Misandry! (via Human)

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Doris Lessing and Barbara Park. One a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, the other a best-selling author of children's books. We're sad to report that both of them have gone to that great book store in the sky.

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Girls just wanna have the highest literary honor in the world.

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You can find this mothery dragony pendant at Pendant Lab on Etsy.

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The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics is being awarded to Peter W. Higgs and François Englert for their work on theorizing the Higgs boson particle. The Higgs boson has been in the news a lot over the last few years, but Higgs and Englert's work theorizing it took place in the 1960's. It's about time, Nobel Committee.

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In 1962 Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on discovering DNA's double helix structure. There's a cash purse that comes along with the Nobel, but everyone knows the real prize is that everyone will think you're the smartest person in the room for the rest of your life. Unfortunately you can't sell that feeling at auction, but you can sell the medal. So what's a used 1962 Nobel prize actually worth? Crick's Nobel prize just sold at auction for a cool $2 million.

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Yesterday, at the age of 103, Rita Levi-Montalcini died the longest lived Nobel Prize Winner in history, the tenth woman to be elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the co-discoverer of nerve growth factor, and a woman who refused to let her father's ideas about gender or a state's ideas about race keep her from doing some pretty great science.

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Rita Levi-Montalcini, who will turn 103 on April 22, is the longest-living women to have won the Nobel Prize (for Physiology or Medicine) for her discovery of nerve growth factor, or NGF, a protein crucial for the growth, maintenance, and survival of neurons. She now continues to work every day as a Senator for Life in Italy. The fact that Levi-Montalcini discovered NGF (along with Stanley Cohen) is making people wonder: Has this woman unlocked one of the secrets to longevity? Exhibit A: She's about to turn 103 and still goes to work every day.

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A Nobel Prize is a goal people in many fields dream about throughout their career, but few actually achieve or live to see. Someone famous who came close? The Lord of the Rings author, J.R.R. Tolkien. Newly released documents have surfaced that reveal the fantasy author was nomniated for a Nobel in literature in 1961 and passed over by the comittee. And oh yeah, he was endorsed by friend and fellow author, C.S. Lewis. 

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The Nobel Prize committee announced its winners for achievements in medicine today, naming cellular biologist Ralph Steinman worthy of the prestigious award. Steinman's award winning work began in 1973 when he identified a new type of cell, the dendritic cell, which plays a key role in the human immune system. Thanks to his ground breaking work, medicine now has a far greater understanding how the body fights off invaders, and how it can sometimes turn on itself. Though Steinman is certainly worthy of the award he is, unfortunately, dead. According to the Seattle Times, Steinman died three days before the Nobel announcements were made leaving the committee unaware of his demise. This puts the Nobel committee in a bit of a tricky situation, since posthumus awards are no longer given by the organization. Two other scientists named in the award, Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann, seem to be in no danger of losing their award, though there is no word whether their shares of the $1.5 million prize will be increased. The Nobel committee has not announced how they will handle the situation, but it is certainly a tragic moment for Steinman's family. Congratulations Dr. Steinman, wherever you are. (via Seattle Times)

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Beat that, Mark Zuckerberg: A Norwegian member of Parliament has nominated WikiLeaks for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, citing the organization's important contributions to "freedom of speech and transparency." One day after the deadline for new nominations had expired, parliamentarian Snorre Valen announced that he had nominated WikiLeaks; MPs are not technically supposed to reveal their proposals, but there are no formal rules against their doing so.

The member of parliament for the Socialist Left Party, part of Norway's ruling red-green coalition, also noted WikiLeaks publication of documents relating to corruption by authorities, governments and corporations as well as "illegal surveillance, war crimes and torture committed by a number of states".

Last year, the editors of Wired's Italian edition proposed that the Internet receive a Nobel Peace Prize; however, whereas that nomination was suggestive and unofficial, as a member of a national assembly or state government, Snorre's WikiLeaks nomination is a valid one, per the Nobel Foundation's statutes, and will be considered by the Nobel Committee. According to the Nobel website, "The Committee seeks to achieve unanimity in its selection of the Peace Prize Laureate, [and] on the rare occasions when this proves impossible, the selection is decided by a simple majority vote," so this likely controversial (and non-corporeal) pick may not have legs, though it remains quite a statement. (Times Live via Reddit)

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Russian-born physicists Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, both faculty members at the University of Manchester, have won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work with graphene, which is an arrangement of carbon consisting of a flat, atom-thick layer in a honeycomb-like lattice. In 2004, Novoselov and Geim discovered a low-tech but highly effective way to produce graphene flakes: With Scotch tape. By putting tape on a piece of graphite and repeatedly peeling away, you can create a layer of graphene. Now known as the so-called "Scotch tape technique," according to Dr. Geim, this discovery has had theoretical as well as practical implications: New Scientist reports that it wasn't previously known that such two-dimensional sheets would be stable.

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The editors of the Italian edition of Wired Magazine have proposed that the Internet be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.  The entire Internet.  We have many questions. Wired.it cites the utility of the internet for advancing world peace, beginning with an issue featuring Shirin Ebadi, the first Iranian Muslim woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the role of the internet in the Iranian election protests. So: though it has the whiff of a publicity stunt about it, it's not totally baseless.

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