Nobel prize winning Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was forced into exile for books strongly critical of the Soviet government, has died at 89. His son said Sunday Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure while Russian news reports said he suffered a stroke.

Imperial's Nobel Conversations series kicked off this week with a lively and engaging discussion with Professor Hartmut Michel from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for being the first person to grow crystals from membrane proteins.

United Nations climate panel's chief scientist Rajendra Pachauri and former US vice president Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming and spreading awareness on how to counteract it.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today announced that Dr. James D. Watson, 79, has retired after nearly 40 years of distinguished service to CSHL. He had stepped down as President of CSHL in 2003 and most recently served as Chancellor.

The $1 million, two-month project is a collaboration of 454 Life Sciences and the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center (HGSC), said Dr. Richard Gibbs, director of the HGSC and a scientific advisor to the Connecticut-based company. BCM's strength in genetics, diagnostics and genomics made it a logical partner in the project. For example, BCM has developed gene chips that can evaluate DNA in chromosomes for deletions or additions associated with increased risk of some diseases.