2006 Nobel Prize Winners

LITERATURE Orhan Pamuk "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures" PEACE Muhammad Yunus Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below" ECONOMICS Edmund S. Phelps "for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy" MEDICINE Craig C. Mello Andrew Z. Fire "for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA" PHYSICS John C. Mather George F. Smoot "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation" CHEMISTRY Roger D. Kornberg "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription" Congratulations to them. Three considerations:

~ this year the winners are all men; ~ except for Literature and Peace, they are all American; ~ what does *intertemporal tradeoffs*, *anisotropy* and *eukaryotic* mean?