The five most-read stories on Scope this week were:
Stanford’s Thomas Südhof wins 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine: Molecular neuroscientist Thomas Südhof, MD, was named a co-winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet said the award was for “discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.”
Stanford’s Michael Levitt wins 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: As announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday, Michael Levitt, PhD, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor in Cancer Research, is a winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award was given for “the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.”
Stanford’s newest Nobel winner on the prize: It’s an “incredibly beautiful” honor: From a car in Spain, Thomas Südhof answered his phone last Monday to discover he had just won a Nobel.
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: A 2012 article in the San Francisco Chronicle offered a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
Science rapper “busts a move” to explain Nobel discovery: A student rap group led by Tom McFadden, a former teaching assistant for Stanford’s Program in Human Biology, explains how neurons in the brain communicate with one another across gaps called synapses in a video titled “Synaptic Cleft.” The song and dance breaks down the discovery made by Nobel winner Thomas Südhof.
