ISSUE TOPIC

JUBILEE - 100th issue of "Planet"

After more than seventeen years of work and continuous publishing, "Planeta" has reached its hundredth edition! In the stagnant market of the domestic press, this has happened to just a few local magazines, so judging by the persistence of work and regularity of publishing, it could be said for "Planeta" that it is not only an exception but also an indicator that there is always an audience in our environment for such topics, that there is an interest in reading, and that there are those who want exactly the content that "Planet" offers on its pages for so many years.
Discovering the secrets of this world, scientific research, discovering and applying new knowledge ... make up the variety of topics that the magazine was offering from the very beginning of its publication. Thus, "Planeta" ranked at the top of European editions of these thematic commitments, among the magazines that exist despite the capricious and sluggish market.
When "Planet" began - the first issue came out in June 2003 - there were just few of those who could say that it would last until today. Regardless of the topics - from always seductive researches and conquest of space, through achievements in physics and mathematics, through artificial intelligence and computer technology, to medicine and chemistry, anthropology, climatology and botany ... With its wide thematic scope, "Planet sought, ineach issue, to fulfill its basic intention: to interest readers in the essential issues of the origin, survival and duration of the world, and to contribute to young people opting for scientific professions as much as possible.
The published selection of parts of the texts published in earlier editions is a kind of time machine that goes into the past. The long road has been travelled, so let's briefly remind ourselves where we were and what we went through.

DISCOVERING MARS

Secrets of the Red Planet

The exploration of Mars with space probes that have successfully landed on its surface and sent images and scientific data about its surroundings lasts from the "Viking 1 and 2" probes, ie. over 45 years. The picture of Mars became more complete after each probe mission - but many questions remained about its past and planetary-physical evolution. In the early history of the solar system, was Mars warmer, with a much larger atmosphere and running water on the surface? Did life originate on it, even in the most primitive single-celled form, and did it perhaps survive to the present time?
Previous researches (some missions are still ongoing) has not provided a direct and unambiguous answer to these questions, so new space probes have been sent to the neighboring planet with the goal of at least getting closer to finding answers.
Approximately every 780 days, Earth and Mars, in their orbits around the Sun, find themselves on the same side and at the smallest distance from each other. A few months before there is the so-called "time window", the period that is most suitable for the launch of a spacecraft from Earth, which would reach Mars with the least energy consumption. In the summer of 2020, this time possibility was used and - three space probes were sent to this neighboring planet.
 

MEDICINE

Does COVID-19 leave consequences?
Lungs on the first line of defense

The COVID-19 infectious disease pandemic has been paralyzing life around the planet for more than a year. The new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes this disease, has so far infected more than 115 million people, with about 20 percent of patients requiring hospital treatment, and up to five percentrequiringsomekind of intensive care. In our country - where the death rate from COVID-19 is around one percent, and where extensive immunization of the population is underway - more than 450,000 infected people have been recorded so far.
Like its predecessors, SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, in 2003 and 2012, the new coronavirus proved to be particularly unpleasant and moody. Among other things, it leads to a systemic disease that attacks not only the respiratory tract (where this virus normally begins its aggression and later develops an infection), but almost all organic systems. Also, a large number of people who have had COVID-19 and, according to all results, have been cured of an acute illness, report a very slow recovery that takes weeks or months, with persistent post-COVID symptoms such as general weakness and dyspnea (difficulty breathing).Accordingly, the term "prolonged or long-term COVID" or "post-COVID syndrome" has been coined in the world, as an unusual long-term return to the previous psychophysical state, like some cases recorded after the SARS epidemic in Asia. However, not enough is known about the action of the new coronavirus, so numerous studies of the possible consequences of COVID-19 have yet to answer the question: is it a unique effect of SARS-CoV-2, or a general post-viral syndrome that is particularly noticeable because a large number of infected and sick people are recorded globally. The World Health Organization has announced that it will hold an international expert meeting with the aim of reaching an "agreed clinical description" of the condition called "long COVID". Pulmonologist and pneumo-phthisiologist Dr. Vukoica Karlicic, an expert at the Belgrade General Hospital BelMedic, talks about that.

MEDICINE

Cardiovascular system affected by new coronavirus

The ongoing pandemic has unequivocally shown that infection with a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19, can structurally and functionally affect almost all body organs. When it comes to the cardiovascular system, there is a frequent occurrence of heart damage, vascular dysfunction and thrombosis in patients around the world, even in those people who did not have or had mild symptoms in the initial stages of the disease. Then, after suffering from the disease COVID-19, convalescents began to appear more and more often, reporting persistent symptoms such as fatigue, chest pain, difficulty breathing, insomnia, and headaches.
Previous researches proved that any segment of the vascular system can be affected by COVID-19 infection in various ways, including violent immune responses and consequent local and systemic inflammatory reactions. With this in mind, the global health community is also addressing new pandemic issues: is the acute phase of COVID-19 a preparatory ground for potentially longer-lasting consequences for cardiovascular health and an increased risk of heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, myocardial damage or even sudden cardiac death, or accelerated atherosclerosis and thromboembolic disease? How to prevent such events? How to monitor the condition of people who have had COVID-19 and have symptoms of so-called "prolonged" COVID or post-COVID19 syndrome? Explanations are given by Bojan Ilisić, MD, PhD, Head of the BelMedic Center for Interventional Cardiology.

COSMONAUTICS

Satellites and sustainable development

The first UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, adopted the Declaration on Environment and Development, often abbreviated as the Rio Declaration, which consists of 27 principles aimed at establishing future sustainable development in the world. In addition, Agenda 21 has been adopted, a non-binding action plan for the UN and other international and regional organizations and individual governments around the world that can be implemented at the local, national and global levels.
In September 2000, the UN General Assembly (189 members) adopted the Millennium Declaration, which contained several political commitments expressed as the Millennium Development Goals. These 8 goals were focused on developing countries that were to be reached by 2015. As progress in meeting these goals has been uneven, the international community reconsidered them in 2015, and in September of the same year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled "Transforming our world: 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development".
 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The algorithm works like a human brain

The power of prediction is one of the basic qualities of intelligence. This is what separated man from animals, and brought him, step by step, out of the cave and led him to the digital age in which we live today. Human hunger for foresight was woven into the oldest rituals and was the impetus for the development of many civilizational achievements. Great prophecies, such as the one in Delphi, ruled over ordinary people but also king - but sciences like mathematics and astronomy developed as astrologers observed the sky and stars searching for the answers. Ever since the down of the Earth, we have been looking for ways to penetrate the future and make the right decisions. At the time of the information revolution, this need for prediction was translated into the development of artificial intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) serves to find meaning in a large amount of data about the phenomena that surround us - either because it would be too complicated, or too tiring or even completely impossible for us. It can, in a large number of examples, establish cause-and-effect relationships that are not obvious. There are three preconditions for its development: "smart" algorithms, great computing power to perform the necessary calculations and large amounts of data in digital form from which the algorithms will extract knowledge and translate it into answers.

IT

A new revolution
Back pocket computer

Practice has confirmed that, after major crises, new achievements are being made that raise the entire IT sector. Thus, for example, the economy was hit hard after the recession in 2008, but a wave of new startups emerged precisely from that financial crisis (Whatsup - 2009, Uber - 2009, Instagram - 2010, Pinterest - 2010).
We are now witnessing a crisis caused by the corona virus. However, there are two phenomena: the first is the growth of online sales in almost all segments - most exceeded sales planned for 2023, and the second is the emergence of a new chip and CPU recently announced by Apple.

CLIMATE

After 6500 years of cooling

In the past 150 years, global warming has annulled the global cooling that has occurred over the past six millennia, according to a large study published in the journal Nature Research's Scientific Data. It is a global mean surface temperature of the Holocene, a reconstructive approach consisting of several methods. Research shows that global cooling of millennial proportions began about 6,500,000 years ago when long-term global temperatures peaked and were about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer than in the mid-19th century. From that moment, the ever-faster emission of greenhouse gases has contributed to the overall warming, which is now stronger by an entire degree compared to the last century.
Four researchers from the School of Earth and its Sustainability at the University of Northern Arizona (USA) led this research, along with Professor Darrell Coffman, lead author, and Associate Professor Nicholas McKay, as well as assistants Cody Rutson and Michael Erb. The team worked in collaboration with scientists from research centers around the world to reconstruct the global average temperature during the current Holocene era, a period that occurred after the Ice Age and began approximately 12,000 years ago.