Nobel prizes 2013 for computational research

Nobel Prizes-2013 to Computational Research Dr. S.S.Verma Professor, Department of Physics S.L.I.E.T., Longowal, Distt.-Sangrur (Punjab)-148106, INDIA E-mail: ssverma123@rediffmail.com The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award that captures the world’s attention. in the world. The Nobel Prize, is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances as per the will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895. The prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace were first awarded in 1901. An associated prize in Economics has been awarded since 1969. The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, while the other prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. Every year in early October, the world turns its gaze towards Sweden and Norway as the Nobel Laureates are announced in Stockholm and Oslo. Millions of people visit the Nobel Foundation’s website during this time. Prizes are awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”

Announcement of Nobel Prizes every year in general and in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine disciplines in particular are awaited with great curiosity by each and every one who is either associated with research or thinking to pursue research (PG students) as career in any of these disciplines. Recognition/selection of these prize winning scientific discoveries always acts as guiding lights not only for researchers and students but also to the people involved in the scientific and industrial planning of any country. Topics/fields of scientific discoveries lay a great stress about the importance of latest trends in science and its applications and will encourage/motivate researcher and students to follow these areas of science. Nobel prizes for 2013 in the disciplines of Physics, Chemistry and Medicine have been recently awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as: Physics: François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider" Chemistry: Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" Physiology or Medicine: James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof

"for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells" All three above mentioned Nobel Prize discoveries represent to the theoretical work of advance level with the help of advanced computer simulation. Computer simulation involves mathematical modeling, numerical analysis, computer science, high-performance computing and visualization. In its narrowest sense, a “computer simulation” is an algorithm, run on a computer, which uses step-by-step methods to explore the approximate behavior of a mathematical model.

Computer simulation was first pioneered as a scientific tool in meteorology and nuclear physics in the period following World War II, but it has grown rapidly to become indispensible in a wide variety of scientific disciplines. The list of sciences that make extensive use of computer simulation has grown to include astrophysics, materials science, engineering, fluid mechanics, climate science, evolutionary biology, ecology, economics, decision theory, sociology, and many others. There are even a few disciplines, such as chaos theory and complexity theory, whose very existence has emerged alongside the development of the computational models they study. As computer simulation methods have gained importance in more and more disciplines, the issue of their trustworthiness for generating new knowledge has grown, especially when simulations are expected to be counted as epistemic peers with experiments and traditional analytic theoretical methods.

The remarkable development of large scale computing in the last decades has turned this technique into the "third pillar" of science, complementing theory and experiment. Nobel prize winning discoveries of 2013 in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine have further strengthened that the field of computer simulations is of great importance for high-tech industry and scientific/engineering research in any branch/topic. Often the field of computer simulations is referred to as the third pillar of science complementing theory and experiments. Computer Simulation for Science and Engineering (COSSE) enables the technology for scientific discovery and engineering design. Computer Simulation offers scientists new insights in scientific problems and tools for extracting and using detailed information from volumes of data and also provides reliable information for design in engineering disciplines, thereby shortening and economizing the design cycle for products and processes. The creation, investigation, implementation, evaluation and documentation of computational models in science and engineering is a process which puts high demands not only on technical skills but also on the communication with other professionals.

Working scientists describe simulation studies in experimental terms and the connection between simulation and experiment probably goes back as far as von Neumann, who, when advocating very early on for the use of computers in physics, noted that many difficult experiments had to be conducted merely to determine facts that ought, in principle, to be derivable from theory. Once von Neumann's vision became a reality, and some of these experiments began to be replaced by simulations, it became somewhat natural to view them as versions of experiment. A simulation that accurately mimics a complex phenomenon contains a wealth of information about that phenomenon. Variables are evaluated at thousands of points by the supercomputer as it simulates the development of phenomenon. The idea of “in silico” experiments becomes even more plausible when a simulation study is designed to learn what happens to a system as a result of various possible interventions.

In drug design, for example, scientists can now use computers to calculate how an experimental medicine will react with a particular target protein in the body by working out the interplay of atoms. The field of computational modeling has revolutionized how we design new medicines by allowing us to accurately predict the behavior of proteins," said Dominic Tildesley, presidentelect of Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry. Today, all pharmaceutical companies use computational chemistry to screen experimental compounds for potential as medicines before further testing them on animals or people. The ability to model chemical reactions has also grown as computers have become more powerful, while progress in biotechnology has produced ever more complex large molecules for use in treating diseases like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The approach has applications in industrial processes, such as materials science, the design of solar cells or catalysts used in cars. For the former, programs can be used to mimic the process of photosynthesis by which green leaves absorb sunlight and produce oxygen.

In the present era, computer simulation has become a center of activity in virtually every domain where science is applied. Digital computer simulation helps study phenomena of great complexity. Today the computer is just as important a tool for scientists and engineers as it is for others. Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in science and technology today. Powerful computer models developed by the scientists offer a new window into cost effective research and have become a mainstay for researchers in thousands of academic and industrial laboratories around the world. Numerous simulations and animations can be found on the Internet to illustrate key principles and the easiest way to locate these resources is enter the name of the concept and the term "simulation" when performing a search.