Soeren Prell and a team of Iowa State University researchers are part of an international research team testing a theory that led to a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for Japanese researchers Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa.

By The Associated Press Two Japanese scientists and an American have won the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics for theoretical advances that help explain the behavior of the smallest particles of matter.The American, Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago, won half the $1.4 million prize for work he did nearly a half-century ago.Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, of Japan, shared the other half for a 1972 theory that forecast the later discovery of a new family of subatomic particles.The insights "give us a deeper understanding of what happens far inside the tiniest building blocks of matter," said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which presents the physics award.Or, as physicist Phil Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics, put it: "Nature works in strange ways, and these three physicists helped to explain that strangeness in an ingenious way."They focused on a concept physicists call symmetry, and more specifically on occasions when that symmetry is

By Dennis Overbye A U.S. and two Japanese physicists won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their work exploring the hidden symmetries between elementary particles that are the deepest constituents of nature.

By Dan Vergano Insights into the peculiarities of the smallest subatomic particles and the existence of the universe have netted one American and two Japanese theorists the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics.

World in brief STOCKHOLM The award of the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics to two Japanese scientists and a Japanese American for helping explain why the universe is asymmetrical, and thus fit for life, prompted an angry response from Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics yesterday.