page_title: 2018 in science
section_title: January
hierarchical_section_title: 2018 in science / Events / January
caption_attribution_description: English: CRISPR Cas9 system
context_page_description: A number of significant scientific events occurred in 2018.
context_section_description: 1 January – Researchers at Harvard, writing in Nature Nanotechnology, report the first single lens that can focus all colours of the rainbow in the same spot and in high resolution, previously only achievable with multiple lenses.
  2 January – Physicists at Cornell University report the creation of "muscle" for shape-changing, cell-sized robots.
  3 January
  Computer researchers report discovering two major security vulnerabilities, named "Meltdown" and "Spectre," in the microprocessors inside almost all computers in the world.
  Scientists in Rome unveil the first bionic hand with a sense of touch that can be worn outside a laboratory.
  4 January – MIT researchers devise a new method to create stronger and more resilient nanofibers.
  5 January – Researchers report images (including image-1) taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars showing curious rock shapes that may require further study in order to help better determine whether the shapes are biological or geological. Later, an astrobiologist made a similar claim based on a different image (image-2) taken by the Curiosity rover.
  8 January – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that 2017 was the costliest year on record for climate and weather-related disasters in the United States.
  9 January
  A pattern in exoplanets is discovered by a team of multinational researchers led by the Université de Montréal: Planets orbiting the same star tend to have similar sizes and regular spacings. This could imply that most planetary systems form differently from the Solar System.
  Analysis of the stone Hypatia shows it has a different origin than the planets and known asteroids. Parts of it could be older than the solar system.
  A new study by researchers at Stanford University indicates the genetic engineering method known as CRISPR may trigger an immune response in humans, thus rendering it potentially ineffective in them.
  10 January – Researchers at Imperial College London and King's College London publish a paper in the journal Scientific Reports about the development of a new 3D bioprinting technique, which allows the more accurate printing of soft tissue organs, such as lungs.
  11 January
  In a study published in the journal Cell, University of Pennsylvania researchers show a method through which the human innate immune system may possibly be trained to more efficiently respond to diseases and infections.
  A NASA experiment, Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology (SEXTANT), shows how spacecraft may possibly determine their location by focusing on millisecond pulsars in space.
  15 January
  Artificial intelligence programs developed by Microsoft and Alibaba achieve better average performance on a Stanford University reading and comprehension test than human beings.
  University of Washington scientists publish a report in the journal Nature Chemistry of the development of a new form of biomaterial based delivery system for therapeutic drugs, which only release their cargo under certain physiological conditions, thereby potentially reducing drug side-effects in patients.
  University of Pennsylvania announces in the United States National Library of Medicine human clinical trials, that will encompass the use of CRISPR technology to modify the T cells of patients with multiple myeloma, sarcoma and melanoma cancers, to allow the cells to more effectively combat the cancers, the first of their kind trials in the US.
  17 January – Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Peking University scientists, announce the creation of a memory storage device only one atomic layer thick; a so-called 'atomristor'.
  18 January
  NASA and NOAA report that 2017 was the hottest year on record globally without an El Niño, and among the top three hottest years overall.
  Researchers report developing a blood test (or liquid biopsy) that can detect eight common cancer tumors early. The new test, based on cancer-related DNA and proteins found in the blood, produced 70% positive results in the tumor-types studied in 1005 patients.
  Sharks are shown to move 
caption: 9 January: A potentially major setback for CRISPR is reported, as it is shown to trigger an immune response in many humans.
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