American becomes first woman to win Economics Nobel

STOCKHOLM:
STOCKHOLM: Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson of the United States won the 2009 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for their work on the Elinor Ostrom organisation of cooperation in economic governance, the Nobel jury said.

Ostrom is the first woman to win the Economics Prize, which has been awarded since 1969.

"The research of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson demonstrates that economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organisation," the jury said.

Ostrom won half the 10-million-kronor (1.42-million-dollar, 980,000-euro) prize "for her analysis of economic governance" especially relating to the management of common property or property under common control.

Her work challenging the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatised, it added.

A professor at Indiana University whose name has circulated as a possible winner in recent years, Ostrom told Swedish television her first reaction was "great surprise and appreciation," and said she was "in shock" over being the first woman to clinch the honour.

She conducted numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, and concluded that the outcomes are "more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories," the jury said.

Williamson was honoured with the other half "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm."

He has argued that hierarchical organisations such as firms represent alternative governance structures, which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest.

"A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is ... that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets," it said.

The Economics Prize is the only one of the six Nobel prizes not created in Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel's 1896 will — it was created much later to celebrate the 1968 tricentary of the Swedish central bank and was first awarded in 1969.

Last year, the honour went to US economist Paul Krugman, a prolific New York Times columnist and fierce critic of Washington's economic policies, for his "analysis of trade patterns."

The Economics Prize wraps up the 2009 Nobel season.

Americans dominated the awards this year.

For the five Nobel prizes announced last week — for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace — nine of the 11 laureates were US citizens, including US President Barack Obama who sensationally won the prestigious Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

The Literature Prize went to German writer Herta Mueller for her work inspired by her life under Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship in Romania.

This year was also a record year for women laureates, with four honoured: Herta Mueller for literature; Australian-American Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider of the United States were awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize; and Ada Yonath of Israel was one of three scientists recognised for her work in chemistry.

The Nobel prizes, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, were first awarded in 1901.

Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, died childless in 1896, dedicating his vast fortune to create "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."

Laureates receive a gold medal, a diploma and the prize sum at formal prize ceremonies held in Stockholm and Oslo on the anniversary of Nobel's death, December 10.

NKorea fires two short-range missiles: Official

SEOUL
SEOUL: North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles off its east coast Monday, a South Korean official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the North had warned fishing boats to stay clear of parts of its coast from October 10-20.

TOI

World Muslim population is 1.57 billion: study

Washington,

Washington, Oct 8 (PTI) Muslim population across the globe stands at 1.57 billion which means nearly one in four people in the world practice Islam, according to a study which also says that India has the third-largest population of the community.

The study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life which covered more than 200 countries found that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23 per cent of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

"While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60 per cent of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20 per cent is in the Middle East and North Africa," the study said.

However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan wins Chemistry Nobel

Prasun Sonwalkar

London, Oct 7 (PTI) Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with two others, the Nobel Committee announced today.

Born in 1952 in Chidambaram, Ramakrishnan shares the Nobel prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".

Ramakrishnan earned his B.Sc. in Physics (1971) from Baroda University and his Ph.D. in Physics (1976) from Ohio University.

He moved into biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he took a year of classes, then conducted research with Dr Mauricio Montal, a membrane biochemist.

American Paul Krugman wins Nobel Prize in Economics

STOCKHOLM: US economist Paul Krugman, a fierce critic of George W. Bush's handling of the global financial crisis, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in

Krugman has taken the Bush administration to task over the current financial meltdown, blaming its pursuit of deregulation and unencumbered fiscal policies for the financial crisis that has threatened the global economy with recession.

He has come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican candidate is ``more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago'' and earlier that the GOP has become ``the party of stupid.''

The 55-year-old Princeton University professor has worked intensely on the impact of free trade and globalisation, as well as the driving forces behind urbanisation, the Nobel citation said.

The financial turmoil that has sent shares crashing has cast a shadow over this year's prize and after his triumph, Krugman said he was "extremely terrified" by the crisis, Sweden's TT news agency reported.

"I'm happier about it now than I was five days ago. I was extremely happy with the European summit yesterday, so I'm feeling better today, but it's still terrifying," he added.

"I never thought I would see anything that looked like 1931 in my lifetime, but in many ways this crisis does," he added.

A number of experts had predicted the crisis would prompt the Nobel committee to shift its focus away from liberal market theories now under increased attack because of the credit crunch.

And by naming a critic of unfettered free market policies, the jury has decided to confront major, civilisation-changing issues.

In columns for the New York Times, Krugman has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration's policies.

He strongly opposed the initial wording of US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's 700-billion-dollar bank bailout plan - which he described as "financial Russian roulette" - although he conceded that a rescue was needed.

On Sunday, he wrote admiringly of Britain's rescue scheme, buying stakes in troubled banks and extending huge guarantees, asking whether "Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, (had) saved the world financial system."

"The Brown government has shown itself willing to think clearly about the financial crisis, and act quickly on its conclusions. And this combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn't been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own," he wrote.

While he has few kind words for the administration, which he has charged with engaging "in a game of deception" on Iraq and the economy, Krugman is even more sceptical of the Republican candidate in the current US election campaign John McCain.

In a recent column he stated that Democrat rival Barack Obama was "wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse."

The Nobel committee hailed Krugman's economic approach "based on the premise that many goods and services can be produced more cheaply in long series, a concept generally known as economies of scale."

The theory shows that globalisation tends to increase pressure on urban living because specialisation sucks people into centres of concentration in which "regions become divided into a high-technology urbanised core and a less developed 'periphery'," the Nobel jury said.

Traditional trade theory assumes that differences between countries explain why some nations export agricultural products while others export industrial goods. Such a process holds out the prospect that some countries can improve their situations through complementarity.

But Krugman's "theory clarifies why worldwide trade is in fact dominated by countries which not only have similar conditions, but also trade in similar products," the Nobel jury wrote.

His theory helps to explain that globalisation tends towards concentration, both in terms of what a manufacturing base makes, and where it is located.

The Nobel committee has focused on an area of economic theory with deep implications for the understanding of how globalisation affects industries, populations, regions and the structure of trade, particularly in developing countries.

Krugman has written dozens of books and several hundred articles, primarily about international trade and global finance and was known as creating so-called "new economic geography."

In 1991, he received the 1991 John Bates Clark Medal, an award given every two years by the American Economic Association to an economist under 40.

He will receive his Nobel gold medal and diploma along with 10 million Swedish kronor (1.42 million dollars, 1.02 million euros) at a formal prize ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

Speaking to Swedish public television immediately after the announcement, Krugman said the award "obviously will seriously warp my next few days."

"I hope that two weeks from now, I'm back to being pretty much the same person I was before," he said. "I'm a great believer in continuing to do work. I hope it doesn't change things too much."

TOI

3 Americans share 2009 Nobel medicine prize

STOCKHOLM:
STOCKHOLM: Americans Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W Greider and Jack W. Szostak won the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering a

key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.

The trio solved the mystery of how chromosomes, the rod-like structures that carry DNA, protect themselves from degrading when cells divide.

The Nobel citation said the laureates found the solution in the ends of the chromosomes _ structures called telomeres that are often compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoe laces that keep those laces from unraveling.

Blackburn and Greider discovered the enzyme that builds telomeres _ telomerase _ and the mechanism by which it adds DNA to the tips of chromosomes to replace genetic material that has eroded away.

The prize-winners' work set the stage for research suggesting that cancer cells use telomerase to sustain their uncontrolled growth. Scientists are studying whether drugs that block the enzyme can fight the disease. In addition, scientists believe that the DNA erosion the enzyme repairs might play a role in some illnesses.

``The discoveries by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies,'' the prize committee said in its citation.

It was the first time that two women have been among the winners of the medicine prize, committee members said.

Blackburn, who holds US and Australian citizenship, is a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Greider is a professor in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Greider, 48, said she was telephoned by just before 5 a.m. her time with the news that she had won.

``It's really very thrilling, it's something you can't expect,'' she told The Associated Press by telephone.

People might make predictions of who might win, but one never expects it, she said, adding that ``It's like the Monty Python sketch, 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!'''

Greider described the research as beginning with experiments aimed at understanding how cells work, not with the idea for certain implications for medicine.

``Funding for that kind of curiosity-driven science is really important,'' she said, adding that disease-oriented research isn't the only way to reach the answer, but ``both together are synergistic,'' she said.

Blackburn, 60, said she was awakened at 2 a.m. ``Prizes are always a nice thing,'' she told The AP. ``It doesn't change the research per se, of course, but it's lovely to have the recognition and share it with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak.''

London-born Szostak has been at Harvard Medical School since 1979 and is currently professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is also affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the citation said.

The award includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) purse divided among the winners, a diploma and an invitation to the prize ceremonies in Stockholm on Dec. 10.

The researchers have already won a series of medical honors for their enzyme research. In 2006, they shared the Lasker prize for basic medical research, often dubbed ``America's Nobel.''

Some inherited diseases are now known to be caused by telomerase defects, including certain forms of congenital aplastic anemia, in which insufficient cell divisions in the stem cells of the bone marrow lead to severe anemia. Certain inherited diseases of the skin and the lungs are also caused by telomerase defects.

The Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced later this week, while the economics award will be presented on Oct. 12.

Prize founder Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, left few instructions on how to select winners, but medicine winners are typically awarded for a specific breakthrough rather than a body of research.

Nobel established the prizes in his will in 1895. The first awards were handed out six years later.

TOI

Two NATO soldiers reported killed in Afghanistan

STAFF WRITER 16:48 HRS IST

Kabul, Oct 5 (AP) Two more NATO soldiers, including one American, are reported dead in the latest fighting in Afghanistan.

A NATO statement says the US soldier died of wounds suffered in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan yesterday.

The statement says a second service member died of wounds in a roadside bombing today in southern Afghanistan. NATO is not releasing the service member's nationality.

The latest deaths follow an attack two days ago against a pair of remote outposts in Nuristan province. Eight US soldiers were killed in the Saturday attack, which was the deadliest against US forces in Afghanistan in more than a year.