What's New Friday October 12, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 12 Oct 07   Washington, DC

1. NOBEL MESSAGES: STINGING REBUKES FOR ADMINISTRATION POLICIES.
The week began with three scientists sharing the Nobel Prize in Medicine 
for "discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications 
in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells."  It produced a revolution in 
mammalian biology, buts it’s also a reminder of Bush obstruction of human 
embryonic stem cells.  The week ended with the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change and Al Gore jointly winning the Nobel Peace Prize for 
spreading awareness of man-made climate change.  Gore has also won an Emmy 
and an Oscar.  He even won the popular vote for President, only to be 
defeated by the Supreme Court.

2. MORE MESSAGES: "PLENTY OF ROOM AT THE BOTTOM" - FEYNMAN, 1959. 
We’re almost scraping the bottom now.  Quantum size effects were first 
seen 30 years ago in layered films of dissimilar metals a few atoms 
thick.  This week, Albert Fert, at CNRS in France and Peter Grunberg at 
Julich in Germany shared the Physics Prize for independently discovering 
giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in layered nickel and chromium films.  Both 
credited Stuart Parkin of IBM with applying GMR to drastically reduce the 
size of hard drives.  Media reports said it made iPods possible, but it 
also has important applications.  Many felt Parkin should have shared the 
Prize, but it put the U.S. on notice that the days of sweeping the prizes 
are past - and nano is the future.  The Chemistry Prize announced the next 
day bore this out.  Gerhard Ertl of the Max Planck Institute in Germany 
won the Prize for advancing the ultra-clean, single-crystal surface 
approach to the study of individual gas molecules interacting with metals, 
pioneered by the late Harry Farnsworth at Brown.  Everyone in the field 
applauded the choice of Ertl to receive the prize. 

3. PETITION: HAVE YOU GOTTEN THE CARD TO SIGN FROM FRED SEITZ?
Familiar?  http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN98/wn031398.html  Fred signs 
his note as "Past President, NAS."  That should be "Way Past."  He now 
heads the Board of the George C. Marshall Institute.  Look that up in 
Wikipedia.  Click on its funding sources - that will explain a lot.  Also 
see the Oregon Institute of Science and Technology  http://www.oism.org/ . 
The OISM is supported mostly by sale of home-schooling materials, 
including McGuffey Readers, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica, and the 1913 
Noah Webster Dictionary.  Don’t trust your kids with anything more 
recent.  The CISM Home Page lists a faculty of six, but at least two of 
them are dead.  Well, who could tell?   

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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