时间:2010-10-15 02:54 来源: 作者: admin 点击: 次
A technology that has brought 4 million babies into the world over the past three decades has been recognized with a Nobel Prize, along with two innovations that promise to revolutionize how those children live in the 21st century. The 2010 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine went to Robert Edwards of the University of Cambridge in England for pioneering in vitro fertilization, a process that overcomes many causes of infertility by creating embryos outside the body and implanting them in a prospective mother’s uterus. Edwards began research on IVF in the 1950s and later worked with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe. In the late 1960s Edwards was the first to try human egg removal and fertilization in vitro, a Latin term meaning “in glass.” “By a brilliant combination of basic and applied medical research, Edwards overcame one technical hurdle after another in his persistence to discover a method that would help to alleviate infertility,” the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute stated in announcing the prize. Ultimately, Edwards’ efforts gave rise to both a medical breakthrough and a now-outdated term — test-tube baby. The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born July 25, 1978. One winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, Konstantin Novoselov, was little more than a toddler at the time. Now 36, he and Andre Geim, both of the University of Manchester in England, published their Nobel-winning discovery just six years ago in Science (SN: 10/23/04, p. 259). Since then almost 50,000 research papers have been published on graphene, the material the pair isolated from graphite using ordinary adhesive tape. Graphene is made of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern, forming a single layer so thin that it’s nearly see-through. For such a humble material, graphene displays some remarkable properties: It conducts electrons with extremely low resistance, can conduct heat 10 times better than copper and exhibits strange quantum effects. Graphene is also flexible and stronger than steel. The substance could form the basis for new kinds of electronics, transparent displays, efficient solar panels or lightweight plastic composite materials for use in aerospace and other applications.
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