Don’t let hype around AI distract us from our progress in brain studies

livemint.com:

far side of the moon and China’s longer-range plan is to have a crewed lunar mission by 2030, followed by a permanent lunar base. Nasa’s crewed Artemis III mission is scheduled to land on the moon in 2026. Isro has not prioritized humans in space, but still has plans to send humans into low-earth orbit this decade and land on the moon by the end of the next one.

In partnership with private sector firms like Space X, Nasa is also working on rocket reusability; making a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to and from Earth’s orbit, the moon, Mars and further. New depths have also been gained in deep-sea exploration (bit.ly/4bCJFtD). Even though last year’s implosion of the Titan submersible received much attention, both crewed and unmanned submersibles have made significant progress has been made in plumbing such depths.

Crewed missions from the US and China have recorded depths greater than 10,000 metres on several dives. An international project is now on to map 100% of the ocean floor, about 20% of which has been completed so far. An unexpected field of scientific development culminated in the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 2023.

Operation Warp Speed catalysed the use of messenger RNA for vaccines to target the Sars-Cov-2 virus. Research is ongoing on new vaccines that utilize the mRNA method of delivery. Old style vaccines use a weakened or dead version of the actual virus combined with an adjuvant to stimulate an immune response against a disease, while mRNA vaccines use a genetic code to message the body’s cells to produce proteins that re-train the immune system.