年诺贝尔奖 小者为王

Bigger isn’t always better.

体积大未必就是好的。

People who are skeptical about this argument just need look at smartphones and personal computers, which have served as the technological driving force of the past century.

智能手机和电脑代表了20世纪科技发展的驱动力，任何人只要看到它们，就会打消对上述这句话的疑虑。

It is the continual shrinkage of components that have unleashed the explosion of computing power and enabled these gadgets to be accessible to people across the world.

正是由于零部件的不断缩小，这些科技设备的运算效率才得以释放，让它火遍全球。

Inspired by this, researchers and scientists have been working on areas where making things small may mean big results.

受此启发，研究者和科学家们都致力于研发体积小却意义重大的科技成果。

And this year, the Nobel Prize has defied the convention of celebrating big by presenting the biggest prizes to discoveries on the smallest scales.

而今年的诺贝尔奖，更是一反过往青睐大型科技成果的传统，将大奖颁给了体积最小的科学新发现。

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to a cellular-level experiment.

今年的诺贝尔生理学或医学奖花落一项细胞层面的实验成果。

The committee *bestowed the award upon Yoshinori Ohsumi of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, for his research on *autophagy, which is a self-eating process seen in cells.

评委会将奖项授予了来自东京工业大学的大隅良典，以表彰他在细胞自噬作用研究上所做的贡献。

What’s more, in recognition of their working on the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states and taking their research all the way down to an atomic scale, the Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to three British-born scientists who currently work in the US.

而诺贝尔物理学奖则颁给了三位生于英国、目前正在美国工作的科学家，肯定了他们对极端状态下物质的特异属性所做的原子级研究。

Another exceptional new field is that of nanotechnology.

另一个出人意料的新领域是纳米技术。

The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to a scientist who managed to build the world’s tiniest machines out of molecules.

诺贝尔化学奖颁给了一位尝试制作世界上最小的分子机器的科学家。

These contraptions, including a nano-sized car, are so small that they’re invisible to the human eye.

这些包括纳米汽车在内的轻巧设计小得甚至连肉眼都不可见。

Microscopic as the subjects are, the benefits of the scientists’ research are set to be huge.

尽管这些物质都十分微小，但相关科研成果的意义却是巨大的。

More importantly, their inventions may even eventually be turned into products that benefit mankind.

更重要的是，这些发明在将来或许还能投入生产，造福人类。

Ohsumi’s research on autophagy shines a light on ubiquitous diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes.

大隅在自噬作用上的研究成果，为帕金森病、糖尿病等常见疾病的治疗带来了一线希望。

As for the molecular motors, they’re geared up to bring huge potential to the fields of medicine and energy.

而分子马达将会为医药和能源领域带来巨大的潜力。

The ground-breaking discoveries in physics, have ignited a firestorm of research, and it’s only a matter of time before their research leads to advances as unimaginable to us now as lasers and computer chips were a hundred years ago, Laura H. Greene, president-elect of the American Physical Society told The New York Times.

物理学界这一开拓性的发现已经点燃科学研究的星星之火，而他们的这项研究发展为前沿科技，也不过是时间早晚的事罢了，就像100年前我们无法想象今天的激光和电脑芯片那样，美国物理学会候选会长劳拉•H•格林在接受《纽约时报》采访时表示。