Bob Dylan has won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Sara Danius, Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, on Thursday in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” Danius said at the Swedish Academy.

“As an artist, he is versatile; he has been active as painter, actor and scriptwriter,” said the official statement.

Apart from his large production of albums, Dylan has published experimental work. He has written the autobiography Chronicles (2004), which describes memories from the early years in New York and his life at the center of popular culture, it added.

Born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, in the United States, the 75-year-old rock singer is the first songwriter to win the glorious award and the first American to win since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993.

Barack Obama said the honour was well-deserved. “Congratulations to one of my favourite poets,” he wrote on Twitter.

Dylan, who took his stage name from the poet Dylan Thomas, had long been regarded as a potential prize winner.

Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion is among those who have ever praised Dylan’s lyrics, saying they are often the best words in the best order.

Dylan began his musical career in Minnesota before heading for New York. Many of his best-known works date from the 1960s, when he became an informal historian of America’s troubles. His songs Blowing in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changing were popular in the anti-war and civil rights movements.

Few experts, though, expected the academy to extend the award to a folk music songwriter. In 112 years, no songwriter has ever won before. What makes a man who has only ever written three books a suitable winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Fifty-two species of birds in the USA were studied. Most were different kinds of songbirds. These birds reproduce in cold areas of North America, so they migrate (迁徙) to spend their winters in areas south of Chicago.

The study found that over the 40-year period, the average body size in all 52 species fell by 2.6 percent. Leg bone length dropped by 2.4 percent. The one area of growth was the wingspan, which increased by 1.3 percent. The researchers said the wing growth likely happened to permit the birds to continue flying from one part of the world to another according to the season.

Brian Weeks is a biologist at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. He helped lead the research. He told the Reuters news agency that climate change seems to be changing both the size and shape of these species.

Dave Willard works with Chicago’s Field Museum, which was in charge of measuring all the birds. He said nearly “everyone agrees that the climate is warming, but examples of just how that is affecting the natural world are now just coming to light. ”

The study provides new evidence of worrisome developments for North American birds. A study published in September documented a 29-percent drop in the bird population in the United States and Canada since 1970. The study said this represented a net loss of about 2. 9 billion birds.

“We had good reason to expect that increasing temperatures would lead to reductions in their body, based on previous studies, ” Weeks added. “The thing that was shocking was how consistent it was. I was incredibly surprised that all of these species are responding in such similar ways.”

The researchers plan to continue studying the Field Museum data in an effort to find additional evidence. They will also further examine the idea that an individual’s physical development can change to fit changing environmental conditions.