The ten scientific breakthroughs of 2014 – The Reason (Bolivia)

For Science landing on a comet is the most important achievement of the year, followed by cooperating robots, rejuvenating blood or manipulation of memory, according ABC.es and EFE

The deputy news “Science”, Robert Coontz, said the findings of the year must “solve a problem that people have been struggling for a long time or opening the door to a lot of new research. ” For Rosetta, “most of good science really is coming,” he said in a statement.

1.-The encounter with a comet

It could not be otherwise. The journal Science has chosen the first landing of a human artifact in a comet as the most significant progress this year in the world of science. After a long journey of ten years and 6,400 million kilometers, including three flybys of Earth and one of Mars, the Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) won last November release a module, called Philae, and posarlo on the now famous comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The landing Philae was harder than expected. It bounced twice and stood at some distance from its original purpose. Furthermore, no secured to the surface as planned and its solar panels do not get enough light, so it lost power in less than three days. You might not wake up again until August, when it receives more light, and there is no certainty that does. However, Philae had time to gather valuable information about the structure and composition of the comet. This, coupled with Rosetta continues to accompany the comet on its journey, supposed to Science the most important part of the mission. The science that is capable of providing help scientists not only to learn more about these space rocks, but to better understand the origin and evolution of the Solar System.

2. The Step dinosaur to bird

Tyrannosaurus rex to the heavy agile and graceful swan hummingbird. An international consortium of researchers has created the most complete tree of avian life to date. The project, which involved over four years to hundreds of scientists from 20 countries around the world have discovered how certain lineages of dinosaurs developed smaller and lighter bodies that allowed them to evolve into various types of birds and survive the mass extinction Cretaceous- Paleogene nearly 66 million years ago. Once crystallized their body plan, facilitating the search for food and shelter, new avian species arose quickly. In reaching this conclusion, the study compared 850 morphological features 150 different species.

3. Blood, elixir of youth

Researchers Stanford University found that a component in the blood of young mice (2 months) is able to rejuvenate muscle and brain of mice in the last stage of his life (22 months). The elderly mice improved their ability to orientation and learning comparable to those of young people from structural changes in the hippocampus levels. The study shows that, in rodents at least, some of the age deterioration own reversible. If this would work in humans, would be a new way of treating diseases related to aging. A clinical trial of Alzheimer’s patients who are already receiving plasma from young donors tested if the miracle is possible.

4. Robots cooperating as insects

These small robots the size of a coin can work together without human supervision. They have been created by a team of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), inspired by the way some insects, such as ants, bees or termites, cooperate among themselves to work without central direction . This army of 1,024 ‘kilobots “can organize to form shapes like stars, letters, or other two-dimensional shapes by simply give the initial instructions.

5. Chips functioning as a brain

IBM engineers presented computational neuromorphic chips, microprocessors that work similarly to that of a living brain year. Mimicking the architecture of a human brain, aiming to improve the artificial intelligence of digital devices and possibly replace traditional chips.

6. Cells Laboratory diabetes

A team of researchers from Harvard University (USA) won for the first time from human embryonic cells, grow beta cells, which produce insulin in the pancreas. The finding represents an unprecedented opportunity to fight diabetes. Scientists believe that testing for human transplantation using these cells will be launched in a few years. If it worked, patients could stop relying on insulin for life.

7. At the rock art in Indonesia

Representations rock you found in caves on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia twelve negatives of hands for 40,000 years and some paintings of animals of 35,400, rivaling in antiquity with some European prehistoric jewelry, such as red disc of Cantabrian cave The Castle or the “Sistine Chapel” of Altamira. According to the scientific team that has dated creations, which were already known but assumed more modern, discovery implies that the first cave productions take place not only in Europe but also in the antipodes.

8. The memories can be manipulated

Using optogenetics, a technique that manipulates the neuronal activity with rays of light, researchers at the University of California Davis have managed to erase existing and implement other false memories in the brain of mice. In this way, they even managed to change the emotional content of memories from good to bad, or vice versa. Research that reminds the plot of the movie.

9. The era of cheap satellites

They were first launched into space more than a decade almost like an educational toy for college students, but now these CubeSats, some cheap satellite just 10 square cm, are really taking off. This year have been released over 75, a record. And what’s more, these minisatellites have begun to produce real science, for example, to study deforestation, urban development or changes in the rivers.

10. Broadening the genetic code of life

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California (USA) have designed a semi-synthetic bacterium with extra genetic material. This laboratory E.coli hosts two additional nucleic acids – X and Y which do not exist in nature, in addition to G, T, C and A which make the normal standard building blocks of DNA. Scientists believe that the expansion of the biology of DNA could have important applications from new medicines to new types of nanotechnology -.