First, who are the Nobel Prize winners? Why is their research so important in the areas of aging and cancer detection?

Three Americans won the Nobel Prize for medicine. They are Elizabeth Balckburn, Jack Szostak and Carol Greider. Balckburn is with the University of California, San Francisco, Greider is with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore and Szostak is at the Harvard Medical School.

Princeton professor and New York Times op-editorialist, Paul Krugman, just won the Nobel Prize in economics "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity." This award comes at a time when he has been weighing in on the debate as to how best to fix the financial crisis. And I found inspiring his suggestion that governments should inject capital into ailing banks -- an idea that has taken hold in the U.K. and may also prevail here.

Why did Krugman win the Nobel? His work bolstered a branch of economics called strategic trade theory which argues that countries can subsidize certain industries to gain global market share. Others have praised his work on the development of clusters of related industries and his equations that measure how economic shocks affect the current account, exchange rates and capital flows.

The official name of Krugman's prize is "The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." He'll get $1.4 million, a gold medal and a diploma. I've agreed and disagreed with him but if his ideas about how to fix the financial crisis take hold, maybe he'll be able to find a safe bank in which to deposit his winnings.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

2007 Nobel Prize Winner and 2000 Presidential election winner Al Gore has another notch on his belt -- partner at Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firm -- Kleiner Perkins. (Thanks to the Supreme Court, Gore -- who won the 2000 Presidential vote -- did not serve.)

But he handled the disappointment well. His work on the documentary An Inconvenient Truth -- easily the highest payoff PowerPoint presentation ever made -- has helped make the world aware of the threat it faces from global warming and what people can do about it. Gore insightfully points out that climate change is a matter of war and peace. It has created conflict -- the drying up of a lake in Sudan contributed to genocide there and the melting of the polar icecap has set off an international sea grab at the top of the world.

So what's the deal with Gore at Kleiner Perkins? According to the New York Times, President-elect Gore's part-time job at Kleiner will be to assess the potential of alternative energy companies and to opine on whether Kleiner Perkins should invest in them. Gore plans to donate his salary from the venture to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit policy foundation. But he was not clear about whether he'd get the partner's share of the 2% of assets under management and 20% of the profits from successful "exits."

He was clearer about his political aspirations -- noting "I don't expect to be a candidate again."

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

"If you want what you never had, then do what you have never done."

I don't know to whom to attribute that quote. It was on a T-shirt my niece was wearing when we went to her home for Christmas dinner. When I saw it, it hit me like a warm balmy breeze on a cold December day. Those are the simple words which I have never condensed into such a simple statement, yet they are representative of the dynamics which have colored my life. Yes, I'm that guy you never really got to know when you worked with him or went to school with him. I'm that guy who was "over there". I'm that guy who fights against conventional wisdom. It's not because I can't buy into the concepts of what already works. It's a matter of a bull headed refusal to be limited by a blind acceptance of the status quo. What already works isn't always good enough to satisfy me.

That's my position on eBay, Inc. (NYSE: EBAY). As a matter of fact, what already works over there doesn't seem to be working so well these days. I received an unofficial report today that as of Dec. 24, 2006, eBay listing count has dropped below 10 million. If that's true, it equals an over 30% decrease of average listing volume in the last quarter. This does somewhat mimic historical performance over the last three years.The most up-to-date figures that I can get which I trust are from medved up to Dec. 16, which show eBay listing volume at about 14.3 million on that date. In any case, based on my tracking of the numbers, things aren't really too good on eBay for overall listing quality and volume. The numbers over the next 30 days will tell the story as to the true effects of the eBay "revolutionaries" on that site and their future. If there is not a significant jump in listing volume beginning in January, be ready for some heads to roll.

At the age of 94, one of the most respected economists ever, Milton Friedman, passed away today. Although Mr. Friedman never held a formal appointment in government administration after World War Two, his influences were felt throughout his lifetime and will continue to shape the economic world for years to come.

In 1976 Mr. Friedman was given the ultimate recognition when he received the Nobel Prize for his "achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy." His views on unemployment and inflation were revolutionary and are still used to shape policies at the Fed today. Friedman contended in the 60's that policy makers would never be able to achieve a permanent trade off between lower unemployment and higher inflation, and efforts to do so would only achieve the same unemployment with higher inflation.

Mr. Friedman served as an adviser to both Reagan and Nixon and his influence is credited to having a huge impact on the ending of the American military draft. He also served as president of the American Economic Association in 1967.

Mr. Friedman passed away in his home town San Francisco after suffering heart failure. This is truly a loss of one of the most brilliant and influential economists in American history.