Interpretation of the top ten international science and technology news in 2020
Our reporter Zhang Mengran
The 3D simulation animation of Chang'e-5 entering a nearly circular orbit around the moon.
Xinhua News Agency
In 2020, the whole world faces uncertainty and insecurity.
In the field of scientific research, the impact of the epidemic has slowed down many studies, but the cause of human beings and cutting-edge exploration has never been put on hold. We still see these news inspiring people, scouring cognition, and pouring hope.
Hope is still there.
In the changing situation, we have never realized that it is so important to walk hand in hand. After all, all anxiety and fear are just passing by. For the former, the unquenchable light of science and technology will always shine on Galaxy.
1 Globally accelerate the development of new crown vaccine
"I hope that humans will become smarter after gazing into the abyss and realize how vulnerable we are," said Jeremy Farah, a former professor of tropical diseases at Oxford University.
The new crown has allowed over a million lives to leave the world.
In response to this major disaster in human society, the unprecedented high-speed development and testing of vaccines has been opened.
As of December 10, there are 162 candidate vaccines in the world in the development stage, of which 52 candidate vaccines have undergone clinical trials.
"Science" magazine stated, "There have never been so many vaccine candidates carrying out large-scale effectiveness trials at almost the same time, and governments, companies, academia, and non-profit organizations have never invested in the same infectious disease in such a short period of time. So much financial, manpower and energy."
Prominent examples are the team led by Katherine Jensen, head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, a US pharmaceutical company, and launched a clinically validated vaccine in a record-breaking 210 days; academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, researcher of the Academy of Military Medicine of the Academy of Military Sciences The "Ad5 adenovirus vector vaccine" developed by the team led by Chen Wei was the first in the world to enter Phase II clinical trials, bringing hope to people around the world.
In this unusual 2020, people have seen the first batch of vaccines approved for use against new coronary pneumonia launched.
In early 2021, the effectiveness of several new vaccines will become clearer.
2 The current strongest method to reverse HIV latency found
When it comes to the discoloration of Ai, the root cause is still a lack of understanding of it.
AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and HIV is a retrovirus. The reason why it cannot be cured is because the current antiretroviral treatment cannot completely eliminate HIV infection. This virus will be in the cell. Latent, in this way "dodge" the immune system.
Therefore, the elimination of viral infections after long-term viral suppression therapy has always been the focus of research.
Scientists have devised an "activate and kill" method to drive the virus out of latent infected cells and then remove it.
Unfortunately, before this year, the method of "activating" hidden viruses has not been considered successful or effective.
In February, scientists in the United States used two methods to reverse the incubation of HIV. When the reversal incubation method was combined with appropriate drugs, the probability of clearing the virus was significantly increased. This means of "activating" the hidden virus has been so far The most powerful latent reversal method.
Of course, the two "activation" methods must be combined with the subsequent "killing" steps to complete the elimination function, but they will undoubtedly open a new door for the medical community to further understand the virus maintenance mechanism, and make AIDS treatment research forward. A shocking step".
At the same time, this achievement also demonstrates the conceptual and technical challenges related to the reversal of the pharmacological latency.
3 Scientists found the first evidence for the mystery of the origin of the universe
The universe was born in a big bang.
But at the starting point of all this, the same amount of positive and negative matter should be produced, and if the number of positive and negative matter is the same, they will annihilate each other when they meet, leaving only photons and dark matter.
Since the evolution of the universe, it seems that matter is still dominated, and "asymmetric matter of positive and negative" has also become one of the biggest mysteries in nature.
So far, the most powerful argument is that neutrinos have played an important role in this drama. This year, the international joint research team of Japan’s T2K Neutrino Experiment has brought important support to this hypothesis: they succeeded in making “Chinese In the phenomenon of "trino oscillation", the value range of the physical quantity that determines the degree of the difference between the behavior of particles and antiparticles is restricted.
This is a study that lasted nearly 10 years.
Scientists know that neutrinos are divided into three types: electron-type neutrinos, muon-type neutrinos, and Taozi-type neutrinos, and their corresponding antineutrinos. These "chameleons" can travel at a speed close to the speed of light. Changes occur while traveling, the so-called "neutrino oscillation".
The T2K team detected 90 electron-type neutrinos and 15 electron-type antineutrinos from nearly 1021 neutrinos produced by proton shooting.
Data analysis shows that the probability of a muon-type neutrino transforming into an electronic neutrino is higher than the probability of a muon-type antineutrino transforming into an electronic antineutrino.
The conclusion of the experimental group has not yet reached the level that can be called "discovery".
However, this result supports that the origin of matter in the universe is related to the transformation of muon-type neutrinos into electron-type neutrinos. In other words, this is the first evidence for us to study the origin of cosmic matter, allowing humans to distance themselves from the universe. Mystery is one step closer.
4 The largest list of human genetic variants so far announced
The rapid development of biology and medicine is visible to the naked eye.
Now, scientists' research on many diseases can reach the molecular and genetic level. In-depth study of the human genome has also become the key to unlocking the causes of many major diseases.
Unfortunately, the functions of most genes in the human genome are still unknown.
One way to reveal gene function is to observe the results of gene mutations.
These variants often produce undesirable results, but they are usually rare.
Large-scale gene sequencing research will help to investigate the effects of these loss-of-function variants, and will bring important insights into human biological characteristics and diseases.
In June of this year, the British magazine "Nature" published a series of reports at the same time, focusing on the application of a database of more than 140,000 samples-Genome Clustering Database, which covers 125,748 all exomes and 15708 In a whole-genome sequencing data set, 443769 predicted loss-of-function variants were identified.
This is the largest public catalog of human genetic variants that people have so far.
Although scientists are still far away from identifying all the predicted loss-of-function variants in humans, this research is still a valuable resource for us to understand the function of human genes and discover new disease-related genes at this stage.
5 Musk released a practical brain-computer interface
No matter how you evaluate Elon Musk, you should also admit that he has always dared to do things that no one dared.
At the end of August, he held a press conference for Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company, and used the "three little pigs" to demonstrate a practical brain-computer interface chip and automatic implant surgery equipment.
One of the pigs had been implanted with a brain-computer interface device for two months and was alive and kicking, the other had implanted electrodes and was taken out, and the last pig had no device implanted.
This conference has attracted unprecedented attention.
Because the experimental pigs implanted with the chip showed the reading and writing of nerve signals to the world, researchers can see the pig’s EEG through the information transmitted by the chip.
Musk revealed his idea of human brain-machine interaction in 2016. It can be seen that compared with last year's prototype debut, the technology is now much closer to realizing Musk's ambitions.
However, it should be noted that the success of the Neuralink chip does not depend entirely on technology. It will also depend on whether it can persuade people to "start the brain and insert the chip" and try to "tamper" humans' own nerve impulses.
However, both Musk and the company indicated that their main research direction may be in the medical field, that is, the use of brain-computer interfaces to help humans fight memory decline, cervical spinal cord injury, and neurological diseases such as epilepsy, depression, and Parkinson's.
If their safety and reliability can convince scientists, doctors and many patients, then this technology will undoubtedly benefit mankind.
6 Room temperature superconductivity is realized for the first time under ultra-high pressure
In 1911, a Dutch physicist discovered that the electrical resistance of metallic mercury immersed in liquid ammonia would disappear when the temperature dropped to 4.2K (about -268.95°C).
This is a superconductivity phenomenon, and we have passed a hundred years since it was first discovered.
Superconductivity not only means zero resistance, it can also be completely diamagnetic. This allows the superconductor to have almost no energy loss during the transmission process, and the superconducting material can carry a stronger current per square centimeter.
Unfortunately, most superconductors currently only work at temperatures close to absolute zero.
It is this limitation that materials with such excellent properties have not completely changed the world as many people imagine.
In October, a US team reported the creation of an organic-derived hydride material, where room temperature superconductivity was observed for the first time at temperatures as high as 15 degrees Celsius.
Previous studies have shown that hydrogen-rich materials can increase the superconducting temperature to about -23°C under high pressure.
This time the scientists increased the temperature to achieve zero resistance to 15°C, which was achieved in a photochemically synthesized ternary carbon-containing hydrogen sulfide system under a pressure of 267 billion Pascals.
The development of superconducting materials that are not driven by resistance and magnetic fields at room temperature is the goal pursued by condensed matter physics. The new results will not only break many barriers, but also pave the way for many potential applications.
It can be said that after a century of searching, mankind has taken an important step towards the goal of creating a power system with optimal efficiency.
7 The origin of fast radio bursts in the Milky Way is determined for the first time
This is a radio pulse that lasts only a few milliseconds.
Some astronomers believe that it may just be the noise produced when two stars collide. Others are more willing to believe that this is information from aliens and is caused by the "leakage" of technology from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
It is called a fast radio burst and has been foggy and foggy since it was first discovered in 2007.
Its physical origin is unknown, but its energy is so great that it cannot be ignored.
Although many efforts have been made and scientists have been developing related theories, they have never understood the physics behind fast radio bursts, and there are even great challenges in determining the origin-its duration is too short, and astronomers are very Difficult to locate it.
In November, three papers published in the British "Nature" magazine stated that scientists have determined the origin of a fast radio burst in the Milky Way for the first time: the bright pulses of these radio waves detected by multiple satellites and ground-based telescopes showed that they came from the Milky Way. A magnetar inside.
This is the first fast radio burst with radiation other than radio waves detected, and the first to be discovered in the Milky Way. It is also the first fast radio burst related to stellar remnants called magnetars. Magnetars can be the origin of fast radio bursts.
The discovery benefited from the continued attention of the Canadian and American teams on fast radio storms, as well as the important monitoring results of China's 500-meter spherical radio telescope (FAST) in this area of the sky.
8 "Alpha Fold" accurately predicts the three-dimensional structure of proteins
A 50-year-old question, "Alpha Folding" has changed the rules of the game.
The credit of artificial intelligence (AI).
The AI named "Alpha Fold" has overcome a major problem in the field of biology: predicting how a protein will curl from a linear amino acid chain into a 3D shape to perform the task.
Every protein in the human body contains dozens to hundreds of amino acids. The sequence of these amino acids determines their role, giving the protein a complex three-dimensional shape, which in turn determines the function of the protein.
For decades, researchers have used experimental techniques such as X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy to decipher the three-dimensional structure of proteins, but this method may take months or even years and may not be effective.
At present, among the more than 200 million proteins found in life, only 170,000 protein structures have been cracked.
In this year's "Key Evaluation of Protein Structure Prediction", the median score of "Alpha Fold" in the perfect 100 game was 92.4, and the average score for predicting the most challenging protein was 87, which was 25 points higher than the suboptimal prediction. .
It is even good at predicting the structure of proteins embedded in the cell membrane, which is the core of many human diseases, and it is difficult to study it with X-ray crystallography in the past.
This technological achievement is believed to change the future of structural biology and protein research: experimentalists will be able to use precise structural predictions to understand opaque cryo-EM data; drug designers can also use this to quickly clean up everything in dangerous pathogens such as coronaviruses. The structure of this protein, so that related drugs can be developed faster.
9 "Gene Magic Scissors" cured two hereditary blood diseases for the first time
This is the first clinical demonstration of CRISPR gene editing technology to be effective in treating genetic diseases.
Sickle cell anemia and β-thalassemia are two common gene-deficient diseases. The common feature is that due to the defect of the globin gene, the synthesis of one or more of the globin peptide chains in hemoglobin is reduced or cannot be synthesized, thus Produce ineffective hemoglobin.
At present, the common treatment method is blood transfusion or infusion of iron chelating agents. Unfortunately, these methods are prone to poisoning; the use of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a radical cure, but matching donors are likely to be scarce, and complications after transplantation may also occur at any time occur.
For this reason, gene therapy corrects the expression of disease-curing genes at the molecular level, which has become a new hope for patients.
At the end of this year, American researchers announced that after they used CRISPR technology to gene-edit patients’ bone marrow stem cells, two patients with β-thalassemia and one with sickle cell disease no longer needed blood transfusions.
The latest report shows that the patient has been treated for up to 17 months, is now producing a large amount of fetal hemoglobin, and has never experienced pain that occurs every few months.
This time, the "Gene Magic Scissor" has achieved precise targeted therapy, providing the possibility for the successful cure of genetic defect diseases in the future.
Of course, the application of CRISPR technology in the field of diseases has just begun.
10 China's Chang'e 5 returns with the moon
On December 19, the lunar sample of China's Chang'e 5 mission was officially handed over.
China's first extraterrestrial celestial body sample storage, analysis and research work kicked off.
The Chang'e-5 mission is the sixth mission of the "Lunar Exploration Project" and one of the most complex and difficult missions in China's aerospace industry so far.
It has very important significance-to realize the four "firsts" since China launched space activities: the first automatic sampling on the lunar surface; the first take-off from the lunar surface; the first unmanned rendezvous and docking on the lunar orbit 380,000 kilometers away; For the first time, the lunar soil returned to Earth at a speed close to the second universe.
American "Science" magazine pays great attention to this.
The magazine report pointed out that Chang'e 5 is the latest operation of a series of ambitious lunar exploration plans in China. After landing on the lunar surface, it scooped up some lunar soil samples from the lunar surface and drilled 2 meters below the lunar surface to collect the moon. These samples will help scientists to further clarify the age of the moon, and they are "the rock samples brought back from the moon again more than 40 years after the last human mission to the moon in 1972."