How’s it going? There was another typhoon this week. I really hope this is the last one. Actually, my youngest student, aged 3, saw a storm cloud approaching and said to his mother, ‘It’s stormy!’. She told me this week in the waiting room. I’m really glad he’s using the English he learnt in class. Young kids learn really quickly.

  This week the Nobel Prize winners are being announced. So far there have been winners announced for medicine, physics, and chemistry. The winners for literature, peace and economics will be announced later this week. The prize for medicine went to Dr Yoshinori Oshumi from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. His work involved researching about autophagy or body cells ‘self-eating’, a process that if it goes wrong can lead to diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Some British scientists, now working in the USA, won the physics prize. David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz did work looking at strange matter. Their discoveries are helping to make the next generation of super-computers even quicker. The chemistry prize was awarded to scientists from France, the UK and the Netherlands, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa. They were awarded the prize for their work on nanotechnology. It’s always interesting to me to read about Nobel Prizes. I really respect these scientists whose scientific advances change the world and help society. The majority of medical and scientific research is done in English and this is one of the more important reasons to learn English. Congratulations to all the winners, including the Japanese and British winners, and thank you for your contribution.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week.

Kevin