Meet The Scientists That Could Win This Year's Physics Nobel Prize

[Buster's Uncle]

Meet The Scientists That Could Win This Year's Physics Nobel Prize
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig  46 minutes ago



On October 7, a lucky few will join the ranks of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Enrico Fermi, among others, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announces this year's Physics Nobel Prize awardees.

There are a few groups of scientists in the running. Thomson Reuters just announced their list of potential Nobel candidates in each field: chemistry, physics, medicine, and economics. They use algorithms to mine the scientific literature for highly-cited authors to identify the most influential researchers.

Since they started these predictions 12 years ago, Thompson Reuters has accurately predicted 35 Nobel Prize winners, nine of the predictions came true the year of the forecast, and 16 won within two years.

This year's batch of potential Physics Nobel laureates include seven physicists who work on advancing different points of computing technology to next-generation communications.


Charles L. Kane, Laurens W. Molenkamp, and Shoucheng Zhang

Wikimedia Commons


Thomson Reuters predicts that these three will win for their work on two related developments.

The first is their work on the theory behind and experimentation with a special type of material, called a topological insulator, which easily conducts electricity on its surface. The second development involves their investigations into a newly-realized state of matter called the quantum spin Hall state.

Together these two areas of research could help make way for tiny electronic circuits that could enable faster computer processing and storage.

During the mid-2000s Kane at the University of Pennsylvania and Zhang at Stanford University independently predicted the different types of materials that could be used as a topological insulator.

In 2007 Molenkamp, at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, was the first to conduct an experiment that verified theoretical predictions of the quantum spin Hall effect, which describes how electrons cluster on a material like a topological conductor. Verifying this effect carries important applications for information technology, particularly in quantum computing.


James F. Scott, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, and Yoshinori Tokura

Thomson Reuters


Thomson Reuters forecasts these three scientists could win for their pioneering research on a powerful type of data storage device, called ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM), and on the materials that have the capacity for this type of technology.

In 1989 James Scott, who is now at the University of Cambridge, changed the world of electronics when he developed a type of integrated circuit memory device that consumes less power and records data into storage faster. This development led to the creation of FeRAM memory technology and since then Scott has been known as "the father of integrated ferroelectrics."

If you have a Playstation 2, then you have this FeRAM technology in your home. When it was released in the year 2000, the Playstation 2 was the first large-scale commercial use of FeRAM.

Some materials are better for FeRAM than others, and Ramesh at the University of California Berkeley has spent the better part of decade identifying them and studying their ferroelectric properties. His work has led to materials used in USB flash memory, solid-state drives, and similar products.

Yoshinori Tokura of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and also of the University of Tokyo has also been investigating different materials with ferroelectric properties. In 2003, he discovered a special type of manganite mineral that has opened up a new realm of research and could lead to more new types of memory devices.
 

Peidong Yang

Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


The third and final Thomson Reuters contender for the Physics Nobel is Peidong Yang, for his contributions to nanowire photonics, which could lead to next-generation computer technology that has super-fast data processing and transmission capabilities.

A nanowire is a minuscule-sized rod made of semiconducting material and nanowire photonics is the study of how light interacts with this material at nano-scales.

In 2001, Yang at the University of California Berkeley created one of the smallest lasers in history, called a nanowire nanolaser. The nanowire nano laser measured just less than 100 nanometers in diameter, about 1000 times thinner than a typical human hair.

Right now, nanowires only exist in the lab, but scientists like Yang are pioneering the effort to figure out how to use these tiny devices to manipulate a new generation of computing devices.


http://news.yahoo.com/advancements-next-gen-computing-could-163100953.html

[Buster's Uncle]

These Are The Scientific Innovations Likely To Win This Year's Nobel Prizes
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig  1 hour ago



Thomson Reuters just released their annual forecast of potential winners of this year's Nobel Prize in each category: chemistry, physics, medicine, and economics.

They make their predictions based on the number of citations and references the scientific community has made to the contenders' research and publications. Although not a perfect measure of prediction, Thomson Reuters has managed to successfully predict 35 Nobel winners since 2002, when they developed these forecasts.

Some scientists on this year's docket include the scientists James F. Scott at the University of Cambridge who is up for the Physics Nobel Prize for developing a type of technological memory-device used in PlayStation 2 consoles.

Ching Tang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Steven Van Slyke of Silicon Valley start-up Kateeva Inc, are up for the Chemistry Nobel Prize for their discovery of organic light-emitting diodes that illuminate the screens on your smartphone and tablet.

A contender for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is David Julius at the University of California, San Francisco, for discovering the cellular receptors that trigger the pain we feel when eating hot-peppers and other spicy foods that contain the molecule capsaicin.

Mark S. Granovetter at Stanford University is more of a sociologist than an economist, but his innovative work in economic sociology has landed him on Thomson Reuters' list of contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics. He has criticized some of the assumptions in today's economic research like the thought that social norms and values dominate the market and has emphasized that trust is essential in many transactions.



Thompson Reuters


http://news.yahoo.com/scientific-innovations-likely-win-years-180102611.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Here Are The Innovations Likely To Win The Nobel Prize For Chemistry
Business Insider
By Ajai Raj  39 minutes ago



A 1975 medal honoring the Nobel Prize  Richard Renniger/Wikimedia Commons



The winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry won't be announced for a little while — Wednesday, October 8th, to be precise — but we may already have an idea of who might win, thanks to an annual analysis by Thomson Reuters.

The Intellectual Property & Science unit of Thomson Reuters, which also owns the Reuters news service, bases its forecasts on the number of citations of a scientist's published work. These references serve as a proxy for how influential their work is. (This is also how the overall influence and importance of journals and scientists is assessed, a system that is not without its critics.)

The ratings have accurately predicted 35 Nobel laureates since 2002. These include 9 winners predicted in the year of the forecast, and 16 who won within 2 years. Here are this years predictions for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry:


Functional mesoporous materials

Mesoporous silica viewed under a scanning electron microscope. The size of the pores in this material could make it ideal as a drug delivery mechanism for cancer.  Wikimedia Commons


Three of the predicted Laureates work in this area of nanotechnology (read: absurdly small technology, at the scale of atoms and molecules). "Mesoporous" refers to materials with a pore size (similar to the pores in your skin) anywhere between 2 and 50 nanometers — a nanometer being one-billionth of a meter. In particular, mesoporous silica holds promise as a drug delivery system for cancer treatments, among other applications.

The possible winners: Charles Kresge, Chief Technology Officer of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia; Ryong Ryoo, Director of the Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea; and Galen Stucky, Professor in Letters and Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.


Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization process

Two examples of RAFT agents— chemicals used in the RAFT process that allow control over the precise molecular weight of polymers, artificial substances that are used in everything from pantyhose to artificial hearts.  Wikimedia Commons


Three scientists from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) are predicted to win for their work on this process, which affords more precise control over the creation of polymers. or synthetic materials created from linking a large number of similar units. Think Teflon, used not only as a nonstick coating (and descriptor of former President Ronald Reagan), but also in replacement blood vessels. Applications for polymers are virtually limitless, so finding more precise ways of creating them is a big deal.

The possible winners: Graeme Moad, Ezio Rizzardo, and San H. Thang, all from CSIRO, where the RAFT polymerization process was first described in 1998 in a paper by Rizzardo.


Organic light-emitting diode

A visitor looks at white and blue light emitting diodes (LED) used as Christmas decoration at Tokyo Midtown in Tokyo, November 17, 2007. LEDs are also seen in virtually every electronic device we use today.  REUTERS


Two scientists are in the running for inventing organic light-emitting diodes, commonly known as LEDs. These are seen — literally — in a range of electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, and TVs. If there were a separate prize for being readily understandable to laypeople, they would win that hands-down.

The possible winners: Ching W. Tang of the University of Rochester in New York and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Steven Van Slyke, Chief Technology Officer at Kateeva, Inc. in Menlo Park, California.


http://news.yahoo.com/innovations-likely-win-nobel-prize-193911024.html