More than 230 students from 13 countries have already registered for the Courses.

The Asturian musician Víctor Manuel addressed the opening conference of the 2010 International Music School Summer Courses of the Prince of Asturias Foundation. The event was held on 20^th July at 11a.m. at the “Eduardo Martínez Torner” Advanced Conservatory of Music of the Principality of Asturias. On previous years, the opening conferences were chaired by Fernando Argenta, presenter of the music programmes "Clasicos Populares” (Popular Classics) and “El Conciertazo” (The Big Concert), the singer Luz Casal and the Galician musician Carlos Nuñez.

Víctor Manuel San José Sánchez (Mieres, Asturias, 1947), singer, composer and film producer, began to sing and play the harmonica as a child. When he was 18 he recorded his first songs, one of them titled Primer Disco (First Album). In 1965 he took part in the Benidorm Festival and on the following year at the Festival of the Altlantic. After recording El cobarde (The Coward) and El tren de Madera (The Wooden Train) in 1967, Víctor Manuel becomes a writer and performer, reaching his first hit one year later with La Romería, Paxarinos (Little Birds) and El abuelo Víctor (Grandfather Victor). He has worked as an actor in the films Morbo and Al Diablo con amor, by the Asturian director Gonzalo Suárez. He has written for other artists and produced for musicians such as Pablo Milanés, Ana Belén and Rosa León, among many others. In cinema, he has been the producer for films: Al diablo con amor (Gonzalo Suárez), Divinas palabras, El vuelo de la paloma and Tirano Banderas (José Luis García Sánchez), El mar y el tiempo (Fernando Fernán Gómez), Bajarse al moro (Fernando Colomo), Yo soy esa (Luis Sanz), El día que nací yo (Pedro Olea), La frontera (Ricardo Larrain), El marido perfecto (Beda Docampo) and Yo me bajo en la próxima (José Sacristán).

Registered Students

The 2010 Summer Courses will be held at the “Eduardo Martínez Torner” Advanced Conservatory of Music of the Principality of Asturias and at the Prince Felipe Auditorium in Oviedo, from 20^th to 31^st July. Since 3^rd May, 233 students from France, Germany, Mexico, Moldavia, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Ukraine and Venezuela have registered for the Courses. Also, the web page of the School has received more than 94,000 visits from 70 countries.

Thirty-nine teachers of ten different nationalities will give classes covering the standard range of symphonic orchestral instruments, as well as ensemble classes for chamber music, string quartets, wind ensembles, folk music ensembles, youth orchestra and junior orchestra. This year, the School has expanded its department of voice, including for the first time the subject Vocal Chamber Music. In addition, there will also be a workshop on Healthy musical habits: listening to our bodies, which aims to improve body awareness of the music student, and the subject of Guitar.

In addition to the music training, the teachers and students of the School will offer ten concerts; admission to these will be free to the public. There will also be a series of street concerts between 28^th July and 1^st August, with two concerts each day, at 12:00 noon and 7:00 p.m., in charismatic streets and squares in Oviedo.

Since 2005, teachers from institutions such as the Music Academy of Detmold (Germany), the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Advanced Conservatory of Music in Geneva, the Robert Schuman Advanced School of Music in Düsseldorf, the Russian’s Gnesin Academy of Music in Moscow, the “Rubin” Music and Dance Conservatory in Jerusalem, the Royal Conservatory of Mons (Belgium), The Advanced Music School in Porto (ESMAE), the Yehudi Menuhin School (United Kingdom), the Juilliard School in New York, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music in London, have taught at the School.

The 2010 Prince of Asturias Awards Juries met in Oviedo during May and June, except for the Sports and Concord Juries, which are to meet in September.

Extracts from the minutes of the Jury

The Jury for the Arts inaugurated the thirtieth year of the Prince of Asturias Awards, bestowing the accolade on the American sculptor Richard Serra  “for his audacity in structuring –from his minimalist perspective– the most significant spaces at an international scale through works of great visual power that are an invitation to reflection and wonder”.

The Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences was conferred on the archaeological team of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qinshihuang in Xi’an. As the Minutes state: “The Jury has wished to pay tribute to a team of archaeologists and other scientists who have unearthed this great tomb complex and, in particular, the work that has revealed to the world the cultural importance of China and of its civilization that spans thousands of years, its social organisation and its artistic splendour”.

The Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities was bestowed on the sociologists Alain Touraine (France) and Zygmunt Bauman (Poland, of British nationality). “These two representatives of the most brilliant intellectual tradition of European thought have created, independently from one another, singularly valuable conceptual instruments for understanding the changing, speeded-up world in which we live”.

The Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research went to the American biochemists David Julius and Linda Watkins and the Israeli Baruch Minke. “These three outstanding researchers in the field of Sensory Neurobiology have made findings that jointly enable a deeper understanding of the cellular and molecular bases of different sensations, especially that of pain”.

The Prince of Asturias Award for Letters was bestowed on the Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, “who, through historical fiction and theoretical reflection, has managed to lucidly address the complexity of the human condition. Using intense, suggestive language, Maalouf places us in the grand Mediterranean mosaic of languages, cultures and religions to construct a symbolic space for meeting and understanding”.

Finally, the Prince of Asturias Award for Internacional Cooperation went to the Transplantation Society and the Spanish National Transplant Organization. The Jury has taken into account “the cooperation between these organisations and their contribution for scientific and clinical practice to facilitate organ transplants throughout the world, as well as the coordination of the donation, extraction, preservation, distribution and exchange of organs, tissues and cells in the Spanish health care system and internationally”.

Each of the Prince of Asturias Awards, which date back to 1981, is endowed with 50,000 Euros, a commissioned sculpture donated by Joan Miró, a diploma and an insignia. The awards will be presented next autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.

Both organizations stand out for their crucial work in establishing the medical and ethical principles that govern clinical care and scientific research on organ transplantation.

This nomination was put forward by Enrique Moreno, 1999 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.

The Transplantation Society (TTS) was founded in 1966 at a New York Academy of Sciences conference on human tissue transplantation. One year later, TTS celebrated its first international congress in Paris, a congress since then held every two years. Currently, with over 4,500 worldwide members, TTS is the leading international organization in every aspect of human transplantation: medical care, pharmacology, education and research. TTS has provided a forum for hundreds of doctors and researchers worldwide to share findings, discuss theories, reveal new treatments, and formulate definitions and concepts crucial for progress in this field. TTS has an international office in Montreal (Canada) and its president is Australian doctor Jeremy Chapman. TTS's governance is divided into six regions spanning the globe.

TTS is responsible for establishing clinical practice guidelines, advancing training programs, and promoting ethical standards for clinical care and scientific research. Some of its ethical standards include a firm opposition to the commercialization of transplantable organs (an opposition first declared over 20 years ago), and the use of organs from executed prisoners. TTS promotes the principle that organs and tissues should be donated freely and without coercion. TTS also opposes the current phenomenon of "transplant tourism", in which people travel to developing countries to obtain organs.

TTS’s international congresses are the main forum in which scientific advances related to human transplantation are presented. These advances are also published in Transplantation Proceedings, a journal created in 1968. The official journal of TTS is Transplantation, which is published twice monthly and is the most cited and influential journal in the field (over 20,000 citations a year). TTS also publishes Transplant Infectious Disease, Transplantation Immunology and Xeno-Transplantation. TTS is in collaboration with the World Health Organization and has included under its governance other specialized associations such as the Cell Transplant Society, the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association, the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement and the Intestinal Transplantation Association.

TTS has allowed doctors and scientists to do many things: formulate a definition of brain death, define the problems of immunosuppression, debate the efficiency of pharmaceuticals and therapies for improving transplant success, promote different organ transplants, and discuss ethical issues. TTS has also fought unwaveringly against organ trafficking and inequality of access to transplants.

TTS created the Global Alliance for Transplantation so that anyone who needs a transplant, in any part of the world, may obtain it. Recently, with the help of the WHO and the Spanish ONT, TTS has initiated a project to create a global dictionary of donation and transplant data that provides universal standards for information collection and analysis. ONT, which is responsible for the International Registry of Organ Donation and Transplantation, provides technical assistance to this project.

In 2008, TTS and the International Society of Nephrology held an international summit in Istanbul on transplant tourism and organ trafficking. The final Declaration, agreed to by ethical experts and the representatives of over 150 scientific and medical societies and states, is considered a milestone in the establishment of definitions, principles, and proposals helping to increase the number of available donors and preventing organ trafficking and commercialization. The WHO recommended, at the third Global Consultation on organ donation and transplants held in Madrid (2010), that every country's plan to achieve self-sufficiency in covering its patient's needs should follow the guidelines of the WHO and the Declaration of Istanbul.

The Spanish National Transplant Organization (ONT), created in 1980, is a coordinating organization belonging to the Spanish Ministry of Health. It abides by the principles of cooperation, efficacy, and solidarity, and aims to coordinate the donation, extraction, preservation, distribution, exchange, and transplantation of organs, tissues, and cells occurring in the entire Spanish health care system. The organization's goal is to maximize the number of transplants possible, allowing an organ to reach the person who needs it independently of the person's socioeconomic status, race, or religion. Since the creation of the ONT, the rate of donors in Spain has increased 280%, and over 70,000 solid organ transplants and 200,000 tissue and cell transplants have been performed.

The ONT's principal function is to act as a bridge between local, national, and European health authorities, health professionals, social agents involved in donation and transplantation, and the general public. The ONT performs the following activities: managing donation alerts; maintaining and updating waiting lists; assisting in the coordination of kidney exchanges; assisting in the coordination of organ entry and exit; keeping records of donors, receivers, and transplants of organs, tissues, and hematopoietic progenitors; receiving applications for financial support; collecting data on extraction and transplant activity; providing general information for transplantation professionals; and providing continuing education and postgraduate courses for transplantation professionals.

In addition, the ONT collaborates with other national and international entities and periodically publishes a journal and a record of recent activity. In 2007, the ONT created, with the help of the World Health Organization, the International Registry of Organ Donation and Transplantation, which is headquartered in Spain. This registry is the most complete provider of public information on transplants, with information from 98 countries and 5 billion people, or 82% of the world's population. Also, in Latin America, Spain has pushed the creation of the Latin American Network/Council of Donation, and five years ago initiated the "Alliance" program, which has allowed over 200 Latin American professionals to be trained in Spain as transplant coordinators. Thanks to this organization's intense activity in recent years, Spain continues to lead the world of donation rate (34.4 per million people, with a total of 1,606 donors in 2009), and has the lowest family refusal rate in the world (17.6%, as opposed to 30% in Italy and 40% in Holland). Last year, 4028 interventions of this kind occurred in Spanish hospitals.

The work of the ONT has been recognized by several institutions, such as the Council of Europe, which recommended its members to adopt the guidelines of the "Spanish model" of transplantation and declared that the Spanish continuing education programs were of international interest. The ONT received the City of Madrid Medal of Social Merit (2000), and the Red Cross Gold Medal. The WHO has also recognized the work of the ONT, urging countries around the world to adopt the Spanish model of transplantation so that these practices may reach all citizens who need them, and to fight against organ selling and "transplant tourism". Following suit, in 2010 the European Union approved a directive urging member nations to set up national bodies with the same functions as the ONT. In 2007, the WHO made the ONT a partner organization.

Prince of Asturias Awards

The Prince of Asturias Foundation’s statutes establish that the aim of the Awards is to acknowledge and extol “scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work carried out by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level”. Constant with this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation “will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose work has contributed to mutual understanding, progress and brotherhood among nations in an exemplary and significant way”.

This year a total of 25 candidatures from Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Haiti, The Netherlands, Morocco, Peru, Portugal, Senegal, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, United States, Venezuela and Spain ran for the award.

This is the sixth of eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be bestowed this year for the thirtieth time. The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts went to American sculptor Richard Serra, the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences was conferred on the Archaeological Team of the Warriors of Xi’an (China), the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities was jointly bestowed on French and Polish sociologists Alain Touraine and Zygmunt Bauman, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research went to biochemists David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters was given to French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf.

The Prince of Asturias Awards for Sports and Concord will be announced in September.

Each of the Prince of Asturias Awards, which date back to 1981, is endowed with 50,000 Euros, a commissioned sculpture donated by Joan Miró, a diploma and an insignia. The awards will be presented in the autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.

The meetings of the jury responsible for awarding the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, the sixth of eight international awards that will be bestowed by the Prince of Asturias Foundation, will be held on June 15^th and 16^th. The awards will be bestowed this year for the thirtieth time in their history.

The Prince of Asturias Awards aim, to quote from the Statutes of the Foundation "to reward the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work performed by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level." As part of this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation "will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose work has contributed to mutual understanding, progress and brotherhood among nations in an exemplary and significant way ".

There are 25 nominations in the running for this Award from Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Haiti, The Netherlands, Morocco, Peru, Portugal, Senegal, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, United States, Venezuela and Spain.

The Award is endowed with fifty thousand Euros, a sculpture created and specially donated for the Awards by Joan Miró, a diploma and an insignia.

Members of the juries will hold an initial meeting with the media at about 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 15^th in the Salón of Consejos of the hotel (on the first floor), immediately prior to being formally convened and starting their deliberations. The jury will then elect a president from amongst them. The Jury secretary will be appointed by the Foundation.

Their decision will be made public at 12.00 a.m. on Wednesday 16^th in the Salón Covadonga of the hotel, and jury members will then be available for interviews.

The reading of the jury´s decision will be broadcast live for more than 150 countries via the main national and international radio and television channels. The signal will be openly transmitted via the Eurobird (Europe) and Intelsat (America) satellites. In addition, there will be a live Internet broadcast at the Foundation's website

EUROPE
Plataforma: Eurobird-9  (CANAL FEEDS TSA)
Satellite: Eurobird-9,
Orbital Position: 9º Este
Transponder:    69
RX Frequency: 12.092 MHz 
Band: Ku
Polarization: Horizontal
Symbol Rate: 27,5 MSymbols
F.E.C.: 3/4
Coding: MPEG 2 DVB

AMERICA
Satellite: INTELSAT IS-905
Orbital Position: 24,5º Oeste
Transponder: 62Kx12C  SLOT: 5
RX Frequency: 3820 MHz
Band: C
Polarization: Right
Symbol Rate: 4.500 MSymbols
F.E.C.: 3/4
Codec: MPEG 2 DVB

Telf.: + 34 91 512 94 98

Further information

• Biography
• Minutes of the Jury
• Statement

The French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf has been bestowed with the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters. The decision was announced by the Jury in Oviedo today.

His work, which has been translated into more than 20 languages, proves him as one of the contemporary writers who has most deeply explored Mediterranean culture, represented as a symbolic space of coexistence and tolerance.

Amin Maalouf was born in Beirut in 1949 of a Christian family. He studied political economics and sociology at the French University in Beirut and worked for the daily newspaper An-Nahar. In 1976, due to the Lebanese civil war, he moved to France in exile. In France, he continued his journalistic career as the editor of Jeune Afrique, covering numerous events such as the Vietnam War and the Iranian revolution. Since 1985, Maalouf has dedicated himself completely to writing, producing historical reality and fiction, novels and essays.

In 1983 he published his first work, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, which examines this period in history from an Arab perspective. In his first novel, Leo Africanus (1986), he portrayed, in the form of a memoir recorded by a traveler, the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the 16th century. Among his fiction novels are Samarkand (which earned the 1988 Maison de la Presse Prize) and The Gardens of Light (1990). Later he published The First Century after Beatrice (1992), an allegory of the north-south divide, while at the same time a plea for women. In 1996 he published Ports of Call, a metaphor of the Middle East crisis as well as his own personal turmoil. In his second essay, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1999), Maalouf analyzes the notion of identity and the violent passion that it provokes. The author wonders about the difficulty of assuming the many forms of freedom and why affirming oneself must involve negating others. This work earned Maalouf the Charles Veillon European Essay Award. Balthazar's Odyssey (2000) is, conversely, an ode to tolerance and the meeting of different cultures. In 2004 Maalouf published Origins: A Memoir, and in his latest essay, The Mismatch of the World (2009), Maalouf asks whether the current period of turmoil could lead to the development of an adult vision of individual beliefs and differences and of the destiny of this world that we all share.

Maalouf also wrote the libretto for the opera L’amour de loin, of the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, which debuted at the 2000 Salzburg Festival. He has obtained, among other awards, the Prix Goncourt for The Rock of Tanios (1993), the Prix Mediterranée and the Gold Medal of Andalucía. He has received an honorary doctorate from Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona.

Prince of Asturias Awards

The Prince of Asturias Foundation’s statutes establish that the aim of the Awards is to acknowledge and extol “scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work performed by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level.” Consonant with this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters “will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose work or research constitutes a significant contribution to universal culture in the field of Literature or Linguistics.”

This year a total of 27 candidatures from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Lebanon, Macedonia, Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Rumania, United Kingdom, United States and Spain ran for the award.

This is the fifth of the eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be bestowed in what is their thirtieth edition. The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts went to American sculptor Richard Serra, the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences was conferred on the Archaeological Team of the Warriors of Xi’an (China), the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities was jointly bestowed on French and Polish sociologists Alain Touraine and Zygmunt Bauman and the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research went to biochemists David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins. The Award for International Cooperation will be made public next week. The Prince of Asturias Awards for Sports and Concord will be announced in September.

Each Prince of Asturias Award, which date back to 1981, comprises a diploma, a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolising the Awards, an insignia bearing the Foundation's coat of arms, and a cash prize of 50,000 Euros. The awards will be presented in the autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.

The meetings of the jury responsible for awarding the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, the fifth of eight international awards that will be bestowed by the Prince of Asturias Foundation, will be held on June 8^th and 9^th. The awards will be bestowed this year for the thirtieth time in their history.

The Prince of Asturias Awards aim, to quote from the Statutes of the Foundation “to reward the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work performed by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level.” As part of this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters “will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose work or research constitutes a significant contribution to universal culture in the field of Literature or Linguistics.”

There are 27 nominations in the running for this Award from, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Guatemala, Netherlands, Lebanon, Macedonia, Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Rumania, United Kingdom, United States and Spain.

Members of the juries will hold an initial meeting with the media at about 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 8^th in the "Salón de Consejos" of the hotel (on the first floor), immediately prior to being formally convened and starting their deliberations. The jury will then elect a president from amongst them. The Jury secretary will be appointed by the Foundation.

Their decision will be made public at 12.00 p.m. on Wednesday 9^th in the Salón Covadonga of the hotel (on the ground floor), and jury members will then be available for interviews.

The reading of the jury´s decision will be broadcast live for more than 150 countries via the main national and international radio and television channels. The signal will be openly transmitted via the Eurobird (Europe) and Intelsat (America) satellites. In addition, there will be a live Internet broadcast at the Foundation's website.

EUROPE
Plataforma: Eurobird-9  (CANAL FEEDS TSA)
Satellite: Eurobird-9,
Orbital Position: 9º Este
Transponder:    69
RX Frequency: 12.092 MHz 
Band: Ku
Polarization: Horizontal
Symbol Rate: 27,5 MSymbols
F.E.C.: 3/4
Coding: MPEG 2 DVB

AMERICA
Satellite: INTELSAT IS-905
Orbital Position: 24,5º Oeste
Transponder: 62Kx12C  SLOT: 5
RX Frequency: 3820 MHz
Band: C
Polarization: Right
Symbol Rate: 4.500 MSymbols
F.E.C.: 3/4
Codec: MPEG 2 DVB

Telf.: + 34 91 512 94 98

Eric R. Kandel, 2000 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine: 

“In the individual contributions of Julius, Minke and Watkins have each discovered separate component mechanisms that together contribute to our current understanding of the senses and pain. These radical new discoveries have completely new strategies for treating persistent or chronic pain syndromes. (…)

 In summary, these three novel contributions have completely altered our view of pain sensation. I therefore strongly and enthusiastically support the joint nomination of David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins for the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research and consider them outstanding candidates”.

 Erwing Neher, 1991 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine:

“Dr. Minke has discovered the first member of a family of ion channels, which turned out to be of exceptional importance for a number of regulatory processes in the human body. David Julius showed that the some of the members of this family actually sense heat, cold and pain. Linda Watkins, finally, uncovered a regulatory network, involving glial cells and opionid receptors, which is essential for the understanding the complex signalling system underlying our pain perception. Together, the three candidates opened a major new chapter in the molecular understanding of sensation in general, and of pain in particular. A number of pharmacological companies are currently in the process of developing new pain relieving drugs on the basis of the discoveries of these scientists.

 I consider the prospects of application of this work for the betterment of living conditions for mankind as highly promising”.

 Ada E. Yonath, 2009 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry:

 “I would like to express my support for awarding the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research to professors David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins, who jointly paved the way for deeper understanding of sensory processing including pain. (…)

 They have been studied three different systems of receptors and channels in different living systems, namely mammalians, plants and insects and suggested ways to correlate their finding with pain. It is well known that chronic pain is considered to be of the magnitude of epidemic problem that affects the entire society. Hence, their findings are of immense significance. Furthermore, the prospects of the application of their work for the benefit of mankind are highly promising.

 To conclude, the combined findings of the three of them, in three different aspects, contributed significantly to our understanding of senses of pain, and consequently their discoveries provide novel strategies for treating persistent pain syndromes”.

 Paul Greengard, 2000 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine:

“These scientists have discovered mechanisms that provide a deeper understanding of sensory processing especially in the area of pain. Baruch Minke’s research on phototransduction and vision in fruit flies resulted in his identification and characterization of a new type of ion channel which he designated Transient Receptor Potential (TRP). He discovered the role TRP ion channels play in sensory signalling, revealing that the activation of the enzyme phospholipase C (PLC) plays a central role in the modulation of TRP channel activity. (…)

David Julius is a pioneer in the molecular analysis of nociception and pain. In particular, his identification of temperature-sensitive TRPV 1 ion channels, a subfamily of TRP channels, represents a major breakthrough in the study of thermosensation, nociception and pain. His studies have had a major impact in elucidating pathways that contribute to acute and chronic pain. (…)

The research of Linda Watkins focuses on glia, non-neuronal cells now widely accepted as key players in pathological pain states, such as occur after nerve damage. She discovered that most clinically relevant class of opioids activate glia, causing them to release neuroexcitatory substances that suppress the pain-suppressive effects of opioids; enhance the development of opioid tolerance, dependence and withdrawal; increase the rewards associated with drug abuse; and encourage respiratory depression. (…)

In summary, the discoveries of Baruch Minke, David Julius and Linda Watkins have added significantly to understanding the mechanisms of pain and have presented exciting new strategies for treating persistent or chronic pain syndromes”.

Richard Axel, 2004 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine:

 “David Julius’ work is characterized by an elegant series of seminal contributions on both genetics and neuroscience that have profoundly enhanced our understanding of the peripheral mechanisms of pain perception. (…)

In early work David exploited the exquisite sensitivity that we exhibit to capsaicin, the active component in chili peppers to clone a receptor expressed on terminals of nociceptive, sensory neurons. This receptor not only responds to capsaicin, but protons and noxious heat, mediators of pain-related behaviour. This led David to a search of additional members of this receptor gene family, TRP, which respond to cold, noxious chemicals, and tissue injury. Through a series of elegant genetic experiments, he has demonstrated a role for these receptors in the mediation of pain in response to noxious physical and chemical stimuli. His creative and rigorous experimental flow has led to insight of broad basic and clinical significance”.

Roderick MacKinnon, 2003 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry:

“David Julius has pioneered the field of somatosensation, and in particular hot and cold sensory perception. His work has very far-reaching medical implications because it provides the first mechanistic understanding of noxious (pain-producing) sensory perception.

He has identified specific transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channels as the molecular targets of sensory perception. He first showed that TRPV1 is the target of capsaicin, the active ingredient of hot chili peppers. He next showed that TRPV1 is present on sensory nerve fibers and is activated when temperature is raised above a threshold. Finally, he showed that mice lacking TRPV1 exhibit a reduced sensitivity to noxious heat stimulus. In parallel fashion professor Julius cloned the menthol receptor, TRPM8, and showed that it is responsible for cold temperature sensation”.

Más Información

• Biography
• Minutes of the jury
• Statements
• Endorsments

Biochemists David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins, scientific leaders in the battle against pain, have been bestowed with the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research. The Jury for the Award announced its decision today in Oviedo.

Recognised by the scientific community as world leaders in sensory Neurobiology, David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins have discovered, from complementary approaches, the causes and mechanisms via which pain is produced and perceived, as well as other sensations such as cold, heat and taste. The findings of these scientists open up new and hopeful avenues for the rational design of specific therapies and drugs for the selective treatment of the different types of pain, one of the great medical challenges of all times.

This candidacy was put forward by Ricardo Miledi, 1999 Prince of Asturias Award Laureate for Technical and Scientific Research, and was supported by Edwin Neher, Eric R. Kandel, Paul Greengard and Richard Axel, Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine in 1991, 2000, 2000 and 2004, respectively; and Roderick MacKinnon and Ada E. Yonath, Nobel Laureates in Chemistry in 2003 and 2009, respectively.

David Julius (biochemist) was born in 1955 in Brighton Beach (Brooklyn, USA). In 1977 he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences and in 1984 he received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Considered a pioneer in the study of the molecular mechanisms of nociception, Julius hypothesizes that nociception is a specific and individual sensory modality. His studies have shown that nociceptors are a subtype of sensory neurons that respond to a wide range of physical and chemical stimuli having sufficient intensity to cause pain.

He discovered that the TRPV1 channel is a capsaicin receptor that mediates the body’s response to temperature and tissue inflammation and damage, an important finding for the treatment of chronic pain and syndromes related to neurogenic inflammation, arthritis, cancer, and asthma. His work has also led to an understanding of allodynia, or the experience of pain from an innocuous stimulus, and hyperalgesia, the experience of excessive pain from (ordinarily less) painful stimuli.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (United States) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the Yngve Zotterman Prize of the Physiological Society of Stockholm (2003); the Kerr Basic Science Research Award of the American Pain Society (2006); the K.J. Zülch Prize for Basic Neurological Research of the Max Planck Society (Germany, 2006); the Edward Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT (USA, 2007); the W. Alden Spencer Award of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University (2007); the Julius Axelrod Prize of the Society for Neuroscience (2007); the Unilever Science Prize (USA, 2007) and the Passano Foundation Award (USA, 2010), among other honors.

Baruch Minke (biochemist and geneticist) was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He received his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Biochemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the same university in 1973. He conducted his postdoctoral training at Purdue University (Indiana, USA) where he studied genetics and electrophysiology of the visual system. Since 1987 he has been a Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has acted as Chair of the Physiology Department and is a member of several executive committees. He is also the Director of the Wilhelm Kühne Minerva Center for Studies of Visual Transduction, of the Max Planck Society, and an advisor to the Israeli Council for Higher Education.

He has taught at the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA) and the University of California, San Diego (San Diego, USA) and has conducted research at the Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics (Germany, 1976-1979); the Experimental Ophthalmology Laboratory at the Cantonal Hospital of Geneva (Switzerland, 1983); the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University (Germany, 1986) and the Australian National University (Canberra).

Baruch Minke was the first to identify a new type of ion channel, the TRP channel, as a result of his studies on phototransduction and vision in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). He studied the biophysical and biochemical properties of TRP channels in fruit fly eyes, and identified phospholipase C and the TRP channel as a common signaling pathway in numerous sensory systems, including nociception, thus laying the foundation for the study of the molecules that underlie the role of nociceptors in pain.

TRP channels, fundamental components of biological sensors, are involved in pain perception, the sensation of temperature and mechanical stimuli, photoreception, pheromone perception, taste perception, sour perception, Ca2+ and Mg2 homeostasis, the regulation of smooth muscle tone and arterial tension, lysosomal function, cardiovascular regulation, and the control of cell growth and proliferation.

Baruch Minke is a member of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and the Israeli Society of Vision and Eye Research. He is also on the editorial board of prestigious international journals such as Cell Calcium and The European Journal of Physiology/Pflügers Archiv. He has organized four international conferences and received numerous research grants, including 10 grants from the National Institute of Science (USA).

Linda Watkins (biochemist and physiologist) was born in 1954 in Norfolk, Virginia (USA). In 1976 she received her bachelor’s degree in Biology and Psychology from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and in 1980 received her Ph.D. in Physiology from the Medical College of Virginia.

She has been a Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder (USA) since 1988, and has conducted research at the University of California, Davis, and the Medical College of Virginia. She is on the editorial board of several international scientific journals.

Linda Watkins discovered a new agent of pain: the non-neuronal nerve cells called glial cells, which play a key role in pathological pain and pain resulting from nerve damage. Her research has been fundamental in the study of why certain analgesic treatments, acting exclusively on neurons, do not succeed in reducing pain.

Also, her work has shown how all classes of opioid analgesics trigger the release of neurostimulants from glial cells that override the calming effects of these drugs and lead to tolerance, dependence, or even respiratory depression. Linda Watkins discovered that these effects are not mediated by classic opioid receptors but rather a different receptor, TLR4, which plays a role in glial activation and is a new target for drug treatment.

Linda Watkins is a member of the International Society for Neroimmunomodulation, the International Association for the Study of Pain, the PsychoNeuroimmunology Research Society (USA), the International Pain Foundation, the Society for Neuroscience, and the American Pain Society, among other organizations. Among the awards she has received are the Norman Cousins award of the PsychoNeuroimmunology Research Society (USA, 2005), the FWL Kerr Basic Science Research Award of the American Pain Society (2005) and the Pilot Award of the Colorado Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute (2010).

Prince of Asturias Awards

The Prince of Asturias Foundation's statutes establish that the aim of the Awards is to acknowledge and extol “scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work carried out by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at international level.” In consonance with this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research “will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose discoveries or research work represent a significant contribution to Mankind’s progress in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, or Earth and Space Sciences, or to techniques or technologies related to these fields”.

This year a total of 35 candidatures from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, China, Finland, France, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Spain ran for the award.

This is the fourth of the eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be bestowed in what is their 30th edition. The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts went to American sculptor Richard Serra, the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences was conferred on the Archaeological Team of the Warriors of Xi’an (China) and the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities was jointly bestowed on French and Polish sociologists Alain Touraine and Zygmunt Bauman. The awards for Letters and International Cooperation will be announced in the coming weeks, with the Sports and Concord awards being announced in September.

Each Prince of Asturias Award, which date back to 1981, comprises a diploma, a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolising the Awards, an insignia bearing the Foundation’s coat of arms, and a cash prize of 50,000 Euros. The awards will be presented in the autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.

The meetings of the jury responsible for awarding the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, the fourth of eight international awards that will be bestowed by the Prince of Asturias Foundation, will be held on June 1^st and 2^nd. The awards will be bestowed this year for the thirtieth time in their history.

The Prince of Asturias Awards aim, to quote from the Statutes of the Foundation, “to reward the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work performed by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level.” As part of this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research “will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose discoveries or research work represent a significant contribution to Mankind’s progress in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, or Earth and Space Sciences, or to techniques or technologies related to these fields”

There are 35 nominations in the running for this Award from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, China, Finland, France, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Spain.

The Award is endowed with fifty thousand Euros, a sculpture created and specially donated for the Awards by Joan Miró, a diploma and an insignia bearing the Foundation’s coat of arms.

Members of the juries will hold an initial meeting with the media at about 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 1^st in the "Salón de Consejos" of the hotel (on the first floor), immediately prior to being formally convened and starting their deliberations. The jury will then elect a president from amongst them. The Jury secretary will be appointed by the Foundation.

Their decision will be made public at 12.00 a.m. on Wednesday 2^nd in the Salón Covadonga of the hotel (on the ground floor), and jury members will then be available for interviews.

The reading of the jury's decision will be broadcast live for more than 150 countries via the main national and international radio and television channels. The signal will be openly transmitted via the Eurobird (Europe) and Intelsat (America) satellites. In addition, there will be a live Internet broadcast at the Foundation's website.

EUROPE
Plataforma: Eurobird-9  (CANAL FEEDS TSA)
Satellite: Eurobird-9,
Orbital Position: 9º Este
Transponder:    69
RX Frequency: 12.092 MHz 
Band: Ku
Polarization: Horizontal
Symbol Rate: 27,5 MSymbols
F.E.C.: 3/4
Coding: MPEG 2 DVB

AMERICA
Satellite: INTELSAT IS-905
Orbital Position: 24,5º Oeste
Transponder: 62Kx12C  SLOT: 5
RX Frequency: 3820 MHz
Band: C
Polarization: Right
Symbol Rate: 4.500 MSymbols
F.E.C.: 3/4
Codec: MPEG 2 DVB

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Sociologists Alain Touraine and Zygmunt Bauman have been bestowed with the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. The decision was announced today by the Jury in Oviedo.

Considered two of the highest representatives of current European thought, Alain Touraine and Zygmunt Bauman have analysed the deep transformations of contemporary social structures and have developed key concepts for the understanding of fundamental issues of our time.

This nomination was put forward by Rafael Puyol, president of IE University (Madrid).

Alain Touraine (Hermanville-sur-Mer, France, 1925) graduated in History in 1950 from the Ecole Normale Supérieur of Paris, and he completed his education as a Rockefeller Fellow at Harvard University. In 1956 he founded the Research Center for the Sociology of Labor at the University of Chile, and in 1958 created the Industrial Sociology Workshop of Paris, which in 1970 was renamed the Center for the Study of Social Movements. He participated in the French National Research Council until 1958. In 1960 he received his Doctor of Letters and was Professor of Literature at the University of Paris-Nanterre from 1966 to 1969. Known as the creator of the term "postindustrial society", in 1981 Touraine founded the Center for Sociological Analysis and Intervention, where he acted as Director until 1993. Currently he is a research director at the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris.

A central theme of Touraine's work is the "sociology of action". Early in his career, his work was devoted to the sociology of labor and worker consciousness. Later he focused on the analysis of social movements, from the events of May, 1968 to the military coups in Latin America. His most recent work views the individual as the agent of social movements, a concept that Touraine has written about extensively over his career. He is strongly opposed to the neoliberal political movement of the 1990s. Also, he advocates a new social movement against globalization, which in his opinion fragments society and fosters individualism, and suggests a new focus on human rights.

Touraine has published around 20 books, including Sociology of Action (1965), The Voice and the Eye (1981), in which he describes a research method he developed while in Poland known as "sociological intervention", A Social Movement: Solidarity (1983); Workers movement (1987) and Critique of Modernity (1996). In his book A New Paradigm for Understanding Today's World (2005) Touraine analyzes the social changes experienced by complex societies over the last two decades. In Le monde des femmes (The World of Women) (2006) he examines the sociological construction of the female subject, through a research project involving over 60 interviews. He co-authored, together with Ségolène Royal, the book Si la gauche veut des idées (2008), and his latest publication is Thinking Differently (2009).

Touraine is an official of the Legion of Honor, and of the National Order of Merit of France. He has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities, and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Polish Academy of Science, The European Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an academic of the European Academy of Yuste Foundation. He has received the Sociology Award of the Mattei Degan Foundation (2006), the Social Classes and Social Movements Prize of Research Committee 47 of the International Sociological Association, and the Thought and Humanities Award of the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation (2008).

Zygmunt Bauman (Poznań, Poland, 1925), of British nationality, moved to the USSR with his family, of Jewish descent, at the start of World War II. After the war, he returned to Poland and taught at the University of Warsaw until 1968 when he was again exiled for political reasons. He lived in Israel briefly and was professor at the University of Tel Aviv until 1970. He has taught at universities in the United States, Australia and Canada and is emeritus professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom).

Bauman’s analysis of the links between modernity, Nazism, and postmodern communism has earned him international acclaim. He has contributed to the development of social sciences through the creation of concepts such as liquid modernity, which defines the contemporary era as one of change and constant movement, in which individuals no longer have consistent frames of reference and concepts are less stable than ever. His theories have been a major influence on the anti-globalization movement. His published works, which begin in the 1950s, achieved international fame in the 1980s with books such as Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), in which he argues that Nazi extermination of the Jews was a phenomenon related to the development of modernity.

Some of his most important published works are Liquid Modernity (2000), considered his masterpiece, in which he observes that globalized capitalism is destroying the stability of industrialized society, Liquid Love (2003), and Liquid Life (2005). He is also author of Culture As Praxis (1973), Postmodernity and Its Discontents (1997), Globalization: the Human Consequences (1998), In Search of Politics (1999), The Individualized Society (2001) and Wasted Lives. Modernity and Its Outcasts (2005). In this last book Bauman describes inevitable consequences of modernization, such as migration, refugees, unemployment, new poverty, and the need to establish identity.

Some of his latest books published in Spanish include Liquid Fear (2007), Consuming Life (2007), Art: liquid? (2007), Archipelago of Exceptions (2008), Many Cultures, One Humanity (2008), The Art of Life (2009) and Consumer World (2010). His thought and work have been analyzed in numerous books written by other authors.

Bauman has received honorary doctorates from fifteen European and American Universities. Among the awards that he has received are the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences, given by the Italian Association of Sociology (1989), and the Theodor W. Adorno Award given by the city of Frankfurt (1998).

Prince of Asturias Awards

The Prince of Asturias Awards aim, to quote from the Statutes of the Foundation "to reward the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work performed by individuals, institutions, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level". As part of this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities "will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose work or research constitutes a significant contribution to universal culture in these fields".

This year a total of 23 candidatures from Colombia, France, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, Mexico, Poland, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela and Spain ran for the award.

This is the third of eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be bestowed this year for the thirtieth time. The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts went to American sculptor Richard Serra and the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences was given to the Archaeological Team of the Warriors of Xi’an. The rest of awards will be announced in the coming weeks in the following order: Technical and Scientific Research, Letters and International Cooperation, with the Sports and Concord awards being announced in September.

Each Prince of Asturias Award, which date back to 1981, comprises a diploma, a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolising the Awards, an insignia bearing the Foundation's coat of arms, and a cash prize of 50,000 Euros. The awards will be presented in the autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.