BREAKING NEWS:
The 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”
The research conducted by the 2019 Economic Sciences Laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research.
Over 700 million people still subsist on extremely low incomes. Every year, five million children still die before their fifth birthday, often from diseases that could be prevented or cured with relatively cheap and simple treatments.
This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. It divides this issue into smaller, more manageable questions – for example, the most effective interventions for improving child health.
In the mid-1990s, Economic Sciences Laureate Michael Kremer and his colleagues demonstrated how powerful an experiment-based approach can be, using field experiments to test a range of interventions that could improve school results in western Kenya.
2019 Economic Sciences Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries, including India. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics.
The 2019 Economic Sciences Laureates’ research findings have dramatically improved our ability to fight poverty in practice. As a result of one of their studies, more than 5 million Indian children have benefitted from programmes of remedial tutoring in schools.
In the 2019 Laureates’ early field experiments, more textbooks and free school meals had small effects, while targeted help for weak students significantly improved educational outcomes. This showed that help targeting the weakest pupils was an effective measure.
Electrons’ movements in atoms and molecules are so rapid that they are measured in attoseconds. An attosecond is to one second as one second is to the age of the universe.
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The experiments conducted by this year’s laureates demonstrated that attosecond pulses could be observed and measured, and that they could also be used in new experiments.
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Now that the attosecond world has become accessible, these short bursts of light can be used to study the movements of electrons. It is now possible to produce pulses down to just a few dozen attoseconds, and this technology is developing all the time.
Before the discovery of insulin, people with diabetes didn’t live for long because there were very few treatments.
By 1920, scientists knew that diabetes was due to a lack of insulin formed in parts of the pancreas. Attempts to extract insulin from pancreatic cells had failed.
A surgeon named Frederick Banting suggested a different way to isolate insulin. Banting met with scientist John Macleod to formulate a plan.
Banting and his research assistant, Charles Best, began to experiment. In 1921 they successfully isolated insulin from a dog’s pancreas.
The next step was to treat diabetes with their extract which required more research.
The first experiments failed, but by November 1921 they had kept a dog with diabetes alive for 70 days.
In December 1921, the scientists added biochemist James Collip to their team.
2020 #NobelPrize laureates Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice made seminal discoveries that led to the identification of a novel virus, Hepatitis C virus.
The methodical studies of transfusion-associated hepatitis by 2020 Medicine Laureate Harvey J. Alter demonstrated that an unknown virus was a common cause of chronic hepatitis.
Michael Houghton – awarded the 2020 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine – used an untested strategy to isolate the genome of the new virus that was named Hepatitis C virus.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has been awarded this year’s #NobelPeacePrize for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea. @AbiyAhmedAli
@AbiyAhmedAli The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize is also meant to recognise all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions.