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Pioneers of lithium-ion batteries win the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists credited with the invention of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery. John B Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin, M Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University and Akira Yoshino of Meijo University will receive equal shares of the 9m Swedish kronor ($905,000) prize, which was announced today by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
The devastation of nuclear war is VR's latest reality check
Whether it's a face-to-face encounter with a shark or being in a Syrian city during an air raid, VR is bringing us experiences that we might otherwise never have. One such example is the burned-out shell of a dome that was right under the atomic bomb that America dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. In The Day the World Changed, not only are you placed in this bombed-out structure, you're also invited to interact with ghostly floating artifacts that were recovered from the site. The idea is that by witnessing the effects of such devastation, you'll at least learn something, if not be so moved that you join a campaign to abolish nuclear weapons.
Video games are more important than ever
When Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, it shocked the humanitarian world. What's more, Dylan himself hasn't behaved like a traditional Nobel winner: He hasn't commented on the honor and has yet to give an acceptance speech. At least one member of the Nobel panel has called Dylan's silence "rude and arrogant," and the public has been reminded that if he doesn't give a lecture within six months, he won't receive the $900,000 prize money. It's a new kind of strange in-fighting scandal for the Nobel community. However, it's not surprising. Selecting Dylan as a Nobel laureate may be contentious, but it's mostly a sign of growth for intellectual society -- at least in Literature, no one is off-limits, not even mumbling masters of wordplay and songwriting. Growing pains are expected as the world of mainstream politics, activism and academia is suddenly forced to consider the potential of new industries and vice versa. Songwriting might just be the beginning. With the growing accessibility of high-end living-room consoles and virtual reality headsets, it's easy to imagine a video game on a list of Nobel nominees in the near future. Nowhere was that more apparent than at IndieCade 2016, an annual festival celebrating independent video games held in Los Angeles, California.
'A Beautiful Mind': mathematician John Nash dies aged 86
Dr. John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician whose work included noncooperative game theory, has died aged 86. Known as Nash equilibrium, the theory is used in a broad range of fields, including economics, other social sciences, evolutionary biology as well as influencing computing and artificial intelligence. His work and life were turned into the film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 2001, also putting focus on the stigma of mental illness. Nash's famed work in math and other fields extended beyond the game theory work that won him the Nobel Prize.
Higgs boson researchers awarded Nobel Prize for physics
Sure, it may have been one of the easier Nobel prizes to call in recent years -- at least partly -- but that doesn't make it any less notable. This morning, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles," or what's come to be known as the Higgs boson. While the prize doesn't extend to the researchers at CERN who confirmed the existence of the Higgs particle last year, the Nobel committee did cite their work in the announcement, as did Peter Higgs himself, who said in a prepared statement that he "would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle." Professor Higgs isn't offering any more than that statement today, though -- one of his Edinburgh University colleagues tells the BBC that "he's gone on holiday without a phone."
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to pioneering graphene researchers
Last year's Nobel Prize in Physics may have been somewhat belatedly awarded to the inventors of the CCD, but this year's prize couldn't be more timely -- it's just been awarded to Russian-born researchers Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their "groundbreaking experiments" with graphene. Graphene, as you may well be aware by now, is the thinnest and lightest material there is, and could well pave the way for whole new generation of smaller, better, faster electronics -- among a host of other things. What's more, like so many great inventions, this one also had something of an inauspicious beginning -- the researchers kick-started their research just six years ago by peeling some flakes off a chunk of graphite with a piece of Scotch tape. [Thanks, Eddie]
The internet earns a nomination for 2010 Nobel Prize
Isn't Italy a place of contrast? After the country's judiciary slammed Google for failing to keep a tight enough leash on user-uploaded content, we're now hearing that its local version of Wired magazine is putting forward the internet as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its contributions to "helping advance dialogue, debate and consensus." Right then. Just in case you think this is all a bit silly -- and you should -- we're also hearing Nicholas Negroponte and 2003 Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi are both in support of the idea, which has been described as "a Nobel for each and every one of us" by Internet for Peace, an organization set up specifically to promote the web's candidacy. That's a pretty succinct way of putting it, but it also shows what's wrong with the idea: nothing devalues a prize's worth and meaning quite like handing it out to everyone. Just imagine icanhascheezburger.com slapping a legitimate Nobel laureate badge up on its homepage and you'll know what we mean.
Nobel Prize in Physics shared by CCD inventors, fiber optics pioneer
It's not every year that the Nobel Prize in Physics falls within our scope of coverage, but this year turned out to a big exception, as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has deemed it fit to recognize two breakthroughs in the fiber optics and digital photography. The first of those (and half of the $1.4 million prize) goes to Charles K. Kao, whose work in the mid-60s getting light to travel long distances through glass strands made the fiber optic cables we have today possible. The second half of the prize is divided between Canadian Willard S. Boyle and American George E. Smith, who both worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and invented the so-called charge-coupled device semiconductor, better known to anyone that has ever looked at a digital camera spec list as a CCD.[Image courtesy Nobelprize.org]
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR: New Noble Garden Achievements
More patch 3.1 information, this time the Noble Garden achievement revamp. Noble Garden is an Easter like celebration, complete with eggs and all other sorts of festivities. The event has been rather mundane in the past, especially compared to some other events like the fire festival or Halloween, but that appears to no longer be the case.You might be wondering why the Playboy Bunny is displayed as this article's image.Well, one of the achievements for the Noble Garden is to "Use Spring Flowers to place rabbit ears upon females of at least 18th level." And that to me just screams getting the title "Hefner," and I mean, Kendra was 18. So it's all good.The list of Noble Garden achievements after the break.
Apple boardroom now includes special "Nobel laureate" chair
It's official: Apple's board of directors now has a shiny new certificate to pin up over by the coffee machine, between the volleyball game announcement and the worker's-comp sign. Board member Albert Gore, Jr., who had some government gig before he won an Oscar, is a co-laureate (with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, honoring his work in climate awareness.TUAW extends congratulations to Mr. Gore and to the Apple board, who now have a much better shot at getting the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela to endorse the iPod and Leopard.Update: Apple's home page currently shows a tribute to Al Gore, and Apple is "bursting with pride." Picture if you read on. [thanks Martijn]
European duo awarded Nobel Prize for HDD-related discovery
Although you've probably never glanced at your HDD-based music player and whispered a silent "thank you" to France's Albert Fert and Germany's Peter Grünberg, they're being rewarded handsomely for their discovery of a phenomenon used in every single one. In the effect, which is dubbed giant magnetoresistance, "very weak changes in magnetism generate larger changes in electrical resistance," which in turn allows data stored on hard drives to be "converted to electrical signals." The duo has been largely credited with enabling the portable HDD player market to explode, and they will reportedly split the respectable $1.5 million purse that comes with winning the Nobel Prize in physics.[Image courtesy of Nobel Prize]
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, father of LCDs, passes away
We'll admit, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes didn't exactly get the ongoing credit he deserved for spearheading discoveries that gave us the liquid crystal display, and it's with regret that we convey the news that he has indeed passed away at 74. Pierre-Gilles was born in Paris where he graduated from the elite Ecole Normale Superieure school after working in "neutron scattering and magnetism before moving to the realm of supraconductors and later to liquid crystals." He went on to take home the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1991, and was even dubbed the "Isaac Newton of our time" by some of the judges. Thankfully, much of his brilliance can still be enjoyed via his 1974 book "The Physics of Liquid Crystals," and while we're sure the context is way over our heads, we can certainly appreciate the end results of his unwearying work.
The Nobel Prize for games
No, the prestigious international organization named for the inventor of dynamite isn't giving a prize for gaming along with its other prizes this week, but the Nobel Foundation is using some interesting educational games to explain the concepts behinds the winning science experiments, books and, er, concepts of peace.The games aren't going to make you reconsider buying a next generation console or anything, but they are a bit more interesting than the usual crap that passes itself off as edu-gaming. This simple platforming game used to explain laser physics is particularly notable for including actual hidden items and interesting mini-games with its dry trivia questions about lasers.This is all well and good, but when will we finally see a peace prize awarded to the person who finally brought down international criminal Carmen Sandiego?
