Of Nobel and other prizes and their need.

The Nobel Prizes were awarded last week. The Pulitzer awarded last June and other prizes throughout the year. Interesting, how new telecommunication tools are playing an important role in achieving many of the science outcomes these days.

These modern tools - by revealing the many issues facing our world today in real time, create an urgency to resolving them. They also provide an avenue of cooperation for people near and far, not possible before. Such teamwork from differing arenas helps to accomplish solutions faster, eliminating hesitancy and diffidence. As playwright and novelist Alice Childress whose birthday (10-12-1916) was this week said, "Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way."

Lack of contacts and collaborations can however, add to many of our problems. For, as Eleanor Roosevelt, whose birthday (10-14-1884) was also this week said, "We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk …”

Just as in medicine, a closed wound can fester into an alarming infection, while a surgeon's knife opening it will drain and heal it. Prizes and awards encourage dialogue and discourse, solving problems. While secrecy and reticence aggravate to misunderstandings and conflict.