2017年，我们了解到哪些科学新知？

世界上每年都有多项科学新进展，很难讲哪一项是最重要的。但如果要在2017年的科学新知中选择一些亮点的话，《纽约时报》分享了以下这些令人难忘的事件和新发现。

The Great American Eclipse

横跨全美的大日食

We learned that nothing brings people together like the sun hiding behind the moon.

没有什么事情能像太阳躲在月亮后面那样，把人们聚集在一起。

On Aug 21, the country came to a pause as millions of Americans — even the president — put on eclipse glasses and stopped to take in the first eclipse to cross the United States since 1918. Its path across the United States was a scientific bonanza for astronomers who were able to more easily point advanced equipment at the sun.

8月21日，数百万美国人，甚至连总统都暂时放下眼前的事，带上日食眼镜，停下来观看自1918年以来首次横跨美国全境的日食。对于天文学家来说，这次日食是科学界的一大幸事，他们能更轻松地将先进设备对准太阳。

What Separates Wolves From Dogs

狼和狗有何不同？

We learned that you can never turn a wolf into a pet dog.

你永远都不能把一只狼变成宠物狗。

James Gorman, a Times reporter, accompanied scientists who are trying to understand the genes that distinguish dogs from wolves. Humans who raise wolf puppies must spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with them in order to socialize these puppies for scientific study. And while the pups may seem cute, they will grow to be predatory wolves, not humanity’s faithful companions. The researchers hope their work will help reveal the trigger that made some ancient wolves into the dogs we know today.

《纽约时报》记者詹姆斯•格尔曼追踪报道了一群科学家，他们试图找到将狼与狗区分开来的基因。为了进行科学研究，饲养小狼崽的人必须每周7天、每天24小时和它们在一起，使它们能够适应社会化，以便进行科学研究。尽管这些幼崽看起来很可爱，它们最终还是会成长为掠食性的狼，而不是人类的忠实伙伴。研究人员希望他们的工作将有助于揭示，究竟是什么因素在历史上让一部分狼演化成人类熟悉的狗。

Treating Birth Defects Before a Baby Is Born

在婴儿出生前治疗出生缺陷

We learned about fetal surgery’s potential to change lives.

对胎儿进行手术有可能改变他们的人生。

A Times reporter, Denise Grady, went inside an operating room to observe an experimental technique to treat severe spina bifida in a 24-week-old fetus. The doctors performing the surgery hope it will result in superior outcomes for children born with the disorder. Their first 28 surgeries have seen good results so far. Jan. 14 is the due date for the mother who was the subject of the article.

《纽约时报》记者丹尼斯•格莱迪进入一间手术室，观察一项对24周、患有先天性脊椎裂的胎儿进行治疗的实验性技术。医生希望通过手术缓解患病婴儿的症状。他们目前已进行了28例手术，效果良好。报道中的胎儿母亲的预产期为1月14日。

Farewell to Cassini

再见，卡西尼号

We learned about the power of human ingenuity in our solar system’s deep reaches.

抵达太阳系深处的人类智慧。

The Cassini spacecraft has been sending home images of Saturn, its rings and its moons since arriving at the gas giant in 2004. The mission ended in September with a planned fiery crash into Saturn’s atmosphere. While it studied the planet, Cassini explored moons — Titan and Enceladus — that could be home to extraterrestrial life. The probe also gave us great insight into our solar system, and will continue to do so for years as scientists pore over the data it collected.

自2004年抵达土星以来，卡西尼号宇宙飞船已经将土星、土星环及土星卫星的图片传送回地球。卡西尼号于9月完成使命，按计划撞向土星大气层中焚毁。卡西尼号在研究土星的同时，还探索了可能存在外星生命的土卫六和土卫二。它使人们更加深入地了解了太阳系，这种影响还将持续，科学家将继续对它收集的数据进行分析。

Beauty and Evolution

美与进化

We learned that animals may make choices based on aesthetics.

动物会根据美感做出选择。

Why does beauty exist? To answer this question, Richard O. Prum, an ornithologist, is working to revive an idea advanced by Charles Darwin: the attractiveness of an animal to another of its species isn’t only tied to fitness and good genes. Rather, animals — especially birds in Dr. Prum’s work — are making subjective decisions. He hopes that evolutionary biologists will stop “explaining away desire.”

美因何而存在？为了回答这个问题，鸟类学家理查德•O•普鲁姆正试图令达尔文的一种观点重新流行：同一个物种中，动物对其同类的吸引力，不仅仅与健康和良好的基因有关。动物，尤其是普鲁姆博士所研究的鸟类，会做出主观的决定。他希望进化生物学家不要再“为欲望辩解”了。

Saving Cancer Patients in Africa

拯救非洲癌症患者

We learned that there is new hope for Africans with treatable cancers.

对于可治疗的癌症，非洲人有了新的希望。

Major pharmaceutical companies, working with the American Cancer Society, will steeply discount cancer drugs for patients in African countries. Cancer kills 450,000 people across the continent each year, but many types here are among the most treatable: breast, cervical and prostate tumors.

大型制药公司正在与美国癌症协会合作，以大幅折扣价为非洲患者提供抗癌药物。在整个非洲大陆，每年有45万人死于癌症，但其中有很多种癌症是可以治疗的，比如乳腺癌、宫颈癌和前列腺癌等。

The Global Obesity Epidemic

全球性肥胖

We learned about the causes and consequences of rising obesity around the world.

全球肥胖率上升的前因后果。

Makers of processed food, soda and fast food see markets in the developing world as their greatest growth opportunities. At the same time, obesity rates and weight-related illnesses are on the rise in developing countries. An ongoing series of articles examined the interaction of these two trends, starting with cases in Brazil, Ghana and Colombia. Taken together, these stories reveal “a new global food order, and a new health crisis.”

加工食品、汽水和快餐商家将发展中国家市场视为他们最重要的发展机遇。与此同时，发展中国家的肥胖率以及与体重相关的疾病也在上升。一系列文章以巴西、加纳和哥伦比亚为例，研究了这两种趋势之间的相互作用。总的来说，这些故事揭示了“新的全球食品秩序和健康危机”。

Where Goods Made From Trafficked Wildlife Go

用走私野生动物制成的商品到哪里去了？

We learned about a warehouse that is like a mausoleum for endangered species.

一座陵墓般的濒危物种仓库。

When contraband goods made from prohibited wildlife are seized in the United States, they find their way to the National Wildlife Property Repository near Denver. Pictures taken by Tristan Spinski from inside the facility — shoes made of leopard skin, a lamp made with zebra hooves, a sea turtle’s skull, an elephant foot stool — “testify to the human appetite for other species,” Rachel Nuwer wrote for The Times in July.

当野生动物违禁走私商品在美国被查获时，它们会被送往丹佛附近的国家野生动物资源库。特里斯坦•斯宾斯基在这间资料库内拍到了以下物品的照片：用豹子的皮制成的鞋，用斑马蹄制成的灯，海龟头骨，大象脚凳——“人类对其他物种欲望的物证，”瑞秋•努尔在7月的报道中写道。

The Aftermath of Zika Virus

寨卡病毒的后果

We learned about the lingering toll of this frightening epidemic.

这场可怕疫情的后果持续不断。

Late last year, the World Health Organization declared that Zika virus was no longer a global emergency. But the disease’s effects on babies who may live for decades are only beginning to be understood. In northeastern Brazil, where links between the virus and birth defects like microcephaly were first detected, families struggle to give the best lives possible to stricken babies. Researchers hope to find clues about the virus’s effects on the fetus by studying pairs of twins in Brazil in which one was born with birth defects and the other was not.

去年年末，世界卫生组织宣布，寨卡病毒不再是全球紧急公共卫生事件。然而，人们才刚刚开始认识到这种病毒对婴儿及其未来几十年生活的影响。在巴西东北部，人们首次发现了病毒与小头畸形等出生缺陷之间的联系，家庭竭力为患病婴儿提供最好的生活。研究人员希望通过研究在巴西出生的一对双胞胎，来寻找病毒对胎儿影响的线索。这对双胞胎中，一个有出生缺陷，另一个没有。

Colliding Neutron Stars

中子星相撞

We learned that we could see a source of ripples in space-time.

我们可以看到时空涟漪的源头。

Astronomers confirmed a key part of Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 2016 when they announced that the LIGO array had detected gravitational waves released by the collision of two black holes. The researchers won a Nobel Prize for the discovery. But they’re not done: In October, scientists announced the finding of two dead stars colliding — not only hearing the ripples in space-time they made, but confirming the event visually with powerful telescopes. Collisions of neutron stars are believed to be the source of all heavy metals in the universe, including gold and silver, and the detection by LIGO helps verify accepted explanations of how the chemistry of the universe formed.

天文学家在2016年宣布，LIGO阵列检测到了两个黑洞碰撞所释放出来的引力波，证实了爱因斯坦广义相对论的关键部分。研究人员因这项发现而获得了诺贝尔物理学奖。但是研究人员的发现仍未结束：10月，科学家们监测到了两颗中子星的碰撞，不仅听到了碰撞造成的时空涟漪，而且还用性能强大的望远镜在光学上确认了这一事件。中子星的碰撞被认为是宇宙中所有重金属的来源，包括黄金和白银，LIGO的探测有助于验证有关宇宙化学形成的解释。