Tag Archives: Nobel Prize

White House Press Office

Remarks by the President on American Energy — Lemont, Illinois

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By The White House

Argonne National Laboratory
Lemont, Illinois

1:31 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! (Applause.) Hello, Illinois! Hello! It is good to be home! (Applause.)

Well, let me begin by thanking Ann for the great introduction, the great work she’s doing, the leadership she’s showing with her team on so many different, amazing technological breakthroughs. I want to thank Dr. Isaacs and Dr. Crabtree for giving me a great tour of your facilities.

It’s not every day that I get to walk into a thermal test chamber. (Laughter.) I told my girls that I was going to go into a thermal test chamber and they were pretty excited. I told them I’d come out looking like the Hulk. (Laughter.) They didn’t believe that.

I want to thank my friend and your friend — a truly great U.S. Senator, Senator Dick Durbin — huge supporter of Argonne. (Applause.) An outstanding member of Congress who actually could explain some of the stuff that's going on here — Bill Foster is here. (Applause.) Congressman Bobby Rush, a big supporter of Argonne — glad he’s here. (Applause.) We’ve got a number of state and local officials with us, including your Mayor, Brian Reaves. (Applause.)

And I could not come to Argonne without bringing my own Nobel Prize-winning scientist, someone who has served our country so well over the past four years — our Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu. (Applause.)

Now, I’m here today to talk about what should be our top priority as a nation, and that's reigniting the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class and an economy built on innovation. In my State of the Union address, I said our most important task was to drive that economic growth, and I meant it. And every day, we should be asking ourselves three questions: How do we make America a magnet for good jobs? How do we equip our people with the skills and training to do those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?

Those of you who have chairs — I wasn’t sure everybody had chairs there. (Laughter.) Please feel free to sit down — I'm sorry. Everybody was standing and I thought Argonne — one of the effects of the sequester, you had to — (laughter) — get rid of chairs. (Applause.) That's good, I'm glad we've got some chairs.

So I chose Argonne National Lab because right now, few areas hold more promise for creating good jobs and growing our economy than how we use American energy.

After years of talking about it, we’re finally poised to take control of our energy future. We produce more oil than we have in 15 years. We import less oil than we have in 20 years. We’ve doubled the amount …read more
Source: White House Press Office

Articles of Interest

Budget Crisis Hurts University Research Programs

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

By Gabriel Debenedetti and Peter Rudegeair
March 9 (Reuters) – Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Carol Greider used to have eight to 10 young researchers working in her university laboratory, but with U.S. government funds for scientific research shrinking in recent years, she’s gone down to four.
Sequestration, Washington’s name for $85 billion in federal spending cuts this year, promises to cut even deeper into Greider’s team at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She’s decided she cannot afford to hire “a promising young researcher” she wanted to add to her staff for the next academic year.
“I’m not sure in the current climate we have for research funding that I would have received funding to be able to do the work that led to the Nobel Prize,” Greider said at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) event last month, adding that her early work on enzymes and cell biology was well outside the mainstream. The NIH has been funding her research for the past 23 years.
Federally funded, university research has long been a major engine of scientific advancement, spurring innovations from cancer treatments to the seeds of technology companies like Google.
But now some of the largest U.S. research universities fear that spending cuts under sequestration could lead to layoffs, curtail scientific discovery and leave a generation with less access to careers in science, school officials said.
The across-the-board budget cuts, to be carried out by September 30, come on top of years of reductions in federal spending on research that have already had an impact on universities’ scientific exploration, officials from eight top research universities told Reuters.
“These cuts threaten to undermine our ability to carry on the basic research that leads us to new frontiers of knowledge and boosts American competitiveness,” Harvard University President Drew Faust told Reuters in a statement.
A report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a lobbying group, said sequestration would leave the United States $511 billion behind in research and development investment, compared with expected growth in spending on research in China. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

News, Politics, Government

Protesters in Tokyo demand end to nuclear power

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Thousands of people rallied in a Tokyo park Saturday, demanding an end to atomic power and vowing never to give up the fight, despite two years of little change after the nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan.

Gathering two days ahead of the second anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that sent the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant into multiple meltdowns, demonstrators said they would never forget the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, and expressed alarm over the government‘s eagerness to restart reactors.

“I can’t see what lies ahead. It looks hopeless, but if I give up now, it’s over,” said Akihiro Nakata, a 47-year-old owner of a construction company, who had a drum slung around his shoulder. “I’d rather die moving forward.”

Only two of Japan‘s 50 working nuclear reactors have been put back online since the disaster, partly because of continuous protests like Saturday’s, the first time such demonstrations have popped up in this nation since the 1960s movement against the Vietnam War.

People have thronged Tokyo parks on national holidays, and have gathered outside the parliament building every Friday evening. The demonstrations have drawn people previously unseen at political rallies, such as commuter “salarymen” and housewives. Organizers said Saturday’s demonstration drew 13,000 people.

Two years after the disaster, 160,000 people have left their homes around the plant, entire sections of nearby communities are still ghost towns, and fears grow about cancer and other sicknesses the spewing radiation might bring.

But the new prime minister elected late last year, Shinzo Abe, hailing from a conservative party that fostered the pro-nuclear policies of modernizing Japan, wants to restart the reactors, and maybe even build new ones.

The protesters said they were shocked by how the government was ignoring them.

“I am going to fight against those who act as though Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima never happened,” Nobel Prize-winning writer Kenzaburo Oe told the crowd, referring to the atomic bombings preceding the end of World War II. “I am going to fight to prevent any more reactors from being restarted.”

The demonstrators applauded, waving signs and lanterns that read, “Let’s save the children” and “No nukes.” Some were handing out leaflets, pleading to save animals abandoned in the no-go zone.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

Jon Stewart, Nobel Laureate

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By Steve Forbes, Forbes Staff

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart should be awarded a Nobel Prize in economics. The Nobel committee wouldn’t even have to issue a new one; it could just revoke the one it awarded to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in 2008. In January Stewart spoofed the idea of the trillion-dollar platinum coin, which had been floated as a way of getting around the ceiling on the national debt. The debt-ceiling crisis will reemerge soon, as will this silly proposal–the notion that the Treasury can mint such a coin and then turn it in to the Federal Reserve for cash to keep the government going. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

This Day in History

Today in History for 3rd March 2013

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Historical Events

468 – St Simplicius elected to succeed Catholic Pope Hilarius
1813 – Office of surgeon general of the US army forms
1893 – Columbian Isabella silver quarter authorized
1919 – 1st international air mail service from US, Seattle-Victoria, BC
1965 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1991 – Miguel Trovoada installed as president of Sao Tomé e Principal

More Historical Events »

Famous Birthdays

1873 – William Green, president of American Federation of Labor (1924-52)
1913 – Margaret AR Bonds, US pianist/composer/arranger
1920 – Julius Boros, golfer (PGA Champ 1968, US Open 1952, 63)
1950 – Re Styles, rock vocalist (Tubes)
1953 – Aleksandr Viktorovich Borodin, Russia, cosmonaut
1966 – Tone-Loc, [Anthony Terrell Smith], LA California, rocker (Letand#039;s Do It)

More Famous Birthdays »

Famous Deaths

1635 – Philips de l’Espinoy, historian/mayor of Ghent, dies
1850 – Oliver Cowdery, American religious leader (b. 1806)
1977 – Percy Marmont, actor (Secret Agent, Lisbon), dies at 93
1994 – Bob Crisp, cricketer (9 Tests for South Africa, 20 wickets at 37 35), dies
1999 – Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)
2005 – Max M. Fisher, American philanthropist (b. 1928)

More Famous Deaths »

Articles of Interest

Top U.S. Scientists Call For Draconian UN Social Engineering

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By Breaking News

United Nations logo SC Top U.S. Scientists Call for Draconian UN Social Engineering

A controversial peer-reviewed paper set to be published next month, authored by a dozen prominent scientists and other experts, is coming under heavy criticism, primarily for calling on policymakers to adopt draconian measures to change social norms and values through coercion — essentially mass social engineering under the guise of environmentalism, whether the public wants it or not. The dubious plan outlined by the academics, however, is already being blasted by analysts as a scheme to erect an “eco-dictatorship under United Nations rule.”

Indeed, a draft version of the paper, scheduled to be published in the March 2013, edition of the American Institute of Biological Sciences’ journal BioScience, openly calls for defying public opinion and restructuring society under the guidance of UN “teams.” Entitled “Social Norms and Global Environmental Challenges: The Complex Interaction of Behaviors, Values, and Policy,” the controversial document is uncharacteristically honest in outlining its wild recommendations to transform human civilization.

“Substantial numbers of people will have to alter their existing behaviors to address this new class of global environmental problems,” claim the authors, who include Nobel Prize winners and even the infamous but largely discredited biologist and “population bomb” alarmist Paul Ehrlich. “Alternative approaches are needed when education and persuasion alone are insufficient.”

In simpler terms, the self-styled arbiters of proper environmental stewardship and human values are seeking to use the force of government — without the consent of the governed, if need be — to radically change people’s thoughts and behavior. If taxpayer-funded propaganda and brainwashing fail to convince enough of the public to submit, coercion in the form of new rules, regulations, fines, and other policies will be needed, the authors claim.

“Policy instruments such as penalties, regulations, and incentives may therefore be required to achieve significant behavior modification,” the paper claims matter-of-factly. In a table included within the document, some potential examples of the envisioned “policy instruments” are outlined, starting from taxpayer-funded propaganda — “active norms management: advertising, information, appeals,” as the authors put it — and moving on through taxes, fines, subsidies, and other “financial interventions.”

Read More at The New American . By Alex Newman.

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…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Science & Technology

Tech Giants Fund Big Annual Award for Scientists

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By Kevin Spak Forget the Nobel Prize; pretty soon, enterprising medical researchers will really be after the Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize. Some of the biggest names in tech—including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin—have teamed to create the award, which rewards biological breakthroughs with fat, $3 million checks…. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Science

Articles of Interest

Obama Placing Fellow America-haters In The US Military

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By George Spelvin

Obama Feeds America SC Obama placing fellow America haters in the US Military

Will you fire on American citizens if the Commander in Chief gives the order? This is the question being asked of America’s top generals by the Obama administration.  “I have just been informed by a former senior military leader that Obama is using a new litmus test in determining who will stay and who must go [among] his military leaders,” begins the post of Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Jim Garrow, originator of the Pink Pagoda project that rescues baby girls from “gendercide” shortly after their birth in China.

Garrow goes on to say “The new litmus test of leadership in the military is if they will fire on US citizens or not.  Those who will not are being removed!”  Now a video is showing narrator Gary Franchi interviewing Dr. Garrow, who is calling the ‘Fire on US Citizens’ order a “serious breach of the Constitution and the Second Amendment.”  “Watch what Barack Obama does, not what he says. . .his patriotic words are in conflict with his actions. . .he treats the Constitution as a faint relic ,” says Garrow.

Every patriotic American who cares about our land needs to see and study this important video.  Whether or not you care about gun ownership, take heed because Garrow gives an account of the discrepancy between the opinion an average Chinese citizen “in the street” has of President Obama and that held by Chinese Communist leaders. “He’s a traitor to his own country,” is the prevailing attitude of the Chinese man in the street.  Giving the command to fire on one’s own citizenry is beyond the pale of acceptable presidential governance.  The “OathKeepers” website has posted its “ten commandments” of allegiance concerning the Oath to the Constitution all warriors must take, and the main emphasis is on refusal to fire on average American citizens for owning guns, an inherent right granted to them by the Second Amendment!

“China wants America to be disarmed,” Garrow continues on the Franchi video.  He reports that the Bank of China evaluation team came into America recently to evaluate our coal and gas reserves, which they could take over in exchange for our enormous debt owed to China.  The Chinese bankers are attempting to equate that debt with the value of America’s natural resources!

The Kansas area was of special interest to the Chinese team as it attempted to set prices on our clean coal and oil reserves. The team allegedly told Obama they want American citizens disarmed.  After all, having to shoot average residents of the world’s last Republic would make the Communists look bad on the world stage!

“We have a president that has such a deeply rooted hatred of America that it separates him from all other tyrants and who is allowing infiltration by Islamic influence at all levels of government,” says a patriotic poster.  John Brennan’s nomination as CIA Director would clearly solidify Islam in the Oval Office as Brennan has been called a recent convert to the Muslim faith.

This Gun Control and Confiscation …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Science & Technology

New ways to fund science: Geneticist, panel discuss how research and public interest can intersect

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s research funding dwindles in the United States and abroad, scientists need to rethink their methods for supporting the most promising projects—and how they communicate the meaningful results of that work to the public, according to Nobel Prize–winning geneticist Paul Nurse. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org

News, Politics, Government

Neruda foundation supports exhumation for autopsy

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The body of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda will be exhumed for an autopsy seeking clues to what killed him.

Neruda died days after the 1973 military coup that ended the life of his close friend, socialist President Salvador Allende. With Gen. Augusto Pinochet‘s forces killing prominent leftists, friends had a plane waiting to carry Neruda into exile.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time, but friends have told The Associated Press that the official cause of extreme malnutrition makes no sense because Neruda weighed 220 pounds (100 kilograms).

Forensic scientists have said it would be very difficult to determine from his remains whether drugs were given in doses big enough to kill him.

Still, the Pablo Neruda Foundation announced Friday that it supports Judge Mario Carroza‘s investigation.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

A poet too? Rare Churchill verse for sale

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Wartime leader, Nobel Prize-winning historian, amateur painter — and perhaps a poet, too.

A rare piece of verse by Winston Churchill is set to be auctioned, offering a glimpse into his patriotic and militaristic frame of mind. The 40-line work is written by hand, signed but not dated; experts believe it was written around 1900.

Churchill wrote poetry while a student but experts say this poem — called “Our Modern Watchwords” — is unusual because it was written when Churchill was an adult.

One section describes the mood before a naval battle: “The silence of a mighty fleet portends the tumult yet to be.”

It will be sold by Bonhams auction house in April and is expected to fetch between 12,000 and 15,000 pounds ($18,800 and $23,500).

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

History

Revealed: the only known poem by an adult Winston Churchill

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By hnn

The wartime leader was an unrivalled speechwriter, prolific author and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, but despite being a lover of poetry, he was only known to have written one poem, as a schoolboy at Harrow.

Now a 10-verse poem penned over two pages in blue crayon by Churchill while he was serving in the army has emerged for sale at auction in London.

The poem is a rousing celebration of the British Empire and of going to war to defend her, and describes anxious sailors and marines ahead of a battle. It is said to have been influenced by Kipling and Tennyson….

Source:
Telegraph (UK)

Source URL:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9852330/Revealed-the-only-known-poem-by-an-adult-Winston-Churchill.html

Date:
2-6-13

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

News, Politics, Government

Will The Cost Of Immigration Reform Explode The National Deficit?

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By Rick Ungar, Contributor Appearing this morning on ABC’s “This Week”, Pennsylvania GOP Congressman Lou Barletta, a staunch opponent of immigration reform, and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman went toe to toe on the projected costs to the nation of moving forward with an immigration reform program.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

Statement from the President on Secretary Steven Chu

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By The White House

I want to thank Secretary Chu for his dedicated service on behalf of the American people. As a Nobel Prize winning scientist, Steve brought to the Energy Department a unique understanding of both the urgent challenge presented by climate change and the tremendous opportunity that clean energy represents for our economy. And during his time as Secretary, Steve helped my Administration move America towards real energy independence. Over the past four years, we have doubled the use of renewable energy, dramatically reduced our dependence on foreign oil, and put our country on a path to win the global race for clean energy jobs. Thanks to Steve, we also expanded support for our brightest engineers and entrepreneurs as they pursue groundbreaking innovations that could transform our energy future. I am grateful that Steve agreed to join in my Cabinet and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House Press Office

News, Politics, Government

The World's Best Sustainability Ideas

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By Susan Adams, Forbes Staff Katerva, a four-year-old nonprofit set up to recognize and support stand-out sustainability efforts around the world, has just announced its second annual awards in a competition it bills as the Nobel Prize in the broad and somewhat amorphous field of sustainability. Among the eclectic choices: a computer game that solves scientific problems, a nonprofit co-founded by actor Matt Damon that leverages donor funds to provide microloans to clean water projects and a venture by Japanese technology giant Mitsubishi that makes ships move more efficiently through the ocean, cutting down on CO2 emissions.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

Taiwanese tycoon offers Nobel-type prizes

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A Taiwanese tycoon with vast business interests in mainland China is setting up what local media are calling Asia’s Nobel Prizes for outstanding achievements in natural and social sciences.

Samuel Yin announced Monday the establishment of the Tang Prize Foundation with an initial endowment of 3 billion New Taiwan dollars ($103 million). The 618-907 A.D. Tang Dynasty is widely revered by Chinese everywhere.

The prizes will be awarded every other year to international leaders in biopharmaceutical science, sustainable development, the study of China and the rule of law. The 118-year-old Nobel Prize does not cover those fields.

The prizes will be awarded starting next year. Winners will receive NT$50 million ($1.7 million).

Yin heads the Ruentex Financial Group and holds an estimated NT$100 billion in assets.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News