That doesn't change your primary point about a limited supply of doctors producing a higher cost though, but I thought you might want updated numbers.
Also, in my own experience, a part of the higher-ups doesn't have any kind of family, therefore they are actually oblivious to the fact that you may have something going on outside the laboratory.
I wonder how true this is from a global perspective. Do the chair's of academic departments tend to have fewer or forgo children?
shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind
Yeah, in its current form, that prize isn't at all what Nobel intended it to be: A prize to help younger, still aspiring scientist with their work.
Is that what Nobel intended? Do you have a quote to that effect from his will? As far as interpreting the "in the preceding year" in the context of science, often the award is given for discoveries that have yielded results that might not have been envisioned when the discoveries were made. The siRNA related award a few years ago had really only come into it's own after several years of development, perhaps qualifying it for "conferring the greatest benefit on mankind" (in medicine at least) only several years after the initial discovery.
Also, as I understand it, early awards were given to findings that proved dubious at best (cancer caused by worms? OH YEAH). Thus, the switch to see which findings age gracefully.
as well as a share going back to the funding agency (or agencies).
I've never heard of a university sending money back to NIH/NSF/other funding agency. Was this a typo or do you have experience somewhere that does this?
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.