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Future

Nobel Prize In Chemistry Goes To American Researchers

NOBELPRIZE.ORG (Sweden)

Worldcrunch

STOCKHOLM – The 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to two American researchers for their studies on how body cells react to their environments.

Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka were recognized for their “groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of receptors, known as G-protein-coupled receptors,” announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“Your body is a fine-tuned system of interactions between billions of cells,” the Nobel Committee explained. “Each cell has tiny receptors that enable it to sense its environment, so it can adapt to new situations.”

For instance, you hear a loud bang. You are startled, your whole body jumps, your heart pounds. Your brain is sending nerve signals to warn your body. Your adrenal gland has been awakened and it is pumping cortisol, adrenalin and noradrenalin into your body. A multitude of cells have reacted at the same time - thanks to the sensors on the cell surface, they have sensed that something was happening.

These sensors are called receptors. For a long time, scientists have been trying to find these receptors, to understand what they look like and how they send their signals to our cells.

After decades of research, Lefkowitz and Kobilka were able, in 2011, to get an image of the receptor at the moment that it transfers its signal from the outside of the cell to the G-protein on the inside of the cell.

Read more about their groundbreaking research here.

Images courtesy of nobelprize.org.

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Geopolitics

Saudi Ambitions: Is MBS A New Nasser For The Middle East?

Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, is positioning the Saudi kingdom to be a global force of diplomacy in a way that challenges a longstanding alliance with Washington. But does the young prince have a singular vision for the interests of both his nation and the world?

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sitting with hands crossed

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on April 14, 2023

Piere Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — In the Lebanese daily L'Orient-le-Jour, which has no particular attachment to the Saudi government, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's Crown Prince, was recently described as a man "who is taking on an importance that no Arab leader has had since Nasser."

That's right: this is the very same Mohamed bin Salman who had been considered an international pariah for ordering the sordid murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

So what has "MBS," as he calls himself, done to be compared to the greatest Arab nationalist leader of the 20th century, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who died in 1970? The Crown Prince has taken advantage of the shockwaves of the war in Ukraine to emancipate himself from any oversight, and to develop a diplomacy which, it must be admitted, is hard to keep up with.

Saudi Arabia thus embodies those mid-level powers that defy all the codes of international alliances, and do as they please – for better or for worse.

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