One of the most frustrating aspects of science is that it’s an incremental process. This should be a feature, however, and not a bug as you may think. In order for us to increase our understanding of ourselves and the things that are around us, we need to test and retest and keep testing and testing everything new thing we think has been discovered. And now I have decided to look back at 2017, and spot out some of the advances that were made in different aspects of scientific fields that we feel they were both underrated and are likely to have a major impact in 2018 and beyond.
In no specific order:
A pill to treat mental illness with built-in data tracking technology
The world’s first digital drug could be a revolution on how patients and doctors interact. Once the pill is ingested (of which contains some tiny chips made of silicon, magnesium, and copper) it will enable information to be sent from the body(inside) to an adhesive patch placed on a patient’s torso. The patch will, therefore, relays those data to a doctor’s office, and, for those patients who wish to monitor themselves as well, to a smartphone app. The US Food and Drug Administration so far has approved only the technology that is used in medications also used to treat
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.However, I think this approval will inaugurate a new model of healthcare in which physicians may have more direct access to patient data/info of an entirely different quality than the self-reporting stuff they have to make do with today. This new paradigm, of course, now also raises huge questions about the privacy, bioethics, and the uses of the big data gathered from inside the human body. —Chase Purdy
SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket
Elon Musk’s heartbreak and obsessions with tunnels has gotten more press, but the success in launching his comapnay spaceX's of three previously-flown rocket boosters was a major step ahead in space travel.
Futuristic space businesses depend on ever-cheaper trips to orbit, and Musk—along with burgeoning competitor Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin—is poised to deliver.
Competitors charge was about $10,000 or more likely per each kilogram launched to space, but Musk’s reusable rocket has drop that price and became less than $2,000.
And this trend could make asteroid mining, lunar tourism, orbital manufacturing, and powerful new satellite constellations feasible.. Knowing that there’s still more work to be done, to get to Musk’s goal of a 24-hour turnaround between a rocket landing back on Earth along side with its next launch, but 2017 should also be remembered and noted as the year SpaceX revolutionized the launch industry. — Tim Fernholz
Undetectable = Untransmittable
We all know that HIV diagnoses once amounted to a death sentence, as almost all of those people that was infected with this virus in the past, went on to develop acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). We were told that more than 35 million globally have died from #HIV since the 1980s. And now, with the availabilty and help of drugs such as antiretroviral medications and PrEP, the virus has become more manageable.
Last year(2017), medical authorities all over the globe came to unity and a public agreement that led to a new policy direction that could have profound effects for the many people currently living with managed HIV: and it is said that those who are suffering from undetectable viral loads, have “effectively no risk” of the virus being transmitted. It sounds like semantics, but it’s not.
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The policy shift could reshape how governments and health agencies communicate about HIV and its implications, and reduce stigmatization of the more than 36 million people living with HIV around the world.—Chase Purdy