Singer/Actress Melba Moore poses nude. ca. 1971. Image: Jack Robinson/Conde Nast Archive.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
US-Led Coalition Ramps Up Strikes On Syrian Town
A Turkish Kurd takes a rest on a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border, as he and others came to watch fighting between Syrian Kurds and the militants of Islamic State group, in Kobani, Syria.
MURSITPINAR, TURKEY (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The U.S.-led coalition intensified its aerial bombardment of Islamic State positions Thursday in the Syrian border town of Kobani as the extremist group fought street battles with Kurdish forces and reportedly rushed in reinforcements.
The battle for the town near the frontier with Turkey has emerged as a major early test for the air campaign aimed at rolling back and eventually destroying the extremist group. It has also strained ties between Washington and NATO-ally Turkey over the long-term U.S. strategy in Syria.
Ankara has called for the creation of a buffer zone inside Syria to secure the border, but the White House and Pentagon said Wednesday the U.S. is not considering that option. Such a zone would be costly and complex to enforce.
Columns of smoke rose over Kobani as warplanes buzzed overhead Thursday. Two strong explosions — apparently from an airstrike — echoed from the edge of the town, a cluster of low-slung concrete buildings nestled in rolling hills.
The crackle of gunfire and blasts could be heard on the Turkish side, where people watched the fighting unfold from a stretch of farmland. The coalition airstrikes have forced some Islamic State militants out of Kobani.
The U.S. Central Command said five airstrikes south of Kobani since Wednesday had destroyed an Islamic State group support building and two vehicles, and damaged a training camp. The strikes also hit two groups of Islamic State fighters, it said in a statement.
"Indications are that Kurdish militia there continue to control most of the city and are holding out against ISIL," it said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
But the Pentagon has said the town may yet fall to the extremists because air power alone cannot prevent it. Despite the airstrikes overnight and into the morning, the Islamic State fighters managed to capture a police station in the east of Kobani, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said 11 Islamic State fighters were killed, adding that Kurdish fighters captured four jihadis. The station was later struck by coalition jets.
The Observatory, which relies on activists across Syria, said Kurdish forces had surrounded the jihadists near the station and that heavy fighting was underway. The Observatory said the militants had seized more than a third of Kobani, but Kurdish officials disputed that, saying their forces had recaptured several parts of the town.
"I can confirm that they don't control a third of the city. There is only a small part of Kobani under the control of Daesh," said local Kurdish official Idriss Nassan, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the Islamic State group.
Both Nassan and the Observatory said more than 20 airstrikes have been conducted in the area since Wednesday afternoon. The fight for Kobani has brought Syria's civil war yet again to Turkey's doorstep, and the U.S. and its allies have pressed Ankara to take a more robust role in the coalition. Kurds have held massive demonstrations across Turkey in which they accuse the government, which has deployed its tanks just across the frontier, of doing nothing to save the town.
Responding to the criticism, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was unrealistic to expect Turkey to launch a ground war against the Islamic State group on its own. Cavusoglu spoke at a news conference in Ankara with visiting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who said there was no easy solution for Kobani.
"ISIL poses a grave threat to the Iraqi people, to the Syrian people, to the wider region, and to NATO nations," Stoltenberg said. "So it is important that the whole international community stays united in this long-term effort."
Cavusoglu said Turkey is prepared to play a bigger part once a deal is reached with the coalition. "Turkey will not hold back from carrying out its role," he said. Turkish officials have said that while they do not want Kobani to fall, they will not take on a greater role until the coalition outlines a broader strategy that also weakens Syrian President Bashar Assad, who at the moment is best positioned to benefit from any rollback of the Islamic State group.
Ankara also is suspicious of the Syrian Kurdish forces fighting in Kobani, seeing them as an extension of the Kurdish PKK, which waged a long and bloody insurgency against Turkey. The U.S. special envoy for the coalition, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, was expected to travel to Turkey after a stop-over Thursday in Egypt in which he met with Egyptian and Arab League officials. Secretary of State John Kerry and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have spoken at least twice this week.
Islamic State militants launched their offensive on Kobani in mid-September, capturing several nearby Kurdish villages and steadily strengthening their control around the town. The fighting has forced at least 200,000 residents to flee over the frontier into Turkey.
The Observatory's chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said more than 500 people have been killed in and around Kobani since the fighting began. He said the Islamic State group was rushing in reinforcements, indicating the extremists also view Kobani as a test of will.
"Entangled" By Etienne George
US Military Aircraft Arrive In Liberia
MONROVIA, LIBERIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Presidents of several West African countries ravaged by Ebola pleaded for aid at the World Bank on Thursday as the U.S. military ramped up its efforts in Liberia, the country that has been hardest hit by the disease.
"Our people are dying," Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma said by videoconference at a World Bank meeting in Washington on the Ebola response. He called the epidemic "a tragedy unforeseen in modern times" and said the world is not responding fast enough as children are orphaned and doctors and nurses keep dying.
A Uganda-born doctor, John Taban Dada, died early Thursday of Ebola at a treatment center on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia's capital. Liberian Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said the gynecologist and surgeon was to be immediately buried.
His death brings to four the number of doctors who have died in Liberia since the outbreak. More than 90 health workers, including nurses and physician assistants, have also died. Two U.S. military flights were due to arrive Thursday at an airport outside Monrovia, Army Capt. R. Carter Langston told The Associated Press in an email.
Critics say Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's handling of the crisis has been heavy handed and ineffective. Police used batons and rattan whips to disperse 100 protesters Thursday outside the National Assembly, where lawmakers were debating granting her even more powers beyond those contained in a state of emergency declared in August. Liberian state radio announced that Senate elections scheduled for next week would be postponed. No new date was given.
The outbreak has killed more than 3,800 people, according to the latest World Health Organization figures. The vast majority of those deaths have been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The U.S. military is working to build medical centers in Liberia and may send up to 4,000 soldiers to help with the Ebola crisis. Medical workers and beds for Ebola patients are sorely lacking. Liberia and Sierra Leone, for instance, have only enough beds for about 21 percent and 26 percent of their needs, respectively, WHO said Wednesday.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said his country would provide more than 750 troops to help build treatment centers and an Ebola "training academy" in Sierra Leone. Army medics and helicopters will provide direct support. Britain will also contribute an aviation support ship.
British troops are expected to arrive next week in Sierra Leone, where they will join military engineers and planners who have been there for nearly a month helping to construct medical centers. The German military has started flying material such as protective clothing from Senegal to the worst-hit countries. A German military advance team plans to head to Monrovia on Friday to prepare the way for a wider aid deployment expected to start in mid-November. The military is expected to set up a clinic for 50 patients.
Meanwhile, Sierra Leone officials finally released a shipping container filled with medical gear and mattresses that had been held up at the port for more than a month. Ibrahim Bangura, an official who handles medical supplies, said the container's contents were finally in his possession on Thursday. Bureaucracy and political infighting were blamed for delay in distributing the aid.
In Guinea, where the first Ebola cases were confirmed back in March, Doctors Without Borders warned on Thursday of a "massive" influx of cases in the capital. The aid group's center in Conakry received 22 patients on Monday alone, including 18 from the same region 50 kilometers east of the city, the group said Thursday in a statement, adding that its facilities were reaching their limits.
"This seems to confirm fears of a massive increase of cases in the capital," the group said. Dada, the naturalized Liberian doctor who died Thursday, served as the medical director of the Redemption Hospital in Monrovia from 2008 to 2013 before moving on to take up a new assignment at the country's largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center, according to authorities at the Redemption Hospital.
Ebola "has come for the health workers," said Dr. Atai Omoruto, a Ugandan doctor heading the newest Ebola treatment center at what used to be Island Clinic in the western suburbs of the city. There was continued concern about Ebola spreading in Spain, where the first person known to have caught the disease outside the outbreak zone in West Africa became sick.
The condition of Spanish nursing assistant Teresa Romero deteriorated on Thursday, said Yolanda Fuentes, deputy director of Madrid's Carlos III hospital. The woman's brother, Jose Ramon Romero, told reporters outside the hospital that his sister had been intubated because of "something to do with the lungs."
Intubation involves inserting a plastic tube into a patient's windpipe. The procedure is usually done to help patients breathe better either with or without a respirator or to administer drugs. But several hours after Romero spoke, a hospital spokeswoman denied that Teresa Romero had been intubated and said she was breathing on her own.
Three doctors have been admitted to the Madrid hospital for precautionary observation, bringing to seven the number being monitored at the center, health officials said Thursday. In Germany, a man infected in Liberia arrived Thursday at a hospital for treatment — the third Ebola patient to be flown to the country.
The St. Georg Hospital in Leipzig said the man, who works for the United Nations in Liberia and whose name was not given, will be placed in a special isolation unit. The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, died Wednesday in Dallas. Five major U.S. airports plan to try to catch any travelers from Ebola-ravaged countries who may be carrying the disease by checking their temperatures on arrival.
French Novelist Patrick Modiano Wins Nobel Prize In Literature
French novelist Patrick Modiano has been awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation". Most of Modiano's work were focused on the Holocaust. The 2010 release of the German translation of La Place de l'Étoile won Modiano the German Preis der SWR-Bestenliste (Prize of the Southwest Radio Best-of List) from the Südwestrundfunk radio station, which hails the book as a major Post-Holocaust work. In 1973, Modiano co-wrote the screenplay of Lacombe Lucien, a movie directed by Louis Malle which focuses on the involvement of a boy in the "French Gestapo." Image: Nicolas Hidiroglou, Paris, 2007
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
2 Americans, 1 German Wins Nobel Prize In Chemistry
Two separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, developed by Stefan Hell in 2000. Two laser beams are utilized; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow, another cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a nanometre-sized volume. Scanning over the sample, nanometre for nanometre, yields an image with a resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit.
Eric Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation for the second method, single-molecule microscopy. The method relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric Betzig utilized this method for the first time.
Today, nanoscopy is used world-wide and new knowledge of greatest benefit to mankind is produced on a daily basis.
------------The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
LED There Be Light: 3 Share Nobel For Blue Diode
STOCKHOLM (AP) — An invention that promises to
revolutionize the way the world lights its homes and offices — and
already helps create the glowing screens of mobile phones, computers and
TVs— earned a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for two Japanese scientists and a
Japanese-born American.
"Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps," the Nobel committee said in announcing its award to Japanese researchers Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and naturalized U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura.
Their work, done in the early 1990s, led to a fundamental transformation of technology for illumination, the committee said. And when the three arrive in Stockholm to collect their awards in early December, "they will hardly fail to notice the light from their invention glowing in virtually all the windows of the city."
Nakamura, 60, is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Akasaki, 85, is a professor at Meijo University and Nagoya University in Japan, while Amano, 54, is also at Nagoya. Akasaki and Amano made their inventions while working at Nagoya, while Nakamura was working separately at the Japanese company Nichia Chemicals.
At a press conference, Nakamura said he is "happy to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality. Nowadays we can buy energy-efficient light bulbs in the supermarket and help reduce energy use. I hope this helps to reduce global warming too," he said, reading from a prepared statement.
Asked earlier if he realized the importance of his research early on, he told reporters, "Nobody can make a cellphone without ... my invention." Akasaki told a nationally-televised news conference in Japan that he had faced skepticism about his research bearing fruit. "But I never felt that way," he said. "I was just doing what I wanted to do."
Before their work, scientists had long been able to produce red and green light with LEDs. But they needed a blue LED as well to make white light, a goal sought for about 30 years. The three new Nobel laureates created blue LEDs.
It's "a fundamental invention that is rapidly changing the way we bring light to every corner of the home, the street and the workplace," H. Frederick Dylla, the executive director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics, said in a statement.
For illuminating schools, homes and offices, "it's quite possible this will change everything. All the light sources could easily become blue-LED-based light sources," said Mark Rea, director of the Lighting Research Center at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
Nadarajah Narendran, director of research at the center, estimated the share of illumination by LED lights in homes, offices, streets and industries is approaching 10 percent in the United States. Within five years, he said, that fraction will probably exceed 30 percent as prices come down.
People can already buy LED lights for their homes at a fairly affordable price, he said. In poor countries, such lights are replacing alternatives like kerosene lanterns, he said. "It's touched (people) from the poor to the rich in a very short time frame," he said.
The Nobel committee noted that for people not supplied by power grids, LED lamps may be feasible to use with cheap solar power because they consume so little energy. The committee also said the efficiency of LEDs helps save the Earth's resources because about one-fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting.
Not all reactions to the prize were laudatory. Many colleagues of Nick Holonyak, a retired professor from the University of Illinois who invented the red LED in 1962, have long said his work was unjustly overlooked by the Nobel committee. In the past, Holonyak, now 85, has said the award was far less important to him than the work.
But on Tuesday, Holonyak said the work done by the new winners was built on achievements by himself and dozens of others who worked with him. "I find this one insulting," he said in an interview in Urbana, Illinois.
Last year's physics award went to British scientist Peter Higgs and Belgian colleague Francois Englert for helping to explain how matter formed after the Big Bang. On Monday, U.S.-British scientist John O'Keefe split the Nobel Prize in medicine with Norwegian couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for breakthroughs in brain research that could pave the way for a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer's.
The Nobel award in chemistry will be announced Wednesday, followed by the literature award on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize on Monday. Worth 8 million kronor ($1.1 million) each, the Nobel Prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. Besides the prize money, each laureate receives a diploma and a gold medal.
Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, provided few directions for how to select winners, except that the prize committees should reward those who "have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind."
This year's physics prize, the Nobel committee said, was given with that idea in mind.
Malcolm Ritter
reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Yuri Kageyama in
Tokyo, Raquel Dillon in Santa Barbara and David Mercer in Urbana,
Illinois, contributed to this report.
Here's The Status Of Gay Marriage In All 50 States
(ASSOCIATED PRESS) The Supreme Court declined to hear a set of appeals on gay marriage, in one fell swoop effectively raising the number of states where the practice is legal from 19 to 30, in addition to Washington, D.C.
Here's the legal status of gay marriage in all 50 states:
WHERE GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL (And when it was legalized):
— CALIFORNIA (2013)
— COLORADO (Oct. 6, 2014) — Pueblo and Larimer counties began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples Monday, although official guidance from state Attorney General John Suthers is still pending.
— CONNECTICUT (2008)
— DELAWARE (2013)
— HAWAII (2013) — The state Legislature legalized gay marriage last year. Meanwhile, an appeal is pending of a federal court ruling that upheld Hawaii's previous ban.
— ILLINOIS (June 2014)
— INDIANA (Oct. 6, 2014) — Gov. Mike Pence reaffirmed his commitment to traditional marriage but said people are not free to disobey the Supreme Court decision to reject an appeal of a ruling striking down Indiana's gay marriage ban. County clerks issued a few licenses to same-sex couples.
— IOWA (2009)
— KANSAS (Oct. 6, 2014) — The American Civil Liberties Union says the Supreme Court decision in the 10th Circuit cases affects Kansas because it's in that circuit; the group plans to seek a federal court ruling to block Kansas' constitutional ban on gay marriage. Gov. Sam Brownback was defiant, saying he swore to uphold the constitution, and some same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses were turned away.
— MAINE (2012)
— MARYLAND (2013)
— MASSACHUSETTS (2004) — The first state to legalize gay marriage.
— MINNESOTA (2013)
— NEW HAMPSHIRE (2010)
— NEW JERSEY (2013)
— NEW MEXICO (2013)
— NEW YORK (2011)
— NORTH CAROLINA (Oct. 6, 2014) — The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina says it will seek an immediate ruling in federal court overturning the state's ban. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has previously said he wouldn't challenge such a ruling.
— OKLAHOMA (Oct. 6, 2014) — The Tulsa County Court Clerk's Office issued a marriage license Monday to Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin, the couple who successfully challenged the state's ban on gay marriage. Several other Oklahoma counties also issued same-sex marriage licenses.
— OREGON (May 2014)
— PENNSYLVANIA (May 2014)
— RHODE ISLAND (2013)
— SOUTH CAROLINA (Oct. 6, 2014) — A lawyer for a gay couple seeking to overturn the state's ban on gay marriage said she will ask a federal judge to immediately rule in their favor. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said he will continue to fight to uphold the ban.
— UTAH (Oct. 6, 2014) — Gay couples in Utah began applying for marriage licenses, and a handful of same-sex weddings occurred in Salt Lake County after Gov. Gary Herbert directed state agencies to recognize the marriages Monday.
— VERMONT (2009) — The first state to offer civil unions, in 2001.
— VIRGINIA (Oct. 6, 2014) — Gay couples started marrying in Virginia. Thirty-year-old Lindsey Oliver and 42-year-old Nicole Pries received the first same-sex marriage license issued from the Richmond Circuit Court Clerk's office then were married by gay-rights advocate The Rev. Robin Gorsline.
— WASHINGTON, D.C. (2010)
— WASHINGTON STATE (2012)
— WEST VIRGINIA (Oct. 6, 2014) — Attorney General Patrick Morrisey was studying the implications for the state in light of the Supreme Court decision.
— WISCONSIN (Oct. 6, 2014) — County clerks began accepting applications from gay couples for marriage licenses which, by Wisconsin law, can't be issued until after a five-day waiting period. In Milwaukee and Dane counties, where most of the roughly 500 same-sex weddings took place this summer before a federal judge's decision was put on hold, a few couples applied for licenses.
— WYOMING (Oct. 6, 2014) — A state case, scheduled for a court hearing Dec. 15, is similar to gay marriage cases in federal court but Wyoming supporters weren't ready Monday to declare unconditional victory. They say same-sex marriage could be legal in the state by year's end.
WHERE GAY MARRIAGE IS NOT LEGAL AND CASES ARE PENDING:
— ALABAMA
— ALASKA
— ARIZONA — In a ruling that called into question Arizona's gay marriage ban, a U.S. District Court judge handed a victory Sept. 12 to a gay man denied death benefits after losing his spouse to cancer.
— ARKANSAS — A state judge in May struck down the state's ban. The state Supreme Court brought marriages to a halt and is weighing state officials' appeal. Same-sex couples are also suing the state in federal court. The attorney general's office has asked that proceedings in both cases be put on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to take up a case from Utah.
— FLORIDA — A federal judge declared the state's ban unconstitutional in mid-August, joining state judges in four counties. He issued a stay delaying the effect of his order, meaning no marriage licenses would be issued immediately issued for gay couples.
— GEORGIA
— IDAHO — State officials are appealing a federal judge's decision to overturn the state's ban. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in San Francisco heard arguments Sept. 8 along with appeals from Hawaii and Nevada.
— KENTUCKY — Two Kentucky cases were among six from four states heard in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Aug. 6. Rulings are pending on recognition of out-of-state marriages, as well as the ban on marriages within the state.
— LOUISIANA — A parish judge ruled Sept. 22 that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional; the attorney general has appealed to the state's Supreme Court.
— MICHIGAN — The state's ban was overturned by a federal judge in March following a rare trial that mostly focused on the impact on children. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati heard arguments Aug. 6, and a ruling is pending.
— MISSISSIPPI
— MISSOURI — Attorney General Chris Koster announced Monday he wouldn't appeal a state court order that Missouri recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states. But two other same-sex marriage cases are pending in Missouri. One is a federal challenge in Kansas City; the other is a St. Louis case that focuses on city officials who issued marriage licenses to four same-sex couples to trigger a legal test of the ban.
— MONTANA
— NEBRASKA
— NEVADA — Eight couples are challenging Nevada's voter-approved 2002 ban, which a federal judge upheld a decade later. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel heard arguments Sept. 8, along with appeals from Hawaii and Idaho.
— NORTH DAKOTA
— OHIO — Two Ohio cases were argued Aug. 6 in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a ruling is pending. In one, two gay men whose spouses were dying sued to have their out-of-state marriages recognized on their spouses' death certificates. In the other, four couples sued to have both spouses listed on their children's birth certificates.
— SOUTH DAKOTA
— TENNESSEE — The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Aug. 6 on an appeal of a federal judge's order to recognize three same-sex couples' marriages while their lawsuit against the state works through the courts. A ruling is pending.
— TEXAS — A federal judge declared the state's ban unconstitutional, issuing a preliminary injunction. The state is appealing to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which is soon expected to set a date for arguments.
Monday, October 06, 2014
DTLA 'Dark Nights': Jennifer Korsen
Nobels Prize For Work On Brain's Navigation System
STOCKHOLM (AP) — How do we remember where we parked
the car? And how do we figure out a shortcut to work when there's a big
traffic jam?
"We can actually begin to investigate what goes wrong" in Alzheimer's, said O'Keefe, a dual British-American citizen. He said the findings might also help scientists design tests that can pick up the very earliest signs of the mind-robbing disease, whose victims lose their spatial memory and get easily lost.
It was in London in 1971 where O'Keefe discovered the first component of the brain's positioning system. He found that a certain type of nerve cell was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. Other nerve cells were activated when the rat moved to another place. He demonstrated that these "place cells" were building up a map, not just registering visual input.
Decades later, in 2005, the Mosers identified another type of nerve cell — the "grid cell" — that generates a coordinate system for precise "positioning and path-finding," the Nobel Assembly said. "I made the initial discovery over 40 years ago. It was met then with a lot of skepticism," the 74-year-old O'Keefe said. "And then slowly over years, the evidence accumulated. And I think it's a sign of recognition not only for myself and the work I did, but for the way in which the field has bloomed."
John Kubie of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York said this GPS system in the brain is used in such everyday tasks as remembering where a car is parked or taking a new shortcut on the way home. Kubie also said learning about it may teach scientists more about how the brain learns and remembers, even apart from navigating.
Born in Harlem and raised in the South Bronx, O'Keefe received his doctoral degree in physiological psychology at McGill University in Canada before moving to England for postdoctoral work at the University College London.
"If you can survive the South Bronx, you can survive anything," he said. Monday's award was the fourth time that a married couple has shared a Nobel Prize and the second time in the medicine category.
"This is crazy," an excited May-Britt Moser, 51, said by telephone from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, where she and her husband work. "This is such a great honor for all of us and all the people who have worked with us and supported us," she said. "We are going to continue and hopefully do even more groundbreaking work in the future."
Edvard Moser, 52, said: "It is really a joint work. Not only are we two people, but we are complementary as well." The Nobel Assembly said the laureates' discoveries marked a shift in scientists' understanding of how specialized cells work together to perform complex cognitive tasks. They have also opened new avenues for understanding cognitive functions such as memory, thinking and planning.
"Thanks to our grid and place cells, we don't have to walk around with a map to find our way each time we visit a city, because we have that map in our head," said Juleen Zierath, chair of the medicine prize committee.
Half the Nobel prize money of 8 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million) goes to O'Keefe and the other half to the Mosers. Each winner also receives a gold medal. The Nobel Prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
This year's Nobel announcements continue with the physics award on Tuesday, followed by chemistry, literature and peace later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday.
Lewis reported
from Stavanger, Norway. Malin Rising in Stockholm, Jill Lawless in
London and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
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