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ByLefterisPitarakis The Associated Press MURSITPINAR, TURKEY NewU.S.-ledairstrikesnear the Syrian border town of Kobani have helped Kurd- ish fighters push back the Islamic State group a day af- ter it appeared on the verge of seizing the town, the fate of which has emerged as a key test of whether coali- tion air power can roll back the extremist group. Thenewwaveofairstrikes came as several Syrian hu- man rights groups called on the world to save the embat- tled town from falling into the hands of the Islamic State group, whose fighters have broken through Kurd- ish defenders' front lines and entered parts of the town over the last two days. The U.S.-led coalition has launched a series of strikes aimed at preventing the ex- tremist group from seizing Kobani. An activist group said the strikes killed at least 45 Islamic State militants since late Monday, forcing the group to withdraw from parts of the town. "The airstrikes have helped. They were good strikes but not as effective as we want them to be," said Idriss Nassan, deputy head of Kobani's foreign relations committee. "Kobani is still in danger and the airstrikes should intensify in order to remove the danger." "They (militants) have re- treated inside the city be- cause of the airstrikes and because of the ambushes that members of the Peo- ple's Protection Units car- ried out, killing many of Daesh's fighters," he said, referring to the main Syr- ian Kurdish militia and us- ing an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. Over the past few days thousands of Islamic State fighters armed with heavy weapons looted from cap- tured army bases in Iraq and Syria managed to push into parts of the town, which is located on the Syria-Turkish border and is also known by the Arabic name of Ayn Arab. The Islamic State group has tightened the noose around Kobani since mid-September, when it launched a blitz in which it captured several nearby Kurdish villages and brought Syria's civil war yet again to Turkey's doorstep. The fighting has forced at least 200,000 town res- idents and villagers from the area to flee across the nearby frontier into Turkey. Activists say more than 400 people have been killed in the fighting. Around noon Wednes- day, warplanes believed to be from the U.S.-led coali- tion bombed Islamic State positions near Kobani. One airstrike, visible from the border, struck a hill and an open space near the town. The Syrian Observa- tory for Human Rights said Wednesday's strikes tar- geted Islamic State fighters east of Kobani. The U.S. Central Com- mand said in a statement that several airstrikes were launched near Kobani since Tuesday. It said four air- strikes south of Kobani de- stroyed an Islamic State group armored personnel carrier, an artillery piece and three armed vehicles, damaging a fourth. It said a fifth airstrike destroyed an armed vehicle and a sixth destroyed an artillery piece. Since Monday night, the strikes have killed 45 Is- lamic State fighters in and around Kobani, target- ing 20 separate locations and destroying at least five of their vehicles, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria. The airstrikes also forced Islamic State fight- ers to withdraw from sev- eral streets they had con- trolled earlier, the Obser- vatory added. ISLAMIC STATE GROUP AirstrikesdrivemilitantsbackinSyria LEFTERISPITARAKIS‑THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A Turkish Kurd uses binoculars in Mursitpinar, on the outskirts of Suruc, on the Turkey‑ Syria border, as he watches the intensified fighting between militants of the Islamic State group and Kurdish forces in Kobani, Syria, on Wednesday, By Malcolm Ritter The Associated Press STOCKHOLM Three re- searchers won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for giving microscopes much sharper vision than was thought possible, letting scientists peer into living cells with unprecedented detail to seek the roots of disease. The chemistry prize was awarded to U.S. research- ers Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German scien- tist Stefan Hell. They found ways to use molecules that glow on demand to over- come what was considered a fundamental limitation for optical microscopes. Betzig, 54, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Vir- ginia. Hell, 51, is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, and also works at the Ger- man Cancer Research Cen- ter in Heidelberg. Moerner, 61, is a professor at Stanford University in California. Their work, done inde- pendently and extending back to the 1980s, led to two techniques that were first demonstrated in 2000 and 2006. Previously, a calcula- tion published in 1873 was thought to define the limit of how tiny a detail could be revealed by optical mi- croscopes. "As recently as 15 years ago, it was believed to be theoretically impossible to break this barrier," said Nobel committee member Claes Gustafsson. He called the laureates' work "a revo- lution." The result of their ad- vance is "really a window into the cell which we didn't have before," said Cathe- rine Lewis, director of the cell biology and biophysics division of the National In- stitute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Mary- land. "You can observe the be- havior of individual mole- cules in living cells in real time. You can see ... mole- cules moving around in- side the cell. You can see them interacting with each other." The research of the three men has let scientists study diseases such as Par- kinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's at a molecu- lar level, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. "Due to their achieve- ments, the optical micro- scope can now peer into the nanoworld," the acad- emy said, giving the 8 mil- lion-kronor ($1.1 million) award jointly to the three for "the development of su- per-resolved fluorescence microscopy." While scientists can get still finer resolution by using an electron micro- scope, that device can't be used to examine cells that are alive. "You really need to be able to look at living cells because life is animate — it's what defines life," Betzig said. Hell said that close look can shed light on disease. "Any disease, in the end, can be boiled down to a malfunctioning of the cell," he said. "And in order to un- derstand what a disease ac- tually means, you have to understand the cell and you have to understand the mal- function." Hell has used the tech- nology to examine nerve cells, Moerner studied pro- teins related to Hunting- ton's disease, and Betzig tracked cell division inside embryos, the academy said. Betzig said his reaction to hearing about the prize was "kind of like 50 percent happiness and 50 percent fear. Because I don't want my life to change. I really like my life, and I'm busy enough already." Moerner heard the news as he stepped out of a shower in Brazil, where he was attending a conference. The phone call came from his wife, who learned that he'd won from The Associ- ated Press. "I'm incredibly excited and happy to be included with Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell," Moerner told the AP. Hell, who was born in Romania, said he was "to- tally surprised, I couldn't believe it." This year's Nobel awards began Monday with U.S.- British scientist John O'Keefe splitting the medi- cine award with Norwegian couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for brain re- search that could pave the way for a better under- standing of diseases like Alzheimer's. On Tuesday, Isamu Aka- saki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and U.S. scientist Shuji Nakamura won phys- ics award for the invention of blue light-emitting di- odes — a breakthrough that spurred the development of LED technology, which can be used to light up homes, offices and the screens of mobile phones, computers and TVs. The Nobel Prize in lit- erature will be announced Thursday, followed by the Nobel Peace Prize on Fri- day and the economics prize Monday. UNPRECEDENTED DETAIL Three win chemistry Nobel for super-zoom microscopes BERTIL ERICSON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Images of the three winners of the 2014Nobel Prize for Chemistry Americans Eric Betzig, le , and William Moerner, right, and German scientist Stefan Hell, are projected on a screen at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday. The Associated Press JAKARTA, INDONESIA Res- cuers and fishermen found eight survivors and 17 bod- ies Wednesday after two days of searching for a mo- torboat lost since its cap- tain reported an engine failure off Indonesia's main island of Java. The captain was able to report Monday evening that the engine failed due to broken propeller before au- thorities lost contact with the vessel, Search and Res- cue Agency head Muhamad Hernanto said. It wasn't known if the boat sank or if it was stranded on another island until the survivors were found Wednesday. The 18-meter-long boat was heading from Raas is- land in East Java province to the neighboring resort is- land of Bali. Local reports said it was carrying 49 people who were to have attended a wedding ceremony. ENGINE FAILURE 8 fo un d al iv e a er b oa t si nk s By Maggie Michael The Associated Press CAIRO At Cairo Univer- sity's campus, new, black steel walls have gone up. A private security firm has put up surveillance cam- eras. Guards have bomb- detection devices. Just outside, heavily armed riot police have permanent po- sitions. Summer vacation ends this weekend, and uni- versities across Egypt are preparing for the return of students with a heavy, pre- emptive security clamp- down. The aim is to pre- vent a resurgence of pro- tests by supporters of Mohammed Morsi, the Is- lamist president who was removed by the military just over a year ago. Last school year, uni- versities became the fo- cus of pro-Morsi protests and campuses turned to war zones as police tried to suppress them. But the clampdown now is going beyond supporters of Mor- si's Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists and threatens to silence all po- litical activism in the uni- versities. It reflects what rights activists have warned is happening nationwide un- der President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi: Dissent in general is being snuffed out in the name of fighting Islamists. University presidents have been given new, un- questioned powers to ex- pel students or fire profes- sors suspected of involve- ment in protests or any political activities, with- out independent review of the cases. In one of his first moves after his inauguration in June, el-Sissi halted the election of university presidents by professors and deans, a practice be- gun after the 2011 up- rising that ousted auto- crat Hosni Mubarak. In- stead, he reinstated the Mubarak-era practice by which the head of state chooses the heads of uni- versities, a sign of how the post is seen as crucial for keeping control. Moreover, the govern- ment last year ended a tra- ditional ban on security forces entering university campuses, allowing police to move in if the university president invites them, or simply if they feel it is nec- essary. Elections for stu- dent unions, a major venue for campus political activ- ity, have been called off for the time being. Last week, el-Sissi gave a speech in Cairo Univer- sity, warning students "not to get involved with malig- nant activists." He accused an "unpatriotic group" — referring to the Brother- hood — of "seeking to sab- otage the nation and us- ing the youth to achieve its goals." Egypt's universities have historically been an incubator for political ac- tivism of all stripes, from hard-line Islamists to sec- ular leftists. Last year, campuses were a vital lifeline for Morsi's Muslim Brother- hood after security forces shattered the group and its Islamist allies with a nationwide crackdown that killed hundreds of protesters and arrested more than 20,000. Pro- tests were all but crushed in the streets, but they continued almost daily at universities. PRE-EMPTIVE MOVE Security tightens at Cairo University The Associated Press KABUL,AFGHANISTAN Af- ghan authorities executed five men who were con- victed of armed robbery and gang rape, the Kabul police chief said, following a case that galvanized the nation in recent weeks. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Zahir says the men were hanged on Wednesday in the Puli Charkhi prison in the Afghan capital. Then- President Hamid Karzai had approved and signed the execution order last month on his last day in office, a rare such authori- zation in his more than de- cade-long tenure. In August, eight men, some dressed in police uni- forms, stopped an Afghan family's car outside Ka- bul and sexually assaulted four of the women in the family, including one who was pregnant. They were dragged out of the vehicle into an area where their male family members could hear the women screaming. Seven men were ini- tially sentenced to death in a trial last month, but an appeals court later re- duced two of the sentences to up to 20 years in prison — verdicts upheld by the country's Supreme Court. Three suspects remain at large. The case prompted street demonstrations in support of the victims. While allowed under Af- ghan law, the death pen- alty was applied only on two occasions during Kar- zai's 13-year presidency. 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