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05/10/2022 ---- 08/10/2022

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08.10.2022
THEME: WORLD

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize assigned for protection of civil and human rights in East Europe

The 2022 Peace Prize is awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski (60 - Belarus), the Russian Human Rights Organization Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties. The laureates "have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses, and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy". The Memorial has been founded in 1989 to commemorate the crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign in the Soviet Union, and it was based in Moscow until its forced dissolution in 2022 for violations of "foreign agent law". The Center of Civil Liberties was founded in Kyiv in 2007. The organization is engaged in an attempt to make Ukraine more democratic and to improve the public control of law enforcement agencies and the judiciary. It also documented war crimes during the ongoing invasion of Russia in Ukraine. Ales Bialiatski is known for his work with the Viasna Human Rights Centre, based in Minsk until Belarus ordered its closure in 2003. This was an organization providing assistance to political prisoners. In 2010 controversial presidential elections were held and both Visa's offices and Bialiatski's home have been searched by state security forces repeatedly. Bialatski was summoned in the same year to the Public Prosecutor's office and warned that as Viasna was an unregistered organization, the government would seek criminal proceedings against it if the group continued to operate. More recently, following the Belarusian protests in 2020-2021, Viasna's members have been further prosecuted with politically motivated charges. Ales Bialiatski, now Nobel Peace Laureate, has been imprisoned Since 14 July 2021 for alleged tax evasion. Human rights defenders consider him a prisoner of conscience.

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07.10.2022
THEME: WORLD

Annie Ernaux wins the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the french author Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. Annie grew up in Normandy in a working-class family. She started her literary career in 1974 with Les Armoires Vides ("Cleaned Out"), an autobiographical novel. Very early in her career, she turned away from fiction to focus on autobiography, combining historic and individual experiences. Her books are followed by a wide readership and are reviewed in most local and national newspapers in France, as well as being the subject of many radio and television interviews and programs, and a large and growing international academic literature. Her famous works include La Place ("A Man's Place", 1983), L'événement ("Happening", 2000), L'Occupation ("The Possession", 2002), and Les Années ("The Years", 2008). Ernaux has always been adamant that she writes fiction. Many of her works have been translated into English, and she was nominated for the International Booker prize in 2019 for her book The Years. Her work is published in the US by Seven Stories Press. Ernaux is one of the seven founding authors from whom the press takes its name.

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06.10.2022
THEME: WORLD

Bertozzi, Meldal, Barry: the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to the pioneers of “click” chemistry

Carolyn R. Bertozzi (USA, 55), Morten Meldal (DK, 68), and Barry Sharpless (USA, 81) are the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022, awarded “or the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”. Sharpless and Meldal have laid the foundation by describing the process for the first time in two independent but very similar works. Bertozzi (the 8th woman in history awarded with this Nobel) has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilizing it in living organisms. Click chemistry is not a single specific reaction but describes a way of generating products by joining small modular units. By the union of biomolecules and molecular probes, they have been made notably useful in the detection, localization, and qualification of biomolecules in vivo. However, the method is not limited to biological conditions: the concept of a "click" reaction has been used in chemoproteomic, pharmacological, and various biomimetic applications. The reason for such widespread use is that these reactions are in general able to occur in relatively simple conditions, are not disturbed by water, generate little and inoffensive byproducts, and happen quickly with high characteristic yield. These qualities make click reactions particularly suitable to the problem of isolating and targeting molecules in complex biological environments. In such environments, products accordingly need to be physiologically stable and any byproducts need to be non-toxic (for in vivo systems). Their work finds even further application in all those industries and research fields where molecules need precision design and production, such as nanotechnology, pharmacology, and materials engineering.

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05.10.2022
THEME: WORLD

Aspect, Clauser, Zeilinger: the Nobel prize in Physics goes to experimental quantum entanglement

A famous law of quantum mechanics states that two objects that are separate in space can, in some cases, maintain a strong connection: what happens to one object will immediately influence the other. Such incredible behavior, referred to as entanglement, is a characteristic of quantum mechanics which has no parallel in classical physics. If theories have been developed at the beginning of the past century, the experimental proof came much later. It is for their pioneering experiments that demonstrate these facts that today Alain Aspect (France - 75), John F Clauser (the USA - 79), and Anton Zeilinger (Austria - 77) are the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. Thanks to their work, quantum entanglement is not just a theory anymore, but rather a hard undeniable fact of nature. It is also thanks to their contribution that today many investments have been dedicated to quantum technology, which is revolutionizing the capabilities of our computers as well as bringing cybersecurity to the next level.

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