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Working in Japan, Omura isolated novel strains of streptomyces bacteria from soil samples that not only had antibacterial components, but also had the potential to combat other harmful microorganisms.

In the U.S., Campbell explored the effects of Omura’s streptomyces cultures and found that, as the Nobel committee says, “a component from one of the cultures was remarkably efficient against parasites in domestic and farm animals.”

The active compound, called avermectin, was further developed to become ivermectin, which is now used around the world to protect people and animals from a range of parasites, from river blindness to lymphatic filariasis (also known as elephantiasis).

“I humbly accept this prize,” Omura said when he was contacted by the Nobel committee Monday. Saying there are “many, many researchers” who are doing important work, he added, “I may be very, very lucky.”

Anecdotes have long held that Omura found the life-changing soil sample while he was doing what he loved: playing golf. He clarified that a bit Monday, saying it had happened “very close to the golf course.”

Tu revolutionized how malaria is fought by applying ancient techniques from China’s traditional herbal medicine to isolate and purify a component from the plant Artemisia annuathat could fight malaria in animals and people.

Tu used those insights to extract the component, now known as artemisinin, and to show that it could beat malaria. The Nobel committee says artemisinin represented “a new class of antimalarial agents that rapidly kill the malaria parasites at an early stage of their development, which explains its unprecedented potency in the treatment of severe malaria.”

The plant that yielded the compound, Artemisia annua, is also known as qinghao, sweet wormwood and sweet Annie. Its use in traditional Chinese medicine dates back more than 2,000 years.

The work that led to the discovery of artemisinin began in the late 1960s, when China launched a large-scale effort to develop an antimalarial treatment to protect North Vietnamese soldiers from the deadly disease.

To illustrate how malaria works — and how humans have fought it — NPR’s Adam Cole produced a video feature in 2012, explaining how that story ranges from the use of quinine (and the gin and tonic) to the Vietnam War.

“Driven to Kill: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit.” That attention-grabbing headline should have prepared me for what I read next and yet I was stunned by the grim reality that Geoffrey Santpainted in this Slate.com piece.

It seems like a crazy urban legend: In China, drivers who have injured pedestrians will sometimes then try to kill them. And yet not only is it true, it’s fairly common; security cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: “It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure.”

Hit-to-kill and double-hit cases are common in China because of the country’s laws on victim compensation. Guilty drivers will often reverse back over their victims because the compensation for killing someone in a traffic accident is significantly less than the possible costs associated with a lifetime of care for the injured.

While this article is exclusively about the hit-to-kill phenomenon in China, you can be certain that I’ll be looking both ways each time I cross a city street. Money does weird things to people.