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Nobel Prize in Medicine Honors Two Americans for Discovery of MicroRNA

Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media in front of a picture of this year's laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkum during the announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7, 2024. (AFP)
Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media in front of a picture of this year's laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkum during the announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7, 2024. (AFP)
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Nobel Prize in Medicine Honors Two Americans for Discovery of MicroRNA

Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media in front of a picture of this year's laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkum during the announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7, 2024. (AFP)
Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media in front of a picture of this year's laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkum during the announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7, 2024. (AFP)

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.

The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”

Ambrose performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Rackham’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

The announcement launched this year’s Nobel prizes award season.

Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 14.

The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

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The World's Rivers Faced the Driest Year in Three Decades in 2023

People visit Silver Sands Beach at the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City, Utah, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)
People visit Silver Sands Beach at the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City, Utah, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)
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The World's Rivers Faced the Driest Year in Three Decades in 2023

People visit Silver Sands Beach at the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City, Utah, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)
People visit Silver Sands Beach at the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City, Utah, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)

The UN weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world's rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in some places.
The World Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers in many countries suffered the largest loss of mass in the last five decades, warning that ice melt can threaten long-term water security for millions of people globally.
“Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, releasing the report on Monday.
She said rising temperatures had in part led the hydrological cycle to become “more erratic and unpredictable” in ways that can produce “either too much or too little water” through both droughts and floods.
The weather agency, citing figures from UN Water, says some 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water for at least one month a year — and that figure is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2050.
The world faced the hottest year on record in 2023, and the summer of this year was also the hottest summer ever — raising warning signs for a possible new annual record in 2024.
“In the (last) 33 years of data, we had never such a large area around the world which was under such dry conditions,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of hydrology, water and cryosphere at WMO.
WMO called for improvements in data collection and sharing to help clear up the real picture for water resources and help countries and communities take action in response.
The report said the southern United States, Central America and South American countries Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay faced widespread drought conditions and “the lowest water levels ever observed in Amazon and in Lake Titicaca,” on the border between Peru and Bolivia.