Irandaily | No. 4299 | Science

Font Size

News Cut

Move Panel

Iranian Wins $3 Million Physics Prize

Nima Arkani-Hamed, a scientist at Princeton University, is among nine scientists receiving the biggest prize ($3,000,000 each) in theoretical physics.
Nima is the son of Jafar Arkani-Hamed, former professor and chairman of Physics Department at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, Iranian.com reported.
Physicists are rarely wealthy or famous, but a new prize rewarding research at the field’s cutting edges has made nine of them instant multimillionaires.
The nine are recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize, established by Yuri Milner, a Russian physics student who dropped out of graduate school in 1989 and later earned billions investing in Internet companies.
“It knocked me off my feet,” said Alan H. Guth, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was among the winners.
He came up with the idea of cosmic inflation, that there was a period of extremely rapid expansion in the first instant of the universe.
When he was told of the $3 million prize, he assumed that the money would be shared among the winners. Not so: Instead, each of this year’s nine recipients will receive $3 million, the most lucrative academic prize in the world.
The Nobel Prize currently comes with an award of $1.2 million, usually split by two or three people. The Templeton Prize, which honors contributions to understanding spiritual dimensions of life, has been the largest monetary award given to an individual, $1.7 million this year.
Milner said that he wanted to recognize advances in delving into the deepest mysteries of physics and the universe.
“This intellectual quest to understand the universe really defines us as human beings,” he said.
Four of the physicists work at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.: Nima Arkani-Hamed, Juan Maldacena, Nathan Seiberg and Edward Witten. They work on theories trying to tie together the basic particles and forces of the universe, particularly with a mathematical machinery known as string.

Nanoparticles Allow Monitoring of Cancer Cells

Early and accurate detection of cancer is critical for successful cancer therapies.
In most cases, a tissue biopsy is the initial means of making a diagnosis. With increasing accuracy, “liquid biopsies”--where circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are isolated from blood samples--are becoming a viable complement or even alternative to invasive biopsies of metastatic tumors, Nanowerk wrote.
CTC is of great interest for evaluating cancer dissemination, predicting patient prognosis and also for the evaluation of therapeutic treatments, representing a reliable potential alternative to invasive biopsies and subsequent proteomic and functional genetic analysis.
Unfortunately, given that human blood is a complex fluid that contains a variety of cells and metabolites, the fast detection of CTCs is quite a difficult task.
“The main techniques reported for CTC detection consist in their labeling with tagged antibodies (immunocytometry) followed by fluorescence analysis or the detection of the expression of tumor markers by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction,” Dr. Alfredo de la Escosura Muniz, a senior researcher in the Nanobioelectronics & Biosensors Group at the Institut Català de Nanotecnologia, explains to Nanowerk.
“However, the previously reported isolation of CTCs from human fluids are limited to complex analytic approaches that often result in a low yield and purity.”
In new work, Escosura and his collaborators, led by Arben Merkoci, describe a rapid and simple electrochemical biosensing strategy to quantify circulating tumour cells based on the simultaneous use of antibody-coated magnetic beads, which selectively bind to the cancer cells for subsequent magnetic isolation, and antibody-coated gold nanoparticles, to also selectively bind to the cancer cells for final electrochemical detection.
“We combine for the first time the use of both micro and nanoconjugates and the simple electrochemical detection methodology for the sensitive and selective quantification of circulating tumour cells,” says Escosura.
The team has reported their findings in the July 20, 2012, online edition of Nano Letters (“Simple Monitoring of Cancer Cells Using Nanoparticles”).

DNA Clue to Women Longevity

Scientists believe they have discovered a clue to why women tend to live longer than men--by studying fruit flies.
Writing in Current Biology, they focus on mutations in mitochondrial DNA--the power source of cells, BBC wrote.
Mitochondria are inherited only from mothers, never from fathers, so there is no way to weed out mutations that damage a male’s prospects.
But one aging expert said there were many factors that explained the gender difference in life expectancy.
By the age of 85, there are approximately six women for every four men in the UK, and by 100 the ratio is more than two to one.
And females outlive males in many other species.
In the research, experts from Australia’s Monash University and UK’s Lancaster University analyzed the mitochondria of 13 different groups of male and female fruit flies.
Mitochondria, which exist in almost all animal cells, convert food into the energy that powers the body.
Dr Damian Dowling, of Monash University who was one of the researchers, said the results point to numerous mutations within mitochondrial DNA that affect how long males live, and the speed at which they age.
“Intriguingly, these same mutations have no effects on patterns of aging in females,” he said.
“All animals possess mitochondria and the tendency for females to outlive males is common to many different species. Our results, therefore, suggest that the mitochondrial mutations we have uncovered will generally cause faster male aging across the animal kingdom.”
They suggest this is because there is no evolutionary reason for the faults that affect males to be picked up--because mitochondria are passed down by females.
Dr Dowling added, “If a mitochondrial mutation occurs that harms fathers, but has no effect on mothers, this mutation will slip through the gaze of natural selection, unnoticed. Over thousands of generations, many such mutations have accumulated that harm only males, while leaving females unscathed.”
Tom Kirkwood, professor of ageing at Newcastle University said the paper was ‘intriguing’.
“It may be it does tell us something rather important about mitochondria and the difference between male and female fruit flies. And we know that mitochondria are important for aging in a number of species,” he said.
“But I certainly don’t think this is a discovery that explains why women live five-to-six years longer than men. There are other things we know also count--lifestyle, social and behavioral factors. But the biggest difference in biology is that we have different hormones.”