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The coronavirus pandemic has garnered much of the attention around science news this year, although a lot of other things have happened in the research world. The 2021 that is about to begin will probably not be left behind, with COVID-19-related issues in the spotlight, and that could overshadow many other scientific activities. In view of the beginning of the new year, Nature, one of the most famous and respected scientific journals in the world, has compiled a list to try to predict which scientific topics will be the most important and to watch during 2021.
Weather
Precisely because of the pandemic, this year the news about climate change has had less space, not only in the newspapers, but also in the political debate and among world leaders. Things should change in 2021, especially thanks to the start of the presidency of Joe Biden, who has already announced on several occasions that he wants to return global warming to the center of the activities of the US government, after the four-year presidency of Trump with numerous decisions to the contrary, compared to what researchers have now shown about the role of human activities in climate change.
Biden intends to bring the United States back to the Paris Climate Agreement, the most important pact to limit pollutant emissions agreed to by most countries in recent years, and have new approaches and policies ready in time for the next meeting. Nations climate. Unite, to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. It will be an important opportunity to go beyond the Paris Agreement with new commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, among the main causes. of global warming.
China and the European Union intend to achieve the goal of a zero carbon dioxide budget for 2050-60; The United States could announce a similar plan.
Pandemic / 1
Although almost a year has passed since its inception, there are still many aspects to clarify about how the coronavirus pandemic began. By 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) plans to send a task force that includes epidemiologists, virologists and other researchers to China to find out how the coronavirus reached us from animals and through what intermediate steps.
The first investigations will focus on the meat and animal markets of the Huanan Wholesale Market in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic is believed to have started. Then the investigation will extend to the reconstruction of the other passages that led to the first infections causing an epidemic and then the pandemic that we are facing today. The research could take years, but it could provide important information to reduce the risk that one day the same dynamic will be repeated with another virus.
Pandemic / 2
The end of 2020 was accompanied by the authorization of the first coronavirus vaccines, developed in less than a year and already used among the population. However, only from the first months of 2021 will we know if its effectiveness in the community will be comparable to the very high one detected during clinical trials. There will also be several other vaccines, now in the final testing phase, and based on different and more traditional systems than those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Not only will we have confirmations or denials about effectiveness, but we will also begin to understand whether vaccines lead to medium or long-term protection against coronavirus. We will also find out if pharmaceutical companies will be able to maintain the accelerated pace announced for the production of billions of doses of vaccines, demanded by virtually any government on the planet.
Open access
2021 could also mark a major shift in the way scientific research results are shared. In fact, a new ‘open access’ system will be made available to the scientific community that will collect studies from some of the largest organizations funding research, such as the American Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the British charity Wellcome Trust. and the Netherlands Research Council (NWO).
Starting in January, the research made possible by your funding should be immediately available and freely accessible to all. The initiative is called “Plan S” and it could change the way many scientific journals work.
Resistance cells
The International Association for Stem Cell Research is an independent organization based in the United States and is considered one of the most authoritative bodies in the field. In 2021, it will publish a long-awaited set of new guidelines on stem cells, cells capable of transforming into different types of other cells depending on the circumstances, and considered an important resource for the development of new therapies and treatments against diseases for which to date no there is a cure.
The new guidelines will include guidance on the use of stem cells to obtain structures that resemble the early stages of the embryo. Embryonic structures of this type, which do not use real embryos, should make it possible to overcome the legal limitations imposed in some countries on the study of embryos in vitro (therefore in the laboratory) beyond two weeks after fertilization. The possibility of having longer test periods could help researchers better understand the circumstances that cause miscarriages in early pregnancy.
Alzheimer’s
2021 could be the year of aducanumab, a monoclonal antibody produced by the pharmaceutical company Biogen, which binds to amyloid, a protein accumulated in the brain that, according to some researchers, may be behind Alzheimer’s disease. However, clinical trials of the drug have yielded mixed results, and this year an independent advisory group to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government agency that deals with drugs in the United States, has raised questions about effectiveness. of the system.
Space
Mars will be a pretty inflated destination next year. In addition to NASA’s Perseverance rover that will hit the planet on February 18, China’s Tianwen-1 mission is also expected to reach Mars, with an automated robot that could hit Martian soil in April. If all goes according to plan, it would be the first robot produced by the Chinese space program to explore Mars.
In October 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope in history, which has suffered countless delays and postponements in recent years, should be launched. It was built by NASA in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency. It will have much higher sensitivity than the Hubble Space Telescope and could allow us to make observations with unprecedented definition.
Groups of astrophysicists from Europe, Australia and North America are working to demonstrate a new way to detect gravitational waves by taking advantage of the signals emitted by neutron stars. There have already been good precedents, but in 2021 new evidence could be obtained to help us locate and study the main cosmic events.
And brexit
The UK will exit the European Union entirely at the end of this year, with many consequences for research. Many things will change not only for the projects that are already underway, but also for the thousands of researchers who have been following them for years or who will start new international collaborations. As with many other areas, we will know the effects of these changes due to Brexit only next year, and there is no shortage of uncertainties.
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