The 7 scientific and medical findings that stood out in 2024

In the scientific and medical panorama of 2024, the revolution of artificial intelligence (IA) continued its dizzying advance.

Thanks to this rapid evolution of AI, many research teams made important discoveries this year, ranging from drug development to applications for healthcare and environmental research.

Below we present some of the scientific and medical advances that made an impact throughout 2024.

The amazing discovery of 300 geoglyphs in Nazca, Peru, found with the help of AI

The lines of the Nazca Desert, in Peru, are one of humanity’s most perplexing mysteries.

From the ground the marks look like simple grooves. But seen from the air, these grooves transform into mysterious figures and shapes that have amazed scientists since their discovery in 1927.

In November of this year, a team of Japanese archaeologists, using artificial intelligence and drones, found 303 geoglyphs that until then were unknown.

Scientists published their findings on the enigmatic purpose of symbols in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

You can read more about this amazing discovery here.

Fascinating fly brain research that will shed light on the human thought process

In 2024, scientists managed for the first time to create the most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever performed.

It was a complete map that identifies the position, shape and connections of each of the 130,000 neurons and 50 million connections.

The breakthrough was described as “a huge leap” in understanding our own brain, which will help us understand the mechanism of how we think.

“What are the connections? How do signals flow through the system that allows us to process information to recognize your face, that allows you to hear my voice and convert these words into electrical signals?” the doctor told the BBC. Gregory Jefferis of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK, and one of the scientists involved in the study.

“Mapping the fly brain It is really extraordinary and will help us understand how ours works“he added.

The images obtained by scientists and published in the magazine Nature They show a tangle of cables as beautiful as it is complex.

Here you can read more about this amazing development.

The revolutionary vaccines that show “real hope” for finding a cure for cancer

Throughout 2024, various human clinical trials of the revolutionary personalized vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA) were carried out in several countries.

Vaccines that give you instructions the immune system by “training” it to recognize and destroy cancer cells and eliminate the disease.

This is the same technology that was used in some of the Covid-19 vaccines.

The first trials, aimed at combating various types of cancer, have shown encouraging results.

In the United Kingdom, the so-called Cancer Vaccine Launch Platform was launched this year, which brings together several clinical trials that will use vaccines with mRNA technology.

These trials are also being carried out with patients in Germany, Belgium, Spain and Sweden.

Here you can read more about how this revolutionary cancer treatment works.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientists who achieved “the almost impossible feat of building completely new types of proteins” with the help of AI

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry focused on proteins, the building blocks of life.

These compounds are found in all cells of the human body and control and direct all chemical reactions that, together, constitute the basis of our existence.

The Nobel Committee describes them as “the ingenious chemical tools of life.”

Having a better understanding of these tools has driven great advances in medicine.

And what the three Nobel laureates managed to do was crack the code of its surprising structures.

David Baker “accomplished the almost impossible feat of constructing entirely new types of proteins.”

And Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “developed an artificial intelligence model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins.”

Here you will find more information about the work of these researchers.

The artificial intelligence tool that detects cancer tumors that doctors cannot see

The AI ​​tool is called Mia and it has been working in British hospitals analyzing mammograms.

Mia’s job is to identify small signs of breast cancer that had gone unnoticed during the doctors’ examination.

After analyzing nearly 10,000 mammograms, most of which showed no signs of cancer, Mia successfully identified those that did, including those of 11 patients who had not been diagnosed by doctors.

Patients with tumors smaller than 15 mm at the time of diagnosis have a 90% survival rate over the next five years.

That’s why Mia has been described as a tool that reflects “the enormous potential of AI” in medical diagnosis.

“There is no doubt that real-life clinical radiologists are essential and irreplaceable, but a clinical radiologist using insights from validated AI tools will increasingly be a formidable force in patient care,” said Katharine Halliday, president of the UK College of Radiologists.

You can read more about this new AI tool here.

The extraordinary discovery of liquid water for the first time inside Mars

There is enough water on Mars to form oceans.

That’s what researchers discovered after studying data from NASA’s Insight lander, a robotic explorer that landed on Mars.

The water is unlikely to be useful as a well in the near future, as it lies between 11.5 and 20 kilometers underground.

But the discovery will help understand the water cycle on the red planet, which is essential to understand the evolution of the climate, its surface and its interior.

The discovery also could point to another target for the current search for evidence of life on Mars.

“Without liquid water, there is no life,” explains Professor Michael Manga of the University of California at Berkeley, who participated in the research. “So if there are habitable environments on Mars, these may now be deep underground.”

Here you can read more about this research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For the first time the temperature increased by 1.5 degrees during an entire year

This was bad news in 2024: Researchers from the European Union (EU) climate service discovered that for the first time global warming exceeded 1.5°C for an entire year.

The 1.5°C limit on long-term temperature rise is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging effects of global warming.

Having crossed this limit for the first time in an entire year, reaching a temperature increase of 1.52°C, puts the world further away from achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“This far exceeds anything that is acceptable,” Professor Bob Watson, former president of the United Nations climate body, told the BBC.

“Look what happened this year with only 1.5°C: we have seen floods, we have seen droughts, we have seen heat waves and forest fires around the world, and we are starting to see lower agricultural productivity and some problems with water quality and quantity.

Scientists say, however, that urgent action to reduce carbon emissions can still slow warming.