Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. It was the sort of report card that could crush a budding young talent. In 1949, a teacher at Eton belittled John Gurdon's dreams of becoming a scientist as quite ridiculous. If he can't learn simple biological facts, the teacher sniffed, pursuing science would be a waste of time. Gurdon eventually did go on to study zoology. And this week his breakthrough in reprogramming cells received the Nobel Prize for Medicine. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
Americans Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka have been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their "groundbreaking discoveries" about the "fine-tuned system of interactions between billions of cells" in the human body, the Nobel Prize committee announced this morning.
In Pakistan, a 15-year-old girl is in the hospital with a bullet wound in her head. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting. Malala Yousefzai has spent several years criticizing violent Islamist militants who do not want girls to have an education.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee want to hear why the State Department repeatedly denied requests for tighter security for U.S. diplomats in Libya before the deadly September 11th attack on the consulate in Benghazi. The State Department has been tight lipped on the issue.
Originally published on Wed October 10, 2012 6:21 am
Penske Media bought the 107-year-old magazine for $25 million. Unlike its longtime competitor, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety has had trouble making the switch to digital media.
Originally published on Wed October 10, 2012 6:12 am
Americans Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka have won the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two researchers Wednesday "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors."
For the past decade, scientists have been toying with the notion of encapsulating medicine in microscopic balls.
These so-called nanospheres could travel inside the body to hard-to-reach places, like the brain or the inside of a tumor. One problem researchers face is how to build these nanospheres, because you'd have to make them out of even smaller nanoparticles.
For our series First and Main, Morning Edition is traveling to contested counties in swing states to find out what is shaping voters' decisions this election season. The latest trip took us to Larimer County, Colo.
Richard Branson is not your average entrepreneur. He dropped out of school at 15 and, despite suffering from dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, went on to found Virgin Group, a business empire that includes airlines, cellphone companies, banks, hotels, health clubs and even a space travel business.
