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Breakthrough Of The Year
The Breakthrough of the Year is an annual award for the most significant development in scientific research made by the AAAS journal ''Science,'' an academic journal covering all branches of science. Originating in 1989 as the ''Molecule of the Year'', and inspired by ''Time'' Man of the Year, it was renamed the Breakthrough of the Year in 1996. Molecule of the Year * 1989 PCR and DNA polymerase * 1990 the manufacture of synthetic diamonds * 1991 buckminsterfullerene * 1992 nitric oxide * 1993 p53 * 1994 DNA repair enzyme Breakthrough of the Year * 1996: Understanding HIV * 1997: Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from adult cells * 1998: Accelerating universe * 1999: Prospective stem-cell therapies * 2000: Full genome sequencing * 2001: Nanocircuits or Molecular circuit * 2002: RNA interference * 2003: Dark energy * 2004: ''Spirit'' rover landed on Mars * 2005: Evolution in action * 2006: Proof of the Poincaré conjecture * 2007: Human genetic variation * 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Association For The Advancement Of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity. It is the world's largest general scientific society, with over 120,000 members, and is the publisher of the well-known scientific journal ''Science''. History Creation The American Association for the Advancement of Science was created on September 20, 1848, at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a reformation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. The society chose William Charles Redfield as their first president because he had proposed the most comprehensive plans for the organization. According to the first constitution which was agreed to at the September 20 meeting, the goal of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Circuit
Molecular scale electronics, also called single-molecule electronics, is a branch of nanotechnology that uses single molecules, or nanoscale collections of single molecules, as electronic components. Because single molecules constitute the smallest stable structures imaginable, this miniaturization is the ultimate goal for shrinking electrical circuits. The field is often termed simply as "molecular electronics", but this term is also used to refer to the distantly related field of conductive polymers and organic electronics, which uses the properties of molecules to affect the bulk properties of a material. A nomenclature distinction has been suggested so that ''molecular materials for electronics'' refers to this latter field of bulk applications, while ''molecular scale electronics'' refers to the nanoscale single-molecule applications treated here. Fundamental concepts Conventional electronics have traditionally been made from bulk materials. Ever since their invention in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cancer Immunotherapy
Cancer immunotherapy (sometimes called immuno-oncology) is the stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving on the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer immunology and a growing subspecialty of oncology. Cancer immunotherapy exploits the fact that cancer cells often have tumor antigens, molecules on their surface that can be detected by the antibody proteins of the immune system, binding to them. The tumor antigens are often proteins or other macromolecules (e.g., carbohydrates). Normal antibodies bind to external pathogens, but the modified immunotherapy antibodies bind to the tumor antigens marking and identifying the cancer cells for the immune system to inhibit or kill. Clinical success of cancer immunotherapy is highly variable between different forms of cancer; for instance, certain subtypes of gastric cancer react well to the approach whereas immunotherapy is not effective for other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Higgs Boson
The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge, that couples to (interacts with) mass. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately. The Higgs field is a scalar field, with two neutral and two electrically charged components that form a complex doublet of the weak isospin SU(2) symmetry. Its " Mexican hat-shaped" potential leads it to take a nonzero value ''everywhere'' (including otherwise empty space), which breaks the weak isospin symmetry of the electroweak interaction, and via the Higgs mechanism gives mass to many particles. Both the field and the boson are named after physicist Peter Higgs, who in 1964, along ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HPTN 052
HPTN 052 is the name of a clinical trial conducted in nine countries which examined whether starting people living with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ART) can reduce the chance that they will pass HIV on to their sexual partners who do not have HIV. The trial showed remarkable success in preventing HIV transmission and were so compelling that the study's Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) asked the research team to share the results with all study participants and offer ART to the control group (people who had been randomized to not start ART) before the study ended. As a result of the study there was increased consensus that treatment as prevention should be included as a public health strategy in lowering HIV infection. The trial was organized by the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) and its chief architect was Myron S. Cohen. Results As reported by a 2011 publication in the ''New England Journal of Medicine'', in the trial there were 1763 couples, where only one pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Machine
A quantum machine is a human-made device whose collective motion follows the laws of quantum mechanics. The idea that macroscopic objects may follow the laws of quantum mechanics dates back to the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. However, as highlighted by the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, quantum effects are not readily observable in large-scale objects. Consequently, quantum states of motion have only been observed in special circumstances at extremely low temperatures. The fragility of quantum effects in macroscopic objects may arise from rapid quantum decoherence. Researchers created the first quantum machine in 2009, and the achievement was named the "Breakthrough of the Year" by ''Science'' in 2010. History The first quantum machine was created on August 4, 2009 by Aaron D. O'Connell while pursuing his Ph.D. under the direction of Andrew N. Cleland and John M. Martinis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. O'Connell and his co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ardipithecus Ramidus
''Ardipithecus ramidus'' is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). ''A. ramidus'', unlike modern hominids, has adaptations for both walking on two legs (bipedality) and life in the trees (arboreality). However, it would not have been as efficient at bipedality as humans, nor at arboreality as non-human great apes. Its discovery, along with Miocene apes, has reworked academic understanding of the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor from appearing much like modern day chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas to being a creature without a modern anatomical cognate. The facial anatomy suggests that ''A. ramidus'' males were less aggressive than those of modern chimps, which is correlated to increased parental care and monogamy in primates. It has also been suggested that it was among the earliest of human ancestors to use some proto-language, possibly capable of vocalizing at the same level as a human infant. This is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cellular Reprogramming
Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from a somatic cell. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka's lab in Kyoto, Japan, who showed in 2006 that the introduction of four specific genes (named Myc, Oct3/4, Sox2 and Klf4), collectively known as Yamanaka factors, encoding transcription factors could convert somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells. He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize along with Sir John Gurdon "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent." Pluripotent stem cells hold promise in the field of regenerative medicine. Because they can propagate indefinitely, as well as give rise to every other cell type in the body (such as neurons, heart, pancreatic, and liver cells), they represent a single source of cells that could be used to replace those lost to damage or disease. The most well-known type of pluripotent stem cell is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Genetic Variation
Human genetic variation is the genetic differences in and among populations. There may be multiple variants of any given gene in the human population (alleles), a situation called polymorphism. No two humans are genetically identical. Even monozygotic twins (who develop from one zygote) have infrequent genetic differences due to mutations occurring during development and gene copy-number variation. Differences between individuals, even closely related individuals, are the key to techniques such as genetic fingerprinting. As of 2017, there are a total of 324 million known variants from sequenced human genomes. As of 2015, the typical difference between an individual's genome and the reference genome was estimated at 20 million base pairs (or 0.6% of the total of 3.2 billion base pairs). Comparatively speaking, humans are a genetically homogenous species. Although a small number of genetic variants are found more frequently in certain geographic regions or in people with ance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poincaré Conjecture
In the mathematics, mathematical field of geometric topology, the Poincaré conjecture (, , ) is a theorem about the Characterization (mathematics), characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space. Originally conjectured by Henri Poincaré in 1904, the Grigori Perelman's theorem concerns spaces that locally look like ordinary Euclidean space, three-dimensional space but which are finite in extent. Poincaré hypothesized that if such a space has the additional property that each path (topology), loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is necessarily a 3-sphere, three-dimensional sphere. Attempts to resolve the conjecture drove much progress in the field of geometric topology during the 20th century. The Perelman's proof built upon Richard S. Hamilton's ideas of using the Ricci flow to solve the problem. By developing a number of breakthrough new techniques and results in the theory of Ricci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. The theory of evolution by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere (less than 1% that of Earth's), and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos (moon), Phobos and Deimos (moon), Deimos. Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and List of tallest mountains in the Solar System, highest known mountain in the Solar System and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The North Polar Basin (Mars), Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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