Mind-reading, bionic materials, cheaper medicines and a visit to the Kuiper belt. In the week between Christmas dinner and New Year's reception, the editors of NEMO Kennislink once again take a cautious look ahead:what scientific breakthroughs will 2019 bring us?
Last year, right around this time, we asked our editors for the first time:“What major breakthroughs do you expect in your own field in the coming year?” NEMO Kennislink editor Roel van der Heijden expressed the wish for the first black hole like Sagittarius A* straight in the eye. And despite the fact that the very first image of a black hole is still a while away, astronomers have already discovered a thing or two about Sagittarius A*.
NEMO Kennislink editor Anne van Kessel was convinced – rightly in retrospect – that in 2018 we would hear even more about gene therapy and the use of CRISPR-Cas. But even they probably would not have dared to predict that the first genetically modified people would eventually be born in September 2018.
Chinese researcher He Jiankui proudly talks about his work and the birth of the genetically modified twins. But the scientific world reacted with disbelief, anger and disgust.
Also this year we asked our editors what they expect for 2019 in their field.
A visit to the Kuiper belt
What better way to start the year than by visiting an icy rock in the outer reaches of our solar system? The New Horizons probe, known for making its first visit to the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, will fly close to Ultima Thule, a roughly 20-mile stretch of rock and ice in the so-called Kuiper Belt, on January 1 of the new year.
This belt, which bears the name of the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, consists of billions of icy boulders that have probably hardly changed since the formation of the solar system. New Horizons is the first mission to visit objects in this region, and will, among other things, measure the composition of these 'building blocks of the solar system'. NEMO Kennislink editor Roel van der Heijden expects a lot from this mission in the coming year.
It is not surprising that NEMO Kennislink editor Roel van der Heijden has such high expectations of the New Horizons mission along Ultima Thule; the images of Pluto returned by New Horizons during the 2015 mission were breathtaking.
The elements on our earth are not infinitely available. We are using more and more elements such as platinum and neodymium, for example in our electronic devices and powerful magnets. If we then throw those devices in the trash or replace them with a newer model, it is by no means always possible to remove these scarce elements and use them again.
NEMO Kennislink editor Renée Moezelaar hopes that more and more people will realize the value of these elements, and that the smaller (and hopefully larger) initiatives to recycle these types of materials will expand considerably in 2019.
Mind reading and biomaterials
NEMO Kennislink editor Mariska van Sprundel expects that in 2019 we will hear more about initiatives to read out brain activity and about methods to stimulate the brain. In other words, 'mind reading' and 'mind writing', as the director of the Netherlands Brain Institute Pieter Roelfsema put it in July in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. It is already possible to control artificial limbs using brain activity.
Stimulation of the brain with current is already happening, for example to treat Parkinson's disease. However, it is expected that we will increasingly use such techniques for human improvement. People without ADHD are already using Ritalin as brain doping. And with brain medication you can erase fearful memories and thus manipulate the memory, research by Radboud University in Nijmegen recently showed in rats. New neurotechnologies are coming our way quickly!
New materials may also play an important role in this. Biomaterials that can interact with living cells, for example, because according to NEMO Kennislink editor Esther Thole, we will see a lot of them in 2019. You can think of materials that are able to repair damaged tissue by stimulating the growth and development of new, healthy cells.
But there are also biomaterials on the way that can prevent the uptake of viruses or that inhibit the motility of cancer cells, thus preventing metastases. These will mainly be results from lab research, but they will undoubtedly show that changing the environment in which living cells operate can be crucial to repair damage, prevent infections and treat diseases.
Artificial intelligence and social data
NEMO Kennislink editor Mathilde Jansen pointed out last year that researchers in the humanities are also increasingly making use of large amounts of digitized data. She expects this trend to continue in the coming year. On the one hand, humanities scientists are increasingly using 'big data', while on the other, insights from the humanities are important to steer the lightning-fast developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the right direction.
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Research shows that robots and computers often discriminate because human input is not without bias. During a recent meeting of the KNAW Humanities Cluster, Professor Antal van den Bosch argued in favor of cultural AI. When developing AI, it is necessary to think about the way in which culture is anchored in language. We desperately need humanities for that.
Perhaps, thanks to big data in the humanities, more war criminals will eventually end up behind bars. After all, there are still criminals from the Second World War on the loose. Last year, the National Archives were sued for refusing access to the Central Archives for Special Jurisdiction. This contains the protected files about war criminals. The verdict came on December 18:the judge considers the defense of the National Archives – namely protection of privacy – insufficient and gives the archive ten weeks to form a new decision. According to NEMO Kennislink editor Marjolein Overmeer, it seems that the archives will finally open in 2019. This will not only yield interesting new research into war criminals, but also the tracing of the few who are still alive.
Cheap medicines and yellow vests
The price of medicines has been discussed for some time. Pharmaceutical companies sometimes charge exorbitant amounts because they want to recoup the development costs of a drug and make a profit. This problem is particularly acute with orphan drugs, which are intended for rare diseases and are therefore not often sold. There is no solution yet. There are plenty of ideas now. For example, a different development model, in which not only companies but also health insurers, hospitals and patient associations invest in new medicines. Or an approach in which pharmacies and hospitals are allowed to cheaply 'counterfeit' certain medicines themselves. NEMO Kennislink editor Elles Lalieu expects that we will undoubtedly hear more about this and sees the first cheap medicines on the market in 2019.
NEMO Kennislink editor Marloes van Amerom thinks that social scientists will increasingly focus on the increasing socio-economic inequality in Western countries, and the ways to remedy this phenomenon as much as possible. First of all, because protests like those of the 'yellow vests' are partly motivated by feelings of deprivation and anger towards an elite that does take good care of itself. Research also shows that in many Western countries the gap between rich and poor is growing rapidly. Also in the Netherlands.
Incidentally, this is not so much a question of class inequality as of 'education inequality':there are increasing socio-economic differences between the low-educated and the highly educated. It is also the case for the first time in a long time that young people will probably not surpass their parents in terms of income, but will be poorer. The greater the socio-economic gap between rich and poor in society, the greater the chance of conflict. For that reason, Marloes secretly hopes that her prediction that scientists will look into this will come true:so that with science as a big stick, the tide can still turn in time.