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<\/div>\n<\/div>Elephant seals carrying sensors will help researchers to gather ocean data as part of a massive mission to study Antarctica\u2019s Thwaites glacier.<\/span>Credit: Design Pics\/NGC<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In January, US and UK researchers will descend on Antarctica to begin their largest joint mission to the continent in more than 70 years. The aim of the five-year project is to understand whether the remote and seemingly unstable Thwaites Glacier will start to collapse in the next few decades. It includes efforts to study ocean conditions near the Florida-sized glacier using autonomous underwater vehicles and\u00a0sensors affixed to seals<\/a>. Later in 2019, European scientists plan to start drilling into the ice sheet on Antarctica\u2019s Little Dome C in a quest to recover a 1.5-million-year-old ice core. If they\u2019re successful, the core will yield the oldest pristine record of climate and atmospheric conditions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n China could emerge as the world\u2019s biggest spender on research and development, after adjusting for the purchasing power of its currency, once countries publish their 2018 spending data in late 2019. Outlays on science in China have accelerated since 2003, although the country still trails behind the United States on measures of research quality. Over in Europe, officials will try to agree on how to disburse a proposed \u20ac100 billion (US$110 billion) through the European Union\u2019s next research-funding programme,\u00a0Horizon Europe<\/a>, which begins in 2021. It\u2019s unclear how fully UK researchers will be able to participate, as\u00a0uncertainty over Brexit<\/a>\u00a0continues to plague the country.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More fossils illuminating the origins of ancient hominin species could emerge from islands in southeast Asia \u2014 a region of intense interest since archaeologists discovered a\u00a0human-like \u2018hobbit\u2019 species<\/a>\u00a0on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Ongoing digs could reveal more about the first human inhabitants of the Philippine island of Luzon, including whether their isolation led to a diminutive stature, similar to what seems to have occurred on Flores.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It could be a make-or-break year for plans to build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Physicists in Japan proposed hosting the roughly US$7-billion International Linear Collider (ILC) in 2012, after scientists at the LHC in Geneva, Switzerland, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. The ILC would study the Higgs in detail. But a\u00a02018 report commissioned by the Japanese government<\/a>\u00a0failed to support the project, citing its cost. Japan is the only country that has shown interest in hosting the ILC, and the government is expected to issue a statement on whether it will do so by 7 March.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Geneticists will continue to deal with the repercussions of 2018\u2019s claim by He Jiankui to have helped produce the world\u2019s first gene-edited babies. Researchers hope to confirm whether He, a genome-editing researcher at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, modified the genes of two embryos that produced twin girls. Following\u00a0an international outcry<\/a>, scientists will attempt to uncover any potential side effects of the process, and create a framework to ensure that any future efforts to edit heritable human DNA \u2014 such as that in eggs, sperm or embryos \u2014\u00a0happen in a responsible and regulated way<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Subscription journals could shift their business models to accommodate Plan S, the\u00a0effort to flip scholarly publications to a fully open-access model<\/a>. Publishers have a year before the scheme\u2019s backers will require the researchers they fund to immediately archive papers accepted for publication in free-to-access repositories \u2014 a practice that many journals currently forbid. The drive for open science also underpins a 2019 effort by funders and research organizations in the Netherlands that seeks to move away from using citations and impact factors to assess researchers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The World Health Organization expects to finish a major revision of its\u00a0Laboratory Biosafety Manual<\/i>\u00a0in mid-2019. The widely used guidelines outline best practices for the safe handling of pathogens such as Ebola. This is the manual\u2019s first overhaul since 2004. The revisions will increase the focus on creating site- and experiment-specific risk assessments, and on improving the management, practices and training of lab personnel. The rethink aims to discourage labs from approaching biosafety by rote, and encourage the\u00a0creation of more flexible and effective procedures<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As carbon emissions continue to rise, 2019 could see the first experiments that are explicitly aimed at understanding\u00a0how to artificially cool the planet using a practice called solar geoengineering<\/a>. Scientists behind the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) hope to spray 100-gram plumes of chalk-like particles into the stratosphere to observe how they disperse. Such particles could eventually cool the planet by reflecting some of the Sun\u2019s rays back into space. Geoengineering sceptics worry that the practice could have unintended consequences and distract from efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The US-led SCoPEx team is awaiting the go-ahead from an independent advisory committee.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Canada is set to harvest the results of a boom in marijuana research.<\/span>Credit: Carlos Osorio\/Reuters<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/p>\n Researchers in Canada should start to see the\u00a0first results from a flurry of studies<\/a>\u00a0into the cultivation and basic biology of cannabis. In October 2018, the country legalized the plant for all uses \u2014 the second nation in the world, after Uruguay, to do so \u2014 leading to funding windfalls for marijuana research from provincial and federal governments. By the end of 2019, researchers at the University of Guelph hope to launch Canada\u2019s first dedicated academic centre for cannabis research, which will study everything from the plant\u2019s genetics to its health benefits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The world\u2019s largest radio telescope \u2014\u00a0China\u2019s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 should be fully operational and available to researchers from September. Since the start of its commissioning phase in 2016, the 1.2-billion-yuan (US$170-million) mega-telescope has spotted more than 50 new pulsars: dense, rapidly spinning dead stars. It will soon hunt for the faint signals that emerge from phenomena such as\u00a0fast radio bursts<\/a>\u00a0and clouds of cosmic gas. Meanwhile, astronomers will decide whether to press ahead with building the\u00a0Thirty Meter Telescope<\/a>\u00a0on the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Kea. In 2018, the plans cleared the last of a long series of legal challenges lodged by locals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nature<\/span>\u00a0565<\/strong>, 13-14 (2018)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n (\uc6d0\ubb38: \uc5ec\uae30<\/a>\ub97c \ud074\ub9ad\ud558\uc138\uc694~)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/h3>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Polar projects<\/h5>\n
Big bucks<\/h5>\n
Human origins<\/h5>\n
Collider crunch<\/h5>\n
Gene-editing fallout<\/h5>\n
Planning for Plan S<\/h5>\n
Biosafety bible<\/h5>\n
Climate tinkering<\/h5>\n
![\"A](\"\/\/media.nature.com\/w800\/magazine-assets\/d41586-018-07847-3\/d41586-018-07847-3_16349196.jpg\")
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High hopes<\/h5>\n
Cosmic signals<\/h5>\n
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