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10/10/2012

Hundreds of Egyptians missing

One report finds that 1,200 people were missing in the months after Egypt's revolution
Many are still unaccounted for and families continue to search
Egypt's president has created a fact-finding mission to investigate

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Ahmed Taha was 17 a year ago, when he says security forces abducted him outside Egypt's High Court, beat and raped him.

"They beat me," he says. "One stepped on my face. I was wearing my glasses. They broke the glasses and my face was disfigured."

He says the beatings were just the beginning.

"I felt someone coming in. I was almost dead so he picked me up from the floor and tore my T-shirt and started holding my body," he recalls. "I went into shock. He removed my clothes and sexually assaulted me in front of the other policemen."

Khaled Gamal, 18, lives in Manshiyat Nasr, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt. He joined in some of the protests last year in Tahrir Square but says he couldn't afford to miss work too often to protest.

Two-thirds of the Cairo population live in informal shanty-towns called Ashwiyats (literally meaning "random" in Arabic). The unplanned settlements have proliferated across the city over the past three decades.

Umm Farouk, her eye swollen nearly shut from lack of medical care, says she never saw a revolution and says the protests "only caused more problems."

Mazes of slums cover Cairo, where some say the lack of affordable, sustainable housing is nearing a crisis point.

With 20 million people, more than the populations of Libya, Lebanon and Jordan combined, Cairo is the largest city in Africa and the Middle East.

Khaled is studying for Egypt's state examination. It's an exam that could earn him a coveted university spot.

Inside one of Cairo's poorest neighborhoods

The cost of the Egyptian revolution

For nine months, he says, his family couldn't find him in hospitals and police stations. His mother started to wear black in mourning.

Finally, his family located him and were able to visit him briefly in prison. Taha was released in July, without ever being indicted. He's now 18.

Egypt's Ministry of Interior refused to comment on Taha's claims and has long maintained that there is no torture inside its prisons.

Taha, who says he has overcome the trauma with the help of a psychiatrist, recounts his story in a rush -- short sentences without pauses.

He believes others who have disappeared from the streets of Cairo since the start of last year's revolution may have similar stories -- if they can ever be found.

A March 2011 report found that 1,200 people went missing in the course of the uprising in January and February that year, according to Nermeen Yousri, co-founder of the Hanlaqihom (We Will Find Them) Campaign. The list of missing, which activists say is still with the cabinet of ministers, hasn't been updated or cross-checked with lists of names of those found dead or in military prisons.

Many believe those missing could be in military prisons without proper papers or may have been killed and buried without identification. During the uprising, there were forced, and sometimes temporary, disappearances of activists, and also random rounding up of citizens passing by sites of clashes and protests.

Simple procedures, like keeping DNA records of anonymous bodies, could have helped narrow down the numbers of the missing, says lawyer Ahmed Raghab, a member of a new fact-finding commission mandated by President Mohamed Morsy. Raghab criticizes the actions of many state institutions, including judicial and investigative authorities, especially when dealing with missing people. The number of the missing, he says, could be in the thousands now following the turbulent 18-month transition.

The punishment

The legacy of the Egyptian revolution

Egyptian: 'Revolution has long way to go'

Mohamed Siddiq disappeared on January 28, 2011, a "day of rage" which resulted in nationwide clashes between police and protesters. His mother was able to talk to him on the phone two weeks later, the same day then-President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. He told her he was in prison. It was the last time she heard from him.

"The ministry of interior tells me all the revolution people are with the army, the army tells me they are with the interior ministry," Sabah Siddiq says. She calls her son's mobile number regularly and pays to keep it working.

"I know he's alive," she says repeatedly.

In July 2011, a soldier answered the phone and told her he found the SIM card near a detention facility outside Cairo. When she asked about her son there, officials told her about "a group of protesters from the revolution" who were held there. They were moved to an unknown place, she was told.

At a gathering for the families of the missing in August, the wails of the mothers screaming the names of their sons challenged claims of change.

"We believe it's a deliberate punishment to people who tried to protest and bring down the regime," said Yousri, of the Hanlaqihom Campaign.

Taha said he was tortured to force him to confess about crimes he didn't commit. He says he was taken near a protest staged by lawyers against changes in court procedure. He was accused of receiving foreign funding, holding thousands of judges hostage, arms possession, thuggery and protesting against the military. Most of the questions, however, were about his participation in the January 25 protests that forced Mubarak out of office.

In pants soaked with blood, Taha says, he eventually signed a pre-written police report. When he pleaded to a deputy prosecutor for help, telling him he was a minor, the official reportedly told him, "Here, you don't have rights."

"The value of the human being to our government is still not clear," said Yousri.

The ministry of interior refused to comment on Taha's story and the issue of the missing.

The fact-finding commission was formed because of the lack of cooperation by security agencies, Raghab says. "If these entities were cooperative, a fact-finding mission wouldn't have been needed. Some security agencies have an interest in covering up parts of their crimes."

'Circle of frustration'

Several activists and psychiatrists working on missing persons cases say it is a double punishment for the detainees and the families. In the case of torture, for instance, the victims are denied the ability to adapt to the violence because they usually don't know the reason for their ordeal. The same applies to the family.

"Forced disappearances are worse than murder, because families are deprived from their right to know and to grieve," said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Sometimes, he said, families feel that even if their children are dead, they are better off knowing the truth.

It's a dilemma. Families "are afraid to let go of the hope because maybe (their son or daughter is) out there somewhere and they would be letting (them) down if they stopped looking," said Yousri. "It's really a circle of frustration and anger and depression."

Many of the missing were the main providers for their families. To search in prisons scattered across the country is costly, increasing the families' financial burdens.

For many, such as Siddiq's family, the search in morgues continues.

"For my son not to come back ... of course, it's taking its toll on all of us. He's my only son. I need him," says Siddiq, pausing repeatedly to hold back the tears. Mohamed's picture is placed on the partition separating his small bedroom from the living room.

Like Taha, she is frustrated with Egypt's first elected president. She had hoped he would bring about substantial change and find her son. "Isn't the government supposed to bring me back my son? Who's responsible for this country? Dr. Morsy, right? He's supposed to find where my son is."

Morsy pardoned all political prisoners on Monday, but that leaves the missing file unresolved. Activists suspect that those supposedly held in prison are without proper documentation.

Lawyer Ahmed Seif El-Islam, a member of an official committee set up by Morsy to look into prisoners, said in August that there are "private prisons" associated with certain security agencies and outside the inspection jurisdiction of the prosecutor. Secret detention facilities in existing prisons, as alleged by some former prisoners, would be even more difficult to pin down, he says.

Taha, however, remains hopeful. "We must have hope because of the blood of the martyrs, the pain of the injured, the deprivation of the detainees, the injustice dealt to the revolutionaries. These things should inspire hope and push us forward and not look back," he says.

He was able to get a reversal of a decree expelling him from school for missing a year and is now working on a campaign against torture and the detention of students.

"We can face any oppressor or corrupt regime until we find the Egypt that we want, that we dream of," he says. "We will continue to the last breath."

Race in college admissions before court

The Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration's health care reform law, on June 28, 2012. The decision could determine how hundreds of millions of Americans receive health care in the future. Here's a look at other landmark Supreme Court cases.

Activists rally in February 2012 to urge the Supreme Court to overturn its decision that fundamentally changed campaign finance law by allowing corporations and unions to contribute unlimited funds to political action committees not affiliated with a candidate.

Gregory Lee Johnson lights a flag on fire to protest the Reagan administration and some Dallas-based corporations. Johnson was convicted of desecrating a venerated object but the court overturned the verdict on First Amendment grounds.

President Richard Nixon claimed executive privilege over taped conversations regarding the Watergate break-in in an attempt to keep the tapes out of a congressional investigation. The Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege is not ironclad.

Wanda McCorvey, identified as "Jane Roe" sued the Dallas County, Texas, District Attorney Henry Wade over a law that made it a felony for her to have an abortion unless her life was in danger, citing her personal liberty. The court agreed with Roe and overruled any laws that made abortion illegal in the first trimester.

Ernesto Miranda confessed to a crime without the police informing him of his right to an attorney or right against self-incrimination. His attorney argued in court that the confession should have been inadmissible because police did not properly inform him of that right. The court agreed and the "Miranda Rights" got their name.

In 1961, Clarence Earl Gideon was convicted of burglary after he was denied the right to an attorney by a Florida court. Convinced that Constitution guaranteed him the right to an attorney, he wrote a note from his prison cell to the Supreme Court, which unanimously overturned the verdict.

Dollree Mapp was arrested under an Ohio law for possession of obscene materials after police entered her home waving a piece of paper and calling it a warrant. The Court ruled that states could not violate the Fourth Amendment right to reasonable search and seizure, which rendered evidence gained that way inadmissible.

Nathaniel Steward, 17, recites his lesson surrounded by white classmates at the Saint-Dominique School, in Washington, the first school in which the Supreme Court ruling banning school segregation was applied.

Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American man, was arrested after authorities found out he claimed to be a Mexican-American to avoid being imprisoned in an interment camp during World War II. The court ruled that the rights of individuals were not as important as the need to protect the country during wartime.

Homer Plessy, who was of mixed descent, said because he was 7/8 white and 1/8 black, he should be alowed to ride the whites-only car on a segregated railway in Louisiana. The court upheld a 1890 state statute requiring railway cars provide separate but equal accomodations.

The front page of 'Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper' reports the Dred Scott case, in which the court ruled that a slave could not gain his freedom by entering a state in which slavery was outlawed. The decision inflamed anti-slavery sentiment in the North.

Gibbons v. Ogden was the first case to establish Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. The ruling signaled a shift in power from the states to the federal government and was later used as part of the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In response to the federal government's controversial decision to institute a national bank, Maryland tried to tax the bank out of business. A customer sued Maryland and the court ruled that the implied powers in the Constitution allowed the federal government to create a national bank and that national supremacy made Maryland's actions unconstitutional.

Outgoing President John Adams tried to appoint a number of Federalist loyalists to to judicial positions but some of the appointments had not been delivered by the time Thomas Jefferson took office. Jefferson instructed his Secretary of State James Madison (pictured) to stop delivery on the appoinments, including that of William Marbury, who sued. The court's ruling established the principal of judicial review -- the court's ability to rule on a law's constitutionality.

The Supreme Court will hear a case Wednesday on race in college admissions
The court ruled in a 1950 case that a minority student should be admitted to a university
Both cases -- more than half a century apart -- involved the University of Texas
The plantiff in 1950 was black; the plaintiff in 2012 is white

"Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free" -- from the Bible (John 8:32), inscribed on the facade of the the University of Texas at Austin Main Building ..."Equal Justice Under Law" -- inscription above the U.S. Supreme Court Building

(CNN) -- Heman Marion Sweatt and Abigail Noel Fisher both wanted to attend the University of Texas at Austin.

Both claimed their race was a primary reason for their rejection. Both filed civil rights lawsuits, and the Supreme Court ultimately agreed to hear their separate appeals -- filed more than half a century apart.

Their cases share much in common -- vexing questions of competition, fairness, and demographics -- and what role government should play when promoting political and social diversity.

But it is the key difference between these plaintiffs -- separated by three generations and a troubled road to "equality" -- that now confronts the nation's highest court: Sweatt was black, Fisher is white.

Supreme Court hears affirmative action case

As justices hear affirmative-action case, students differ on diversity

Sweatt's 1950 case produced a landmark court ruling that set the stage for the eventual end of racial segregation in public facilities.

Fisher's case will be heard by the justices Wednesday. The question here could come down to whether a majority on the bench believes affirmative action has run its course -- no longer necessary in a country that has come far to confront its racially divisive past, a country that has a president who is African-American.

"There's a good chance that affirmative action, at least in the case of education, is on the chopping block," said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington appellate attorney and SCOTUSblog.com editor.

"The Supreme Court 10 years ago approved the use of race as a factor. But it's just changed. (Now-retired Justice) Sandra Day O'Connor isn't there and she was the decisive vote. And the current conservative majority is just very suspicious of the use of race in government decision-making."

At issue: do the flagship state universities' race-conscious admission policies violate the rights of white applicants?

The timing of the arguments is not lost in a presidential election year, as the justices wade gently into this divisive issue. The court and its recent rulings on health care reform and illegal immigration have ensured that the court -- however it decides the Texas appeal -- will be a major campaign issue. A ruling in this petition, however, will not likely be issued until at least early 2013.

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Fisher individually sued the state university after her college application was rejected in 2008 when she was a high school senior in Sugar Land, Texas. She claims the individualized, discretionary admission policies violate her rights, and favor African-American and Hispanic applicants over whites and Asian-Americans.

The state of Texas provides for a hybrid admission policy: automatic acceptance to its university's main campus in Austin for in-state students finishing in the top 10% of their high schools, ensuring a measure of nonsubjective diversity. Three-fourths of the in-state student body gets in this way.

Fisher just missed that opportunity, so had to compete in a separate pool of students seeking to attend the highly competitive school. It is that a selection process that is before the court.

"If any state action should respect racial equality, it is university admissions," she and her lawyers told the high court in their written brief. "Selecting those who will benefit from the limited places available at universities has enormous consequences."

Supreme Court possibilities if Romney wins election

The school, with a large 52,000 student body, defends its "holistic" policy of considering race as one of many factors -- including test scores, community service, leadership and work experience -- designed to create a diverse campus.

"We must have the flexibility to consider each applicant's unique experiences and background so we can provide the best environment in which to educate and train the students who will be our nation's future leaders," said school administrators.

The Obama administration agrees, and is backing the school, saying to grow a nation built on differing complexions and backgrounds will depend on future leaders "who possess the understanding of diversity that is necessary to govern and defend the United States."

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is among more than five dozen outside groups filing legal briefs in support of the school. Many of them worry the conservative high court majority is poised to strike down or severely limit affirmative action.

"A broad ruling could have very far reaching effects, and could possibly affect the pathway to opportunity for minority students at a range of universities," said Debo Adegbile, the group's acting president. "Not just at state universities, but at all institutions of higher education."

But groups opposed to the state's policies think the time has come to rethink how affirmative action will be applied in the future, if at all.

"Using race in admissions decisions, to achieve diversity, amounts to stereotyping people by their race," said Joshua Thompson of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed a legal brief in support of Fisher. "Racial diversity in a student body does not guarantee a diversity of experience and perspectives. It is unrealistic and wrong to try to pigeonhole people by their race."

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A larger social debate is whether race-conscious policies serve their ultimate purpose -- to help minority students achieve success, especially in high-profile professional positions.

"What we're seeing now is affirmative action is backfiring quite badly," said Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She and two fellow commission members filed a brief, citing recent studies that race preferences are doing more harm than good, and suggesting there are fewer African-American professionals than would have been with race-neutral methods.

"The problem is what is called mismatch," said Heriot. "As a result of affirmative action, black students in particular, Hispanic students as well, are likely to go to a school where their entering credentials put them towards the bottom of the entering class," at top schools like Harvard or Texas. Their lower grades as a result, said Heriot, mean those students are much more likely to give up on the ambition to major in science, or go into medicine or the law.

Supreme Court possibilities if Obama is reelected

"It's heartbreaking," she said. "If only the students would go to the school where their entering credentials are pretty much in the middle or towards the top of that particular college."

Many social scientists and civil groups, including the NAACP, reject that analysis.

"I think those studies and arguments don't really jive with the real world," said Adegbile. "The admissions officers are best situated to make the determination and some of the tradeoffs, to have a mix of students that can accomplish all of the things that college and universities are engines to do."

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The high court has had an evolving record on the discretion of state officials to decide who attends their institutions.

The justices in 2003 said state universities can narrowly tailor their admissions policies to consider an applicant's race, to achieve a "critical mass" of minority students. But they reaffirmed existing limits -- bans on the use of quotas, extra "race" points in selective criteria, or "balancing" measures to reflect the larger population.

That landmark case from the University of Michigan is the subject of current but separate appeals over a state ballot measure designed to eliminate any racial criteria. A divided federal appeals court last year concluded the voter-approved ban on "preferential treatment" at public colleges and universities was unconstitutional, and "alters Michigan's political structure by impermissibly burdening racial minorities."

The Texas case is complicated over the issue of "standing" and whether Fisher should even be allowed to bring her lawsuit. She graduated this spring from Louisiana State University, where she went after being rejected by the University of Texas -- and school officials had argued she has no "live" controversy or claim necessary for the high court to intervene. They said her only "harm" would be trying to recoup nonrefundable application fees.

Through her lawyers, Fisher said she did not want to be interviewed by CNN.

In accepting the case, the high court made no mention of whether the standing issue would affect its ultimate ruling. The court also announced Justice Elena Kagan will not participate in the case since she apparently had been briefed on the issue as the Obama administration's solicitor general before joining the high court.

That leaves the possibility of a 4-4 ruling, meaning Fisher would not prevail, and leaving undecided the larger constitutional questions presented.

Fisher's attorneys made the strategic decision to sue as an individual instead of bringing a class-action discrimination claim, which would have made it easier in some respects. A co-plaintiff, Rachel Michalewicz, dropped out of the suit last year.

The university proudly touts its diversity: the latest freshman class is about 46% white, 25% Hispanic, 18% Asian, and 5% black.

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The Michigan case was divisive in 2003, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the swing vote. "In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity," O'Connor said. "The (Michigan) Law School's educational judgment that such diversity is essential to its educational mission is one to which we defer."

But she left the bench in 2006, replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, who is expected to strongly question the Texas policy.

Justice Clarence Thomas was among four conservative justices who found the Michigan policies unconstitutional. "The Law School, of its own choosing, and for its own purposes, maintains an exclusionary admissions system that it knows produces racially disproportionate results. Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution to the self-inflicted wounds of this elitist admissions policy."

Despite that high court ruling, some states, including California, do not allow race considerations in college admissions. The issue now before an arguably more conservative high court is whether the Texas policies should be re-evaluated, as states have had nearly a decade to re-evaluate such diversity considerations.

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A final word about Sweatt. When the Houston mailman applied to the University of Texas in 1946, no African-American at the time could be admitted to any law school in the state, and there were even no black-only law schools. So a purported "separate-but-equal" government policy was in fact "separate and non-existent."

School administrators cited the established white-only policies for their rejection -- "Texas' wise and long-continued policy of segregation," in the state attorney general's words -- and instead offered Sweatt an out-of-state scholarship. He refused and took his case to court.

By that time the state had agreed to create a blacks-only School of Law of the Texas State University for Negroes -- in Houston, not Austin -- but its implementation was delayed for many months. The high court unanimously found in favor of Sweatt -- concluding the separate school for a variety of quantitative and intangible reasons lacked "substantive equality." He became the first African-American ever ordered admitted to an all-white institution.

His legal victory was an important landmark -- a building block that culminated three years later in the 1953 Brown v. Board case, where the justices ordered a permanent end to state-mandated public, racial segregation.

Sweatt's personal victory was bittersweet. He entered the UT law school, but later dropped out, following ill health as well as hostility from white classmates. He died in 1982, and the Travis County civil courthouse in Austin was renamed in his honor.

The current case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (11-345).

US chemists win Nobel for study of receptors

STOCKHOLM — Americans Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka won the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for studies of protein receptors that let body cells sense and respond to outside signals. Such studies are key for developing better drugs.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the two researchers had made groundbreaking discoveries on an important family of receptors, known as G-protein-coupled receptors.

About half of all medications act on these receptors, so learning about them will help scientists to come up with better drugs.

The human body has about 1,000 kinds of such receptors, which let it respond to a wide variety of chemical signals, like adrenaline. Some receptors are in the nose, tongue and eyes, and let us sense smells, tastes and vision.

Lefkowitz, 69, is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Kobilka, 57, is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

'My wife gave me an elbow'
"I'm feeling very, very excited," Lefkowitz told a news conference in Stockholm by phone.

He said he was fast asleep when the Nobel committee called.

"I did not hear it ... I wear earplugs, so my wife gave me an elbow," he said. "And there it was. ... It was a total shock and surprise."

Lefktowitz said he had no clue that he was being considered for the Nobel Prize, though he added it has always been "a bit of a fantasy" to receive the award.

Kobilka said he found out around 2:30 a.m., after the Nobel committee called his home twice. He said he didn't get to the phone the first time, but that when he picked up the second time, he spoke to five members of the committee.

"They passed the phone around and congratulated me. I guess they do that so you actually believe them. When one person calls you, it can be a joke, but when five people with convincing Swedish accents call you, then it isn't a joke."

Solving the mystery
The academy said it was long a mystery how cells interact with their environment and adapt to new situations, such as when adrenaline increases blood pressure and makes the heart beat faster.

Scientists suspected that cell surfaces had some type of receptor for hormones.

Using radioactivity, Lefkowitz managed to unveil receptors including the receptor for adrenaline, and started to understand how it works.

Kobilka's work helped researchers realize that there is a whole family of receptors that look alike - a family that is now called G-protein-coupled receptors.

The award is "fantastic recognition for helping us further understand the intricate details of biochemical systems in our bodies," said Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, president of the American Chemical Society.

"They both have made great contributions to our understanding of health and disease," Shakhashiri said. "This is going to help us a great deal to develop new pharmaceuticals, new medicines for combating disease."

Now taken for granted
Mark Downs, chief executive of Britain's Society of Biology, said the critical role receptors play is now taking for granted.

"This groundbreaking work spanning genetics and biochemistry has laid the basis for much of our understanding of modern pharmacology as well as how cells in different parts of living organisms can react differently to external stimulation, such as light and smell, or the internal systems which control our bodies such as hormones," Downs said in a statement.

The Nobel week started Monday with the medicine prize going to stem cell pioneers John Gurdon of Britain and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka. Frenchman Serge Haroche and American David Wineland won the physics prize Tuesday for work on quantum particles.

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The Nobel Prizes were established in the will of 19th-century Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Each award is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million. The awards are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

More about the Nobels:

AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York and AP writers Danica Kirka in London and Amanda Kwan in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Americans win Nobel Prize in chemistry

Research by Robert J. Lefkowitz (L) and Brian K. Kobilka (R) on have increased understanding of how cells sense chemicals.

NEW: The prize recognizes work on cells that tell scientists what is going on in the human body
NEW: Their work has allowed drug makers to develop medication with fewer side effects
Nobel Prizes in chemistry have often gone to life sciences
Other work praised this week has deep implications for society

(CNN) -- Two American scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work revealing protein receptors on the surface of cells that tell them what is going on in the human body. The achievements have allowed drug makers to develop medication with fewer side effects.

Over four decades of research by Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka on "G-protein-coupled receptors," have increased understanding of how cells sense chemicals in the bloodstream, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize.

"I'm feeling very, very excited," Lefkowitz said in a predawn phone call from the United States to the committee in Stockholm, Sweden. The announcement caught him by surprise.

"Did I even have any inkling that it was coming?" he said. "I'd have to say no."

Cell discovery earns Nobel Prize

Lefkowitz, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, began tracking cell receptors in 1968, when he revealed "several receptors, among those a receptor for adrenalin."

In the 1980s, Kobilka, from Stanford University School of Medicine in California, joined the research to find the gene that produces the adrenalin receptor.

"In 2011, Kobilka achieved another break-through," the academy said in a news release: a photographic image of a hormone triggering a receptor to send an impulse into its cell.

"This image is a molecular masterpiece -- the result of decades of research," the academy said.

Nobel Prizes in chemistry have gone to predominantly to organic or carbon-based chemistry, particularly to discoveries in the area of life sciences, such as genetics.

This year's monetary award will be 8 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million). This represents a drop of 20%, compared with last year, from 10 million Swedish kronor, and is due to the turbulence that has hit financial markets.

Last year, Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology won the award for the discovery of quasicrystals, which was made in 1982 and "fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter," according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

On Tuesday, the academy bestowed Nobel honors in physics on Serge Haroche of France and David Wineland of the United States for their work in quantum optics that allowed scientists to observe the workings of atoms without disturbing their properties. As a side effect, their work lays down principles that could lead to quantum computers, which are astronomically fast computers that would radically change human life, if ever invented.

On Monday, the Nobel Assembly awarded the prize for physiology or medicine to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka jointly for their discovery that stem cells can be made of mature cells and need not necessarily be taken from fetuses or embryos.

The committee also will announce prizes in literature, peace and economics.

Since 1901, the committee has handed out the Nobel Prize in chemistry 103 times. In certain years, mainly during World Wars I and II, no prize in chemistry was awarded.

The youngest recipient was Frederic Joliot, who won in 1935 at the age of 35. The oldest chemistry laureate was John B. Fenn, who was 85 when he received the prize in 2002.

Frederic Sanger was the only scientist to win the chemistry prize twice for his work related to the structure of proteins and DNA.

There is a fine line between the science of chemistry and the fields of physics and biology. Famed female scientist Marie Curie of France, for example, won Nobel honors for her work in radiophysics in 1903 and then again in 1911 for discoveries in radiochemistry.