Science Summary - 2023, March

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--------------------------------------- March 2023 ---------------------------------------

Image: https://imgur.com/gallery/2ywsd8e

Monthly newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/359cae84aa22/science_summary

----------------- Selection -----------------

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_science

Items which I added to the Wikipedia list are marked with a star (*) below.

Criteria info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Prototyperspective/Year_in_science/Inclusion_criteria
Nonincluded items: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Prototyperspective/Year_in_science/List_of_nonincluded_items_for_2023

------------------ Sources ------------------

* Global Biolabs Report
https://www.science.org/content/article/growing-number-high-security-pathogen-labs-around-world-raises-concerns

* IPCC
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/

* Commercial determinants of health
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fs0140-6736%2823%2900013-2

_____

* Organoid intelligence
https://doi.org/10.1101%2F2023.02.28.530502

* Deforestation inc
https://www.dw.com/en/deforestation-inc-how-green-firms-prevent-climate-action/a-64851705

* Havana syndrome
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/havana-syndrome-intelligence-report-weapon/

* Air pollution
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fs2542-5196%2823%2900008-6

* DART
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-03-02/nasa-dart-asteroid-mission-studies/102036038

* Wildfires
https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.ade0805

* Long COVID
https://doi.org/10.3389%2Ffnins.2023.1125208

* Building heating
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs43247-023-00715-7
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.enconman.2022.116602

* Food emissions
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41558-023-01605-8

* UAP
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf

* Sanctions
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41560-023-01228-5
https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fpnasnexus%2Fpgad051

* Extreme weather
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230003509/downloads/Rodell-Li_grace_extreme_final3_all.pdf

* Food system x

* AI x

Venus volcanoes & * catalog
https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.abm7735
https://doi.org/10.1029%2F2023JE007753

* Mesh robots
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.asr.2023.02.012

* Two males offspring
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-023-05834-x

* Wealth attraction
https://doi.org/10.3386%2Fw31039

* VPNs
https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2022-285-paper.pdf

* C. aurus
https://doi.org/10.7326%2FM22-3469

* Consciousness studies
https://doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.2218949120

* Fossil fuel subsidies
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41558-023-01597-5

  'Oumuamua & * reply
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-022-05687-w
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.13861

* Health education x

* Virome
https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fnar%2Fgkad199

* Recycling
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs42004-023-00844-2

* Language & brain
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.neuroimage.2023.119955

* Protein delivery
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-023-05870-7

  Antarctica & * Greenland ice sheet
https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-023-05762-w
https://doi.org/10.1029%2F2022GL101827

* Plant sounds
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cell.2023.03.009

* Hydrogen pipelines
https://www.dvgw.de/english-pages/dvgw/news/germanys-gas-pipelines-h2ready

* Twitter x
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/31/23664849/twitter-releases-algorithm-musk-open-source

* Innovations x

* Therapeutic candidates x

------------------ Not included ------------------

36 items


Most/all would have been included if there was more space (30):

- * Bioengineers show bodily system changes can induce anxiety, in specific altered heart rate by itself in risky contexts, after earlier studies also implicated immune system elements.

- * An "adversarial collaboration" study shows larger financial incomes increase mental wellbeing beyond a previously believed flattening threshold, except for a ceiled "unhappy" minority.

- * The largest study of ancient Europeans' DNA (356 UP–neolithic hunter-gatherers) is published, with implications for the history of ancestry changes during the last Ice Age. Other geneticists report on immune function (MHC) and pigmentation (SLC24A5) as targets of adaptation in neolithic admixture, with farmers inheriting many immunity genes.

- * The first global precise global time series of ocean surface plastic pollution is released.

- * Researchers report the development of a fuel cell implant powered by blood glucose. It can also release insulin at certain levels and have enough energy to allow smartphone implant control.

- The entire brain of a fruit fly larva is mapped in complete detail for the first time, showing all 3,016 neurons and 548,000 synapses.

- * An analysis concludes there is large potential (~9,400 TWh/yr) for floating solar photovoltaics on reservoirs, at the upper range of the prior 2020 study.

- * The first comprehensive assessment of 'bottom marine heat waves' is published.

- * An analysis concludes there is large potential for mycoforestry incorporation for carbon sequestration, ecosystem support, and food production.


- Medical researchers report a 24% reduction of heart disease risk in women on a Mediterranean-type diet.

- * A study reports average carbon footprints of average diets that can be called vegan (~0.69 CO2-eq/1000 kcal), vegetarian (~1.16), pescatarian (~1.66), omnivore (~2.23), paleo (~2.62) and keto (~2.91) diets. Pescatarian diets were the healthiest before the two other plant-based diets. There may also be substantial variation within diets.

- * A study using data of 0.5 M participants strengthens the association between ultra-processed foods and cancer risks.

- * A post-mortem study finds green leafy vegetable intake inversely correlates with Alzheimer's disease pathology.

- * Scientists report fMRI results showing daily consumption of a high-fat/high-sugar snack alters, similar to drug addiction and likely directly, brain reward circuits, altering food preferences.


- The LLM GPT-4 is launched by OpenAI. It and ChatGPT based on it continue to receive major global media attention.

- * Researchers suggest that growing influence of industry in AI research means that "public interest alternatives for important AI tools may become increasingly scarce".

- Google reveals PaLM-E, an embodied multimodal language model with 562 billion parameters.

- * Google releases chatbot Bard due to effects of the ChatGPT release with potential for integration into its Web search and, like ChatGPT software, also as a software development tool. DuckDuckGo releases the DuckAssist feature integrated into its search engine that summarizes information from Wikipedia to answer search queries that are questions. The experimental feature is shut down without explanation on 12 April. Around the time, a proprietary feature by scite.ai is released that delivers answers, also providing citations for the quoted paper(s). It may demonstrate an alternative approach to ChatGPT whose fundamental algorithms are not designed to generate text that is true, including for example "hallucinations" and fake citations or misinformation more generally. Elicit.org may provide a free alternative to this tool. A broader alternative approach to the chatbots' Q&A applications may be the improvement of media literacy and Web search skills in education systems.

- * A method for editing NeRF scenes, a novel media technique from 2020, with natural language commands is demonstrated by Nvidia.

- * An open letter "Pause Giant AI Experiments" by the Future of Life Institute calls for "AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4" due to "profound risks to society and humanity". It received substantial media attention and also contributed to speculations about perceived large LLM potential. At the time there is extensive media coverage of views that regard ChatGPT as a potential step towards AGI or sentient machines, also extending to some academic works (e.g. a popular corporate preprint). The coverage focused on such views may not represent the majority expert views and, for example, some researchers note that e.g. the ability to generate coherent text and imitations are not the same as understanding language. A set of techniques under development include self-refining code or text.


- * A study reports the first case of C. purpureum causing disease in a human – a mycologist, highlighting cross-kingdom human pathogen potential.

- Analysis of samples from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu reveals the presence of uracil, one of the four nucleobases in RNA needed for life.

- * A review about mitochondria and health is published, suggesting that "a normalization of a lack of physical activity in our modern society has led to the perception that exercise is an 'intervention'" instead of part of a modus vivendi engrained in human bodies and that lessons learned from elite athlete research (healthy subjects) could be translated to the betterment of populations' health.

- * A report projects more than half of the population will be obese within 12 years, assessing the situations in 187 countries, including their obesity prevention policies commitment.

- * A psychologist reports on a study that hypothesizes mental health awareness efforts (in current forms) or glamorised and romanticised mental disorders on social media (e.g. quotes about depression on aesthetically-appealing backgrounds shared widely on certain social media) may contribute to the recent rise in reported mental health problems – by intensifying and over-diagnosing of such – beyond e.g. increased reporting of previously under-recognised symptoms or mental health-related issues.

- * A news outlet reports on a paper that contributes to an understanding of already-existing law that suggests that fossil fuel companies may be chargeable with homicide due to climate change effects and e.g. partly their deception of the public and proactive prevention of regulations. The paper is focused on corporate actors and does not address e.g. politicians' and policymakers' responsibilities, media people or issues, economic pressures or incentives, and responsibilities for facilitations of solutions to these underlying economic conditions.

- * A university and one news outlet report on a study suggesting incentives and regulations are needed for producers to design solar panels that can be more easily recycled.

- A study of 90,000 adults finds that increased physical activity levels can reduce the mortality risks associated with short or long sleep duration.

- * Twitter's proprietary verification checkmarks cause controversy, parts of Twitter's source code are leaked, and applications of a "state-affiliated media" label – which purportedly uses Wikipedia's "Category:Publicly funded broadcasters" data which, like the label, does not differentiate and list the shares of funding sources – cause controversy

- * A university reports on a study demonstrating functional integration of a magnetically steered microbot containing neurons, 'Mag-Neurobot', in a mouse "organotypic hippocampal slice" (OHS) as physical (semi-)artificial neurons.



Most/all are unlikely to be included as category-2 items (6):

- A new record for the closest and oldest ultracool dwarf binary pair is reported. The newly discovered stars, in a system named LP 413-53AB, orbit each other in just 17 hours and are believed to be billions of years old.

- A new way of capturing carbon, which transforms the gas into bicarbonate of soda and stores it safely in seawater, is shown to be three times more efficient than existing methods.

- Nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride is demonstrated as a viable superconducting material at 20 °C (room temperature) under a pressure of 1 GPa (10 kbar).

- * A bacterial hydrogenase enzyme, Huc, for biohydrogen energy from the air is reported.

- The structure of olfactory receptor protein OR51E2 is found, the first elucidation of the structure of any olfactory receptor to date.

- Astronomers identify an "ultramassive" black hole, one of the largest ever discovered, and the first to be confirmed through gravitational lensing, at the centre of the galaxy Abell 1201 BCG.



------------------ Candidates ------------------

Promising innovations relating to global challenges are demonstrated:
a low-cost open source air pollution sensor (Flatburn), a second biotech company commercializes sustainable MS mycelium protein after Quorn in 1983 (Meati Foods), another agrivoltaic greenhouse which outperforms a conventional glass-roof greenhouse, first kWh by a TLP floating airborne wind turbine system (X30) possibly as part of a "new wave of startups" in this area, WHO recommendations on two new types of insecticide-treated nets for Malaria prevention, a biodegradable and biorecyclable glass, another demining drone, nonalcoholic first powdered beer (Dryest Beer), a reforestation drone (AirSeed), a phase-change materials embedded in wood-based energy-saving building material, cultivated meat from extinct mammoths as demonstration of potential, media reports on a study demonstrating a CNC radiative cooling film.

Promising results of therapeutic candidates are reported:
mice-tested CMD diet with RSL3 against cancer, a phase 1 trialed tuberculosis vaccine, trialed pulsed field ablation against atrial fibrillation, mice-tested FGF21 (also activated by β-klotho) for alcohol intoxication recovery, a mice-tested mRNA vaccine against potential antibiotic-resistant plague which may also be useful for other antibacterial vaccines, a study indicates Naloxone access does not promote high-risk opioid use behaviors, rat-tested mitochondrial transplantation (MTx) for cardiac arrest recovery, an EEG BCI headgear, mice-tested menin target against aging, a mice-tested novel-type CRISPR gene editing system PESpRY against RP vision loss, a mice-tested wearable patch for accelerated cutaneous chronic wound healing, phase 3 trialed pembrolizumab addition against recurrent endometrial cancer, a phase 3 trialed percutaneous approach against chronic limb threatening ischemia without amputation, a mice-tested self-charging battery ROS implant against cancer.