As is well known, websites have the advantage that their editors can check which articles are particularly popular with users – updated daily, monthly or even by the minute. As every year, MIT Technology Review checked the TR online archive between Christmas and New Year’s Eve and found the twelve most popular contributions of the year 2021 per month for you.
In the popularity ranking, Corona once again clearly shaped the mix of topics – but that is by far not the only important topic of this once again exceptional year.
We wish all readers a lot of fun reading our review of TR Online 2021. It has three parts: Today, Monday, we will show the most widely read January to April texts, tomorrow, Tuesday, the texts from May to August will continue and on Wednesday with the texts from September to December.
What to do with the children in the pandemic
When the first Corona lockdown began, the schools were also closed – and many families no longer knew what to do with their children while they were stressed by home office stress. At the same time, an entire generation lacked the socialization in a formative time. And yet: The measure seems to have worked as a method against the spread of the virus, reports TR editor Wolfgang Stieler with a view to the study situation from the end of 2020.
Researchers came to the conclusion that closing schools and universities and limiting meetings to a maximum of 10 people had the greatest effect on the spread of the virus. The closure of shops, restaurants and pubs that are not absolutely necessary, on the other hand, only had a medium-sized effect, and curfews only had a minor effect. However, the data were only examined for the first and not for the following waves. The TR text on the effectiveness of the still controversial school closings was the most widely read article in January 2021.
The pile of bare noses
Biology is really cute sometimes. The wombats of the bare-nosed genus, which are native to Eastern Australia, secrete excrement that is very different from the heaps of other animals. These are not round or sausage-shaped, but fall to the ground in cubes. The fascinating thing is that for a long time it was completely unclear how this came about. Because: The type of production of the Köttel not only appeared medically puzzling, there was also no recognizable evolutionary or other advantage.
But now biologists no longer have to have sleepless nights because of the legacies of the bare-nosed wombats. The mystery is solved, as the most-clicked TR article in February 2021 explains. Apparently, in the last section of the intestine, there are two stiffer regions opposite each other, viewed in the longitudinal direction. During the intestinal peristalsis, these press more inward and thus the material more and more flat on opposite sides, so to speak. And it obviously also has a point: The wombats mark the territory with their excrement. They often choose stones as their investment location, from which cube-shaped piles simply roll away less easily.
Fascination with mRNA technology
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic called for new vaccines – and they came onto the market extremely quickly and efficiently. The fact that mRNA technology was ready for the market at exactly the right time helped. The experts Thomas Ebensen and Kai Schulze, Senior Scientists at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig, are working on the development of new mechanisms of action for vaccines. In the interview they say what makes the mRNA vaccines so special.
Particularly fascinating: The mRNA vaccines combined the minimalist structure of subunit vaccines, which usually only code for components of a pathogen, with the promising T-cell induction capacity of live attenuated vaccines -based vaccines have the potential to efficiently fight future pandemic infectious diseases, “the researchers said. Most of the TR readers were interested in the conversation in March 2021.
AI creates dream people
It is well known that tastes are different. This is especially true when choosing a partner or what you personally find attractive in or about other people. Computer scientists have now developed an algorithm that uses a “Generative Adversarial Network” (GAN) to produce artificial faces – trained with a database of well-known celebrities who are considered pretty.
These creations were then presented to test persons, who were checked using brain waves to determine which faces they found particularly attractive. This information was then used “to triangulate the point in a 512-dimensional ‘face-space’ of the neural network that exactly corresponds to the greatest attractiveness for an individual participant,” said one of the researchers. This then resulted in the perfectly tailored artificial ideal of beauty. What that means, describes the most-clicked TR article in April 2021.
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