Trio win Nobel Medicine Prize for work on cells, oxygen
Stockholm: US researchers William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza and Britain's Peter Ratcliffe on Monday shared the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability, the Nobel Assembly said.
"They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function," the jury said.
Their research has "paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and many other diseases."
The jury said the trio had identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen, which is central to a large number of diseases.
"Intense ongoing efforts in academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies are now focused on developing drugs that can interfere with different disease states by either activating, or blocking, the oxygen-sensing machinery," the jury said.
Kaelin works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US, while Semenza is director of the Vascular Research Program at the John Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering.
Ratcliffe is director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and director of the Target Discovery Institute in Oxford.
The three will share the Nobel prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about USD 914,000).
They will receive their prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.
Last year, the honour went to immunologists James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, for figuring out how to release the immune system's brakes to allow it to attack cancer cells more efficiently.
The winners of this year's Physics Prize will be revealed on Tuesday, followed by the Chemistry Prize on Wednesday.
The Literature Prize will be announced on Thursday, with two laureates to be crowned after a sexual harassment scandal forced the Swedish Academy to postpone the 2018 award, for the first time in 70 years.
The Peace Prize will follow on Friday, with bookies predicting a win for Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg on betting sites such as Ladbrokes.
The Economics Prize will wrap up the Nobel prize season on Monday, October 14.
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Sudha Murty moves resolution to guarantee free care for children of 3-6 years
New Delhi (PTI): Rajya Sabha nominated MP Sudha Murty on Friday urged the government to take steps to guarantee free and compulsory care and education for children in the age group of 3 to 6.
The private member resolution moved by Murty said the government may consider amending the Constitution to introduce a new article Article 21B in this regard.
Moving the resolution, she said: "Children are our future. They are the rising Sun. Their early education should benefit their life. Hence I request through you sir to our government to consider amending our Constitution to give fundamental right to education from 6 to 14 years to 3 to 14 years."
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Murty said several parents who are not well-off are not even aware of the importance of Anganwadi education.
The government, the resolution said, needs to "work towards universal access to quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) through strengthening Anganwadi services, or through any other mechanism the government may deem appropriate, to ensure that all children receive equitable and holistic early childhood support."
The resolution also urged the government to take suitable measures to enhance delivery, training and support systems related to early childhood services, recognising their role in securing strong foundations for lifelong learning and development.
