The prize-winning receptor (blue), shown here bound to a signalling molecule (yellow) and activating a G-protein (red, gold and green).

To find out more about this year’s chemistry Nobel you can read Daniel Cressey‘s report:

Brian K. Kobilka and Robert J. Lefkowitz have won this year’s chemistry Nobel for their work “crucial for understanding how G-protein–coupled receptors function”.

Lefkowitz works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Kobilka is at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

More about G-protein-coupled receptors can be found in this collection of research and news published by Nature over the past few years. Nature also have a longer story on the prize.

Physics Nobel Prize

Frenchman Serge Haroche and American David Wineland, both 68, have shared the 2012 Nobel prize in physics, for their work on “ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems”.

The Nobel Committee said: “Through their ingenious laboratory methods Haroche and Wineland together with their research groups have managed to measure and control very fragile quantum states, which were previously thought inaccessible for direct observation.”

More information can be found in the News Blog’s report and do read Nature‘s full story.

Physiology or Medicine Nobel Prize

Ewen Callaway reveals in the News Blog, the Nobel Committee awarded this year’s prize in Physiology or Medicine to John Gurdon, of the University of Cambridge, UK, and Shinya Yamanka, of the University of Kyoto, Japan, for “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.”

Working with frog eggs, Gurdon showed that the nucleus from a mature cell could be transplanted into an egg cell with its nucleus removed and produce a living frog. The technique, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, is often called cloning and it was used to produce Dolly the sheep. His work revolutionized the understanding of developmental biology and cell fate, showing that a genome contains all the information needed to transform a cell into a whole organism.

Yamanaka, on the other hand, showed that whole mammalian adult cells could be reverted into an embryonic-like state by treating them with a cocktail of protein factors. These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are similar to embryonic stem cells that give rise to every tissue in the body. He achieved the feat first in mouse cells, and later with human cells. It is hoped that iPSC cells, transformed into myriad cell types, will be useful for regenerative medicine and drug testing.

Find out more in Ewen’s report, or check out the full Nature story. 

Ocean Acidification

Frontier Scientist’s blogger, Liz O’Connell, asks in her latest post, “Will ocean acidification spell a watery grave for vital parts of marine ecosystems?”

Heightened acidity increases concentrations of hydrogen ions in seawater. It also ties up calcium ions and thus creates a scarcity of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is required by calcifying marine organisms to build stony skeletons and hard shells.

A Blue Starfish (Linckia laevigata) resting on hard Acropora coral. Lighthouse, Ribbon Reefs, Great Barrier Reef / Photographer Richard Ling 2004 (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Continue to Liz’s post to find out more.

Singing mice may join humans and songbirds as vocal learners

Jason Goldman reveals in the News Blog a new finding, published this week in PLoS ONE by Gustavo Arriaga, Eric P. Zhou, and Erich D. Jarvis from Duke University, adds to the list of phenomena that scientists once thought were categorical but may, in fact, not be:

{credit}WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/GEORGE SHUKLIN.{/credit}

The consensus among researchers was that, in general, animals divide neatly into two categories: singers and non-singers. The singers include songbirds, parrots, hummingbirds, humans, dolphins, whales, bats, elephants, sea lions and seals. What these species all have in common – and what distinguishes them from the non-singers of the animal world – is that they are vocal learners. That is, these species can change the composition of their sounds that emanate from the larynx (for mammals) or syrinx (for birds), both in terms of the acoustic qualities such as pitch, and in terms of syntax (the particular ordering of the parts of the song). It is perhaps not surprising that songbirds and parrots have been extremely useful as models for understanding human speech and language acquisition. When other animals, such as monkeys or non-human apes, produce vocalizations, they are always innate, usually reflexive, and never learned.

But is the vocal learner/non-learner dichotomy truly reflective of biological reality? Maybe not. It turns out that mice make things more complicated.

More information can be found in the post which has been cross-posted from Scientific American’s The Thoughtful Animal blog.

The Foundation of Cosmetics

Scitable’s student blogger Fabiha Anwar, talks about chemistry and cosmetics in her guest post:

….it is not just scientists who face a laboratory every day; every woman has one right on her dressing table, and sometimes even carries a portable one in her bag. Just as every scientist will have a bottle of Hydrochloric acid, every woman will certainly have a concoction of octinoxate, titanium dioxide, dimethicone, glycerine, sodium chloride, ascorbyl palmitate and water amongst other chemicals in a little skin-coloured container they call ‘foundation’ – the preliminary powder to every morning’s make-up ritual.

Chemicals and their compounds usually take our thoughts to corrosive, bubbling solutions, and no doubt by listing just some of the components of foundation it now sounds like a threatening potion rather than a fundamental solution as important to a woman as water.

Want to know what other chemicals are in your make-up pots, then continue to Fabiha’s post. 

Transferable skills

Focusing on transferable skills, Nature Jobs blogger Catherine de Lange, offers some good advice for job seekers in her latest post:

{credit}iStockphoto/Thinkstock{/credit}

 Spotting transferrable skills

Some transferrable skills may be obvious – scientists are especially good at problem solving and analysis, for instance. But there are other skills, often known as ‘soft skills’, which form part of your work or home life activities that might not come to mind immediately, but could be usefully applied in a different role or context.

“The 2011 Careers in Research Online Survey results reveal that university researchers are engaged in a wide range of activities beyond pure research,” Anna Price, Researcher Development Advisor at Kings College London, told the Naturejobs Career Expo last month. These activities include presentations at conferences, teaching, organising events such as a conference or workshop, and organizational and project management skills. What you do outside of work can also count. “You might be on the Parent-Teacher Association, or running a book club. These can be really useful when applying for jobs that require skills that aren’t part of your key role,” Price said.

More top tips can be found in Catherine’s summary and feel free to share your own too.