Separate scientific research in 2018

Whatever your assessment of 2018, scientists have implemented new research that has yielded unprecedented results. Here we follow the highlights of the year in 7 scientific fields: space, technologies, environment, biology, energy, genes and biological anthropology.

Race to the space

Unique space events, led by the United States of America and China, have marked this year. If NASA announced this year two unprecedented events regarding the sun and Mars, China was to complete its 2018 documents without having a slice of space cake, Also for an unprecedented mission targeting the moon.

The sun's mission is to get closer to a spaceship In August, NASA launched the Solar Solar spacecraft to do the job.

On October 31, 2018, the SIR recorded a record of approaching the sun never reached, separating it from the sun's surface by 15 million miles, surpassing the 1976 record for Helios-2. 26.6 million miles from the sun.

The probe seeks to approach the sun 24 times over the next seven years, finally reaching a distance of 3.8 million miles from the sun's surface in order to solve the mystery of the Great Sun: how the sun warms the halo around millions of degrees, while the surface stays cool below Relatively?

NASA not only accomplished this, but it also accomplished another feat: on November 26, it was discovered that the spacecraft had achieved a historic event for the first time after a journey of more than six months.

The spacecraft is the first American spacecraft to land on Mars since Keriocyte arrived six years ago. It is also the first dedicated ship to explore beneath the surface of Mars.

The probe will carry equipment to monitor temperatures and earthquakes on Mars and spend 24 months taking seismic and thermal measurements, seeking information to know how Mars, the origin of the Earth and other planets rocks form the internal solar system.

But China has decided not to spend the year without reserving a place in the history of space and launched on December 8 the probe "Chang 4", which will be the first ship to land on the dark side of the moon .

The Chang4 mission plans to reach a larger and deeper crater, probably known to all, formed by a collision, known as the South Paul-Itken Basin located on the other side of the moon, which can not be detected from Earth.

– Health Technology

And from space to Earth: this year, the scientific research community has witnessed technological innovations in the field of health, particularly in the field of disease diagnosis.

One of the pioneering researches in this area is the development of a mobile technology for HIV detection, developed by a research team at Brigham Women's Hospital & Disease Hospital. Harvard Medical School.

This technology, described in a study published in Nature Connection in October 2018, uses the camera phone and converts it into a microscope to detect the virus. The technology is used to connect to the mobile phone, a developer to place the blood sample on a slide attached to the phone's camera and equipped with "micromitters", fast-moving polystyrene polymer beads.

Once the blood sample is placed on the slide, a biochemical reaction occurs between the viral DNA and the micrometers: if the virus is active, a viral DNA network blocks the movement of the micrometers, then the phone briefly indicates that the sample tested is positive. If there is no change in the movement of the ball, the sample is negative.

According to the feasibility study, the price of the device allowing the phone to perform the test will not be less than $ 5, which is very low compared to the traditional $ 50 analysis, as well as the person can implement at home, without need to go to the hospital. The results showed that this gives a precision similar to conventional tests.

– Revolution on the "plastic"

Just as human health was a goal of technology, the environment in which it evolved was a goal of innovation. Many researches have focused on "plastic" damage because the year of the 2018 revolution can be considered "plastic". Over the last 50 years, the production of "plastic" has increased from 15 million tons in 1964 to more than 311 million tons per year worldwide, and 32% of plastic waste is not collected, resulting in high economic costs. Is to reduce the productivity of natural systems, such as oceans, and infrastructure failures.

In an attempt to solve the problem, a British company made a yacht to collect and recycle "plastics" from the oceans and unveiled the yacht at the Southampton Boat Show on September 17th.

The yacht costs about 40 million pounds ($ 52 million), called the "savior of the ocean", and can help collect 5 tons of "plastic" a day. It relies on its ability to recycle ocean waste from "plastic" and convert it to Fuel.

Plastics have also been the subject of joint research by British and American scientists, who have succeeded in developing an enzyme that feeds on "plastics," which could help fight pollution. The results of the discovery were published in April 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The enzyme can digest the material of "polyethylethylene", a form of "plastic" used in millions of tons of plastic containers. Plastic products made from this material can survive hundreds of years in the environment and contaminate vast expanses of land and seas.

– energy respectful of the environment

While the issue of climate change was a major concern in 2018, the research reflected this trend by proposing solutions to solve the problems that hinder the use of non-polluting energies, such as solar energy. .

One of the main obstacles to the use of solar energy and its connection to the national grid is its association with solar brightness and the need to provide a way to store it, a problem that the MIT scientists in America have resolved.

Scientists have devised a system announced Dec. 8, capable of storing renewable energy, such as solar and wind energy, and converting it into electrical power on demand.

The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind energy in large molten silicon tanks, and then converts light from incandescent metal into electricity when needed. This system can be useful for the operation of the electricity grid, depending on the renewable energy sources.

In the same spirit, in order to preserve the environment, a British company has developed a hydrogen vehicle that can last a lifetime. The car is still in the testing phase, with a few people, but its main problem is the high cost of its regular maintenance.

On the same fuel, a research team from several British universities has come up with a new way to convert toxic carbon monoxide into hydrogen and published a research on it in June in the journal Molecular Catalysis.

The research team, represented by British universities, succeeded in preparing a catalyst for molybdenum carbide, used in the conversion process, which gave better results than four to five times higher than the other catalysts used in previous research, as well as stability for 85 hours of reaction. Carry on.

– Genetically modified children

The events of the scientific year were marked by some of the most controversial issues, including the announcement of Chinese researcher Hu Jinaki from Shanzan University on November 27, which helped help the birth mother of two genetically modified twins. This process is the first type in the world.

The Chinese scientist said that he had managed to release the embryos using the Krasper Cass Nine tool to disrupt the gene responsible for the transmission of AIDS by the parents of the newborn.

The researcher announced that seven embryos had been released by HIV-positive couples. One case succeeded. The results of this study have not been published. The publication of this study was rejected by "ethical reasons" by the editorial staff of the journal Nature, Science.

Secrets of the Old World

The present and its challenges of the past and its secrets, the year has been an explanation of many mysteries of the past in the fields of biology and geology. In this context, Saudi Arabia has discovered the first human fossils in the Arabian Peninsula, which could change the prevailing theory about how modern humans are migrating from Africa to the rest of the world.

According to a study published in April 2018 in the journal Environment, Nature and Development, fossils were discovered in the Al-Nafud Desert and would be at least 85,000 years old.

If the prevailing theory is that modern humans grew up in Africa and then migrated to the rest of the world in a single wave about 60,000 years ago, the discovery shows that instead of the rapid spread once out of Africa, The wise man of Africa many times, that is to say even 20 000 to 25 000 years ago.

In the field of dinosaur research, the Egyptian research team has achieved the greatest success by discovering the dinosaur Mansoura, the first of its kind in Africa, documenting the last 30 million years of the Cretaceous, there are 135 to 65 million years. A search for discovery was published in January in the journal Nature Ecological and Evolution.

66 million years ago, dinosaurs and large reptiles were massively extinct. Scientists have succeeded in documenting the period separating the average life (including the three geological ages (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous)) and the modern era. About 30 million years ago, between 94 and 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous, scientists could no longer record any fossils and remained a mystery. Scientists are always looking for an explanation. Mansoura Palace is the first of this period.

This dinosaur is the sixth discovered in Egypt, but it is the first in Egypt and Africa, which documents the period between 94 and 66 million years ago, the late Cretaceous. It is 10 meters long and weighs about 5 tons, about 75 million years old.

Morocco also witnessed a unique event involving a small dinosaur, unlike the Upper Cretaceous dinosaur finds.

Most discoveries involve large dinosaurs up to 17 meters long, but the discovery in Morocco of the Milner Center's biology and biochemistry team for the evolution of the University of Bath has been recorded for the first time in a dinosaur of 10 and 15 meters. A discovery search was published in September 2018 in Cretaceous Research, a journal devoted to Cretaceous research.

– Unique research on the history of diseases

Scientists are studying some modern epochs related to ancient civilizations, such as Biological Anthropology, which traces the history of the disease by looking for it in the mummies and skeletons of the human being.

In this context, a Spanish research team managed to record the oldest case of Mueller-Weiss disease in the bones of a man belonging to the Ptolemaic dynasty of the Hellenistic period (4th-1st century BC ). Central Egypt). A discovery search was published in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery in July 2018.

And Moeller Weiss, a rare bone disease, was scientifically described for the first time in the early twentieth century and recorded in the name of its discoverer, a German scholar. Spanish research is the first of its kind to record this infection in bones from the prehistoric period.

Researchers, specializing in this field on a date with a unique discovery last November; a joint Italian-American mission working in the archaeological region of Aswan, Egypt, discovered the remains of a pregnant woman in recent months, dating back to the era of the second transition (1750-1550). .

The first skeletal studies showed that the woman was about 25 years old at the time of her death and was in her last months of gestation The structure of the fetus is present in the pelvic area and has already stabilized in the position of 39; childbirth.

A preliminary analysis of the woman's belly revealed problems or imbalances in the pelvic area, indicating that she was probably suffering from a poorly treated and probably fatal fracture.