Editorial

Reflections on 2024: Lessons Learnt and Looking forward to 2025

Another year 2024 passed by with its wins and lessons, and we are starting a new year today with heart full of hope and mind full of optimism. Like every year, Science and I team keenly followed through various scientific and other endeavours that attracted worlds attention and like our readers we also had our inner circle debates and discussions on how these scientific advancements will touch our daily lives.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) captured a lot of the attention

AI has been in news for quite few years now but in 2024 we saw Noble prizes in Physics and Chemistry were awarded to AI heavy innovations thus showing the future where AI will be making more inroads in most new domains in medical and all other science as well. AI and its various models will be keeping us busy in coming times. AI is used in functional areas to handle repetitive tasks, to ask questions – today we in general work domain are already using AI to ask questions/ seek knowledge through prompting not like we sought information through “Google search” for years but like if we could ask questions to a mentor as we are getting answers in the form of a narrative and hence in a more complete format, this can be scaled up and decision making will speed up in many businesses. Would it get advanced enough to take actions by itself in the coming year is something to follow through. A new area of scientific expertise is coming up where the quantum computing, the hardware, software, networking principles, regulations and ethics for development, testing models, utilisation and implementation needs to be thought through.

New Mechanisms and pathways in healthcare

During and Post covid years of 2020 -2021, 2022 and 2023 were challenging years for health care and life sciences domain with decrease in investment, rising cost of living and settling back post covid era, also AI was seen to make its place in the drug discovery. In 2024 small molecules still remain the core to the modern medical sciences although the biologics are rising in its share and there is a steady growth in investment on research and development for these specifically for targeted therapies for rare disease pathways. in 2024 Artificial Intelligence assisted Drug Discovery (AIDD) continues to be an important area of development in health and medical sciences from identifying lead molecules to faster in-silico understanding structural and functional characteristics of these molecules with its environment with limited information available in first place. AIDD is going to be a focus area for this year too. Other important advancement was seen in the field of vaccine development, cancer treatments, GLP-1 drugs that are revolutionising obesity management, focus on treatment for rare diseases and complex diseases like Alzheimer’s. Focus on Womens health and issues is on rise but it still needs time to gain enough momentum funding to achieve health equity to prevent, detect and cure conditions that specifically affects women. In India specifically respiratory, GI, diabetes and heart and age related health issues will continue to rise due to climate issues, sedentary working population and food habits, and upwardly ageing population. Since covid -19 at least in certain pockets of India, mental health has become a point of discussion and that continued to be a point of discussion in 2024 as well. This is a positive trend, Gen Zs and Social media has contributed a lot to bring this positive attribute, discussion about mental health has been a taboo in India and hope we change this with time.

Climate Control

In India specifically due to high levels of air pollutions and rising water issues we will need constant focus on building awareness and developing solutions for climate issues. Respiratory issues and allergic reactions are very common from very early age in India, each winter the term AQI (Air quality Index) becomes a conversation started among Indians from various states and if these problems are not tackled now we might end up with larger problems. Important Indian cities like Delhi is infamous for its air quality and IT city Bangalore comes to news in Summers due to lack of domestic water. Super fast urbanisation of major Indian cities, mobility of population in these cities from other parts of the country, lack of resources to develop civil amenities and continuous construction leading to deforestation and reducing the water catchment low lands and lakes in these cities are some of the many deep rooted cause of these problems. A country who pioneers in space science does have the acumen to face this problem head on, it is just that needs a multilevel collaboration between scientific communities, governance bodies, corporate institutions, and NGOs to find a sustainable solutions.

Plastic pollution and waste management is another growing concerns, and each one of us are responsible for this, we all like to say ban plastic but we all love the convenience of tetra-packs, non-spilling plastic lunch boxes and carriers. Another unavoidable trend we are observing post pandemic is the increase in door to door delivery of anything and everything through online retail global giants like Amazon and equally popular Indian ones like Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto and many others. The convenience fee that we are giving is in the form of high amount plastic and paper packaging materials around all the vegetables, books and all other stuff and it has been already studied that India is the largest plastic polluter in current times. Currently other then ban on single use plastics, and adding some signs and instructions on plastic products and packaging (which keeps getting diluted on and off) there are no protocol for the plastic waste recycling leading to landfill and burning issues. Another area which can be converted to an opportunity through public private partnership and laying laws on packaging levels and making the companies responsible for the packaging process

Energy Efficiency

Entire world is working together on strengthening avenues for alternate energies in comparison to high dependency on fossil fuels, although fossil fuel still holds the major role as energy provider to the globe, a lot of advancement can be expected in alternative energy sector with more and more electric vehicles on global and Indian roads, higher inclusion of other alternative energy sources will continue to bring in more innovation opportunities and investments in the key six mass-manufactured clean energy technologies – solar PV, wind, electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, electrolysers and heat pumps across the world and India will add to it.

Science and I team is happy to bring their perspectives on various topics from last year and will continue to track the scientific endeavours in various fields and keep bringing personal stories of various individuals who are curious and constantly dwelling in the field of sciences or alternate sciences.

Happy reading and happy New year!

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Wrapping Up 2023 – Through Editors’ Eyes

As we wrap up 2023 and usher in 2024, editors at ‘Science and I’ would like to thank all our authors and readers. Our final story is all about what our editors’ takeaways are from different fields of science in 2023.

Perseverance, scale and impact on humanity

This year’s Nobel Prize laureate Katalin Kariko’s journey is a reminder of how perseverance finally pays in science. Doing science and securing funding for research has always been an arduous journey, if not a lonely one with rejections and disappointments galore. What makes Katalin’s story powerful is despite her not securing tenure at one of the famous universities, she believed on her research idea and pursued it initially as a start-up co-founder and later in an industry. Her research along with Nobel Prize co-awardee Dr Drew Weissman were the reason why mRNA-based vaccines became a reality when CoVID-19 struck. Together with the industrial collaboration their research idea was realized soon. BioNTech worked on the technology in the past decade and solved the possibility of delivering the vaccine to cells. Pfizer invested eventually and scaled up the technology for worldwide use. Yes, there are challenges that are yet to be solved with mRNA technology, although the technology saved lives when it mattered the most.

International focus and collaboration on climate change

The past few years were difficult for humanity with the ongoing pandemic, wars and natural disasters. India had its fair share of natural disasters to grapple with, namely the landslides and floods in Himalayan states, Assam and Chennai floods and the obnoxious high temperatures during summer.Climate change and activism has been going on for quite some time, although countries are aligning and collaborating on climate action in recent times. The G20 summit, COP23 were testaments that countries have opened to the reality and the existing challenges that climate change poses. This brings us to the next question, how and where science can help us in mitigating the effects of climate changes? As a novice observer of this field, we think the answer lies in collaboration across research, industry, policy, and citizens’ active participation. We are observing changes at a smaller, albeit meaningful scale. In some of the new residential constructions that came up in the last five years across India, electric charging points for vehicles are incorporated in the parking lots. Similarly, it’s not at all an anomaly to see public transport vehicles such as buses plying on electric energy across Pune. Similarly, the citizen drives to clean public spaces are well-documented. The challenges are far from over, in fact we may face more challenges in the coming times in adoption of green technologies across country. Although, science is optimistic, and so are supporters of science. Otherwise, how can you explain a renewable energy company stock listed only a few weeks back yielding 240% returns? Well, you can explain, as the listed company aims to give citizens loans to install solar panels in their homes and localities! Launching of E20 fuel (petrol blended with 20% bio-ethanol) this year, is another attempt to reduce our petrol consumption and CO2 footprint. The Indian Government initiation of the ‘National Green Hydrogen Mission’-making hydrogen from water is yet another example of strong focus on climate change.

Capturing Indian imagination and the moon ride

If you are an Indian or know an Indian, you would probably know their obsession with cricket and Bollywood! A recent obsession is added to the existing list – ISRO. It was an overwhelming moment for every Indian, sitting in front of their television or laptop or phone in the evening of 23^rd August, 2023. The kind of palpable excitement one only witnessed when Sachin Tendulkar or Virat Kohli (in recent times) inched towards their century. And then, there was the moment when we reached moon! People were boisterous with their memes and general happiness. Social media was flooded with congratulatory messages for people who made it possible, it was indeed a sight to behold. In the victory, we all were happy, although let us also take a moment to recollect 2019, when despite Chandrayaan-2 not making it to the moon, Indians supported ISRO and our scientists! For the team at ‘Science and I’, the last line summarizes our collective scientific perspective of 2023, let us encourage everyone to embrace the scientific and science-related failures, along with the successes that come along. Happy New Year to everyone reading ‘Science and I’.