The Morning Briefing: Nobel prizes

"The Morning Briefing" is SmartPlanet's daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we're reading about this year's Nobel prizes.

1.) Nobel medicine prize goes to SF scientist. It started in 1962, when an Oxford scientist used cells from the gut of a frog to make tadpoles that were clones of the original.

2.) Nobel prize in physics: It's not too soon for a Higgs boson to win it. There is excellent evidence that some kind of Higgs boson was discovered this year, and nothing more is needed to award a Nobel prize for it.

3.) Nobel prize goes to British researcher, Japanese scientist for stem cell work. Nobel committee awarded John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka the prize in physiology or medicine for discovering that ordinary cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells, a discovery which may lead to new treatments.

4.) Nobel prize could ease the politics of embryonic stem cell research. Not a lot has been said about embryonic stem-cell research in this presidential campaign, in stark contrast to previous years when this issue stood prominently with marriage equality in the culture wars of politics.

5.) Nobel prize for Literature to be announced on Thursday morning. The Swedish Academy is set to announce the world's most prestigious literary prize later this week. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature -- an award that carries a prize of some $1.2 million -- will be revealed on Thursday morning in Stockholm.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com