STOCKHOLM: This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been announced. The prize has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis. Their research is in quantum mechanics. The prize is for the discovery of large-scale (macroscopic) quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit. All three are from the US.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The prize money is 11 million Swedish kronor (over 10 crore Indian rupees). This amount is equally divided if there is more than one awardee.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced yesterday. Mary E. Brunkow (US), Fred Ramsdell (US), and Shimon Sakaguchi (Japan) were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering regulatory T cells (Tregs), which are immune system "guards" that prevent the body from attacking its own tissues and causing autoimmune diseases. Their research, which focused on peripheral immune tolerance, uncovered the critical role of these specialized cells in maintaining the balance between the immune system's defense and its ability to recognize self from non-self.

Understanding how the immune system works and why humans don't get serious autoimmune diseases has opened up new avenues for treating cancer and autoimmune diseases.