In today’s Bulldog wrapup of science and technology news from around the world:

  • Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmstrom win Nobel prize in economics
  • Verizon cuts jobs in stores as wireless growth slows
  • Drones carrying medicines, blood face top challenge: Africa
  • Spielberg’s Amblin, China’s Alibaba announce partnership

The details:

  • Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmstrom win Nobel prize in economics

British-born Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom of Finland won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their contributions to contract theory, shedding light on how contracts help people deal with conflicting interests.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their theories “are valuable to the understanding of real-life contracts and institutions, as well as potential pitfalls in contract design.”

  • VIDEO: Watch the ceremony at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlUBxV39Kkw

For example, contract theory can be used to analyze performance-based pay for CEOs or deductibles and co-pays for insurance, the academy said.

The economics prize is not an original Nobel Prize. It was added to the others in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank.

The Nobel Prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize were announced last week. This year’s Nobel announcements will finish Thursday with the literature award.

Each award is worth 8 million kronor, or about $930,000. The laureates will collect them on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

  • Verizon cuts jobs in stores as wireless growth slows

Verizon has cut jobs in stores across the country as it deals with increasing competition in the wireless industry.

Verizon spokeswoman Kim Ancin said Friday that stores will have fewer employees, but she refused to specify the size of Thursday’s layoff.

A union representative, Tim Dubnau, estimates that Verizon has cut hundreds or even thousands of jobs across the nation given that nine of 55 employees were laid off in six Brooklyn stores in New York. Dubnau is an organizing coordinator for the Communications Workers of America union, which represents workers in sevenVerizon stores in New York and Massachusetts. Most Verizon stores are not unionized.

Ancin said estimates of thousands of cuts are “an exaggeration.” People who lost theirjobs can apply for new positions at Verizon. Verizon has 162,000 U.S. employees. Ancin could not immediately say how many of those were retail store workers.

The layoffs result from Verizon combining the roles of two store positions — inventory stockers and customer-service specialists who answer questions about gadgets and bills.

Revenue growth across the wireless industry has slowed. Most adults already have smartphones, and carriers offer discounts. In the first half of the year, Verizon’s wireless revenue fell nearly 3 percent to $44 billion; additions of the type of wireless subscribers who are more lucrative to the company fell 26 percent.

  • Drones carrying medicines, blood face top challenge: Africa

At first, the drone took some explaining. Anxious villagers buzzed with rumors of a new blood-sucking thing that would fly above their homes. Witchcraft, some said.

The truth was more practical: A United Nations project would explore whether a small unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, could deliver HIV test samples more efficiently than land transport in rural Malawi.

Once understanding dawned and work began, young students and their teachers would spill out of the nearby school, cheering, each time they heard the drone approaching. “It was very exciting,” UNICEF official Judith Sherman said.

As drones quickly pick up momentum around the world in everything from military strikes to pizza delivery, Africa, the continent with some of the most entrenched humanitarian crises, hopes the technology will bring progress.

This second-largest continent, with harsh landscapes of desert and rain forest and extremes of rainy seasons and drought, is burdened with what the World Bank has called “the worst infrastructure endowment of any developing region today.” Rural highways, often unpaved, disintegrate. In many countries, access to electricity has actually declined. Taking to the air to soar over such challenges, much as Africaembraced mobile phones to bypass often dismal landline service, is a tempting goal.

Those trying out drones for humanitarian uses in Africa warn that the technology is no quick fix, but several new projects are exploring what can be achieved.

  • Spielberg’s Amblin, China’s Alibaba announce partnership

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s media arm announced a partnership Sunday to co-produce films for global audiences.

The deal adds to a multibillion-dollar string of Chinese ventures with Hollywood studios to capture more of the profits from China’s growing media market.

Alibaba Pictures will acquire a minority stake in Amblin Partners, the companies said.Amblin, co-owned by Spielberg, combines DreamWorks Studios, Participant Media, Reliance Entertainment and Entertainment One.

No financial details were announced.

Alibaba, led by founder Jack Ma, is China’s biggest online commerce company and has expanded into entertainment with its 2014 acquisition of a 60 percent stake in a Hong Kong company that became Alibaba Pictures. Alibaba also owns the Youku Tudou online video service.

The partnership “marks an important milestone in our globalization strategy to reach Chinese and global audiences alike,” said Alibaba Pictures chairman Shao Xiaofeng in a statement. “We will also leverage Alibaba Group’s ecosystem as a channel for AmblinPartners’ films to reach hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers.”