Amazing Scientific Discoveries of 2022
The world of science is everchanging and progressive. Every day a new scientific discovery is made. Here are some of the most relevant this year:
Consumption of Microplastics Can Cause Evolutionary Changes
In April 2022, an international group of researchers from the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (TBG), the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre Frankfurt (SBiK-F) and the Estonian National Laboratory of Chemistry and Physics, found that the consumption of microplastics could lead to evolutionary changes in insects. The plastic particles, up to 5 millimeters in size, are dispersed by water and wind. In the meantime, microplastics have already been identified in all ecosystems, from the deep sea to high alpine glaciers. These particles can even get into the brains of mammals. Although there is increasing evidence that the consumption of microplastics– based on size, amount, and composition– could be detrimental to organisms, the degree of danger has not yet been effectively defined.
New vaccines to fight Malaria
Malaria, found in over 90 countries, kills approximately 627,000 people every year. Vaccines could help reduce or eliminate the toll, but scientists have struggled to produce a highly effective one. This year, though, the technology used to develop mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 has helped a research team led by George Washington University develop two experimental mRNA vaccine candidates that are extremely effective in reducing malaria infection and transmission, according to a study published in December in npj Vaccines, an open-access scientific journal in the Nature Portfolio. According to Nirbhay Kumar, a professor of global health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, malaria elimination will not happen overnight. However, such vaccines could potentially eradicate malaria from many parts of the world.
Ressurrecting dying organs
For the first time ever, scientists at Yale University preserved the function of multiple pig organs including the brain, heart, liver, and kidneys for a full hour after the animals’ passing. In the future, the research could help prolong the viability of human organs intended for life-saving transplants. The technology might also be useful in limiting damage to hearts from heart attacks, and to brains from strokes.
Normally organs must be harvested as soon as the heart stops pumping blood for them to be viable. But a sapphire-blue solution called OrganEx developed by neuroscientist Nenad Sestan and his team allowed them to recover basic organ functions well after the tissues had last received fresh blood. With a machine, they circulated the mix for six hours and identified signs of revival in the dying organs—heart cells began beating, liver cells absorbed glucose from blood, and DNA repair resumed. Still, Sestan urges caution. “We can say that the heart is beating, but to what extent it’s beating like a healthy heart—that will require more studies.” The next steps will include transplanting OrganEx-treated organs into live pigs to see how well they function.
Earliest surgery
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The first known surgical operation was a leg amputation. Researchers reached this conclusion after investigating the skeleton of a person who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo about 31,000 years ago. Healed bone where the lower left leg had been removed suggests the individual survived for several years after the procedure. This discovery pushes surgery’s origin back by some 20,000 years.
Closest black hole
By combing through data released by the Gaia spacecraft, astrophysicists found a black hole that’s just over 1,560 light-years from Earth. Named Gaia BH1, it’s approximately twice as close as the previously nearest known black hole. However, that record may not stand. Around 100 million black holes are predicted to exist in the Milky Way. Since most are invisible, they’re difficult to find. But when Gaia, which is precisely mapping a billion stars, releases its next batch of data in a few years, even closer black holes may show up.
Zero COVID no longer works
At first, zero COVID was a success. However, with time, China’s strict lockdown policy strained its economy, frustrated its citizens, and arguably did more harm than good to public health. This month the government started relaxing restrictions without formally ending the zero-COVID strategy. China’s people have lost patience. On 14 November, residents of Guangzhou defied a lockdown and poured into the streets, toppling the barriers intended to keep them home. After 10 people died in a high-rise apartment building fire in Urumqi on 24 November, deaths many blamed on an ongoing lockdown, pent-up frustration erupted in cities throughout China. Protesters demanded the end of zero COVID and the end of mass testing; some even called on President Xi Jinping to step down. Now, authorities are hurriedly rolling back restrictions, despite an ongoing Omicron surge. Ending zero COVID carries risks of its own, as China is still ill-prepared to live with the virus. Just 66% of those over age 80 are fully vaccinated and only 40% have gotten boosters, leaving them vulnerable to the expected wave of infections. China missed its chance to plan and execute a more orderly transition from zero COVID.
AI for artists
Artificial intelligence is bringing new possibilities for businesses and households. Now, new text-to-image generators are giving everyone from artists to urban planners to reconstructive surgeons a new tool to aid them visualize ideas. DALL-E 2, which Open AI released in July, looks at hundreds of millions of captioned images to turn text prompts written by users into images.
Mark Chen, the lead researcher on DALL-E 2, told The Atlantic that image generators like DALL-E 2 aim to “democratize” art. “This is the most exciting new technology in the AI space since natural-language translation,” Atlantic deputy editor Ross Anderson said.
