2008 Nobel Prize Announcements

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Prize Announcements

The 2008 Nobel prize in Economics, Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine and the Ig-Nobel Prizes have been announced.

While you're here, why not also read about past winners.

N.B. The time of the announcement is given in Stockholm time (Central European Time); subtract 6 hours to get the US Eastern Daylight Time).


    Date: Monday, October 13, 2008 (13:00 CEST at the earliest)
    Prize: ECONOMICS
    Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    And the prize goes to...

    Paul Krugman
    "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity".


    Date: Friday, October 9, 2008 (11:00 a.m. CEST)
    Prize: PEACE
    Awarding institution: The Norwegian Nobel Institute
    And the prizes go to...

    Martti Ahtisaari
    "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts"


    Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008 (13:00 p.m. CEST. at the earliest)
    Prize: LITERATURE
    Awarding institution: The Swedish Academy
    And the prize goes to...

    Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
    "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization"


    Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 (11:45 a.m. CEST at the earliest)
    Prize: CHEMISTRY
    Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    And the prize goes to...

    Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien
    "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP".


    Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 (11:45 a.m. CEST at the earliest)
    Prize: PHYSICS
    Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    And the prizes go to...

    Yoichiro Nambu
    "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"

    and

    Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa
    "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"



    Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008 (7:30 pm EDT)
    Prize: IG NOBEL PRIZES
    Awarding institution: The Annals of Improbable Research
    And the winners are:

    NUTRITION PRIZE:
    Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
    REFERENCE: "The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips," Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence, Journal of Sensory Studies, vol. 19, October 2004, pp. 347-63.

    PEACE PRIZE:
    The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.
    REFERENCE: "The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants. Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake"
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Urs Thurnherr, member of the committee.

    ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE
    Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
    REFERENCE: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino, Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.

    BIOLOGY PRIZE:
    Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert,, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
    REFERENCE: "A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835)," M.C. Cadiergues, C. Joubert, and M. Franc, Veterinary Parasitology, vol. 92, no. 3, October 1, 2000, pp. 239-41.

    MEDICINE PRIZE:
    Dan Ariely of Duke University, USA, for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.
    REFERENCE: "Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy," Rebecca L. Waber; Baba Shiv; Ziv Carmon; Dan Ariely, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dan Ariely

    COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRIZE:
    Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Agota Toth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
    REFERENCE: "Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, and Agota Toth, Nature, vol. 407, September 2000, p. 470.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero

    ECONOMICS PRIZE:
    Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.
    REFERENCE: "Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?" Geoffrey Miller, Joshua M. Tybur, Brent D. Jordan, Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 375-81.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Geoffrey Miller and Brent Jordan

    PHYSICS PRIZE:
    Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.
    REFERENCE: "Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String," Dorian M. Raymer and Douglas E. Smith, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 42, October 16, 2007, pp. 16432-7.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dorian Raymer

    CHEMISTRY PRIZE:
    Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA), for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.
    REFERENCE: "Effect of 'Coke' on Sperm Motility," Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill, and Deborah J. Anderson, New England Journal of Medicine, 1985, vol. 313, no. 21, p. 1351.
    REFERENCE: "The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola," C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang, Human Toxicology, vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395-6. [NOTE: THE JOURNAL LATER CHANGED ITS NAME. NOW CALLED "Human & experimental toxicology"]
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Deborah Anderson, and C.Y. Hong's daughter Wan Hong

    LITERATURE PRIZE:
    David Sims of Cass Business School. London, UK, for his lovingly written study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."
    REFERENCE: "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations," David Sims, Organization Studies, vol. 26, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1625-40.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: David Sims


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