31/12/2017
One of the most frustrating things
about science is that it’s an
incremental process. This, however,
is a feature, and not a bug; in order
to advance our understanding of
ourselves and the world around us,
we need to test and retest—and
retest and retest—everything new
thing we think we’ve discovered.
That means it’s easy to miss
scientific breakthroughs amid the
churn of the daily news cycle,
especially in the current political
climate. So we’ve decided to look
back at 2017, and highlight some of
the advances made in various
scientific fields that we feel were
both underrated and are likely to
have a major impact in 2018 and
beyond. In no specific order:
A pill to treat mental illness with
built-in data tracking technology
The world’s first digital drug could
revolutionize how doctors and
patients interact. Once ingested, the
pill (which contains tiny chips made
of magnesium, silicon, and copper)
can send information from inside
the body to an adhesive patch
placed on a patient’s torso. The
patch then relays those data to a
doctor’s office, and, for those who
wish to monitor themselves as well,
to a smartphone app. So far, the US
Food and Drug Administration has
only approved the technology for use
in medications used to treat
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
However the approval will
inaugurate a new mode of health
care where physicians will have more
direct access to patient data of an
entirely differently quality than the
self-reported stuff they have to make
do with today. This new paradigm, of
course, also raises questions about
privacy, bioethics, and the use of big
data gathered from inside your
body. — Chase Purdy
SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket
Elon Musk’s heartbreak and
obsessions with tunnels got more
press, but his company SpaceX’s
successful launch of three
previously-flown rocket boosters was
a major step forward in space travel.
Futuristic space businesses depend
on ever-cheaper trips to orbit, and
Musk—along with burgeoning
competitor Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin—is
poised to deliver.
Competitors charge $10,000 or more
per kilogram launched to space, but
Musk’s reusable rocket drops that
price to less than $2,000. That trend
could make asteroid mining, orbital
manufacturing, lunar tourism, and
powerful new satellite constellations
feasible. There’s more work to be
done to get to Musk’s goal of a 24-
hour turnaround between a rocket
landing back on Earth and its next
launch, but 2017 should be
remembered as the year SpaceX
revolutionized the launch industry.
— Tim Fernholz
Undetectable = Untransmittable
HIV diagnoses once amounted to a
death sentence, as nearly all of
those infected with the virus in the
past went on to develop acquired
immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
All told, more than 35 million
globally have died from HIV since
the 1980s. Now, with the help of
drugs such as antiretroviral
medications and PrEP, the virus has
become more manageable.
In 2017, medical authorities across
the globe came to a public
agreement on a new policy direction
that could have profound effects for
the many people currently living
with managed HIV: those who have
undetectable viral loads, have
“effectively no risk” of transmitting
the virus. It sounds like semantics,
but it’s not. The policy shift could
reshape how governments and
health agencies communicate about
HIV and its implications, and reduce
stigmatization of the more than 36
million people living with HIV
around the world. — Chase Purdy
Floating wind farms
Solar and wind energy are both
renewable and do not produce any
carbon emissions, which is essential
an era where climate-change
mitigation is a desperate need. But
they also both require far more area
than fossil-fuel energy sources. In
fact, a fossil-fuel power plant is
typically less than a tenth the size of
a solar farm producing the same
amount of energy. Obviously, we don’
t have unlimited land, and that
presents a challenge to scaling up
renewable energy to the point where
the world can be fully emissions-
free. A breakthrough in 2017 could
help overcome that hurdle.
Wind turbines usually need firm
ground to stand on. But in July, the
Norwegian energy giant Statoil
launched the world’s first floating
wind farm off the coast of Scotland.
Nifty software keeps the turbines
upright by twisting blades in
response to the motions of the wind,
waves, and ocean currents. At
present, the price is too high for
this sort of floating wind farm to
operate without government
subsidies, but Statoil aims to bring
costs down by 2030. Success could
open up the high seas to massive
clean energy projects, making wind
power a lot more attractive than it
already is. — Akshat Rathi
