杏吧原创

1 Iron rice

A strain of rice fortified with iron could give a new lease of life to some 2 billion rice-eaters worldwide who suffer from anaemia. The affliction, which has become more widespread in recent years, is responsible for an estimated 20 per cent of all deaths during childbirth.

Modern rice varieties contain very little iron; this is one of the most serious and least-discussed downsides of the green revolution. But the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, which bred these high-yielding but iron-deficient varieties, believes that 2003 will be the year it makes amends.

Trials of a new variety of 鈥渋ron rice鈥� have gone exceptionally well. Some 200 mildly anaemic nuns in the Philippines have emerged re-energised after six months eating the new rice, with their blood-iron levels raised. The results should herald one of the big agricultural success stories of 2003. And researchers hope to have new varieties of iron-fortified rice, tailored to local conditions, on the market across the world within two years.

IRRI researchers originally developed the new variety, code named IR68144, to tolerate low temperatures. Only later did they discover that it contains almost twice as much iron as conventional high-yielding varieties. Better still, the new variety has been produced by conventional plant breeding, so it will not fall foul of the controversies surrounding genetically modified crops.

2 Einstein鈥檚 toughest test

It has been 35 years in the making, but Gravity Probe B should finally lift off in April. One of the few NASA space missions devoted to fundamental physics, the probe will carry out experiments to test two predictions made in Einstein鈥檚 general theory of relativity. If the probe is successful it will become a classic experiment. And if its findings disagree with Einstein鈥檚 predictions it will spark a revolution.

The probe鈥檚 easiest task will be to measure the 鈥済eodetic effect鈥�, the way the Earth鈥檚 mass bends space-time; you can picture a heavy ball sitting on stretched rubber and distorting it. If Einstein is right, the geodetic effect will slightly shift the axes of the four gyroscopes aboard the probe. The experiment will measure the effect with an accuracy of 0.01 per cent, making it the most severe test yet of general relativity.

But detecting another, smaller force would be even more of a coup. Known as 鈥渇rame dragging鈥�, this force twists space-time as the Earth rotates. As the probe orbits above the Earth鈥檚 poles at an altitude of 650 kilometres, this too will push the gyroscopes out of alignment in a way that can be separated from the geodetic effect.

Though small, these effects have far-reaching implications for our understanding of physics, especially if they do turn out to be different from Einstein鈥檚 predictions. Since researchers looking for a 鈥渢heory of everything鈥� believe that relativity is not exactly correct, Gravity Probe B could provide the best evidence yet that there鈥檚 something deeper to be uncovered.

3 Oldest climate record

Global warming is nothing new. Around 800,000 years ago, the climate was moving the same way as it is today. So how did things pan out? We should know later this year when a group of European scientists complete their efforts to drill an ice core at Dome Concordia, high on the Antarctic plateau.

At 3.2 kilometres long, the core from Dome Concordia will not quite hold the record for the longest in the world. That accolade belongs to the 3.6-kilometre core from the ice above Lake Vostok. But because the ice layers are thinner than at Vostok, the Dome Concordia core will reveal a longer record of Earth鈥檚 atmospheric past. It stretches back around a million years 鈥� twice as far as any other yet studied 鈥� and takes in at least eight ice ages.

Drilling at Dome Concordia began just over a year ago and at the end of the last drilling season the hole was 2870 metres deep. That leaves just 300 metres to go before the drillers hit bedrock, but this final stretch is the crucial part. The ice there was deposited over a 300,000-year period that includes a time when conditions driving climate change were similar to what they are now. Air bubbles trapped inside the icy layers will yield a yearly record of carbon dioxide levels. What鈥檚 more, oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in ice act as an ancient thermometer as their levels depend on the air temperature when the ice formed.

4 Stem cell banking

When a new bank opens in Britain this year, Steve Minger vows his team will be one of the first to make a deposit. The bank will store lines of embryonic stem cells, and is an important milestone for medical researchers all over the world who have high hopes for ESCs.

These cells鈥� ability to develop into many kinds of tissue holds out dramatic possibilities for curing brain disorders such as Parkinson鈥檚 disease, manufacturing new organs to order and many other areas. But while several research groups around the world have already created human ESCs, technical problems, commercial restrictions and political wrangling have impeded progress till now.

That鈥檚 why the deposits by Minger鈥檚 group at King鈥檚 College London and another led by Austin Smith at the University of Edinburgh are so eagerly awaited. Britain has a more favourable legal climate for stem cell research than most countries, and the government-funded bank is expected to accelerate the pace of research even further. Researchers from outside Britain have already offered their cell lines to add to the bank. Though plans have yet to be finalised, it looks likely that companies will be able to buy samples at commercial rates, while academic researchers will pay a nominal fee. Foreign researchers are also likely to be allowed use cell lines from the bank, especially if they have contributed to it.

5 Mars invasion

Has there ever been life on Mars? We will take several steps closer to knowing with the launch this year of not one but three landers designed to explore the surface of the Red Planet. ESA鈥檚 Mars Express mission will launch in May from Baikonur in Kazakhstan carrying the Beagle 2 lander, which is due to touch down seven months later.

The launch will be followed by NASA鈥檚 two Exploration Rovers. Of the two agencies, NASA is the one playing it safer. While Beagle 2鈥檚 project scientists have already picked a landing site, NASA is delaying the decision on where to land for as long as possible. This will give NASA鈥檚 Mars Odyssey probe more time to scout out the possibilities as it orbits the planet. After landing, the rovers will roam hundreds of metres, beaming back pictures of the landscape and detailed spectra that should reveal which elements are present in Martian soil.

But it is the European mission that promises greater scientific gain. It is putting down on sedimentary rock laid down billions of years ago when water flowed on Mars. As well as cameras, it boasts a mechanical mole that can burrow 1.5 metres into Martian soil, deep enough to find any microbes that may be sheltering from the intense ultraviolet radiation on the surface. And unlike the NASA rovers, it will carry mass spectrometers capable of measuring the proportion of carbon-12 in any organic compounds. If Martian and terrestrial biology follow the same rules, that could tell scientists if the compounds are biological in origin.

6 Mass teleportation

Teleportation has a lot to live up to after decades of Star Trek. Physicists have so far managed to teleport only the barest minimum 鈥� a single property of a single subatomic particle, such as the polarisation of a photon. Technically brilliant as this achievement is, it鈥檚 a long way from sending starship captains from ship to shore.

This year, however, things should get more interesting. Eugene Polzik and his team at the University of Aarhus in Denmark have already succeeded in 鈥渆ntangling鈥� two clouds of atoms 鈥� putting them into a shared quantum state that is the first stage of teleportation. Because nudging one entangled object instantly affects its partner, entanglement gives you a kind of quantum information link. With cunning and careful measurement, you can use this link to transmit intimate quantum details between the two entangled objects.

Until last year, physicists had only managed to entangle three or four atoms. Polzik and colleagues have achieved this ready-to-teleport state between two clouds containing billions of caesium atoms. All they need do now is make the actual transmission, using a very pure laser beam to make an exact copy of a third cloud of atoms. Sometime this year they may have teleported an object big enough to be visible.

Well, sort of. Polzik will still only be teleporting a single property of the cloud, its overall magnetic state. But, despite these limitations, some physicists believe we will soon be teleporting whole molecules in all their details, and perhaps, eventually, even something as big and complicated as a virus.

7 Legal cannabis

Stand by for headlines in the British tabloids screaming, 鈥淒ope from your doctor鈥�. This year Britain looks set to become the first country to license a cannabis-based pharmaceutical.

That will be great news for people with multiple sclerosis and nerve damage, who for years have been smoking joints to relieve pain, ease muscle spasticity and help them to sleep. Instead of slinking down to their local dope dealer, they will simply make an appointment with their doctor. Even moral crusaders should be happy because, if anything, medicines derived from cannabis will strengthen their hand.

In November 2002 the British firm GW Pharmaceuticals announced that four randomised trials had proved the medical benefits of its purified cannabis extract. The product comes as an under-the-tongue spray that has several advantages over the street drug. Dosing is more consistent and easier to fine-tune, there is no need to inhale lung-damaging smoke, and patients rarely feel intoxicated once they know what dose to use.

If GW鈥檚 preparation is licensed, the British government has promised to reclassify cannabis so that doctors can legally prescribe it. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is assessing the product to decide whether it should become available on the National Health Service.

The arguments about whether people should be allowed to take dope for fun will run and run. The paradox is that approval for GW鈥檚 product will make it harder for pro-cannabis campaigners to claim that the street drug should be legalised for medical reasons.

8 Moon folly

In an era when commercial space launches are nothing special, it鈥檚 refreshing to find one that stands out from the crowd. After three years of trying, the private company TransOrbital of La Jolla, California, has won clearance for a commercial mission to the Moon. In June it will launch its Trailblazer-1 craft into lunar orbit, then sit back and wait for the dollars to start rolling in.

Sending a $20 million spaceship to an uninhabited lump of rock 385,000 kilometres away might not sound like a sure-fire money-spinner, but TransOrbital says it has that side of things sewn up. It plans to take high-resolution pictures of the lunar surface and publish them in a glossy coffee-table book. And it will sell tiny berths on the craft to people who, for whatever reason, want to send small objects to the Moon. They will end up scattered across the lunar surface when Trailblazer deliberately crash-lands there three months later.

Littering the Moon is one reason to keep an eye on the mission, but there鈥檚 another. Trailblazer will provide the first independent evidence that the Apollo Moon landings really happened and were not an elaborate hoax to fool the Russians, as some people like to claim. One of Trailblazer鈥檚 missions is to fly over the Sea of Tranquility and photograph the site where Neil Armstrong made mankind鈥檚 giant leap in July 1969.

9 First human clone?

If you believe the hype, the next few months will see the birth of the first cloned babies. The controversial Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori reportedly claims to have created, or to know of, several cloned pregnancies. The first of the babies is supposedly due this month. Meanwhile, Brigitte Boisselier, director of the California-based human cloning company Clonaid, has told New 杏吧原创 that a cloned baby girl will be born 鈥渟oon鈥�. Neither Antinori nor Boisselier has yet presented any proof for their claims.

Doctors and scientists have greeted the news with a mixture of condemnation and scepticism. Most think cloning a human is too hard for anyone to have succeeded yet, but Boisselier insists the experts are wrong: Clonaid is well on the way, she says.

Boisselier, whose company was founded by the Raelian cult, also rejects fears that human clones will develop birth defects similar to those observed in cloned animals. She claims that her team has performed safety studies on 300 cloned human embryos.

Independent verification of any of these claims is currently impossible. Boisselier, at least, says she will make the DNA of the expected baby girl and her mother available to an independent expert, and that she plans to publish her data soon. If Clonaid鈥檚 work is proven, it will mark an astonishing breakthrough in handling embryos and will whip up the ethical debate on experiments with human life.

10 Gm wars

Fur will fly this year over the development of genetically modified organisms for nationwide pest control. In Australia, where rabbits pose a mammoth problem, biologists have created GM strains of a virus that will spread through the population, sterilising all the females it infects.

Meanwhile in Spain, where rabbits are a threatened species prized for hunting, researchers are doing the reverse: making GM viruses that will spread resistance to myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease, the very diseases that Australia uses to keep plagues of rabbits at bay. The worry is that such 鈥渄isseminating鈥� GMOs, designed to spread through a target population, are being developed with scant regard for the possible consequences in other countries.

Rabbit control is not the only example where a disseminating GMO that is benefical in one country is disastrous for another country. New Zealand is developing one to sterilise brushtail possums: not a virus this time, but a parasite called Parastrongloides trichosuri. That isn鈥檛 going to go down well in Australia, where threatened possum species could be wiped out if the parasite ever lands there. Meanwhile, Australia could start field trials next year on a disseminating GM virus that sterilises female European house mice. They are an introduced pest in Australia, but native fauna in many countries.

The danger that GM agents designed to control pests across one country could wreak havoc in another has apparently slipped the minds of most policy makers till now. As debate about the risks and potential fixes begins in earnest, that looks likely to change, and international safety regulations may follow. One possible strategy is to require that disseminating GMOs only work in the presence of a second agent, such as an antibiotic. Another is to ensure that they rely on an intermediate host that only exists in the country where the species they kill is a pest.

The obvious answer is not to use disseminating GMOs at all. And that could spell the end for large scale GMO pest control programmes. Any other way of spreading a GM organism, such as distributing it in bait, is likely to prove a logistical nightmare as well as prohibitively expensive.

11 Hypersonic flight

New York to Tokyo in two hours may not happen this year, but if all goes to plan, NASA will take the first step. A B52 bomber will take off with a pilotless hypersonic jet plane called the Hyper-X slung beneath its belly, and release it high above the Pacific. From there, a revolutionary engine will accelerate the Hyper-X to more than 8300 kilometres per hour, twice the speed of today鈥檚 fastest jet plane. With six years and $185 million invested in the project, NASA should finally discover how the plane鈥檚 scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) engine performs at high speed.

The hope is that scramjets will combine the power of a rocket with the fuel efficiency of a jet engine. A scramjet uses its speed to drive air into the engine, whereas a jet engine uses compressor blades. The engineers鈥� calculations say it should work, but no one will know for sure until the new engine has been tested in the air. Wind tunnels are simply not powerful enough to simulate hypersonic flight.

That鈥檚 a real problem, because the faster a plane flies the more crucial the aerodynamics around the engine become. At hypersonic speeds, every edge and curve can create intense shock waves. If they get out of hand, these pressure waves could stall the engine or tear the craft apart.

NASA鈥檚 engineers already know a thing or two about pressure. In 2001, they were forced to destroy the prototype Hyper-X moments after release when the craft spun out of control. Given the agency鈥檚 dire financial state, this year could prove make or break for the next generation of high-speed aircraft.