2023 in science

Events

January

February

March

April

• *Five employees at the National Hurricane Center publish a tropical cyclone report on Hurricane Ian, which officially upgrades the hurricane from a Category 4 to a Category 5 on the Saffir–Simpson scale. The TCR also stated that Hurricane Ian caused, with 90% confidence, $112.9 billion worth of damage to the United States, which made Ian the third-costliest United States hurricane on record as well as the costliest hurricane to strike Florida on record.
• *An unexplained rise of emissions of five chlorofluorocarbons, successfully banned by the Montreal Protocol of 1989, is reported. Their climate impact in 2020 is roughly equivalent to that of the CO₂e from Denmark in 2018.
• *A study affirms and explains why a moderate decrease in body temperature extends lifespan.
• *The NOAA reports that greenhouse gases continued to increase rapidly in 2022 and that CO₂ levels in the atmosphere are now the highest in 4.3 million years.
• *An umbrella review summarizes scientific results on the health effects of added-sugar foods and makes recommendations such as limiting sugar-sweetened beverages which are "the largest source of added sugars" and developing of policy such as advertising restrictions.
• – A study shows neurons take up glucose and metabolize it by glycolysis. There was only limited research on how neurons get their energy in the context of links between glucose metabolism and cognition.
• – A study expands upon the role of elites' unsustainable consumption in urban water crises. In Cape Town, for example, the wealthiest 14% of the population use half of the city's water, while the poorest 62% use just a quarter.
• – A study reports that genomic surveillance shows that a clonal lineage of the wheat blast fungus has spread worldwide and that there is a need for GS to track the potential pandemic threat to the global food supply as it may become fungicide-insensitive.
• *The direct imaging of HIP 99770 b, a new exoplanet found 133 light years away, is reported by astronomers.
• *A global trend towards more rapid-onset "flash droughts" hindering forecasting is reported.
• *Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer is launched by the European Space Agency to search for life in the Jovian system, with an expected arrival date of 2031.
• *A new technique for improving the resolution of post-mortem MRI brain scans "by 64 million times" is reported by researchers, who capture the sharpest ever images of an entire mouse brain.
• *A study expands upon the international Earth heat inventory from 2020, which provides a measure of the Earth energy imbalance and allows for quantifying how much and where heat has accumulated in the Earth system with comprehensive data. It suggests that the EEI is the "most fundamental global climate indicator" to gauge climate change mitigation efforts.
• *Astronomers conclude that "... planets in the habitable zones of stars with low metallicity are the best targets to search for complex life on land."
• *A university reports a study affirming the high level of economic losses from biological invasions, showing they have risen to the level of economic damage costs from floods or earthquakes, which are also rising.
• *A bolide is observed over Ukraine and Belarus for about five seconds. It is first observed at an altitude of 98 km above Velyka Dymerka, then passes directly above Kyiv at an altitude of 80 km and continues to the southwest with a speed of 29 km/s. A bright flare occurs at an altitude of 38 km, when the bolide's absolute magnitude reaches approximately −18.
• *The likely cause of grey hair is shown to be pigment-making cells losing their ability to mature into melanocytes.
• *Researchers show parrots can and enjoy to use a videocalling system.
• *A study with mice shows that microplastics pass the blood–brain barrier, entering and accumulating in the brain, and identifies a key determinant for whether or not they pass the BBB.
• *A new 29-year record of ice sheet mass in Greenland and Antarctica is published as part of the IMBIE collaboration. It finds that the combined ice loss in these regions has more than tripled since the early 1990s, with 2019 seeing the greatest losses of any year on record. These findings have implications for future sea level rise.
• *Paleoneurologists publish the first neuroevolutionary timeline about correlations of in the shape of the cerebral cortex and functions, showing "variability in surface geometry relates to species' ecology and behaviour" and cognition. It characterizes many of the neuromorphological events in the origin of human intelligence over the past 77 million years.
• *A UNICEF report indicates "public perception of the importance of vaccines for children declined during the COVID-19 pandemic in 52 out of 55 countries studied" with causal factors including "growing access to misleading information". On 26 April, news outlets report that Twitter is warned by EU digital policy-makers after a report indicated its recent policies "boost" Russian disinformation-based propaganda. On 17 April, Twitter introduces labels for rationales when tweets are made less visible which previously were semi-censored without any explanation. On 5 April, the first review of interventions against false conspiracy beliefs, with interventions "that fostered an analytical mindset or taught critical thinking skills" being most effective and preventive action being important.
• – Researchers report the development of neuromorphic AI hardware using nanowires physically mimicking the brain's activity in identifying and remembering an image from memory. On 26 April, a university reports on a demonstration of multisensory motion cue integration by a for robots.
• *Astronomers release close-up global images, for the first time, of the Martian moon Deimos that were taken by the Mars Hope orbiter.
• *The first review of issues identified in meta-science of metascience is published, providing an overview of ten "questionable" practices in the field such as "overplaying the role of replication in science" and preregistration potential.
• *A policy study identifies reduction of car travel activity as the most important transportation policy option in reducing GHG emissions to levels comparable to carbon budget levels, with a "decrease car distance driven and car ownership by over 80% as compared to current levels" by 2027 being effective in "edging close to the designated carbon budget" in their case-study of London and electrification being highly insufficient. On 20 April, an international study indicates that the contemporary domestic policy-proposal of a general speed limit on highways in Germany, the only large country in the world without such, for a quick GHG emissions reduction would also be economically beneficial. It points to a climate change mitigation law that mandated emission reductions in this sector that was changed in 2023 so as to remove these obligations.
• *Scientists, based on new evidence, conclude that Rosalind Franklin was a contributor and "equal player" in the discovery process of DNA, rather than otherwise, as may have been presented subsequently after the time of the discovery.
• *The first gene silencing approach to Alzheimer's disease is reported, with a drug called BIIB080 used on the microtubule-associated protein tau gene. Patients in a Phase 1 trial were found to have a greater than 50% reduction in levels of harmful tau protein after taking the drug.
• *Astronomers present an image, for the first time viewed together, of the shadow of the black hole in the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, and its related high-energy jet.
• *The first global assessment of glacier mass loss from satellite radar altimetry is published. It shows that glaciers lost 2,720 gigatonnes of ice, about 2% of their volume, between 2010 and 2020.
• – Progress in AI software:
• *ChatGPT is shown to outperform human doctors in responding to online medical questions when measured on quality and empathy by "a team of licensed health care professionals", albeit the chatbot may have previously been trained with these reddit question and answers threads.
• *Further LLM developments during what has been called an "AI boom" include: local or open source versions of LLaMA which was leaked in March, news outlets report on GPT4-based Auto-GPT that given natural language commands uses the Internet and other tools in attempts to understand and achieve its tasks with unclear or so-far little practicality, a systematic evaluation of answers from four "generative search engines" suggests their outputs "appear informative, but frequently contain unsupported statements and inaccurate citations", a multi-modal open source tool for understanding and generating speech, a data scientist argues that "researchers need to collaborate to develop open-source LLMs that are transparent" and independent, Stability AI launches an open source LLM.
• *On 12 April, researchers demonstrate an that can create of models of natural phenomena from knowledge axioms and experimental data, showing the software can rediscover using logical reasoning and few data points.
• : a review suggests vitamin D₃ may reduce cancer mortality by around 12%, review of experimental phototherapies against dementia cognitive decline, mice-tested L. reuteri''-and-tryptophan-diet for checkpoint inhibitor potentiation, doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis against STIs, an engineered probiotic against alcohol-induced damage, phase 2 trialed AXA1125 against long COVID fatigue, review finds cranberry products useful against UTIs in women , and macaques-tested low-intensity focus ultrasound delivery of AAV into brain regions against brain diseases. Progress in screening: an α-synuclein SAA against Parkinson's disease, and exogenously administered bioengineered sensors that amplify urinary cancer biomarkers for detection.
• : a laser-using drone-based methane plume localization method, approval of the first yeast-based cow-free dairy, a Tor browser-equivalent Web browser for privacy-protected browsing when using a VPN, a concentrated solar-to-hydrogen device approaching viability, a method for fat tissue cultured meat, flexible organic solar cells on balloons in the 35 km stratosphere.