British-Japanese duo win Nobel for medicine

Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and John B Gurdon of Britain won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for their groundbreaking work on stem cells, the jury said.

The pair were honoured "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent," it said.

The two discovered "that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body," it said.

By reprogramming human cells, "scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy," the Nobel committee said.

Gurdon is currently at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, while Yamanaka is a professor at Kyoto University in Japan.

Because of the economic crisis, the Nobel Foundation has slashed the prize sum to eight million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million, 930,000 euros) per award, down from the 10 million kronor awarded since 2001.

Last year, the honour went to Bruce Beutler of the United States, Jules Hoffmann of Luxembourg and Ralph Steinman of Canada, for their work on the immune system.

This year's laureates will receive their prize at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

Medicine prize kicks off Nobel week
 

The 2012 Nobel Prize season opens Monday with the award for medicine, marking the start of a week of announcements and speculation over who will collect the literature and peace prizes.

The medicine prize will be announced in Stockholm at 11:30 am (0930 GMT) at the earliest.

With the awards committees keeping mum on their choices, Nobel watchers are left to play a guessing game.

Swedish media have suggested the medicine prize could go to Japan's Shinya Yamanaka and Britain's John Gurdon for their research in nuclear reprogramming, a process that instructs adult cells to form early stem cells which can then be used to form any tissue type.

James Till of Canada could also be honoured for his related work on blood stem cells.

Other medicine fields cited as worthy of Nobel recognition this year are epigenetics, which studies how genes respond to their environment, and optogenetics, where researchers can turn on or off a nerve cell, for example in a fruit fly or a mouse, to reprogramme the brain.

Japanese media voiced hope Yamanaka was in with a chance, with the Nikkei business daily declaring he was a "sure" thing for a Nobel one day, but conceding it might not be this year.

"It's a matter of time," it said.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps the most watched of the prestigious awards, will be revealed Friday in Oslo, and the five-member Norwegian Nobel committee has 231 nominees to choose from this year.

No clear frontrunner has emerged so far, although Coptic Christian Maggie Gobran of Egypt, dubbed the "Mother Teresa" of Cairo's slums, tops the list of one betting site with odds of 6.5-to-1.

The committee keeps the list of nominees a well-guarded secret, but those who are entitled to nominate candidates can disclose the names they have put forward so the list is known to include former US president Bill Clinton, ex-German chancellor Helmut Kohl, the EU and WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning.

The head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Kristian Berg Harpviken, follows the work of the committee and each year publishes his own shortlist of possible winners.

It includes US political scientist Gene Sharp, an expert on non-violent revolution; Russian rights group Memorial and its founder Svetlana Gannushkina; and independent Russian media outlet Echo of Moscow and its chief editor Alexei Venediktov.

A Nigerian duo campaigning against the misuse of religion, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Mohamed Sa'ad Abubakar, Sultan of Sokoto, are also on it, as is Myanmar President Thein Sein.

Afghan human rights activist, ex-minister and burka opponent Sima Samar is meanwhile also seen as a possible winner, as is Cuban human rights activist Oscar Elias Biscet.

The other closely-watched award is the literature prize, with the usual names being tossed around Stockholm's literary circles.

Among them are Chinese author Mo Yan, Japan's Haruki Murakami, Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, US authors Don DeLillo and Philip Roth, Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah and Egyptian writer Nawal el Saadawi.

The date has not been set for the literature prize announcement, although it is traditionally on a Thursday and could therefore come on October 11.

Much buzz has focused on the physics prize this year, to be announced Tuesday, after the discovery in July of a new fundamental particle believed to be the Higgs boson.

It is one of the biggest breakthroughs in the field of physics in the past half-century, and is widely considered Nobel prize-worthy research.

The chemistry prize will be announced on Wednesday, with Swedish Radio suggesting Svante Paeaebo of Sweden could win for his groundbreaking analysis of ancient DNA.

The economics prize, dominated by Americans over the years, will wind up the Nobel season on October 15.

Because of the economic crisis, the Nobel Foundation has slashed the prize sum to eight million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million, 930,000 euros) per award, down from the 10 million kronor awarded since 2001.

Literature Prize to be announced on Oct 11

The winner of the Nobel Literature Prize will be announced on Thursday, October 11, the Swedish Academy said on Monday.

Its permanent secretary Peter Englund will make the much-awaited announcement in Stockholm at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT).

The date for the literature prize is revealed only a few days in advance, while the dates for the other prizes are known several months ahead of time.

The Nobel season kicked off Monday with the announcement of the medicine prize, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday.

The literature laureate is traditionally revealed on a Thursday during the Nobel week.

The peace prize winner is scheduled to be announced on Friday, and the economics prize on Monday, October 15.

In line with tradition, the Swedish Academy gave no indication of its choice for the literature prize. It never reveals the names it is considering, and its deliberations are sealed for 50 years.

No favourites have emerged for the 2012 prize, but Stockholm literary circles have suggested that it is time for the prize to be given to a woman or a North American.

Only 12 of the 108 Nobel Literature Prize laureates since 1901 have been women. The last North American to win the award was US writer Toni Morrison in 1993.

Last year, the honour went to Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer.
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