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Nobel Prize winners 2015

<div>The 2015 Nobel Prizes are being announced this week and next. The $960,000 awards will be handed out in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. Below is a look at the winners announced so far:</div><div> </div><div><strong>Medicine</strong></div><div><span style="font-size: 13.008px; line-height: 1.538em;">The prize went to three scientists who helped create the world's leading malaria-fighting drug and another that has nearly wiped out two devastating tropical diseases, saving millions of lives.</span></div><div>Half the prize went to Tu Youyou - the first-ever Chinese medicine laureate - who took inspiration from traditional medicine to produce artemesinin, a drug that is now the top treatment for malaria.</div><div>The other half was shared by Japanese microbiologist Satoshi Omura and William Campbell, an Irish-born U.S. scientist, who created the drug avermectin. Derivatives of the drug have nearly rid the planet of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, diseases caused by parasitic worms and spread by mosquitoes and flies that affect millions of people in the developing world.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Physics</strong></div><div><span style="font-size: 13.008px; line-height: 1.538em;">The prize was awarded to Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada, who made key contributions to experiments showing that neutrinos change identities.</span></div><div>These subatomic particles are created in nuclear reactions, such as in the sun and the stars, or in nuclear power plants.</div><div>With their discovery, Kajita and McDonald helped prove that neutrinos must have mass, thereby changing "our understanding of the innermost workings of matter," the Nobel committee said.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Chemistry</strong></div><div>The prize went to Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar for their research into the way cells repair damaged DNA.</div><div>The Nobel committee said the trio's work "has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions."</div><div>Their findings have been used for the development of new cancer treatments, among other things.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Literature</strong></div><div><div>Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for works that the prize judges called "a monument to suffering and courage."</div><div>Alexievich, 67, used the skills of a journalist to create literature chronicling the great tragedies of the Soviet Union and its collapse: World War II, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the suicides that ensued from the death of Communism.</div><div>Her first novel, "The Unwomanly Face of the War," published in 1985 and based on the previously untold stories of women who had fought against the Nazi Germans, sold more than 2 million copies.</div></div><div> </div><div><strong>Peace</strong></div><div>The Nobel Peace Prize jury says The National Dialogue Quartet in Tunisia has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The jury cited the group Friday for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011. The prize comes the day after unidentified assailants shot repeatedly at a lawmaker and prominent sports magnate in Sousse, underscoring a sense of uncertainty in the city, which depends heavily on tourism.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Economics</strong></div><div><span style="font-size: 13.008px; line-height: 1.538em;">Angus Deaton of Britain and the United States won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for his work on consumption, poverty and welfare, the jury said.</span></div><div><p>"By emphasising the links between individual consumption decisions and outcomes for the whole economy, his work has helped transform modern microeconomics, macroeconomics and development economics," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.</p><p>"To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding," it said.</p></div><p> </p>
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