Nobel Science 2014: the way we ‘where,’ the way we see

Maria Isabel Garcia

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Nobel Science 2014: the way we ‘where,’ the way we see
[Science Solitaire] The Nobel winners for science this year revolutionized the way we understand how we know where we are and the way we literally see

The Nobel winners for science this year revolutionized the way we understand how we know where we are and the way we literally see.

Ever wondered how you know where you are and how you build a memory of where you have been? Three scientists did and tried to figure it out. Because of their work, we have identified the internal locator in our brains. They won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. They are John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.”

John O’Keefe, studying rats in the early 70’s, discovered that there are specialized cells in that part of our brains called the hippocampus (strongly associated with long-term memory), that are activated when the rat would stay in one place or in another in a given room. These “place cells” therefore seemed to be the cellular trail that maps out our position and direction. But it turns out that, in addition to “place cells”, our own mapping of the world also recruits a layer of circuits in another part of the brain for accuracy and navigation. May-Britt and Moser saw these 30 years after O’Keefe discovered “place cells” and they called these “grid cells”.

Because of their work, we now know that that our position, directional motion and the distance across points in our own maps of the world correspond to a trail of “place cells” and “grid cells” in our own brain. We now know where to look in our brains when someone shows that they have literally lost their way like in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

The Nobel laureates for physics and chemistry all contributed to the way we see by breaking long-held barriers.

Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura share the Nobel Prize in Physics
“for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”.

LEDs or light-emitting diodes are now taken for granted by a majority of the world’s population who just consume it thinking it is just one of those things that science owed us. But for the 3 scientists who worked on it for decades, it took thousands of experiments to be able to produce a blue-emitting diode around twenty years ago.

But first, why are LEDs so special? And why is “blue” crucial?

Photo taken on June 11, 2008 in Taipei shows a vistor walking past a Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights pannel displayed at the World Trade Center during the Photonics Festival. Sam Yeh/AFP

LEDs are the most energy- efficient lighting because they directly convert electricity to photons (light particles) unlike incandescent bulbs (which uses the electricity to heat the filament to glow) and in fluorescent lights (where electricity produces a gas discharge that heats up and glows). LEDs produce more lumens (the measure of “brilliance”) per watt of electricity used than any other kind of lighting. LEDs could give you 100,000 hours compare to an incandescent bulb’s 1,000 and a fluorescent light’s 10,000.

But why is ““blue” such a big deal? Because the combination of red, green and blue is what makes for white light. Red and green emitting diodes are relatively easy to produce and they have been around for a long time but the color blue, which is the most energetic of the wave lengths in the visible spectrum is so difficult to produce. You have to have the right semi-conducting material which could bounce off energy to emit “blue”.

Lighting the world requires a quarter of the world’s power supply. White light from LEDs helped us see everyday life better in the most energy-efficient way yet. But in order to see the extremely small goings-on in things like the protein-making in our cells- we have to thank this year’s recipients of The Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”

The tools of science in looking at life’s little wonders such as cells or the parts of a cell or others lurking in there, have always worked with a long-standing limitation: they can only see up to 0.2 micrometers (a thin human hair is about 17 micrometers).  This was set in 1873 by Ernst Abbe, who, after working out the geometry of light at work in a microscope, figured we were doomed to only see up to that size. But the 3 gentlemen who received this year’s Nobel in Chemistry worked on ways to go around that limit by using fluorescent light that can “hide” in the tiniest things – like viruses and proteins, Moreso, they found that by doing it over and over again, the clarity of the image of these things greatly improved. With that, humanity said hello to another layer of the physical world – the nanoworld using the nanoscope.

So the next time you see white LEDs, or benefit from a treatment because doctors can see the nasty rare virus in your cells or become simply aware that you actually have specific cells that tell you where you are in this vast universe of things – think of the unstoppable science that brought those to you and the scientists behind them. – Rappler.com

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