2020 was the year when Corona 19 raged around the world. In the midst of this, the British Guardian announced the results of a notable 2020 study selected by scientists, showing that science has made steady progress.
According to this, the first is the successful launch of the first manned spacecraft by a private company. On May 31, SpaceX, an American private space company led by CEO Elon Musk, succeeded in launching the Crew Dragon for the first time as a private company. Crew Dragon, carrying two astronauts, entered the atmosphere on August 2 of the same year after successfully docking with the ISS and returned safely to the Florida coast in the United States.
Second, solving protein structure prediction. All life is made up of proteins, but it has been an important task for the past 50 years as it is not known what the tertiary structure of this protein looks like. But in November 2020, Google-affiliated artificial intelligence company DeepMind unveiled a new way to predict how proteins take on a three-dimensional structure. AlphaFold, an AI, learned a program for more than 170,000 proteins using a deep learning system, and ranked first with an average of 92.4 points out of 100 in the precision evaluation of protein structure prediction held in November 2020. .
Third, discover new genetic modification technologies. Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of CRISPR-Cas9, a technology that can transform DNA with high precision. CRISPR is a technology that can separate and freely edit double strands of DNA, and this discovery enables accurate genome editing of crops or the development of new cancer treatments.
Fourth, the commitment to poverty reduction and environmental protection. It is recognized around the world that poverty reduction and deforestation are important tasks in the 21st century. The two have been considered to have no correlation. However, the research team noted that more than 7,000 villages in Indonesia introduced the Family Hope Program, a cash payment system, and found that deforestation was reduced by 30% as household rehabilitation expanded. Consumption of inexpensive products supplied by deforestation tends to increase in poor rural areas, but it is considered one of the reasons that consumers may transition to eco-friendly products produced in the market if households are well maintained by obtaining cash regularly. .
Fifth, each country establishes Net Zero, which is zero greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, former British Prime Minister May legally enacted a commitment to virtually zero carbon dioxide emissions in the UK by 2050. Since then, China and others have declared net zero goals one after another. Currently, half of the world’s GDP belongs to the countries that issued Net Zero, but some point out that efforts to substantially reduce the amount of manufacturing in excess of the established emission allowances with other countries have been stagnated.
Sixth is new hope for PTSD treatment. Abuse from childhood has a negative impact on mental health even as an adult. A 2020 study found that people who were abused or dedicated as a child suffered from mental health deterioration only when they remember the shock as adults. Also, regardless of whether there is objective evidence of childhood abuse, adult abuse or neglect, the risk of depression, anxiety, PTSD and substance abuse rises equally, but a child who does not recall this when asked 20 years later There were also findings that no one had a higher psychiatric risk than a child who had never been abused or neglected.
Seventh is the announcement of the fact that there are signs of life activity in Venus’ atmosphere. In the September 2020 investigation, it was reported that a gas force exhibited through the activity of anaerobic microorganisms in Venus’ atmosphere was detected. The report was re-analyzed in November 2020 and the amount of detection was downgraded to less than a billionth of a billion, but the fact that there was a substance here that couldn’t exist was enough to excite many scientists.
The eighth is a black scientist leap forward. Following the death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement took place. The statistical data left by statistics experts such as Karl Pearson and Ronald Aylmer Fisher are excellent, but they have eugenics, and some argue that this view is questioned, but the views are not important. With the death of George Floyd in 2020, the world, including the scientific community, became a year to consult more on racism. In a big event in 2020, Professor CHRISTOPHER JACKSON at Imperial College London was named the first black scientist to teach Christmas at the Royal Institute of England, which continued from 1825.
The ninth is from cultured meat. It is known that the world population will exceed 9 billion by 2050. Among these things, the food problem is getting serious. In the midst of research on insect food and artificial meat, the US company Impossible Foods is already selling vegetable beef hamburger patties that are mainly derived from wheat and coconut. In addition, in December 2020, American food company EatJust announced that artificial chicken produced by culturing cells in a laboratory passed the Singapore Food Authority screening and will be released to general restaurants.
The tenth is a new hope for realizing superconductivity operating at room temperature. When a specific metal or compound is approached, the electrical resistance of the material becomes zero. The superconductivity phenomenon can lead to new possibilities in the development of low-loss power lines and linear motor cars. However, it was discovered that this phenomenon, which could not occur in an environment of -13 degrees Celsius, can occur at room temperature of 15 degrees Celsius using carbon, hydrogen and sulfur compounds. Of course, to realize this, a pressure of 270 gigapascals, which is 2.6 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level, is required, and it takes a considerable amount of time to become practical, but it is clear that it is an important scientific achievement. Related information can be found here .