[Shadow_Group] Earthtimes.org 2004’s top 10 best scientific achievements

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/909.html
 
2004’s top 10 best scientific achievements
 
Which do you think was the most significant discovery of the year 2004? The discovery of Hobbit’s fossil, a mere two meter tall human who shared planet earth with modern human for thousands of years or is it the landing of NASA’s two rovers on Mars? Or is it the ability to clone human cells up to a level where cloned cells could be extracted from the embryo?

Not so easy to choose, isn’t it? But Editors of the journal Science did it. The Science's list of “2004 Breakthroughs” has the discovery made by NASA’s rovers at the No. 1 position. The rovers allowed the scientists to conclude that Mars definitely had water on its surface. And where there is water there can be life too. The two Mars rover have landed on the opposite side of the red planet and are closely examining the surface. The data sent by the rovers showed erosion patterns that had all the hallmarks of being carved by water.

The top place is followed by the anthropological breakthrough by experts from the universities of Wollongong and New England, along with their Indonesian colleagues, of the so-called "Hobbit" fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores. The scientists had dug up and dated seven skeletons found in Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Hobbit is thought of a mutated off shoot on the Homo erectus species branch in the tree of human evolution.

Next on the third position is the achievement of South Korean and American scientists at Seoul National University extracted who extracted stem cells from a cloned human embryo for using cloning technique for therapeutic applications.

Fourth position was taken by achievement in cooling down of atoms to sub zero temperatures where the atoms almost cease to vibrate and virtually merge into each other behaving as super atom. In 1995, US scientists had achieved this state with the boson class of atoms; this year, American and Austrian researchers achieved it with the other broad class of atoms the fermions.

Fifth place went to insight in Junk DNA. A large portion of DNA in eukaryotes does not code for proteins and was thought of as junk DNA. Not anymore. Biologists this year showed that junk DNA help genes to turn on at the right time and in the right place.

Other than these top five, topics that appeared in the top ten list were: 

Discovery of binary system of pulsars by the Parkes radio telescope in NSW.

The demonstration by World Conservation Union workshop that 30 per cent of the world's 5700 amphibian species were vulnerable to extinction. 

The structure of water with x-rays and electron beams gave surprising insights into how water molecules link together, how water ions behave, how water binds to silicon and how electrons and protons dissolve in water.

Public-private partnerships between foundations have made a fundamental change in the way drugs are developed and delivered to the third world countries.

The world of micro organisms is still untapped fully and there are millions of microbes just waiting to be discovered. US biologist Craig Venter has unleashed this wealth of hidden DNA knowledge to the world's genomic databanks. He announced in March that his team has discovered at least 1800 new species and more than 1.2 million new genes from the Sargasso Sea alone. 





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