You may have missed some of the less celebrated, but still remarkable science and tech achievements of the past year.
Here are seven such stories to help you get caught up before we ring in 2023.
Superior solar cells
Solar cells absorb light and convert it into electricity — but not very efficiently. Silicon-based cells, the kind most commonly sold, are only about 22% efficient, and their theoretical limit has long been just 29%.
In 2022, a team of Swiss scientists broke that limit with two different solar cells, both combining silicon and the mineral perovskite — with one cell, they reached an efficiency of 30.93%, and with the other, they managed to achieve 31.25% efficiency.
New heart cells
Unlike our skin or livers, our hearts have no regenerative abilities — the heart cells we’re born with are the only ones we’ll ever have. During a heart attack, many of these cells die, leading to the formation of scar tissue that hinders heart function and increases the risk of heart failure.
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In 2022, researchers at King’s College London revealed that they are developing a treatment to reverse this damage, by prompting new heart cells to grow after a heart attack.
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A CRISPR cholesterol cure
While researchers work to undo the damage caused by heart attacks, Boston-based biotech company Verve Therapeutics is trying to prevent them with a treatment that went into human trials in 2022.
