophages” – viruses that infect bacteria – work. Using standard DNA technology, Winter’s group then used the bacteriophages to evolve new proteins. Essentially, Winter used the phage technology in order to engineer new “antibodies” in the bacteria – large proteins that are used by the immune system to fight harmful bacteria and viruses. After many rounds of mutation and selection, artificial chemical evolution can select for the best antibody to fight a certain infection. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239207/original/file-20181003-52660-1a79a65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electron micrograph image of bacteriophages attached to a bacterial cell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr Graham Beards/wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Winter was one of the first to produce functional mammalian antibodies or part of them in bacteria. Crucially, this moved the whole experimental area from being totally dependent on experimenting with animals to a complete new world of exact biology that could be performed in a simple Petri dish. It is therefore fair to say that one of the great contributions of their research was to reduce the number of animals used in the lab.</p>
<p>Winter has set up important commercial antibody producing facilities at Cambridge, producing drugs that can tackle devastating autoimmune diseases and metastatic cancer. Clearly his entrepreneurial vision, ability to surround himself by extremely competent people and openness to new techniques such as phage display makes him a worthy winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. </p>
<p>The work by all three recipients was largely carried out in the 1990s. Nowadays, scientists including myself base most of our research on synthetic libraries of proteins and enzymes, so it has truly transformed the entire field of protein engineering research as well as saving the lives of both animals and people. And this is only the start – we may see many more cures come from research involving these techniques in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcos Alcocer received funding from BBSRC.</span></em></p>
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to work on how to use the principles of evolution to create new medical treatments and renewable fuels.
Marcos Alcocer, Associate Professor in Biochemistry, University of Nottingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104323
2018-10-03T08:17:30Z
2018-10-03T08:17:30Z
And then there were three: finally, another woman awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics
<p>Three, only three, is the number of women who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in the 117-year history of the prize.</p>
<p>Donna Strickland, aged 59 and an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, is the female academic who this year was awarded the holy grail recognition for her major contribution to physics. She shares the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/summary/">2018 prize</a> with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2018-nobel-prize-for-physics-goes-to-tools-made-from-light-beams-a-particle-physicist-explains-104274">2018 Nobel Prize for physics goes to tools made from light beams – a particle physicist explains</a>
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<p>The last time a woman received the Nobel Prize in Physics was 55 years ago, when Maria Goeppert-Mayer won in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/summary/">1963</a>. Before that it was the exceptional Marie Curie who won the prize in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/summary/">1903</a>. In <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1911/summary/">1911</a> Curie also won the Nobel prize in Chemistry.</p>
<h2>A major breakthrough</h2>
<p>Strickland’s <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/advanced-information/">technique</a> (powerful short laser pulses) was developed jointly with her PhD advisor Mourou, and is one of those major breakthroughs that any physicist would envy. It has myriad far-reaching applications, including in the field of medicine and the fight against cancer.</p>
<p>Some will see this award as a powerful response to the recent polemics that took place at CERN – one of the leading physics institutions in the world – after a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/01/physics-was-built-by-men-cern-scientist-alessandro-strumia-remark-sparks-fury">male physicist argued at a workshop on equity and diversity</a> that “physics was invented and built by men; it is not by invitation”.</p>
<p>CERN <a href="http://press.cern/press-releases/2018/09/updated-statement-cern-stands-diversity">issued a statement</a> saying that the physicist was suspended from any activity at CERN with “immediate effect, pending investigation” into the event. </p>
<p>Somehow this male physicist has forgotten that the Emmy Noether theorem, which he uses on a daily basis, was proposed by a female mathematician, Emmy Noether, whose work was critical for the development of what is now known as quantum field theory and particle physics.</p>
<p>So, yes, by awarding the Nobel Prize in Physics to a woman this year, the Nobel committee finally acknowledged the powerful contribution that a woman made, not only to a research field but to humankind.</p>
<h2>Long overdue</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the reality is that this 2018 award to a female physicist is long overdue. The list of female physicists who did (and do) deserve the holy grail of scientific recognition is very long.</p>
<p>And yes, the list of male physicists who should have got it too is also very impressive. But it is striking that only three women have received the physics Nobel since its creation, and that Strickland – at 59 years old and after such a major contribution – is still an associate professor at her own institution.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Higgs">Peter Higgs</a>, who was awarded a Nobel prize in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/summary/">2013</a> for predicting the existence of the so-called Higgs boson (which was only discovered in 2012, many decades after its prediction), <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system">admits</a> he had published a relatively small number of papers in his whole career. Was he an associate professor? No. He had been promoted to professor of theoretical physics at the University of Edinburgh. </p>
<p>Let us be fair to the Nobel committee though. Somehow they have now repaired an injustice. The British astronomer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jocelyn-Bell-Burnell">Jocelyn Bell-Burnell</a> discovered a new kind of star (pulsars) but was omitted when her PhD advisor (who had not made the observations but had obtained the funding for the observations) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1974/summary/">1974</a>.</p>
<p>The now Dame Jocelyn was this year chosen by a panel of scientists to receive the US$3 million special <a href="https://breakthroughprize.org/News/45">Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics</a>, in part for her work on pulsars but also for a lifetime of inspiring scientific leadership.</p>
<h2>More acknowledgement for women in physics</h2>
<p>There is still a gender gap in physics, and in science in general.</p>
<p>The last <a href="https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/reports-and-plans/2015/physics-decadal-plan.pdf">decadal plan for physics (2012-2021)</a>, released by the Australian Academy of Science, showed women only made up 21% of the staff in physics – that’s just one in five. The Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) project <a href="https://www.sciencegenderequity.org.au/gender-equity-in-stem/">notes</a> the widening gap in men and women in senior roles in the natural and physical sciences.</p>
<p>Some of the data used in those reports are more than a decade old but more recent figures still show a wide gap in the number of men and women in physics and astronomy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239089/original/file-20181003-52660-1gual9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Field of teaching’ data from the Department of Education and Training Higher Education Statistics collection for 2016 (most recent data available). A major caveat with respect to the staff data is that this collection doesn’t include research-only positions, (i.e., it only captures academics with a full or part-time teaching load). It also doesn’t include casual or sessional academics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Academy of Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At least now with Strickland’s award, a female former PhD student is recognised at the same time as her male then advisor, Mourou. Perhaps one day, the Nobel prize will be awarded to two or three women physicists, one of whom is a student and the other one their advisor.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/study-of-1-6-million-grades-shows-little-gender-difference-in-maths-and-science-at-school-101242">Study of 1.6 million grades shows little gender difference in maths and science at school</a>
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<p>For now, we can only hope that by rewarding Strickland with a Nobel prize, the Nobel committee has sent a strong signal to academic institutions about the need to acknowledge the contributions of women in physics properly, and promote them adequately in the same way as their male counterparts for similar contributions.</p>
<p>My take on this: three is a magic number because it signifies a change that hopefully will inspire women and girls to enter physics and make contributions that change human’s life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celine Boehm 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>
Donna Strickland is the first woman in 55 years to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Let’s hope the next such award to a woman won’t take so long.
Celine Boehm, Head of School for Physics, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104282
2018-10-03T05:14:24Z
2018-10-03T05:14:24Z
Arthur Ashkin’s optical tweezers: the Nobel Prize-winning technology that changed biology
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238983/original/file-20181002-85608-q4o4py.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/image-vector/abstract-red-laser-beam-isolated-on-631003721?src=ynKx9mYkRVMRbxz64yP0sg-1-5">Maryna Stamatova/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three pioneers of the laser technology that has made a big impact on the world. Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland were recognised for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses, which today is used in laser eye surgery. The other recipient was Arthur Ashkin for his groundbreaking work on optical tweezers. This method of using light to capture and manipulate tiny objects has changed the way we’re able to study microscopic life. </p>
<p>But how can light be used to move matter? The energy carried by light is fundamental to life on our planet. But as well as energy, light beams also have a momentum, which is called <a href="https://phys.org/news/2018-08-momentum-year-mystery.html">radiation pressure</a>. This means that if I shine a laser pointer at you, in addition to making you ever so slightly hotter, it will push you away with a very small force.</p>
<p>To use this force to lift something as big as, say, an apple would be almost impossible. The laser power required would run to many megawatts, probably enough to vaporise the apple before it got off the ground. But when an object gets ten times smaller in each direction it also gets 1,000 times lighter. So moving from something the size of an apple to a single cell means that the laser power needed to lift it falls from megawatts to milliwatts, a similar power to that of a laser pointer.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Ashkin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nobel Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As long ago as 1970, Ashkin (working at the world famous Bell Telephone Laboratories) began studying how you could use radiation pressure to <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.24.156">accelerate and trap</a> individual particles. Over the next 15 years he refined his ideas, brilliantly making the laser systems involved ever less complicated as time went on.</p>
<p>In 1986, working with Steven Chu (who later won his own Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for work on trapping atoms and ultimately became US secretary for energy) he published his <a href="https://www.osapublishing.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-11-5-288">seminal paper</a> on what we now call optical tweezers. In this paper, Ashkin showed that if the laser beam was focused very tightly using a microscope then, rather than pushing objects away with radiation pressure, it would counter-intuitively attract particles towards it. When the laser beam was then moved, the particles would follow it, held in the focus of the beam at all times. </p>
<p>Since then, optical tweezers have been used by many physicists and engineers, who have extended the technique so that it can <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030401807008784">trap many particles at once</a> and even transform the tweezers into <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006911428303">optical spanners</a> that cause the objects to spin. This later area is one of my own research interests and I remember, as a young researcher, the thrill of Ashkin asking me for a copy of my talk at a conference.</p>
<h2>Impact in biology</h2>
<p>Perhaps the greatest impact of optical tweezers has been in biophysics. Optical tweezers can be used to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2408388/">sort healthy cells</a> from infected ones, or identify those that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13205-6">might be cancerous</a>. It is also possible to use optical tweezers to measure both the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05321">minute movements</a> of a trapped object (equivalent to a few atoms in diameter) and <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-02525-9_32">similarly tiny forces</a>. </p>
<p>Turning optical tweezers from a manipulation tool into a measurement device has allowed biologists to study the workings of the <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00638">individual molecular motors</a> which are responsible for movement in the biological world. Such motors transport chemicals within molecules, allow cells to swim and, when acting collectively, allow whole creatures to move.</p>
<p>Ashkin showed us all just what can be done by having an idea and then seeing it through to completion. For years he worked in a minority field, pioneering and then refining his ideas inventing techniques that scientists now use as as essential tools of their trade - thank you Arthur.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miles Padgett receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the European Union
Miles Padgett is employed by the University of Glasgow</span></em></p>
Using lasers to trap and move particles changed the way we’re able to study microscopic life.
Miles Padgett, Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy (Physics and Astronomy), University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104274
2018-10-02T20:56:33Z
2018-10-02T20:56:33Z
2018 Nobel Prize for physics goes to tools made from light beams – a particle physicist explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239067/original/file-20181003-695-1082hzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2018 Nobel Prize for physics recognized discoveries that can make more powerful lasers.</span> </figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Ashkin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Nobelprize.org">Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gerard Mourou.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Nobelprize.org">Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our world is full of light, and we depend upon it to power life on our planet. So it is appropriate to honor three scientists who invented new ways of using light rays to explore our world.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/summary/">The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland</a> for developing tools made from light beams. <a href="https://history.aip.org/phn/11409018.html">Ashkin</a> won half of the prize for his work on optical tweezers, which are beams of light that can actually manipulate tiny objects like cells or atoms, while <a href="https://www.polytechnique.edu/annuaire/en/users/gerard.mourou">Mourou</a> and <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/physics-astronomy/people-profiles/donna-strickland">Strickland</a> won the other half for creating technology that generates high-intensity, ultra-short laser pulses, which are used for eye surgeries, material sciences, studies of very fast processes and plasma physics, among others. </p>
<p>Alfred Nobel specified in his will that the physics prize should be awarded for <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/">“the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics,”</a> so as a physicist I think he’d be pleased that this year’s award recognizes inventions made in the 1970s and 1980s that have led to practical applications that benefit mankind. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Donna Strickland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Nobelprize.org">Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Donna Strickland is only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics, out of 210 recipients, and the first since 1963. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/summary/">Marie Curie was the first, in 1903</a>; she won another one in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1911/summary/">1911 for chemistry</a>. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/summary/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer was the second</a>. Hopefully in the future the Nobel Prize committee can lower the average of 60 years between women laureates being named. </p>
<h2>What are optical tweezers?</h2>
<p>Using light to manipulate our world has become very important in science and medicine over the past several decades. This year’s physics Nobel recognizes the invention of tools that have facilitated advances in many fields. Optical tweezers use light to hold tiny objects in place or measure their movement. It may seem odd that light can actually hold something in place, but it has been well-known for more than a century that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure">light can apply a force on physical objects through what is known as radiation pressure</a>. In 1969, Arthur Ashkin used lasers <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.24.156">to trap and accelerate micron sized objects</a> such as tiny spheres and water droplets. This led to the invention of optical tweezers that use two or more focused laser beams aimed in opposite directions to attract a target particle or cell toward the center of the beams and hold it in place. Each time the particle moves away from the center, it encounters a force pushing it back toward the center.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Optical Cell Rotator uses laser beams from optical fibers to hold living cells in place. The beams can be used to rotate the cells for detailed imaging.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1997/summary/">Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics</a> for development of laser cooling traps, known as optical traps, that hold atoms within a confined space. <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.57.314">Askhin and Chu worked together at Bell Laboratories in the 1980s</a> laying the foundation for work on optical traps. While Chu continued work with neutral atoms, Ashkin pursued larger, biological targets. <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/235/4795/1517">In 1987, Ashkin used optical tweezers to examine an individual bacterium</a> – without harming the microbe. Now optical tweezers are routinely used in studies of molecules and cells.</p>
<p>Ashkin earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from Cornell. He started at Bell Laboratories in 1952 and retired in 1992. But he assembled a home laboratory to continue his scientific investigations. He has been awarded more than 45 patents.</p>
<h2>Why are fast laser pulses important?</h2>
<p>Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland worked together at the University of Rochester, where they developed the technique called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0030401885901208">chirped pulse amplification for laser light</a>. Strickland was a graduate student and Mourou was her thesis advisor in the mid-1980s. At the time, progress on creating brighter lasers had slowed. Stronger lasers tended to damage themselves. Strickland and Mourou invented a way to create more intense light, but in short pulses. </p>
<p>You are probably most familiar with laser pointers or barcode scanners, which are just some of the ways we use lasers in everyday life. But these are relatively low-intensity lasers. Many scientific applications need much stronger ones. </p>
<p>To solve this problem, Mourou and Strickland used lasers with very short (ultrashort) pulses – quick bursts of light separated in time. With chirped pulse amplification, the pulses are stretched in time, making them longer and less intense, and then the pulses are amplified up to a million times. When these pulses are compressed again (through reversing the process used to stretch), the pulses are much more intense than can be created without the chirped pulse amplification technique. As an analogy, consider a thick rubber band. When the band is stretched, the rubber becomes thinner. When it is released, it returns to its original thickness. Now imagine that there is a way to make the stretched rubber band thicker. When the band is released, it will end up thicker than than the original band. This is essentially what happens with the laser pulse.</p>
<p>There are a variety of ways the stretching and amplification can be done, but nearly all of the highest-power lasers in the world use some variation of this technique. Since the invention of chirped pulse amplification, the maximum intensity of new lasers has continued a dramatic rise.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239023/original/file-20181002-101585-jit8r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=372&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 chirped pulse amplification technique creates extremely intense pulses of light by stretching in time short pulses of light before amplifying them up to a million times. When the pulse is compressed again, it results in pulses that are a million times more intense than the original light.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/10/popular-physicsprize2018.pdf">NobelPrize.org</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my own field of particle physics, chirped pulse amplification-based lasers are used <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/312/5772/374.full">to accelerate beams of particles</a>, possibly providing a path to greater acceleration in a shorter distance. This could lead to lower-cost, high-energy accelerators that can push the bounds of particle physics – enabling us to detect evermore elusive particles and gain a better understanding of the universe. </p>
<p>But not all particle accelerators are behemoths like the Large Hadron Collider, which has a circumference of 17 miles. There are some 30,000 industrial particle accelerators worldwide that are used closer to home for material preparation, cancer treatment and medical research. Mourou and Strickland’s work may be used to shrink the size of these accelerators making them smaller and cheaper. </p>
<p>Ultrafast, high-intensity lasers are also now being <a href="http://spie.org/newsroom/2509-ultrashort-pulse-laser-eye-surgery-uses-fiber-technology-at-16-microns">used in eye surgery</a>. It can be used to treat the cornea (surface of the eye) to improve vision in some patients. The chirped pulse amplification invention is also used in attosecond science for studying ultrafast processes. An attosecond is one million trillionth of a second. By having lasers that produce pulses every attosecond, we can get a snapshots of extremely fast processes such as atoms losing an electron (ionizing) and then recapturing it.</p>
<p>The Nobel Prize-winning work was the basis for Strickland’s Ph.D. thesis from the University of Rochester. Dr. Strickland is now an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Mourou became the founding director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan in 1990. He later became director of the Laboratorie d’Optique de Applique in France.</p>
<p>The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics shines a light on the pioneering work of these three scientists. Over the past three decades, their inventions have created avenues of science and medical treatments that were previously unattainable. It is certain that we will continue to benefit from their work for a long time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Todd Adams receives funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. </span></em></p>
The Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to three scientists for the inventions of optical tweezers – in which two laser beams can hold a tiny object – and a method for creating powerful lasers.
Todd Adams, Professor of Physics, Florida State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104191
2018-10-02T18:25:37Z
2018-10-02T18:25:37Z
2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: a turning point in the war on cancer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238758/original/file-20181001-195250-k7doz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo win the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their foundational work on cancer immunotherapy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/about/events_news/office/soumu/koho/news/2018/181001_2_2.html">The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Kyoto University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are moments in the history of scientific achievement that benchmark the end of an era and the beginning of a new phase of reality for mankind. </p>
<p>The significance of these inflection points is sometimes readily apparent. NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first step onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, marked a new phase of space exploration. Other advances take many years for the historical significance to manifest, with an impact that appreciates over decades. That was the case with the development of the mechanized clock of the 15th century and the invention of the telephone in 1876. </p>
<p>Attempts to rid people of their cancer burden date back to 1600 B.C. when the disease was first recognized. But the idea of using a patient’s own immune system to eliminate aggressive cancers is more recent. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1908/ehrlich/facts/">Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich</a> first postulated that the immune system might control tumors more than 120 years ago. Since then, researchers have tried to boost the immune system to wipe out cancers. </p>
<p>This week, the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/summary/">2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine</a> was awarded to <a href="https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/nobel-prize/jim-allison-bio.html">James P. Allison</a> and Tasuku Honjo for discoveries that have led to new medicines that activate the immune system and drive it to fight cancers. These therapies can defeat even the deadliest malignancies.</p>
<p>Allison and Honjo have revolutionized our understanding of how the immune system recognizes tumor cells and have created a paradigm shift in clinical oncology that will likely alter how we treat cancer for the foreseeable future. </p>
<h2>Standard weapons for fighting cancer</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Nobel winner James Allison talks about the impact of his invention.</span></figcaption>
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<p>To date, our best tools for treating aggressive cancers that have spread beyond the range of curative surgery have been radiation therapy and systemic chemotherapy agents. </p>
<p>For the most part these treatments kill rapidly dividing tumor cells by damaging their DNA or disrupting other essential cellular processes. This has led to most of the significant treatment advances we have achieved in terms of long-term survival in patients with advanced cancers. </p>
<p>I believe that soon cancer immunotherapy will equal, or rival, the impact of radiation and chemotherapy for patients diagnosed with cancer. </p>
<p>To understand the significance of Allison and Honjo’s discoveries, one must appreciate researchers have been trying to rally a powerful immune response against tumor cells for the past century. Prior to Allison and Honjo’s work, researchers believed that aggressive cancers grew unchecked because the immune response was too weak. The consensus was that if one could stimulate the immune system, it would respond and destroy the invasive tumor cells.</p>
<h2>Immune checkpoints</h2>
<p>Allison and Honjo, however, made a critical leap when they characterized two very important and potent pathways – called “immune checkpoints” – that can shut down the immune response. These pathways inhibit T cells – white blood cells that are charged with destroying virus-infected cells and tumor cells – and prevent them from “seeing” and attacking the tumor. </p>
<p>Allison and Honjo identified and characterized two different proteins, called CTLA-4 and PD-1, respectively, that sit on the surface of T-cells. When these proteins interact with matching proteins on tumor cells or other immune cells – the way a key fits a lock – the T-cells fall into “sleep mode” and don’t attack the tumor.</p>
<p>In many patients with cancer, these CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways shut down anti-tumor immune activity. Without immune surveillance, the tumors grow and spread. This meant that our early attempts to activate the immune system were like trying to drive a car with the brake pedal pressed to the floor. No matter how we tried, or stepped on the gas, the brakes thwarted any progress. </p>
<p>But Allison and Honjo’s research led to the development of a new type of drug: monoclonal antibodies that block the regulatory pathways controlled by CTLA-4 and PD-1. These drugs, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa8172">called immune checkpoint inhibitors</a>, basically attach to the CTLA-4 and PD-1 proteins and prevent them from switching off the T-cells. These new antibody-drugs have led to dramatic tumor regressions. The results are so impressive that the FDA has approved their use for a variety of advanced cancers such as: metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, head and neck cancers, and other tumors. </p>
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<span class="caption">Antibodies that block PD-1 and CTLA-4, called immune checkpoint inhibitors, are used in cancer immunotherapy to block signals from tumor cells and other regulatory cells. This activates the immune system and leads to an increase in T cells which then kill tumor cells.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lan Hoang-Minh, Ph.D., University of Florida Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>A new arsenal of checkpoint inhibitor drugs</h2>
<p>The excitement surrounding cancer immunotherapy is due, in no small part, to the fact that these new medicines are revolutionizing how we treat advanced malignancies in which chemotherapy, surgery and radiation have failed. Furthermore, cancer immunotherapy has already become the <a href="http://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1503093">preferred first option treatment for some cases of metastastic melanoma</a>, the deadliest form of skin cancer. It is currently being evaluated as the first line option over traditional chemotherapy in other cancers. </p>
<p>CTLA-4 and PD-1 represent only the first two well-characterized immune checkpoints among an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd4591">expanding list of targets</a> that have been identified on immune cells and are believed important for modulating T-cell tumor fighting. </p>
<p>There are more than a dozen immune checkpoint inhibitors that have already entered clinical development and there are endless possibilities for combining these new inhibitors with those that have already been shown to improve clinical responses in treated patients. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">See how the immune system destroys tumor cells with cancer immunotherapy therapy.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The risks of unleashing the immune system</h2>
<p>Although immune therapy is a breakthrough, it is not without risks to the patient. Taking the brakes off of the immune system can trigger undesirable and in some cases deadly consequences for patients treated with drugs. The killing power of the immune system is tightly regulated to protect normal cells from attacks that can damage critical tissues. Removing the brakes with immune checkpoint inhibitors can cause damaging inflammation in the skin, gut, heart, lungs and other vital organs. These risks can add up when these potent inhibitors are combined. And, the long-term side effects of immune checkpoint inhibition are not fully understood. </p>
<p>While the clinical responses to these treatments can be dramatic, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar4060">long-term tumor regressions are achieved only in a minority</a> (usually less than 20 to 30 percent depending on the tumor type) of treated patients. Also, the use of the PD-1 and CTLA-4 checkpoint inhibitors has not proven effective against all tumor types. In our <a href="http://doi.org/10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-15-0713">own</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.4161/2162402X.2014.994374">studies</a> of malignant brain tumors, my colleagues and I have identified unique properties that make them resistant to immunotherapy and have begun to identify strategies for overcoming this treatment resistance.</p>
<p>Thus, we have much still to learn and significant room for improvement in order to maximize the benefits of immunotherapy for all patients. Nonetheless, we have definitively entered a new era of clinical medicine with an accelerated progress in oncology treatments. </p>
<p>More than one in three individuals will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. Despite our continued advances in cancer prevention and early detection, a significant proportion of these individuals will be faced with advanced disease. With continued rapid progress building on Allison’s and Honjo’s pioneering discoveries, it is increasingly likely that a patient’s own immune system will prove the most effective strategy and final defense against an advancing and relentless malignancy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duane Mitchell holds patents related to brain tumor immunotherapy that have been optioned and/or licensed by Celldex Therapeutics, Inc., Annias Immunotherapeutics, Inc., Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc., and iOncologi, Inc. He is the co-founder of, iOncologi, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on cancer immunotherapy treatment. He serves as an advisor for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Inc., Tocagen, Inc., and Oncorus, Inc. He receives funding from the National Cancer Institute, Department of Defense, and several private foundations focused on brain tumor research and immunotherapy treatment. </span></em></p>
James Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for encouraging immune cells to attack cancer. See how their work has revolutionized cancer therapies and medicine.
Duane Mitchell, Professor of Neurosurgery, University of Florida
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104221
2018-10-02T01:55:34Z
2018-10-02T01:55:34Z
How two 1990s discoveries have led to (some) cured cancers, and a Nobel Prize
<p>This year’s award of the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/press-release/">Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine</a> to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, for their work in the early 1990s on immune checkpoint proteins CTLA4 and PD1, is a fitting recognition of how their work has led to a seismic shift in the way we treat cancer. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/james-allison-and-tasuku-honjo-deserving-winners-of-this-years-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-104163">James Allison and Tasuku Honjo: deserving winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine</a>
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<p>In a remarkably short time, drugs that inhibit these immune checkpoints (or immune brakes) have transformed the practice of clinical oncology. Drugs like <a href="https://www.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/10424P-10436G-10475H-10493G">pembrolizumab</a> (Keytruda), <a href="https://www.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/2638W-2641B">ipilimumab</a> (Yervoy), <a href="https://www.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/10745M-10748Q-10764M-10775D">nivolumab</a> (Opdivo), avelumab, durvalumab (Imfinzi) and <a href="https://www.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/11277M-11284X-11297N-11309F">atezolizumab</a> – some of which are now being subsidised on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) – are being applied across a range of cancers.</p>
<p>From AFL player <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/05/31/it-eats-cancer-cells-jarryd-rougheads-melanoma-treatment-exp_a_21386344/">Jarryd Roughead</a> to businessman <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/i-dont-want-to-die-i-still-have-things-to-do-keytruda-wins-ron-walkers-war-on-cancer-20150130-1323s8.html">Ron Walker</a>, to former US president <a href="https://www.cancerresearch.org/join-the-cause/cancer-immunotherapy-month/30-facts/20">Jimmy Carter</a>, anecdotes abound for the activity of immune checkpoint inhibitors in advanced cancers such as melanoma, lung, kidney and bladder and others.</p>
<p>One of the first patients I was privileged to care for in clinic had completed four rounds of treatment with an experimental drug – three months of infusions of a checkpoint inhibitor (one of which is now on the PBS). She had managed these infusions well, but past treatments had failed, so she was understandably anxious.</p>
<p>Before going to see her, I checked her scan report. </p>
<p>Then I looked at the scans.</p>
<p>I checked the report again.</p>
<p>My first words when I walked into her room were ones I never dreamed I’d say to someone with advanced cancer: “I can’t see the cancer on your scans anymore”. My entrance would have been a lot more dramatic if the nurse hadn’t already told her the good news. </p>
<p>“When can I book a holiday?” she said.</p>
<h2>How checkpoint inhibitors work</h2>
<p>Originally, Allison and Honjo’s studies were focused on the underlying machinery of how the immune system controls itself. Like many mechanisms in our body, the immune system has the ability to sense prevailing conditions and rapidly amplify a response to defend the body. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-does-the-immune-system-work-27163">Explainer: how does the immune system work?</a>
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<p>This powerful process has evolved over millions of years. But a powerful system also needs powerful regulation, for which our bodies have evolved so-called “checkpoints”, or brakes, that guard against overactivity of the immune response.</p>
<p>There are myriad <a href="https://wiki.cancer.org.au/oncologyformedicalstudents/Principles_of_cancer_immunotherapy">immune checkpoint proteins</a> on the surface of immune cells and normal cells of the body to allow this regulation to occur. Immune checkpoints work in a committee to vote their approval or disapproval of whether an immune cell becomes activated and attacks when it meets and recognises another cell or organism.</p>
<p>Insufficient or impaired checkpoint signalling allows an overreaction, which may contribute to the causes of autoimmune diseases such as colitis and arthritis. Conversely overactivity of immune checkpoints can obscure and confuse the immune system, allowing infected or abnormal cells to persist.</p>
<p>Cancer cells use these immune checkpoints to hide and evade from immune cells, tipping the balance in favour of the cancer and turning each immune cell off. Checkpoint inhibitor drugs work by not allowing the brakes to come on, so the immune system can keep attacking the cancer.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fourth-pillar-how-were-arming-the-immune-system-to-help-fight-cancer-48152">The fourth pillar: how we're arming the immune system to help fight cancer</a>
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<p>Allison and Honjo initially conceived that their discoveries may help treat chronic infections such as hepatitis B and C. The drugs created from their discoveries remain in trials for these conditions, but their most exciting application has come through the treatment of cancer.</p>
<p>Using the power of the immune system to fight off cancer actually goes back to the late 19th century. Surgeon <a href="https://www.cancerresearch.org/blog/april-2015/what-ever-happened-to-coleys-toxins">William Coley</a> had developed an approach to treating cancer that involved injecting patients with a mixture of heat-killed bacteria in the hopes of stimulating the body’s “resisting powers.” </p>
<p>But with rapid understanding of the physics of radiotherapy, and the chemistry of chemotherapy, the use of immune therapy for cancer languished. It waited until we had a better understanding of the biology of the immune system. </p>
<p>We now know that the current crop of immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs will help a minority of patients across many cancers, but still fail the majority. Our understanding still feels very basic. We can’t yet predict who will be helped, who will be failed, who will suffer side-effects, or who will benefit from different combinations of therapy. </p>
<p>But this platform of studies and drugs will provide us with the foundation to understand how the immune system is structured and could be reactivated in every person with cancer, to try to solve this puzzle in real-time for each individual.</p>
<p>The work of Allison and Honjo has given us hope of delivering mundane miracles to everyone with cancer, and turning cancer patients back into people.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cancer-immunotherapy-drugs-like-keytruda-and-opdivo-hold-hope-for-some-but-theres-still-a-way-to-go-81320">Cancer immunotherapy drugs like Keytruda and Opdivo hold hope for some, but there's still a way to go</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Gedye is the principal investigator on ANZUP cooperative group clinical trials supported by the manufacturers of nivolumab and pembrolizumab. He participates in pharmaceutical company advisory boards, but any and all fees are donated directly to the Hunter Medical Research Institute, University of Newcastle.</span></em></p>
In a remarkably short period of time, drugs that harness the power of the immune system, have been used to successfully treat many cancers.
Craig Gedye, Oncologist and Senior Lecturer, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104163
2018-10-01T13:38:59Z
2018-10-01T13:38:59Z
James Allison and Tasuku Honjo: deserving winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238664/original/file-20181001-195269-1xmjpoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, 2018 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niklas Elmehed. Copyright: Nobel Media AB 2018</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/press-release/">awarded</a> to two immunologists for their revolutionary approaches to treat cancer. <a href="https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/james_allison.html">James Allison</a>, based in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, and <a href="http://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/static/en/research/forefronts/archives/honjo.html">Tasuku Honjo</a>, based at Kyoto University in Japan, led exciting and groundbreaking work on developing new types of immunotherapy that help our immune system fight cancer.</p>
<p>Immune cells need to be very tightly controlled to stop them being switched on inappropriately and causing inflammation. Cells in our immune system have a series of on and off switches that work in harmony to help regulate their function. The off switches – called “checkpoints” – are a bit like the brakes on your car. </p>
<p>This immune balancing act generally works well, but not in the case of cancer tumours. Tumours can encourage the immune brakes to stay on, which means our immune response is dampened and the immune cells cannot kill the tumour effectively. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-weaponising-the-bodys-immune-system-can-deliver-a-cure-for-cancer-43494">How weaponising the body's immune system can deliver a cure for cancer</a>
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<p>By exploiting knowledge of how immune cells work, the researchers found that they could help the immune cells attack the tumour. The treatment works by releasing the brakes from specific immune cells called T cells. This allows the T cells to stay switched on and releases them to kill the tumour cells.</p>
<p>Allison was studying a protein (called CTLA-4) that is a critical brake for our immune system. It competes with our “on” switches to help control immunity. He realised that blocking CTLA-4 action could have amazing potential to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8596936">help our immune cells attack tumour cells</a>. </p>
<p>Honjo <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC556898/">discovered</a> another group of checkpoints called the PD-1 family. This family of proteins works in a completely different way to CTLA-4 but also acts as an immune brake. </p>
<p>Both researchers saw the potential of their work and realised that targeting these two sets of immune brakes could revolutionise cancer therapy. The discovery of checkpoint inhibitors as immunotherapy has been an enormous breakthrough in cancer therapy. </p>
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<h2>Combination therapy</h2>
<p>A bonus is that, because these therapies have such different mechanisms, they can be used in combination. Combination therapy has proved in some cases to be even more effective at treating patient’s tumours than one drug on its own.</p>
<p>The field of immunotherapy is one of the most exciting fields in immunology. As we learn more about immunology and how immune cells work, we are identifying more checkpoints and more ways we can look to harness the power of our immune system to treat cancer. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/immunotherapy-drugs-could-herald-new-era-in-cancer-treatment-39264">Immunotherapy drugs could herald new era in cancer treatment</a>
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<p>Immunotherapy is also important for other diseases like autoimmunity where the immune system is overreacting. In this case, we may want to dampen the immune system to help restore the normal balance. </p>
<p>As we know more about immunology, the number of targets we can look to manipulate and the application of immunotherapies is growing making this an incredibly exciting time to be an immunologist.</p>
<p>This prize awards a fantastic body of work from two outstanding labs and is an amazing achievement. However, it is important to recognise that this groundbreaking research has been built from fundamental work on immunology and that there is a crucial place for both fundamental as well as clinically applied (so-called “translational”) work in research.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104163/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheena Cruickshank 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>
Allison and Honjo discovered how inhibiting the brakes in our immune systems can be used to treat cancer.
Sheena Cruickshank, Professor in Biomedical Sciences, University of Manchester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.