Top 10 Scientific Advances of 2004

TarrVetus writes "Science Magazine's The Top Ten Science Breakthroughs of 2004 have been announced. The winner: The NASA Rovers and their evidence of water on Mars. The runner up was the Hobbit species found in Indonesia. Other breakthroughs include cloned human embryos and the first discovered pulsar pair."

Comments

Hobbits?

[sbergstrom]

If I remember correctly, the finding of the new Hobbit species was discredited as a "dwarf" mutant of a long-discovered human ancestor. Was this discrediting discredited itself?

Re:Hobbits?

[TarrVetus]

Right. They found several Homo Floresiensis skeletons in a collapsed cave, along with primative tools. Apparently the island that the species lived on is known for pygmyism in its animal species, so one theory is that the decendants of the humans that came to the island eventually evolved into pygmies.

Also, the brain mass of Homo Florensis was apparently smaller than the other human species' brains of the time--pitty that they traded brain mass for lower food requirements.

Re:Hobbits?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one suggested that homo erectus floresiensis was anything but a variation of an older theme, except for one Indonesian scientist who claimed they were modern human anomalies. There remain some interesting issues, since they apparently (based on artifacts nearby) that they were capable of not only tool use, but sophisticated stone tool making as well as use of fire to cook. The classic erectus that likely preceded the Ebu Gogo (better name than hobbit, do a search and you'll see) made use of stones and could make an edge or flake,but these little chimp sized fellers were almost in a class with homo habilis as far as toolmaking goes.
There was a more significant but less sexy(?) find in Spain of Pierolapithecus catalanus who was close to the branch divide between those populations who went on to become human, and those who turned right at Great Ape. Much more important, P catalanus is possibly a direct ancestor, Ebu Gogo is definitely not.

Re:Illegality

[stupidfoo]

Your ignorance is interesting.

It's not illegal. You just won't get federal funding.

Re:Illegality

[stupidfoo]

Prohibition on Federal Funding for Cloning of Human Beings

In case your interested.

The buzz I heard is...

[noblesse oblige]

Following the debate on stem cell research in California (which we decided to go billions more in debt to fund) I learned some interesting things, though I admit the sources were more political than anything else.

I've always wondered why the excitement over embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells seem to be safer, and umbilical chords and liposuction seem to be a plenty good source for these little wonders.

Well had I hung my hat on the theory that it justified abortion (and that may have much to do with it) until I learned about cloning embryos (listed above as one of the top 10 scientific advancements). And cloning embryos is a patentable process.

So here in California we have the distinct honor of going in debt to fund yet another health-care industry attempt to corner an emerging market with patents?

If it were only not true...

Re:The buzz I heard is...

[Otter]

Well had I hung my hat on the theory that it justified abortion (and that may have much to do with it) until I learned about cloning embryos (listed above as one of the top 10 scientific advancements). And cloning embryos is a patentable process.

You had it right the first time. There is no advantage from a patent point of view to using embryonic stem cells for a particular application. You could file the same thing with adult stem cells. The frenzy over stem cells (on both sides) is fallout from the aborton issue.

Re:Illegality

[mordors9]

In the United Nations a measure was considered to address human cloning. That measure was not taken up and has been postponed until next year. The following countries wanted to take up the issue and are assumed to be against human cloning: Against: Albania, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (the Federated States of), Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Spain, Suriname, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela and Zambia.

Re:already /.ed?

[leonscape]

Only if half the internet failed. BBC has more bandwidth than slashdot could possibly get at.

1st physical evidence for string theory

[thievery1017]

... seems to blow all that other crap away, even if the news was released in december. evidence of water once being on mars is big... but hardly surprising enough to rank at #1.

Clouds and frost on mars

[FleaPlus]

This page has some of the first pictures of clouds and frost on Mars, likely composed of water ice. It's really quite amazing.

Re:Discrediting mention of junk DNA

[myc]

Here is a reference from the primary literature:

Nobrega et al. Science 302:413- (2003).

Nobrega et al. made 2 knockout mice, deleting 2 Mb and 1 Mb (Mb= 10e6 basepairs of DNA) regions, respectively, of the genome called "deserts", i.e., gene poor regions that nonetheless are highly conserved between humans and mice, but not humans and fish. The authors believed that since this sequence was conserved, it must not be junk, and therefore likely contains cis-acting regulatory sequences that important for gene regulation. When these regions were deleted, however, the mice developed normally and had no apparent defects or pathologies. In other words, what was once thought to be junk, then thought to not be junk, turns out to be junk again (sounds like a Fark cliche).

Here is another link that is informative. One possibility that is mentioned in this blurb is that the knockout mice are just defective in a non-obvious way.

Re:Scientific errors

[Maow]

>>The fact it [human cloning] can be done begins to move us away
>>from some of the mysteries surrounding human beings;
>>things like the existence of a soul, which frankly is pure imagination

>He is making scientific conclusions based on his faith that the soul is not real.

Nonsense.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

There is no evidence of a soul, despite millennia of religious dogma.

>That's just stupid.

No it's not.

If someone claimed to be able to do backflips over the moon, they wouldn't merit much debate, nor much credibility, would they?

Re:What about the Beagle?

[some guy I know]

Apollo 11 stage 2 was crashed into the moon by venting fuel - the impact was measured by seisometers left by previous missions and used to map the internal state of the moon

Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to the Moon.
(There were a few umanned missions that made soft landings prior to that (mostly Soviet), but I don't know whether they contained seismometers.)

Also, I doubt that stage 2 of anu Apollo mission ever left Earth orbit.
You may be thinking of the service module, but that was needed to get the command module back to Earth.
The only thing that I can think of from any Apollo mission that may have crashed into the Moon is the upper stage of the LEM, and it would not surprise me if all LEM upper stages eventually crashed into the Moon.

There were six successful manned missions to the Moon (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17).
They probably all carried seismometers.
Impacts from LEMs of the later missions, plus unmanned probes and the occasional meteorite, would generate plenty of seismic events.
It would be a combination of events that would be used to map the internal structure of the Moon, as a single event measured at one location is generally not enough to gain more than an inkling of the internal structure of anything.