22 | New Scientist | 21/28 December 2019

AlphaGo

The decade has been dominated

by advances in artificial intelligence,

but the pinnacle of machine

achievement was AlphaGo.

The software developed by

DeepMind beat leading player

Lee Sedol at the board game Go

in a stunning 4-1 match in 2016.

Layla’s gene therapy

In 2015, a 1-year-old girl received

a cancer treatment unlike any other.

Doctors at Great Ormond Street

Hospital in London gave baby

Layla immune cells from a donor

that they had genetically modified

to destroy the cells causing her

leukaemia, saving her life.

Review of the year

2019 through a lens

Our changing planet

This year was record-

breaking for all the

wrong reasons.

Hurricane Dorian struck

the Bahamas in August

and September, the most

intense tropical cyclone to

hit the country on record.

Astronaut Christina Koch

captured the storm from

aboard the International

Space Station (above).

In Brazil, deforestation

in the Amazon rainforest

reached its highest levels

for more than a decade

(left). Nearly 10,000

square kilometres of

Clockwise from

bottom left:

Photographer

Nelson Almeida

Agency AFP via

Getty Images

Photographer

William West

Agency AFP via

Getty Images

Photographer

Christina Koch

Agency JSC/

NASA

forest were lost between

August 2018 and July

2019, according to the

Brazilian space agency.

And Australia has had

its worst start to bush-fire

season for decades (top

left). In New South Wales,

more than 1.65 million

hectares have been

destroyed. In November,

the regional government

declared a state of

emergency. The fires

came after Australia

had its hottest summer

on record followed by

an unusually hot winter.

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