They are the heroes of science
Nature's 10 list highlights key advances in science over the past year and some of the individuals who helped make amazing discoveries and draw attention to critical issues. This is not an award or ranking, but a selection to highlight the most exciting stories of the year. Among them are pioneers of science, forgotten scientists, and even artificial intelligence.
Each December, Nature magazine selects ten people who have played a prominent role in some of the most pressing scientific papers of the year. In the published list for 2023, the magazine included for the first time not only people, but also a robot. ChatGPT, capable of answering questions and conducting conversations in a more or less intelligent way, helped write academic articles, summarized scientific texts and prepared documents that were used to apply for research grants.
Along with the potential of this technology to manage and even create new knowledge, Nature's editors point out the need for transparency in the use of such a powerful tool. They warn that «the size and complexity of the large language models on which programs like ChatGPT are based means that they are inherently black boxes,» but understanding why they do what they do is harder when their code and training materials are not publicly available, as is the case with ChatGPT.»
The engineer was credited by the magazine as having played a crucial role in ensuring the triumphant landing of Chandrayaan 3 on the Moon, making India only the fourth country after the US, Soviet Union and China to achieve this feat. Among other things, her job included reorganizing the project after Chandrayaan 2 ended with the probe falling on the Moon in 2019. She and project manager Palanivel Veeramuthuvel shrunk the orbiter's mask so the lander would have more fuel and stronger landing legs. Building on this progress, India wants to send astronauts to the Moon in the 2040s.
Brazil's environment minister helped stop rampant deforestation. In August, Marina Silva announced a 43 percent drop in the number of deforestation warnings in the Amazon rainforest this year compared with 202. During Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, Nature magazine notes, «the government issued 40 percent fewer fines for environmental crimes, and logging in the Amazon increased by about 60 percent.»
His feat creating viable eggs from male mice could help save species on the brink of extinction.
In March, Katsuhiko Hayashi of Osaka University announced that he had created mouse offspring from cells from two males. In 2016, Hayashi and his team were already able to create functional mouse eggs from stem cells. At each stage of this painstaking work, many cells were lost. The researchers believe these techniques are still a long way off from being applied to humans, whose cells are more difficult to work with, but they want to use them to save the northern white rhinoceros, a species with only two females left.
This physicist helped the US National Ignition Facility produce nuclear reactions once seen only in hydrogen bombs and stars.
One hope for obtaining abundant energy without damaging the environment is to control nuclear fusion. In the summer of 2023, American scientists using a laser facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California managed to compress hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei to obtain more energy than needed for such fusion. National Ignition Center engineer Annie Critcher played a key role in this achievement by creating a capsule that traps atoms that are targeted with laser beams to initiate a nuclear reaction. Critcher believes that in the future it will be possible to increase the energy generated to the levels necessary to create the first prototype of a laser fusion reactor.
As the United Nations' chief heating officer, this former politician is helping the world prepare for the threats of climate change. After years of raising awareness of the effects of global warming on citizens' lives as a member of the Athens city council, she has now moved on to warn about the demand to combat the crisis on a global level. She is also seeking funding to make cities more resilient to rising temperatures. At the Cop28 Dubai climate summit, she stressed the importance of cooling technologies that do not result in greenhouse gas emissions.
OpenAI Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever is one of the leaders in the field of generative artificial intelligence. Sutskever believes that the potential of AI is too great for the models to be available to anyone who wants to use them, and he was one of the first to realize that the systems that scientists like Geoffrey Hinton began to develop would begin to demonstrate their real capabilities as computing power increased. power.
This physicist helped expose the flaws in sensational claims of room-temperature superconductivity. When applied correctly, science can correct its own mistakes. The now retracted papers were written by physicist Ranga Diaz, who spoke of a «holy grail» for science that could change the world as we know it «when he was included in Nature's list of ten outstanding scientists for 2020.» This material would make it possible to design ultra-efficient engines and transport networks without wasting energy, but it looks like the dream will have to wait.
As a biochemist, Svetlana Moisova has finally received recognition for her role in the development of multi-billion dollar weight loss drugs. Originally developed to treat diabetes, these drugs mimic the hormones that naturally make people feel full after eating. Their effectiveness in weight loss has made them a bestseller. Despite the success of such drugs, which generate sales of about $1 billion a month, Moisov has long been ignored.
Thanks to this researcher's rigorous testing, a second vaccine against the deadly disease will soon be available. Nanoro Clinical Research Unit Director in Burkina Faso Khalidou Tinto in 2023 clinical trials, the World Health Organization recommended the R21 malaria vaccine. This is the second vaccine against the disease, which causes half a million deaths every year in Africa; Most of the dead were children under five years of age. The institute that Tinto runs has been a key testing site for these vaccines, and the researcher is working on more than 30 clinical trials for diseases that primarily affect poor countries.
This doctor and cancer researcher led a transformative clinical trial to treat severe bladder cancer.
Progress in the fight against some tumors does not match the overall positive trend in the fight against cancer. In 2023, Thomas Powles, working at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, saw results that seemed incredible to him. The two-drug combination, a Trojan horse of sorts that includes a targeted drug that delivers the chemotherapy load to the right place, increased the average survival rate of bladder cancer patients from 16 months to two and a half years. Powles notes that this milestone is the largest for advanced bladder cancer in four decades and the only one that could improve on standard treatment used since the 1980s.
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