November 19, 2014
Go and Vote it Now at Breakthroughs.sciencemag.org!
Landing on a comet
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| Rosetta, the most ambitious space mission ever from Europe, is in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is just beginning to heat up and flare its stores of ice. On 12 November, the probe will drop Philae, a washing machine–sized lander with harpoons to help it stick to the fluffy surface. |
Explaining the global warming pause
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| The so-called pause or hiatus in global warming has been a preoccupation for climate scientists for the last decade: Why has a steady rise in global mean air temperatures flattened out? This year it turned out that Earth has been warming all along—in the oceans, not necessarily the air. The magnitude of the ocean heat sinks is still being debated, but one thing is certain: Some of the trapped heat will eventually return to the air. |
DNA of our daily bread
An easy cure for hepatitis C
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| Until May 2011, the only treatment against hepatitis C virus (HCV) was 48 weeks of ribavirin pills and weekly injections of interferon. The regimen had serious side effects and often did not work. But that month, HCV treatment changed when two drugs that directly act against the virus came to market. This year better drugs with fewer side effects have been approved or are far along in development, and it may soon become routine to cure HCV in as little as 8 weeks. The biggest downside: These drugs sell for as much as $1000 per pill. |
Unzipping wood
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| To turn trees and other woody plants into biofuels, engineers must chemically chop up the woody lignins. The sugar-rich cellulose can then be turned into sugars that yeast can ferment into ethanol. This year researchers engineered plants to produce a modified lignin that didn't stop plants from growing, but that could be unzipped at the end of their lives, releasing the sugars to more easily make biofuels. |
Roll on, big river
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| In the western United States, water is so scarce and intensively managed that rivers rarely run free. So an experimental flood in the Colorado River delta in March was cause for celebration. For the first time in many years, significant amounts of water flowed down the dry river bed to its mouth in the Gulf of California. Scientists planned the event and were on hand to study the benefits to native vegetation. |
The birth of birds
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| Scientists have known for years that birds are dinosaurs: one offshoot of a reptilian family tree whose other branches went extinct tens of millions of years ago. This year, researchers found feathers in a type of dinosaur distantly related to living birds, suggesting that feathers—that most birdlike of traits—were widespread among dinosaurs. This study and others suggest that birdlike adaptations extended deep into the past, implying a long, slow gestation for one of the most colorful, varied, and successful lineages of animals on Earth today. |
A giant swimming dinosaur
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| A new fossil of the sail-backed dinosaur Spinosaurus shows that it was not just the biggest meat-eating dinosaur, at 15 meters in length, but also the only dinosaur adapted for swimming. Though it might have bested T. rex in a fight, it probably ate fish. |
Robots that cooperate
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| This year several teams showed that robots, like people, can accomplish more by working together. In one study, a thousand quarter-sized robots came together like a marching band to form squares, letters, and other formations. Inspired by termites, another team built robots that worked together to build 3D structures. Other, airborne robots mimic flocking birds. |
The rise of the CubeSat
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| 2014 has seen a record number of CubeSat launches. These pint-sized, low-cost satellites are taking advantage of increased access to space and advances in cheap, powerful sensors and electronics that allow them to do real science. In time, space science may be done by constellations of tiny, low-cost satellites, rather than a single, complex and pricey mission. |
Young blood fixes olds
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| Experiments in which the circulatory systems of an old and young mouse are stitched together have found that young blood—as well as a factor isolated from the blood—can rejuvenate the brain and muscles of an aging mouse. Doctors are now testing blood plasma from young donors in people with Alzheimer's disease. |
Giving life a bigger genetic alphabet
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| Researchers have expanded the DNA repertoire beyond the G-C and A-T pairs found in nature by creating a pair of novel letters, X bound to Y. This year they managed to insert these extra letters into living bacteria. Next up: using the extra DNA letters to code for amino acids that are not normally part of proteins in organisms. |
Life lurks under Antarctic ice
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| A diverse microbial ecosystem is thriving under 800 meters of ice in Lake Whillans, a subglacial lake in West Antarctica. A U.S.-led team of scientists drilled into the ice in January 2013, recovering sediment and water samples. This year, the team announced that the water, sealed off from the surface for more than 100,000 years, teemed with life. |
Asia's oldest art gallery
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| The world's oldest cave art may lie not in Europe but halfway around the globe in an Indonesian cave, where scientists have dated handprints and strange-looking pigs in red and mulberry to more than 35,000 years ago. The find suggests that modern humans were a creative bunch by the time they left Africa and began settling the world. |
Manipulating memories
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| One of 2013's cool-yet-creepy neuroscience highlights occurred when researchers instilled a fake memory of fear in mice, by manipulating neurons with light. This year, scientists took the method further, using a similar technique to switch good memories to fearful ones and bad memories to pleasant ones. |
The supercluster we call home
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| Galaxies are trifles next to the structures that astronomers have been mapping lately: galaxy clusters and superclusters of many thousands of galaxies. But where do we and our Milky Way fit in this picture? By combining the best galaxy catalog to date with other data about galactic motions, astronomers have now identified our home supercluster and its nearest neighbors. They call it Laniakea, from a Hawaiian phrase meaning "spacious heaven." |
Humans can smell a trillion scents
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| It's time to stop dissing the human sense of smell. Although we may not be able to detect (or appreciate) as many smells as our canine companions, this year researchers calculated that humans can distinguish roughly a trillion scents—far more than the roughly 10,000 odors that had been estimated before. |
Chips that mimic the brain
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| Computer chips keep getting better and faster—but their basic architecture hasn't changed for half a century. This year chipmakers broke the mold, creating the first large-scale "neuromorphic" chips, designed to process information in ways more akin to living brains. The chips promise to vastly improve the ability of machines to carry out perceptual tasks, such as vision, and thus could improve everything from robotics to interpreting data from vast arrays of environmental sensors. |
Cells that might cure diabetes
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| After more than a decade of trying, scientists have turned human stem cells into pancreatic β cells that secrete insulin—the very cells that are missing in type 1 diabetics. The recipe is complex, and the cells—made from embryonic stem cells or reprogrammed adult cells—would still face rejection by diabetics’ immune system if transplanted into patients. But the achievement brings a possible stem cell–based treatment for diabetes a step closer. |
image source: http://breakthroughs.sciencemag.org/
