Narendra Kohli, 73 year-old eminent Hindi litterateur, has been selected for the prestigious Vyas Samman for 2012 for his historical novel ‘Na Bhooto Na Bhavishyati’. The book was published in 2004. The book is based on the era of Vivekananda and his impression on the history and culture of the country. Kohli is credited with re-inventing the ancient form of epic writing in modern prose. He has published 76 books including short story collections, novels and plays.

This award was established by the K. K. Birla Foundation in 1991, the award is given annually for an outstanding literary work in Hindi published during the past ten years. The award carries a cash purse of Rs 2.5 lakh.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbert, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and other Silicon Valley tech giants have announced their funding of the Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize, a new biology competition intended to incentivize the search for cures for humanity’s most troublesome diseases. The Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences will help generate excitement and financial reward for outstanding scientific achievement, similar to those generated by athletes. Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, who last year established a similar $3 million prize for achievements in physics, Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki, founder of Genetics Company 23andMe, and Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan have also been named as founding sponsors. Zuckerberg, Wojcicki, Milner, and Apple and Genetech chairman Art Levinson make up the Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize foundation board, with Levinson serving as chairman.

1. Cornelia I Bargmann: He investigates the nervous system and behaviour at Rockefeller University.
2. David Botstein: He is Director and Anthony B Evnin professor of genomics at Princeton University. For linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA polymorphisms.
3. Lewis C Cantley: Margaret and Herman Sokol professor and director of the cancer centre at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian hospital. For the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer metabolism.
4. Hans Clevers: He is professor at Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands, and has studied how processes in adult stem cells can go wrong and cause cancer.
5. Titia de Lange: He is head of Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics, and director of the Anderson Centre for Cancer Research at Rockefeller University.
6. Napoleone Ferrara: He is a distinguished professor of pathology and senior deputy director for basic sciences at Moores Cancer Centre at the University of California, San Diego. His works on tumour growth has led to therapies for some kinds of cancer and eye disease.
7. Eric S Lander: He is President and founding director of the Eli and Edythe L Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He is well known for the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease genes, and enabling their application to medicine through the creation and analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the human genome.
8. Charles L Sawyers: He is chairman of human oncology and pathogenesis programme at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre.
9. Bert Vogelstein: He is professor at Johns Hopkins University and has discovered a protein that suppresses the growth of tumours and devised a model for the progression of colon cancer that is widely used in colonoscopy.
10. Robert. A. Weinberg: He discovered the first human oncogene, a gene that when mutated causes cancer.
11. Shinya Yamanaka: He is Director of the Centre for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University. He has done groundbreaking work in developing stem cells.

Shobhana Bhartia the chairperson and editorial director of Hindustan Times was awarded with the “Media Person of the Year’. This leadership award was established by the International Advertising Association’s India.  The awards were presented in 19 categories with 100 nominees. The field involves media, marketing, advertising, banking and telecom. Sam Balsara was presented the ‘Media Agency Head of the Year’ award, Hindustan Unilever marketing head Arun Srinivas was awarded the ‘Marketer of the Year’ award in the FMCG-personal care category.

Samuel Yin chairman of Taiwan conglomerate Ruentex has launched the Asian equivalent of the Noble Prize, which is even more lucrative than the renowned Swedish award. Samuel Yin has donated Tw$3 billion ($101 million) for the Tang Prize, widely regarded as the Asian Nobel Prize. In order to executive the awards, the Tang Prize Foundation is also established by Samuel Yin, who heads a business empire that invests heavily in China. The prizes will be awarded every two years starting July, 2014 to global leaders in four fields - sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Chinese studies, and the rule of law. Each prize will consists of 40 million Taiwanese dollars (around$1.36 million) as well as a 10 million Taiwanese dollar ($341000) research grant for 5 years. This prize money makes it more lucrative than the 118-year-old Nobel prizes, which reward winners with $1.2m in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. For giving the awards, candidates of any nationality or ethnicity will be made eligible for the awards. Taiwan’s Academia Sinica will be in charge of the nomination and selection process, and an international committee for each category will consist of two dozen experts.