The pandemic, the global health crisis and the economic disaster. 2020 will go down in history as the year when a new Corona virus put the whole planet in check. But in this balance, there are not only shadows: in the last twelve months, they have also reached great advances in science that until recently seemed unattainable.
From developing a COVID-19 vaccine to ending polio in Africa, science leaves us with a list of good news worth remembering. Here we review a few of them.
Developing COVID-19 Vaccines in Record Time
When news of ‘strange pneumonia’ spread in China in early 2020, there was virtually no data on the virus SRAS-CoV-2 which caused this new disease in humans. But with all eyes on them, measuring their every step, scientists around the world set to work to answer the question. health crisis. Science has never been done at such speed and its results have never been so important in the world.
The development in record time of vaccines against COVID-19, efficient and safe, is the most significant scientific milestone of 2020 for the prestigious journal Science, which selects each December the ten most significant advances of this year. In Spain, the mass vaccination program against the coronavirus will begin on December 27, according to the latest health forecasts.
“The Ordinary He won’t be back for a long time. But in the coming months, as the vaccines roll out, we may finally be able to find out when this is going to end, ”journalist Jon Cohen said in an op-ed published in Science.
A patient receives a vaccine | Ball Lunla Web (Shutterstock)
Potential HIV vaccine enters final phase of human testing
Since 1981 they have been notified the first cases of AIDS, the scientific community has worked tirelessly to end this disease. In 2020, a candidate for an HIV vaccine has reached the last phase of trials, in which it will be studied whether the experimental treatment is effective and safe against the virus which, if left untreated, causes le side.
According to an article published in the scientific journal The Lancet, these potential vaccines, developed by the pharmaceutical company Janssen, have passed safety studies and are capable of generating antibodies, but it remains to be seen whether they work in real conditions. According to last year’s national AIDS plan, in Spain there were more 2600 newly infected and in 2018, around 400 people died from the disease, as the latest data available from the National Institute of Statistics shows.
Africa is polio free
Polio is a contagious disease which mainly affects children. The first symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiff neck and pain in the limbs; and in a small proportion of cases the disease causes paralysis.
In August, the African Regional Certification Commission certified the absence of poliomyelitis due to natural viruses (also called “wild”) in the Africa Region of the World Health Organization (WHO) after four years without any cases.
With this historic milestone, five of WHO’s six regions – home to over 90% of the world’s population – are now free of naturally occurring poliovirus, bringing the world one step closer to total polio eradication. In fact, transmission is currently only recorded in two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Unprecedented scientific collaboration and more investment in science
To deal with the coronavirus pandemic, new scientific collaboration links have been created between countries and institutions. “Never before have competitors collaborated so openly and frequently. Never before have we produced so many candidate vaccines clinical tests on a large scale almost at the same time ”, stands out in an editorial published in Science.
SCCI Laboratory | Ministry of Science website
“And never before so much money, talent and effort by governments, industry, researchers and nonprofits in the same infectious disease in such a short time, ”the editorial added. In Spain, the injection of funds from the European Union to Spain to resist the onslaught of the virus has enabled the government to increase its total expenditure on science for 2021 by 1,200 million euros, or a 60% increase compared to 2020.
More Nobel Laureates in Science
According to the UN, it is proven that “women in scientific fields publish less, are paid less for their research and do not progress as much as men in their careers”. Since the creation of Nobel prize in 1901 most of the prizes went to men: of the 962 laureates, only 57 women.
This year, four women received a Nobel of the 12 winners in total, including three in scientific fields: Andrea Ghez in Physics for the discovery of a compact supermassive object at the center of our galaxy and Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in Chemistry, for the development of an editing technique of genes.
America’s first manned space mission in a decade returns to space
In August, the mission (called Demo-2) of Space X’s Dragon ship, with which the United States, through La NASA and the company Space X, returned this year to space travel with astronauts. The purpose of this “test” mission is to validate SpaceX’s astronaut transport system, which includes launch, orbit, docking, undocking and subsequent landing operations.
Astronauts return in SpaceX’s Demo2 mission | Epa, Efe
According to NASA, “the future lies in commercial space travel, systems that will be used in future missions with which the agency intends to set foot on the Moon or reach Mars”. The second mission of an inhabited Dragon is scheduled for spring 2021. On this occasion, it will fly with four people. And SpaceX won’t be the only one. If all goes well, Boeing will also send astronauts to the station next year.
The search for life under other suns: no more exoplanets with habitable conditions
Less than three decades ago, no planet had yet been observed beyond the solar system. Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced in 1995 the discovery of the first planet orbiting a normal star other than our sun. They have since been located more than 4000 planets, some of them with habitability conditions.
For example, this year, the journal Science published the discovery of a planetary system relatively close to Earth, 11 light years away. The Discoverers, an international team of scientists, have detected at least two planets around the star GJ 887, a red dwarf.
New discoveries about water on Mars
The red planet was not always so red. In 2015, conclusive evidence was found that Mars was one day covered by oceans, rivers and lakes. Liquid water that has left its mark on coasts and canals. Where has all this water gone?
A new study published this year notes that most of the water on Mars has been slowly converted to hydrogen lost in space. The results of this study could “Help scientists understand why Mars is so different from Earth, why its climate has changed so much throughout the history of the solar system, ”according to experts.
Mars was once covered by the oceans | POT
The oldest hunting images of humanity discovered
The work that is done in the laboratory is not only scientific. In fact, another of the scientific discoveries of the year according to Scientific magazine It is the discovery of a series of rock paintings at least 44,000 years old on the island of Sulawesi (Indonesia). The images depict a group of human figures exhibiting animal characteristics chasing mammals with spears or ropes. These paintings are the traces of figurative art the oldest of our species.
According to Science, if the drawings of these hunters really correspond to half-human, half-animal figures, “their creators could have taken an important cognitive step: the ability to imagine beings who do not exist”. This, say the researchers, is said to be the foundation of most modern and ancient religions. So, this discovery is good news that can help us better understand the past of our species.
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