Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009

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Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 1, 2010 @04:17AM from the still-can't-cure-stupid dept.

Wired has posted their favorite scientific breakthroughs of the past year. The feats include things like the confirmation of element 114, a cancer-detecting breathalyzer, the power of jellyfish and more. What other discoveries should have made the list and what might we look forward to in 2010? "Also this year, researchers at the University of Washington cured two adult monkeys of colorblindness by giving them injections of a gene that produces pigments necessary for color vision. After the treatment, the animals scored higher on a computerized color blindness test. In the coming years, gene therapy will be tested as a remedy for all sorts of inherited diseases, cancer, viral infections and even high cholesterol."

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Non-reversing mirrors! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-01 04:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16585-gallery-the-next-generation-of-mirrors.html
1. Re:Non-reversing mirrors! by Feminist-Mom · 2010-01-01 04:21 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The non-reversing mirror is cute, but the driver-side mirror with no blindspot actually has applications. I'd buy one now if they were selling them.
2. Re:Non-reversing mirrors! by h4rm0ny · 2010-01-01 05:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  According to the article, he can't sell the wing-mirror in the USA because leglislation bans curved wing-mirrors, so he's going to have to try selling them in the EU instead. Why is there such legislation, anyone?
  
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  Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
3. Re:Non-reversing mirrors! by mister_playboy · 2010-01-01 05:52 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The US has had a long history of being overly conservative on automotive equipment. A classic example is the amount of time that passed before aerodynamically shaped headlights were allowed on cars in place of flat faced sealed beams. Ever wonder why the headlights on a car such as this Mustang SVO or this Mercedes S-Class don't blend into the rest of the front end? Silly laws are why.
  The fact that these aerodynamic lights performed their function correctly was irrelevant... they were different in form, and therefore banned in the US for many years after their first appearance.
  Another good example can be found with catalytic converters. It's illegal for a muffler shop to remove it from your car, but it's perfectly fine to drive around with a totally inactive and rusted out one, or to buy a cheap made-in-Taiwan replacement that most likely does very little exhaust scrubbing compared to the (often pricey due to the exotic metal content) factory spec model. Catalytic converters are supposed to be about pollution control, but the actual laws regarding them have nothing to do with their functionality, and only with their apparent presence or lack thereof on a vehicle.
  
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4. Re:Non-reversing mirrors! by Bluesman · 2010-01-01 05:57 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I don't know the original intention of the legislation, but I use the driver side mirror for its intended purpose -- to remove the blind spot when changing lanes or turning right. I position it so that if a car is passing me on the left, I can see it leave the view of the rear-view mirror and enter the driver side mirror, until I can see it with peripheral vision. I usually have the driver side mirror angled way out.
  There isn't a reason (to me) to see more with that mirror; if I could see cars further to the left of me, it would only be confusing when trying to switch lanes quickly. (Is that car immediately left of me, or is it two lanes over?)
  
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  If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
5. Re:Non-reversing mirrors! by ceoyoyo · 2010-01-01 07:11 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Convex mirrors make objects appear further away.
  The passenger side mirror is generally a convex, wide field of view mirror, inscribed with the famous warning "objects in mirror are closer than they appear."
What an amazing breakthrough! by rbcd · 2010-01-01 04:27 · Score: 3, Funny

Who'd have guessed that element 114 would turn out to be a cancer-detecting breathalyzer?
1. Re:What an amazing breakthrough! by Timesprout · 2010-01-01 05:01 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Unfavorable reviews to the original classic
  
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2. Re:What an amazing breakthrough! by h4rm0ny · 2010-01-01 05:15 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Well the Fifth Element was love. I guess by the 115th we're down to, I don't know, petulance or something.
  
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  Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
3. Re:What an amazing breakthrough! by Telecommando · 2010-01-01 05:37 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Petulance is far too abundant to be a rare element like #115.
  It's more likely to be something extremely rare like peace, reason or sarcasm-detection.
  
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Spam by pipingguy · 2010-01-01 04:28 · Score: 2, Funny

I like the way spam was eliminated.
Normal mirrors do not reverse! by Kupfernigk · 2010-01-01 05:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Mirrors do not reverse left-right as was explained most clearly by Richard Feynman. If you turn a book round and then look at it in a mirror, the actual text you see in the mirror is the same way round as it currently is in the book (you can prove this very easily - write in felt tip on a plastic bag and try that. You will see that the mirror writing, and the writing seen through the back of the bag are exactly the same way round
The answer to the question, why do mirrors reverse left/right and not up/down is simple: they do neither. A few seconds of ray tracing show that they reverse front to back.

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1. Re:Normal mirrors do not reverse! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-01 05:41 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Well, sure, what ever you want to call it, this mirror in the link makes it so that text appears normal. It doesn't appear "normal" in a regular mirror, to the observer. Do you, or do you not have trouble reading text that appears reflected in a conventional mirror?
Prebiotic Ribonucleotides by drooling-dog · 2010-01-01 06:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

With all due respect to the achievements heralded in the Wired article, the scientific paper that most blew me away in 2009 was Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions by Powner et.al. in the 14 May 2009 issue of Nature. The authors demonstrated an efficient synthesis of a phosphorylated ribonucleotide under mild conditions using only a small number of simple molecules likely to have been present in the "pre-biotic soup" of early Earth. The reaction is so facile that it would be surprising if it didn't occur given the presence of these molecules (cyanimide, cyanoacetylene, glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde, and inorganic phosphate). Because the products are activated ribonucleotides, they would have readily polymerized into something like RNA and quite probably the first self-replicating molecule.
To me this was one of the biggest "missing links" in the story of how life might have arisen from simple organic molecules, and that scenario now seems like a slam-dunk. The rest, as they say, is history...
1. Re:Prebiotic Ribonucleotides by khallow · 2010-01-01 10:26 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  MMM, how dare they use long words on YOUR internet! Long live Finland!
One page. by antdude · 2010-01-01 13:47 · Score: 2, Informative

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/discoveries-gallery/all/1

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