The Nobel science galaxy

AMONG THE thoughts which are stirred by the recent announcements of Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry in particular is the one about how the areas chosen for picking out the discoveries and those who had made them are those where breath-taking advances have already been made.

With a great deal known already, if a scientist or - as it now seems to be happening - a group of them will have to strive very hard to push the frontiers of science and technology even a little ahead to further enrich the knowledge even if they could not hope to achieve a sensational breakthrough of the kind for which Albert Einstein and C. V. Raman are today remembered.

This would seem to be borne out by Eric Kendal, Paul Greengard and Arvin Carlsson who share the first millenium Nobel Prize for Medicine.

The Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Mr. Zhores Alferov of the Af Ioffe Physico-Technical Training Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, while Herbert Kroemer of the University of California at Santa Barbara gets the prize for developing semi-conductors with practical uses for cellular telephones and Mr. Jack Kilby gets the prize for the part he played in the invention of the computer chip and integrated circuit.

A message rung out by the first Nobel Prizes of the new millennium and even of earlier years is that the discoveries may not be flashes of genius and readily recognisable but which could make a qualitative input to what is already known though it may not be immediately noticed.

Such an inference could be made from the selection of Eric Kendal, Paul Greengard and Arvid Carlsson for medicine and Austrian-born Kandel for the discoveries of how the efficiency of synapses can be modified and how changes changes affect learning and memory.

The discoveries in medicine have been crucial for an understanding of the normal function of the human brain and how disturbances in the signal transduction - the conversion of a non-electrical signal into electrical one and from pressure to voltage - which can result in neurological and scientific diseases according to the Karolinska Institute of Sweden.

Messages between nerve cells in the brain numbering more than 100 million are carried by chemical transmitters with messages transmitted at special points of contact between the cells which are called synapses.

One of these chemical messengers is a hormone-like substance called dopamine, the presence of which in certain qualities makes it possible for the brain to function normally.

The Karolinska Institute has further said that Paul Greengard who is the head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University, New York, is rewarded for his discovery of how dopamine and a number of other transmitters act on the human nervous system.

Dopamine which is also known as Hydroxtyramine is a nitrogen containing organic compound formed as an inter-meshed compound from Dihydroxyl Phenylalanine during the metabolism of the aminoacid tyrosine. It is the precursor of the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine formed primarily by initiating the transmission of nerve impulses in certain crucial segments of the human brain.

This highly rarefied presentation of what the human brain is witness to could start with a description of transduction as a viral infectious process in which genes from a host cell (a bacterim) are incorporated into the viral genome and carried into another host cell with the virus initiating another cycle of infection.

Transduction has been pressed into service as a remarkable microbiological technique for making new strains of bacteria for locating bacterial genes and for many other genetic experiments.

The scientists should have gone ahead on trail which had been blazed earlier and is already stretching very far and pushed back the scientific horizon further.

The discoveries of Austrian-born Kendal, Director of Columbia University Centre for Neurology and behaviour relating to the possibilities for the modification of the efficiency of synapses and how changes can affect learning and memory add more milestones on the road to infinity.

Synapse is the functional connection between two nervous cells which are the neutrons.

It allows impulses to be transmitted from one cell to the next. It contains a number of small cavities which are called pre- synaptic vesicles.

The chemical theory of nerve transmission is that the arrival of an impulse at the end of a nerve fibre causes the release of a chemical compound which is called a transmitter substance and excites the neighbouring cell.

Although several chemical transmitter compounds exist, only a few have been identified and among which are acetylicholine and gamma amino butyric acid.

The transmitter substance is believed to affect the membrane permeability of the nerve cells which it contacts to cause a shift between the potassium sodium ions and the positive charged synapse with its chemical transmitter substance which acts as a physiological valve directing the conduction of nerve impulses in regular circuits to prevent random, chaotic stimulations of nerves and the wasting of energy.

The Nobel Prize for Physics is shared by Mr. Zhores Alfetrov of the Af Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. Mr. Herbert Keromer of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Mr. Jack Kilby for development of semi- conductors with practical uses for cellular telephones.

This is yet another instance of scientists going further on a road which has gone a long way already.

Among the facts about semi-conductors which may not be widely known is that the common ``intrinsic'' semi-conductor like single crystals of silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide have very poor conductivity and very much temperature dependent.

The conversion of these into technologically more important ``extrinsic'' semi-conductors requires the addition of small amounts of impurities under a process known as doping.

The semiconductor device made from a material that is neither a good conductor nor a good insulator could serve as a switch, rectifier, amplifier etc.

Rapid development of techniques for making and applying semi- conductor devices has brought about an explosive growth of the electronic industry during the last four decades.

When Sir Isaac Newton said that he was only picking pebbles on the shore with the sea of knowledge beckoning him, he could never have imagined that a few centuries later, the number of pebbles has gone up and more and more scientists are picking them with the sea still mocking at them as ever before.

If one is looking for another imagery from the new discoveries which have been made is that the road of science never ends at any point.

It has to be pushed further by those who could will themselves, in the ringing lines of Tennyson,

``To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield''.

C. V. Gopalakrishnan

in Chennai

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Section  : Science & Tech
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