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The Top 10 Science Stories of 2012 A devastating storm, a new phase of Mars exploration, a recipe for a pandemic flu—these and

other events highlight the year in science and technology

 

Many more than 10 events took place

during 2012 that reveal how science and

technology play integral roles in our lives.

 As a broad topic, climate change took

center stage, offering many possible

choices, including efforts to combat it head-

on with a rogue geoengineering eperiment 

meant to suck carbon dioide out of the air

as well as efforts to develop clean energy,

such as the creation of microbes that

convert seaweed into ethanol.

!he "nternet and other communications technology still creates challenges for

policymakers, companies and individuals. Among the most notable controversies wasthe one centered on the #top $nline %iracy Act &#$%A', which led to a blackout

protest by some well-trafficked sites, such as (ikipedia.

 And research in basic science continues to assault conventional thinking, such as the

reported discovery of ovarian stem cells. "f confirmed, the finding would overturn the

long-held notion that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have.

 Alas, cultural norms and conventions dictate that we stick to 10 items) channeling Spinal Tap and dialing it up to 11 would hardly help. *eel free to discuss your own

picks in the comments section below.

 Image: Felix Baumgartner taking the plunge courtesy of Red Bull Stratos

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Daredevils Reach New Highs and

Lows

#cience and technology reached new

heights and depths in 2012, thanks to

human daredevils willing to risk life and

limb to eplore both the +arths

stratosphere and its deepest undersea

trench. !he success of both feats hinged not

only on the cutting-edge gear that protected

the men from either thin air or crushing

pressure, but also on clever thinking to

reach their destinations.

$n $ctober 1 Austrian *eli aumgartner broke the /0-year-old mark for highest-

ever skydive after leaping from a balloon nearly kilometers above +arths surface,

traveling at supersonic speeds before landing in southeastern ew Meico. 3uring

his 20-minute descent aumgartners top speed reached 1,2.4 kilometers per hour,

making him the first skydiver to break the sound barrier, which is 1,25 kilometers

per hour at sea level. aumgartners mission also set the record for highest-ever

manned balloon flight.

aumgartners full-pressure suit included a control mechanism designed to ad6ust

pressure at different altitudes, protecting him from symptoms of decompression

sickness during his rapid descent. !he balloon that took aumgartner to the ape of

his 6ourney was made of a polyethylene film, only 0.02 millimeter thick, that could

enclose a voume of nearly 4/0,000 cubic meters. aumgartners e7uipment included

main and emergency parachutes, along with a drogue stabili8ation chute to help him

recover from an uncontrollable spin. !he main and reserve chutes were designed toopen at speeds of up to 240 kilometers per hour.

 At the other etreme, filmmaker 9ames :ameron in March became the first solo

a7uanaut to reach the deepest recess of the Mariana !rench, touching down at the

:hallenger 3eep site about 11 kilometers below the surface of the %acific $cean.

:ameron, who directed the first two Terminator movies as well as Titanic and

 Avatar, piloted his D!SA "#A$$%&R submersible on the seven-hour round-

trip, spending about three hours at the deepest spot on the planets crust to collect

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samples for marine biological, microbiological, astrobiological, marine geologic and

geophysical research.

!he D!SA "#A$$%&R included several features designed to aid :ameron on

his epedition, including a sphere-shaped pressuri8ed cockpit that collected moisture

from :amerons ehaled breath and sweat into a plastic bag. :ameron could have

consumed this concoction if he had run low on drinking water. About ;0 percent of

the "#A$$%&Rs volume was taken up by syntactic foam made from millions of

hollow glass microspheres suspended in an epoy resin, making the vessels skin low

in density but etremely strong. < $arry &reenemeier

Starvation Diet Fails to Boost

Longevity 

 (hen making ew =ears resolutions to

diet and stay fit, remember> what you eat

may be more important than how much

 you eat.

#cientists have found that a significant

reduction in caloric intake does not etend

primates life spans. ?ather, genetics and

healthy eating appear to be elements with higher impact, according to a report

published in %ature. & Scientific American is part of ature %ublishing @roup.'

#cientists funded by the ational "nstitute on Aging &"A' looked at the diets of

rhesus monkeys over a 2/-year period, feeding an eperimental group 0 percent

less than control animals. (hereas previous studies have indicated that other

animals<including rats and roundworms<seem to age more slowly when consuming

fewer calories, the monkeys were unaffected.

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!he %ature study refutes an earlier body of work by the (isconsin ational %rimate

?esearch :enter &(%?:', which found that rhesus monkeys did, indeed, benefit 

from a calorie-restricted diet. !he previous findings likely resulted from a less

healthy menu, however. (%?: monkeys were given food containing 24./ percent

sucrose compared with . percent sucrose at the "A. :onsuming less unhealthy

food could have been enough to alter results.

 Although observational evidence indicates that reducing calories lengthens lives, the

true implications for humans remain uncertain. !he recipe for a longer life likely

depends on a combination of factors, rather than hinging on how much you put on

 your plate. < 'ollie Bloudoff(Indelicato

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The Top 10 Science Stories of2012

* +evastating stor"% a new ,hase of Mars e-,loration% a reci,e for a ,an+e"ic .u

these an+ other events highlight the 0ear in science an+ technolog0

Bold !rivate "fforts Step into Roles

 #acated $y N%S% 

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#pace shuttle ndeavours trip down (est Manchester oulevard past ?andys

3onuts in "nglewood, :alif., in $ctober was probably not 7uite what %res. 9ohn *.

ennedy  had in mind as Bthe other thingsC to accomplish during his famous moon

speech made /0 years ago. !he space plane was towed for the final leg of its 6ourney  

to its final resting place at the :alifornia #cience :enter in Dos Angeles, reminding us

that A#A really has retired its shuttle program and that there isnt much for

astronauts to do these days in space.

 ndeavours brethren had already found their permanent homes> Atlantis will

remain at the A#A ennedy #pace :enter in *lorida. Discovery now lives at the

#mithsonian ational Air and #pace Museum in (ashington, 3.:. And the

 nterprise prototype now sits proudly atop the Intrepid  #ea, Air and #pace Museum

in Manhattan after making spectacular tours around ew =ork :itys airspace and

later enduring a beating from #uperstorm #andy .

3reams of human spaceflight found other outlets this year> :alifornia-based #paceE

 became the first private company to deliver cargo to the "nternational #pace #tation.

!he companys 3ragon capsule is slated to carry humans to orbit by 201/, onboard a

reusable rocket also designed and built by #paceE. $ther contenders in the busy and

risky private human spaceflight arena include A!, lue $rigins, 3ream:haser and

#tratolaunch.

!he commerciali8ation of spaceflight could etend to smaller scales, too> talks are

underway to allow government-built instruments to hitch rides onboard private

satellites.

 

Meanwhile if a trip Bto the moon, AliceC sounds 7uite appealing these days, sign up

for @olden #pikes recent offer<a flight to the moon. "ts only F;/0 million. !he fee

includes return trip to +arth, however, so true escapists will have to wait for igelow Aerospaces private space hotels or a trip to coloni8e Mars. < Ro)in $loyd 

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!ande&ic %vian Fl' (enes )ade !'$lic

 

 A lab-made virus that could spread global

death is the stuff of science-fiction thrillers.

ut this year researchers published the

ingredients for 6ust such a contagion<a

culmination of  widespread debate about

 whether the recipe should be made public

or locked away.

*or decades scientists have warned of a

potential repeat of the 114 flu pandemic,

 which claimed tens of millions of lives. !he

avian &G/1' influen8a virus drew the most

attention. A decade ago, it killed tens of millions of birds, and any person who

contracted the virus faced grim odds<the mortality rate is about 50 percent.

*ortunately, the G/1 virus did not spread in the air and thus could not infect

humans easily, and outbreaks remained confined to small areas.

"n 2011 two research groups independently discovered the genetic mutationsnecessary to make the G/1 virus airborne and therefore more easily transmissible.

!hey showed that ferrets infected with the mutant strains could transmit the virus to

healthy ferrets caged nearby.

:oncerns that bioterrorists could use the data to weaponi8e the virus led government

officials, scientists and 6ournal editors to hold off publishing the mutation

information. %roponents argued that the data would help epidemiologists know what

to watch out for if G/1 mutated in the wild and better enable them to preparecountermeasures. !hat argument, plus the fact that many scientists had already

obtained access to the information, led the H.#. ational #cience Advisory oard for

iosecurity to green-light the publications of the papers. !he first appeared in the

9une 21 issue of %ature* < !hilip +am

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Record )eltdown of %rctic Sea *ce

$n #eptember 15, 2012, the etent of ice

covering the Arctic $cean reached an all-

time low  of . million s7uare kilometers

&since satellite records began in 1;'. !he

minimum ice cover each summer had begun

to shrink annually in 2000 and declined

much more rapidly each year beginning in

200;.

 (hereas happy shipping moguls marveled

at how less ice might allow them to send freighters across the Arctic, scientists began

to demonstrate and speak out about several serious effects. *irst, the dramatic

disappearance of summer sea ice, which was not predicted by many climate models,

eposes darker ocean water that absorbs more heat, thereby melting even more ice<

setting up a feedback loop that may be increasing the rate of global warming.

#econd, scientists maintained that the lack of ice caused the weird weather 

eperienced in the H.#. ortheast and +urope during the past three winters. "n

essence, the lack of ice allows the 6et stream to either dip farther south or remain

farther north than usual during winter, and to get stuck in those positions for long

periods, causing many consecutive days of etreme cold or eceptional warmth on

either side of the Atlantic $cean.

#ome scientists ventured to say that the loss of sea ice helped Gurricane #andy Bturn

leftC from the Atlantic $cean into ew 9ersey and ew =ork :ity. #uch a shift in

direction had never been recorded before. A Bblocking high pressure systemC in the

orth Atlantic<a likely result of the lack of ice<prevented #andy from heading

northeast out to sea, as hurricanes would typically do. < 'ark Fischetti  Image of activists in front of the Supreme "ourt on the first day of ,-)amacare. hearings on 'arch /01

/23/1 )y -legAl)insky4iStockphoto

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 +,$a&acare- .)ostly/ pheld $y

S'pre&e o'rt

!he sweeping health care reforms passed in

the 2010 %atient %rotection and Affordable

:are Act &A:A' represented the largest

systemic changes to the H.#. national health

care system in nearly a half century. "ntact,

the law would etend access to affordable

health care to 2 million otherwise

uninsured Americans, helping more people

obtain consistent and preventive care.

+ncouraging health care information technologies and integrated systems, such as

electronic health records, will likely reduce medical errors and provide reams of new

data for medical research. Additionally, the law contains provisions to boost

comparative- and cost-effectiveness research &via the newly established %atient-

:entered $utcomes ?esearch "nstitute'. #uch research could lead to medical andpublic health advances that will help the largest number of people. "n addition to

improving health in the H.#., all of these changes should help reign in runaway

health care costs, which topped F2.5 trillion in 2010 and are pro6ected to keep

climbing.

ut all of that hard-won reform was up for ma6or revision<or full repeal<as the H.#.

#upreme :ourt heard arguments about the case in March 2012. !he :ourtIs decision,

announced on 9une 24, upheld most of the A:A.

!he only provision that the :ourt undercut was the mandatory epansion of state-

run Medicaid programs. Hnder the original A:A, Medicaid eligibility was to be

epanded to include 15 million more people nationwide who would otherwise have

trouble paying for health insurance. !he federal government would foot the whole

 bill for states until 2015, then gradually step back to paying 0 percent in 2022 and

 beyond. #o far at least nine states have said they will forgo the epansion, citing a

reluctance to spend more of their own pinched pennies.

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 (ith %res. arack $bamaIs reelection in ovember, the law looks likely to continue

rolling out the rest of its provisions through 2020. #tarting in 201, for eample,

insurers will no longer be allowed to make coverage or rate decisions based on a

personIs preeisting conditions) state or federally controlled insurance echanges

 will have to be operational) and Medicare eligibility epansions<in participating

states<will take effect.< 5atherine #armon

!'$lication of the "N,D" "ncyclopedia % )ilestone in (eno&e

Research

 

!welve years after the publication of the

human genome se7uence, a large

consortium published the net step> the+:$3+ %ro6ect> +:yclopedia of 3A

+lements. (hereas the genome pro6ect

provided the se7uence of all the nucleotides

in the human 3A &how all the As, :s, !s

and @s are put in order', +:$3+ goes a

step further and catalogues which of those

se7uences can be transcribed into ?A and

in which types of cells.

9ust as biologists understood that the Guman @enome %ro6ect is a useful tool &albeit

not the Jholy grailJ or Jblueprint of lifeJ as touted in some media', so too did they

 welcome +:$3+ as another useful research tool. !he laboratory techni7ues

developed by the Guman @enome %ro6ect have enabled scientists to se7uence<ever

more inepensively<the complete genomes of many individual humans as well as

many other species. "n the same vein, scientists epect that +:$3+ is 6ust a

 beginning, enabling them to perform the same kind of work on numerous individuals

as well as on numerous species. !he knowledge gained will help answer important

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7uestions about evolution, ecology, conservation, physiology, development and

medicine.

Hnfortunately, much of the discussion surrounding the publication of +:$3+

failed to focus on the usefulness of the catalogue and the techni7ues that built it.

"nstead, much of the debate centered on the failure to understand that transcription

does not necessarily imply meaningful biological function. :ells are messy biological

entities, with lots of gunk and goo floating around, so mistakes happen all the time.

Many 3A se7uences get translated into ?A, only to have the cell degrade that

?A. Much, perhaps most, of the 3A in our genomes<despite being occasionally

transcribed, and thus recorded in +:$3+<is still functionless B6unk 3A.C !hat is

actually not surprising) it is in fact epected from evolutionary theory . !hanks to

+:$3+, though, we should eventually learn which se7uences are the 6unk and

 which are the gems of cell activity. 6Bora 7ivkovic

N%S%3s 'riosity Rover Lands on

)ars

"n 2012 Mars received a new si-wheeled

 visitor. A#As :uriosity rover<the biggest,

most sophisticated eplorer of its kind<

landed safely  on the ?ed %lanet in August.

!he successful touchdown capped an

elaborate landing se7uence that had been

dubbed Bseven minutes of terrorC and made

mini-celebrities out of mission engineers

&notably flight director obak *erdowsi, akathe BMohawk guyC'.

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:uriositys roughly two-year mission on Mars has only 6ust begun<the rover is still

trying out some of its instruments for the first time. ut already the rover has found

evidence of an ancient riverbed and has detected tantali8ing but unconfirmed hints

of Martian carbon &the stuff of life on +arth' in the soil. #oon :uriosity will begin to

eplore Mount #harp, a towering stack of sedimentary layers that should provide

clues to the conditions that prevailed on ancient Mars, when water flowed more

freely. 68ohn 'atson

The Higgs Boson *s Detected

!his year the best *ourth of 9uly fireworks

took place in +urope. $n that warm

summers day, in a conference room not far

from the shores of Dake @eneva, physicists

representing two eperiments at the DargeGadron :ollider celebrated the news four

decades in the making> !he Giggs boson

had been found.

!he net days front-page headline of The

 %e9 +ork Times read B%hysicists *ind +lusive %article #een as ey to Hniverse,C but

the Giggs discovery is about much more than enhancing our understanding of the

subatomic world. !he Giggs represents the final chapter in the story of 21st-centuryparticle physics. "t completes the #tandard Model, the theoretical description of all

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the known particles and forces &and by some metrics the most successful theory in

the history of science'. *rom here, hopes are that scientists at the DG: will make

discoveries that illuminate the universe beyond the #tandard Model, providing

fireworks for years to come. <Michael Moyer

Sandy Devastates the 4S4

Northeastern oast

Dike a bad horror movie se7uel, Gurricane

#andy churned up the H.#. east coast this

fall, making landfall on the ew 9ersey

shore 6ust before Galloween and a little

more than a year after Gurricane "rene took 

a similar path. Hnlike Gurricane "rene,

 which devastated inland communities withtorrential rains, #andyIs wrath came in the

form of hurricane-force winds and a storm

surge eceeding four meters<enough to reshape the ew 9ersey and Dong "sland

shorelines as well as inundate critical ew =ork :ity infrastructure, such as subway

tunnels and power stations, among other ill effects.

Meteorologists dubbed #andy a BfrankenstormC for its meteorologic mash-up of a

hurricane moving up from the south, a winter storm moving in from the west and aridge of high pressure forcing the systems to merge and move inland. Add in the fact

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that the tropical cyclone alone stretched more than 1,/00 kilometers across and

 boasted the lowest pressure of any storm ever recorded north of orth :arolina<

millibars<and #andy certainly merited the designation Bsuperstorm.C

:limate change seems to have intensified the event. A record summer sea ice melt in

the Arctic likely helped create the weather conditions that forced Gurricane #andy

along its ill-fated track. !he storm also gained Ja little bit of etra kick from the

slightly warmer than normal waters it will be tracking over,J noted 9ames *ranklin,

the branch chief of the ational $ceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationIs ational

Gurricane :enter.

!he disaster, which inflicted at least F/0-billion worth of damage and claimed at

least 2/0 lives, 11 in the H.#. alone, showed the vulnerability of our cities and

coastal communities. #andyIs legacy demands new thinking as to how best to

prepare for future punishing storms, likely to be even stronger in our ever-warmer

 world. < David Biello