送交者: hehe 于 2005-1-16, 21:52:18:
Thursday January 13, 2005
The Guardian
1. How hard it is to clone a human
In 2004, a Korean team became the first to clone a human embryo, coaxing it to the blastocyst stage at which embryonic stem cells can be obtained.
In August last year, a team from Newcastle was given the first British licence to perform therapeutic cloning for human embryos, with a further licence granted to Professor Ian Wilmut's team at the Roslin Institute.
Even with this sort of expertise, stem cell expert Dr Steven Minger of King's College, London, does not expect success this year, "it's going to be very difficult".
Meanwhile, although cloning of primates has succeeded in Pittsburgh, it appears that all attempts at implantation have failed.
2. More about Titan
A few hours' worth of information could be all scientists get for 20 years of endeavour as Huygens, the dinner table-sized probe of the Cassini spacecraft, parachutes through the atmosphere of Titan tomorrow.
But what information? Titan is the mystery moon of Saturn. Its opaque, smoggy, orange atmosphere means that its surface has never been seen before. "By next week, we could have a completely different view of another world in our solar system," says TV science presenter Dr Chris Riley. "It may be the last time in history that we'll be able to say that."
Titan is a world dominated by constantly reacting organic compounds with lakes, or even oceans, of liquid ethane, methane and nitrogen. Its chemistry may provide clues as to how life began on our planet.
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3. What it's like inside a comet
Deep impact is a six-year Nasa mission to discover what lies deep inside a comet. Like Cassini, this is two spacecraft in one - a flyby craft and a smaller impactor.
In July, in a piece of spectacular cosmic vandalism, the impactor will be launched directly into the path of comet Tempel 1 for a "planned collision", forming a crater 14 storeys deep and a football stadium wide, all of which will be filmed by the onboard camera.
"Comets are time capsules that hold clues about the formation and evolution of the solar system," says Nasa. If they find complex molecules, rather than the simple ones anticipated, expect the history of Earth to be rapidly rewritten in 2005.
4. How someone looks after a face transplant
A surgical team from Louisville, Kentucky, is hotly tipped to perform the world's first face transplant this year, taking a face from a donor corpse and attaching it to a severely disfigured recipient.
The team, which includes bioethicists, submitted a detailed proposal to an ethics panel last May, and the lengthy approvals process concludes soon. In Britain, meanwhile, plans have been put on hold after a Royal College of Surgeons' working party concluded that the risks outweighed the benefits.
5. Whether the world's oceans are becoming more acidic and what it means for wildlife
The Royal Society's working party on rising acidity of oceans reports in the spring. Environmental biologist professor John Raven, who is chairing it, says: "The same pollution that we believe is heating the world's oceans through global warming is also altering its chemical balance."
Of particular concern is the impact of rising acidity on ocean creatures needing calcium carbonate for their structure, such as corals and molluscs. It might also affect plankton and have a potentially disastrous consequence on marine food webs.
6. Whether carbon trading works
Carbon trading, a key plank of the Kyoto agreement, began two weeks ago but, like much to do with Kyoto, already seems to be going nowhere.
Countries rushed in ill-thought proposals to meet the January deadline. Dr Keith Tovey, the HSBC director of low carbon innovation at the University of East Anglia, points out what will happen if the EU approves the plans of the defaulting nations (Poland, Czech Republic, Italy and Greece).
"They've set their allocations so high that if approved, it will affect the price of carbon credits, causing them to plummet." And at a stroke, the whole scheme descends into farce.
It's not all bad on the global warming front. Tovey's colleague at the Carbon Reduction Centre at UEA, Dr Trevor Davies, predicts that by the end of the year, "the combination of science certainty and increasing extreme climate events will have won over more of the doubters and persuaded those already converted of the need for urgent action".
7. How effective biometric ID data is (and whether it prevents terrorism)
Hi-tech passports containing biometric data are to be introduced in Britain next year, five years ahead of the international deadline, so that the UK can remain in the US visa waiver programme.
This requires passports with embedded electronic chips containing a log of up to 1,800 facial characteristics which can be compared electronically to those held on an international database.
Failure rates of up to 10% have already been reported in the technology and there are doubts that the system it will do much more than validate the honest.
8. Whether RNAi is hype or hope
RNA interference (RNAi) has been hyped as the greatest medical advance since antibiotics.
"By the end of 2005, we'll have a much better idea of whether it's likely to be a potential treatment or will be a research tool up there with PCR [polymerase chain reaction - a way of creating multiple copies of DNA]," says Dr Richard Sullivan, director of clinical programmes at Cancer Research UK.
RNAi is a naturally occurring defence system triggered by double stranded RNA (typical of many viruses) entering the cell. RNAi blocks specific genes and prevents them from working. Harnessing this "silencing" phenomena could allow disease-causing genes to be switched off at will. It is already being trialled in prostate and cervical cancer but the first report of a trial, on the eye disease AMD, is due at the end of the year.
9. Whether artificial life is a flash in the pan or a new industry
"Vesicle bioreactors" are the Scrapheap Challenge of biology. A crude artificial cell, they have walls made from fats in egg white and contain the contents of an E coli cell stripped of its genes, plus a virus enzyme to decode DNA.
Distinctly unpromising - yet when genes are added, they dutifully churn out proteins just like normal cells would. These are the recently announced brainchild of Albert Lichlaber at Rockefeller University. They could be the early entrants to a new field, synthetic biology, in which entire organisms are built from scratch.
Life? Not as we know it, Jim.
10. Who will be the big beasts of science
It's all change at the top as three of the most influential people in science move on this year.
Lord Sainsbury's seven-year stint as science minister will end with the election. The smart money is on the recently ennobled Paul Drayson, a controversial choice given his financial support of the Labour party. But he has a real understanding of science and is widely acknowledged to be highly talented.
Lord May, president of the Royal Society, and Sir David King, the government's chief scientist, have been an outstanding double act, particularly with regard to climate change, but their five-year appointments are both up.
In the running for society president are the astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse, and Britain's leading polymer scientist, Dame Julia Higgins. Higgins is the outsider but could come good.
As for a replacement for King, he has created large shoes to fill. Tough call.
What we still won't know
Whether nuclear is an option
It is an election year, so discussion of the nuclear option in relation to climate change could be inhibited, despite the fact that renewables cannot possibly produce the carbon reductions needed to comply with Kyoto.
How to clone a baby
The expert Pittsburgh group failed to get a single cloned monkey embryo to implant. Treat any human claims from Zavos, Antinori and their ilk this year with extreme suspicion.
The whereabouts of the Higgs Boson particle
Better concealed than a snowflake in a blizzard, this puppy is highly unlikely to reveal itself, even if it exists outside the fevered imaginations of particle physicists.
An endless source of energy
Wonderful idea, but cold fusion, whether it involves a glass of water, a cup of tea or even a jug of Tizer, is not going to happen this year. Or ever?
The biological purpose of a female orgasm
If an orgasm is not necessary to conception, what is the point of it?
Why women go into labour
With more than 750,000 births a year in Britain, you'd have thought someone would have cracked this mystery.