What's New by Bob Park October 9, 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 09 Oct 09   Washington, DC

1.  PEACE PRIZE: OBAMA’S POSITION ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS CITED.    
In announcing that Barack Obama has won the 2009 Peace prize, the Norwegian 
Nobel Committee referred to the president's April speech in Prague, in 
which he outlined his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.  There is, 
alas, no peace in the world.  The first priority of those who seek peace is 
prevention of nuclear war.  The first step must be for the United States 
Senate to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The president has 
also proposed a new treaty to halt production of fissile materials.  The 
biggest obstacle to a nuclear-free world may be the "reliable warhead" 
legislation favored by defense secretary Gates.

2. PHYSICS PRIZE: AWARDED TO THE "MASTERS OF LIGHT."
Charles Kao figured out how to confine light to an optical fiber, while 
Willard Boyle and George Smith invented the charge-coupled detector (CCD) 
that captures a digital image from the light. Boyle and Smith did their 
work at Bell Labs.  It was the seventh Nobel discovery at Bell, a reminder 
that the great industrial labs of the last century are gone.  In effect, 
Boyle and Smith ended the profession of photography; an eight-year-old 
child can pull out a personal cell phone, point it, and capture an image 
superior to anything professional photographers can do with armloads of 
paraphernalia and hours in the darkroom.  

3. PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE: THE KNOTS IN THE END OF YOUR ROPE. 
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak studied telomeres, 
which cap the chromosome like a knot in the end of a rope to keep it from 
unraveling.  Actually, an enzyme, telomerase, ties a lot of knots.  One is 
snipped off every time a cell divides; when they’re used up you’re at the 
end of your rope.

4. FELLOWS MEDAL:  DEFENDING SCIENCE AGAINST CREATIONISTS.
Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist, received the highest honor of the 
California Academy of Sciences for her tireless and remarkably effective 
defense of Darwin against creationism and intelligent design.  Just four 
months ago WN pointed out that she had won the inaugural Stephen Jay Gould 
award of the AAAS http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN09/wn060509.html .

5.  QUIVERFULL:  ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS, MARCHING AS TO WAR.
The movement takes its name from Psalm 127, "As arrows are in the hands of 
a warrior, so are children.  Happy is the man that has his quiver full of 
them."  Children in a Quiverfull family often number in the teens.  Without 
large families, they fear, Christianity might die out.  Their fertility 
rate is matched by Hasidic jews.

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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