Top Ten Stories from Science in 2024

(Belated Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to all readers !!)

This list is personal, and claims to be neither complete nor comprehensive. Neither is it in any justifiable sequence. Obviously I am not an expert in all - any? - of the mentioned areas.

1. Solar eclipse: This happened in April and although we were in the path of totality in Rochester, cloud cover shortly before to after denied us a view of the full spectacle. Still, watching - feeling - the darkness come and go was amazing.

2. The Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry: The physics award to Hopfield and Hinton moved the boundaries of physics closer to AI. The chemistry award to Baker and Hassabis was for protein structure design, also AI-related.

   
   

3. Nobel prize in Physiology/Medicine: This award went to Ambros and Ruvkun for their work on gene regulation, which enables cells, all of which contain exactly the same genes to develop into specialized tissues (nerve, muscle, etc.).

   
   

4. Fruit fly connectome: The complete map of the wiring between the 140,000 neurons in the brain of the fruit fly was assembled. Doing the same for the human brain is still some distance away - it has about 100 billion neurons.

   
   

5. Largest prime number found: I can't write it down here, as it has 41,024,320 digits. Primes are interesting to pure math (number theory) and used to encrypt (e.g. internet) data.

   
   

6. Geometric Langlands Conjecture Proved: Robert Langlands had made the conjecture in 1967. The Langlands program is a set of conjectures relating geometry to number theory (it is sometimes described as a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics). The geometric Langlands theorem considers a generalization of Fourier theory. I can't write down the proof here - even if I could understand it - because it is more than 800 pages long.

   
   

7. Transparent mice: Injection with the right kind of food dye (tartrazine, found in Doritos and Mountain Dew) can make skins of mice transparent. If extension to humans can be realized, it may lead to easy detection of tumors, etc. (Maybe the next thing in body bling after the tattoo).

   
   

8. Mimicking Exercise Effects with a Pill: This will help people who cannot exercise: ageing human beings or those facing muscle loss, etc. The inventor also talks about the benefits of the pill to people who are lazy, like himself.

   
   

9. Edible ants: Depending on the species, the flavors can be nutty, vinegary, or caramel-like. The chemicals responsible were analyzed using chromatography. Reminded me of the time I was offered some cookies which I found had ants crawling over them. When I pointed that out, the cookie-offeror, a doctor, said "Ants are good for you." Not sure she was familiar with this research, though.

   
   

10. The Ig Nobel prizes: Can't miss this one. Awarded yearly to research that is amusing. Consider the ones for chemistry (using chromatography for telling sober worms from drunk worms) and demography (establishing that reports of supercentenerians come from areas with no birth certificates).

    
    

    Afterword

    
    

    See you next year!