A machine that is so tiny that it can barely be seen with the naked eye was chosen as the “breakthrough of the year” by Science magazine.
Every year the U.S. journal highlights the most transcendent research and development projects. The quantum device, no bigger than the diameter of a hair, tops the 2010 list, which was issued Thursday.
It is the first artificial object that does not follow the laws of classical mechanics, Science notes. Instead, the tiny device reacts rather like an atom or a molecule and is constantly moving.
Its inventors, a team of physicists from the University of California at Santa Barbara, managed to at once raise and drop the machine’s energy by a single quantum, a phenomenon allowed only by quantum mechanics.
The magazine defined as a milestone of biotechnology the first synthetic genome. U.S. scientists used artificially produced genes to change the identity of a bacterium, which could allow the production of custom-made medication or even biofuels.
Thanks to improved DNA sequencing methods, another team gained genetic data on Neanderthals and compared these to those of modern humans. The DNA was obtained from the bones of three Neanderthal women who lived 38,000-44,000 years ago in what is now Croatia.
Generally, diving into the human genome and its functions through new, cheap sequencing methods is gaining pace, according to Science ’s reporters and experts. Another of the year’s breakthroughs is the “1,000 Genomes Project,” which identifies the unique genetic make-up of modern humans.
Among the other top 10 scientific research projects, there is the reprogramming of highly specialized cells to their original status of unspecialized stem cells. The new process, which is twice as fast and 100 times more efficient than current methods, can help diagnose illnesses.
