|
The year started with two pieces of remarkable news from outer space: the most distant planetary flyby ever, and China's successful landing of a rover on the far side of the moon. These set the trend for a busy, important year for space research, as Keith Gottschalk explains.
Portable DNA sequencers, the size of a USB, are proving valuable to scientists working in the field during disease outbreaks. These sequencers will become increasingly common in the next few years, and ordinary people could soon be collecting and uploading metagenomic data from their homes and neighbourhoods. The problem, Liam Shaw and Nicola C. Sugden warn, is that this could put people's privacy at risk.
|
Scale models of rockets at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s booth at the International Astronautical Congress.
FOCKE STRANGMANN/EPA
Keith Gottschalk, University of the Western Cape
The space industry and global interest in all matters inter-planetary is growing.
|
A portable DNA sequencer in action.
UGA CAES/Extension/Flickr
Liam Shaw, University of Oxford; Nicola C. Sugden, University of Manchester
Researchers have increasingly turned to DNA sequencing to help identify and track diseases like Ebola.
|
Politics + Society
|
John Shattuck, Tufts University
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has transformed from a liberal into an authoritarian leader who uses the tools of democracy to attack civil society. Hungarians are protesting in the streets.
| |
Teddy Atim, Tufts University
Post conflict recovery is largely driven by the assumption that as soon as conflict ends, normality returns.
|
|
|
Business + Economy
|
Caroline Nye, University of Exeter
Like Japan, the UK is facing an ageing population that is compounding other problems putting pressure on the labour market.
| |
Scott R. Baker, Northwestern University
The government has been partially closed since Dec. 22, making it the second-longest shutdown on record. A finance professor who studied the 2013 shutdown explains the economic impact.
|
|
|
Arts + Culture
|
-
Anita Radini, University of York; Christina Warinner, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History; Monica Tromp
Male monks were not the sole producers of books throughout the Middle Ages.
|
|
