Are the 10 researchers of the year. Or rather, they are the authors of the nine major findings of the year and signer of the more controversial scientific of recent years. The list of the people who are most hard have been stuck in the Science in 2018, each year the journal Nature, has been included in this edition of the biophysical chinese I Jiankui, which announced last November that it had created the first human beings transgenic.
The researcher of the University of Science and Technology of China -phd, and trained in the US – conducted a work of edition genetics of human embryos to rid the offspring of couples with one parent with HIV and a possible infection in the future. Once removed the key gene, implanted these embryos in women and one of them came to give birth to two girls, Lulu and Nana, who have gone down in history as the first two girls are transgenic in the world. However, the announcement raised quite a stir internationally, and that the work had been carried out to the margin of chinese law, and without the controls and filters ethical necessary for a technique of these characteristics. On the 29th of November, only 20 days after the birth of the two babies, the chinese Government suspended all research papers I have Jiankui.
But at the margin of the controversial work of the year, there are nine other scientists whose works have shaken the scientific scene this year. “The list includes a group of individuals who have been this year in the center of the biggest stories in science, from discoveries about superconductivity to the widely criticized work on the issue of genetic human genes,” says the editor-in-chief of Nature, Rich Monastersky, in a note in the magazine.
Yuan Cao was only 18 years old when he landed in the USA to do his phd at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after graduating in the University of Science and Technology of China. This year, already 21 years old, has been discovered -with the research team in the works – a new trick to get the graphene in layers of just one or two atoms thick, is able to conduct electricity without resistance, which has opened by itself a new area of research in Physics and promises that some day we will be able to use energy in a much more efficient or move to the cities to spend less.
The paleoantropóloga German Viviane Slon is in front of one of the most significant findings of 2018: a human being hybrid makes 90,000 years half neanderthal, half denisovano (another hominid that lived in Europe until only a few tens of thousands of years). She same account that I was convinced I had made a mistake when he saw the results of her genetic analysis. “We had too accepted that this was impossible,” admits the researcher to the Max Planck institute of Germany. But there was no error, only a human being become extinct, born of a neadertal, and a denisovano. They called Denny’s.
The other ‘brains’
Nature has also recognized a polymer physics at Imperial College London for their work in inclusion. Jess Wade began writing a page of Wikipedia every day, with the object of trying to correct in science the low representation of women and black people in the online encyclopedia. Creator of nearly 400 pages, Wade works with organizations to organize ‘edit-a-thons’ regular, in which people create and edit content in Wikipedia with a view to the inclusion, which have inspired similar events around the world, including some focused on other professions.
Valérie Masson-Delmotte is another of the scientific ranking. His role was “paramount”, according to Nature to take forward the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was introduced to the world alarming news about the future. The report warned that, in just a dozen years, the average temperature of the Earth could rise by 1.5°C the value of the mid-NINETEENTH century, which would cause a wave of changes that would transform the ecosystem and kill most of the coral reefs of the world, among many other impacts.
Nature also includes in its listing Anthony Brown, an astronomer at the Leiden Observatory (the Netherlands), which directs the Processing and Analysis Consortium Data of the project Gaia of the European Space Agency (ESA), a group of more than 400 researchers who have been working with calculations of the spacecraft Gaia since it was launched in 2013. On the 25th of April, scientists from the esa Gaia mission published their first set of primary data: a catalog of 551 gigabytes that details the positions and movements of more than 1,300 millions of stars.
to Catch the killer with DNA data public
And even acknowledge to Bee Yin Yeo, the Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change in Malaysia. This chemical engineer who was educated in Malaysia and at Cambridge he held the position on may 9, 2018, the day on which the citizens decided to overthrow at the polls the coalition that had held power continuously since the founding of the country in 1963.
In a few months, it has announced goals to increase the renewable energy from 2% to 20% for 2030, reform of the electricity market and the increase of energy efficiency. But it has also led the fight against the pollution of plastics, establishing a national prohibition of their importation, and by launching a roadmap of 12 years and a legal framework to eliminate plastic single-use in Malaysia to 2030.
The genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter helped to identify a serial killer and paved the way for AND play a more important role in the resolution of crimes. Rae-Venter went up a profile created from a sample AND found at the scene of the crime in GEDmatch, a public database used by genealogists.
immediately, he found someone who seemed to be a third cousin or fourth of the killer. With the help of the FBI, worked to triangulate a common ancestor and then build the family tree. Finally, we focused on Joseph DeAngelo, a former police officer who lives in Sacramento. A direct proof of their AND tested the pairing. He was arrested for having committed alleged 12 murders, 45 rapes, 120 robberies during the 70’s and 80’s.
Closes the ranking of Robert-Jan Smits, the promoter of the Plan S, an initiative to move decisively toward open access of scholarly publications to 2020, with the support of the European Commission as well as from 13 countries.
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