Autumn Research Round-Up

Pi Science writers outline the most exciting research developments from the last few months.

Physics

Last month saw an exciting discovery surrounding exoplanet K2-18b, made by astronomers at UCL using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. K2- 18b is now the first planet outside of our solar system on which the presence of water vapour has been detected, with surface temperatures conducive to liquid water. Though exposed to significantly more radiation, and with far higher surface gravity than Earth, this planet theoretically could have life on it.

Callum Limbrick

Chemistry

Carbon capture technology is gathering force, with MIT’s engineers recently developing a new way to remove carbon dioxide from the air using charged electrochemical plates. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change essentially said that some form of carbon capture technology would be required to maintain any hope of keeping warming under 1.5 °C This is the space to watch in environmental research.

Dhruv Krishna

Technology

Deepfakes are a form of artificial intelligence where video content can be produced and manipulated to make it seem like events that did not occur, in fact, did. Given the numerous issues surrounding deepfakes, combatting their spread is becoming increasingly vital. Not only responsible for dangerous misinformation, use of this technology also affects public trust in AI. Big internet companies are attempting to combat this by contributing to deepfake detection research. In September, Google released a database of 3000 deepfakes, aiming to add to the growing data to help develop synthetic video detection methods. Facebook recently launched its Deepfake Detection Challenge.

Sabina-Maria Mitroi

Drug Discovery

Just the third Tuberculosis (TB) drug to be developed in 40 years, Pretomanid has recently been approved by the US FDA. It was developed by the non-profit TB Alliance to help treat multi-resistant tuberculosis. This is particularly exciting news because drug resistant TB has now been identified on every continent. It seems, however, that access to the drug will be a big challenge for translating the research and results of the trial into effective patient care.

Tharani Ahillan

Psychiatry

The search for biomarkers to aid diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders has recently had great success. A new study, conducted by a Brazilian research team, found that certain metabolites in the blood were specific to patients with bipolar disorder, whilst others were seen only in patients with schizophrenia. These two disorders have overlapping symptoms and can sometimes be difficult to distinguish, making this a potentially invaluable future diagnostic tool.

Ahmed Al-Shihabi

Environment

Teleconnections occur when changes in the atmosphere in one place can affect the weather over a 1000 miles away. Research has found that the El Nino-Southern Oscillation had a significant influence on rainfall during the Indian summer monsoon. These results have implications for farming in areas that rely on big weather events, and it is hoped that studies such as these can help predict weather patterns in the future. With climate change contributing to increasingly erratic weather patterns such as these, understanding climate change is more important now than ever before.

Charles Constant