近日，英國《衛報》釋出了由十位科學家選出的2022年度十項重大科學進展。從重返月球任務到快速充電電池技術突破，從推動全球平等獲得早期天氣預警到包容性科學的發展，成果涵蓋了各個領域。
衛報報道截圖
其中，中國的吸入式新冠疫苗以及中國科學院馬越等人利用人工智慧發現抗生素兩項成果入選。
Two Chinese scientific achievements are included in the 10 biggest science stories of 2022 chosen by scientists, according to a report by the Guardian.
中國吸入式新冠疫苗
新冠大流行期間，疫苗研發的速度前所未有。
免疫學研究領域也取得了巨大進展。中國的吸入式新冠疫苗由曼徹斯特大學生物醫學科學和公眾參與教授希娜·克魯克香克選入2022年度十大科學進展。
In COVID's boost to immune research category, the use of sniffable or inhale-able vaccines — mucosal vaccines, which are already used in China to tackle COVID 19 — was introduced by Sheena Cruickshank, professor of biomedical sciences and public engagement at the University of Manchester, the Guardian reported on Sunday .
12月22日，在長沙市天心區南託街道社群衛生服務中心，市民在接種吸入式新冠疫苗。圖源：新華社
吸入式疫苗可誘導黏膜免疫，並可能提供針對呼吸道病毒的長期保護。克魯克香克表示，對於有“針頭恐懼症”的人來說，這類疫苗更具吸引力。如果這些新型新冠疫苗效果達到預期，那麼很快每年的加強針注射將成為歷史。
Cruickshank said the inhale-able vaccines, which is much more appealing for those of us who are needle-phobic, may offer long-term protection against respiratory viruses. If these new developments deliver on their promise, then one day soon the calls for annual shots could be a thing of the past, according to Cruickshank.
人工智慧助力抗生素髮現
抗菌藥物耐藥性被世界衛生組織列為人類面臨的十大公共衛生威脅之一。
抗菌肽（Antimicrobial peptide, AMP）是傳統抗生素的公認替代品，因為它們不太可能引發耐藥性；然而，只有數量有限的這類分子進入臨床實踐，其中數十個正在進行臨床和臨床前試驗。
中國科學院的馬越和他的同事使用機器學習技術來識別由人類腸道微生物基因組序列編碼的抗菌肽。該演算法識別出2349個潛在的抗菌肽序列，其中，216個多肽是透過化學方法合成的，181個具有抑菌活性。
Ma Yue and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences used machine-learning techniques originally developed for natural language processing to identify antimicrobial peptides encoded by the genome sequences of microbes in the human gut. The algorithm identified 2,349 potential antimicrobial peptide sequences. Among them, 216 peptides were synthesized by chemical methods, and 181 were shown to have antimicrobial activity.
實驗室中的抗生素藥敏試驗。圖源：Getty
曼徹斯特生物技術研究所合成生物學教授高野恵理子高度讚揚了馬越團隊的工作。高野表示，該團隊利用人工智慧克服抗藥性、補充了有效抗菌劑庫，與此同時得以開發新藥且成功率驚人。
In the AI new antibiotics category, Chinese scientist Ma Yue and his colleagues' efforts in using AI to overcome resistance and replenish our arsenal of effective antimicrobials while developing new drugs was praised by Eriko Takano, professor of synthetic biology at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. This is an impressive success rate, which would not have been possible without the aid of AI, according to Takano.
其他領域的重大突破也彰顯出人類不凡的科學成就。讓我們一起來了解一下其他八項重大科學進展吧：
The joint Nasa-Esa mission Dart (Double Asteroid Re-Direction Test) was an ambitious attempt to alter the trajectory of a small asteroid (Dimorphos) as it orbited a slightly larger asteroid (Didymos), by sending a spacecraft to crash into it. In October, we learned that the mission had been even more successful than anticipated, and that the orbit of Dimorphos had changed – showing that we could, if given sufficient time, alter the path of an asteroid if it were on a collision course with Earth.
We now have the technology to see many of these natural hazards coming, days in advance. And yet 2022 has been full of lethal events. Global heating is making these types of disasters worse.
Alerting people to danger, so they can take action, is the best way to prevent tragedy. We need equal access to skills and systems that were pioneered years ago. Critical, too, is the leadership to share information and act on the warnings that ensue.
This year saw a small but important advance in the treatment of sickle cell disease. This development brings hope to millions of people worldwide, but predominantly in Africa, the Indian subcontinent and South America.
這些進步激發了包容性科學發展的希望，在這種科學研究中，性別、種族和地點既不享有特權，也不被排斥。
Developments such as these excite hope of inclusive science where gender, ethnicity and location neither privilege nor exclude. 4
Congratulation to Prof James Maynard, who was awarded a Fields medal this year for his "spectacular contributions" to analytic number theory, "which have led to major advances in the understanding of the structure of prime numbers and in Diophantine approximation".
Congratulations also to one of the other Fields medallists, the Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska, the second woman to win the award. She was cited for many mathematical accomplishments, in particular her proof that an arrangement called the E8 lattice is the densest packing of spheres in eight dimensions.5
Early signs of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's are often associated with changes in cell stiffness. This year, two research groups, one from Germany, and one from the US, published separate studies demonstrating groundbreaking improvements in a method to measure cell-stiffness, known as Brillouin microscopy. Developments in this technique this year have significantly advanced imaging speed and resolution, and reduced photo-damage, making the method now widely applicable for observing changes in cell mechanical properties in living animals.
This method will provide a powerful tool for early diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's. It will also revolutionize how scientists can measure and track the mechanical changes of our cells during normal development, and critically improve our understanding of the importance of mechanical forces in biology.
諾獎頒給量子糾纏
Quantum entanglement untangled
"Spooky action at a distance." That's what Albert Einstein called quantum entanglement, which is when two quantum particles have to be considered as a single entity, since influencing one of them affects the other even when they are far apart.
Alongside this, companies are making bold commitments to become "nature positive", meaning that their activities should, overall, lead to nature being in a better state.
12月7日，一名與會者在加拿大蒙特利爾COP15第二階段會議中國角拍照。來源：新華社
The October Nature paper by Chao-Yang Wang and co-authors described a way to charge energy-dense batteries incredibly quickly – in just a few minutes. It really highlights the phenomenal speed at which battery chemists, engineers and technologists are rising to the challenge.
We are also seeing huge progress in battery technologies based on cheap, abundant sodium instead of expensive and relatively rare lithium, as well as methods to make all these batteries far easier to recycle.
編輯：左卓
實習生：魏寧
來源：中國日報 科技日報 衛報