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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 1 declined, 3 accepted (4 total, 75.00% accepted)

Submission + - 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Black Holes (nytimes.com)

Raisey-raison writes: The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists for their work on black holes, regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape.

They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. Dr. Penrose proved that “black holes will form whenever the conditions are right,” said Brown University physicist Sylvester Gates, incoming president of the American Physical Society. “It is almost an unstoppable process. That really was an astounding result.”

Working independently, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez, and their teams, have spent the last decades tracking stars and dust clouds whizzing around the center of our galaxy with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, trying to see if that dark dusty realm does indeed harbor a black hole.

Submission + - 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine (nytimes.com)

Raisey-raison writes: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”

“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population,” the committee said in a statement.

Hepatitis A was transmitted via polluted water or food, while hepatitis B spread through the blood. But doctors and researchers couldn’t explain most bloodborne hepatitis cases. These mysterious cases were especially insidious, because infections often became chronic, which can lead to liver failure and cancer.

Discovery of a third kind of hepatitis virus suddenly explained the source of these infections that were surfacing in baby boomers, many of whom had received blood transfusions, shared needles or were infected through sexual intercourse with someone who was infected.

The Courts

Submission + - A proposal that Prisoners be 'chipped like dogs'

Raisey-raison writes: There is a proposal to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme in the UK. The article states that uses are being considered both for home detention as a means of enforcement of punishment as well as for sex offenders after their release. Many view this as a very slippery slope leading to much wider use starting as a purely voluntary act and gradually becoming more compulsory, significantly endangering human rights and privacy. There are also health questions involved given that studies of implants used in the past 12 years have been linked to cancer in lab mice and rats. Ironically the same technology has been proposed for medical purposes as well. In the USA both state and federal agencies have expressed interest.

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