Fine dust, plastic pollution top science news of 2018

By Baek Byung-yeul

Fine dust, plastic pollution and a successful flight test of the Nuri rocket engine have been chosen as top science news of 2018, a society representing Korea's scientists and engineers announced Wednesday.

The Korea Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST) has announced its annual top 10 science and technology news of the year since 2005. Among the top stories, the KOFST said people have shown interest in fine dust and plastic pollution, which deeply affect their everyday life.

For this year's top stories, the KOFST picked four science and technology news stories and six research achievement ones, and the fine dust issue topped the science sector,” said Kim Myung-ja, president of the KOFST, during a press conference at the KOFST headquarters in Yeoksam, southern Seoul.

Stating that the result shows more people are taking environmental issues seriously, Kim urged the government to raise priority on fine dust and plastic waste problems.

“Among the top 10 stories, six were from environment and energy sectors, showing increased social awareness toward these issues. There should be technical and political solutions to solve these issues,” Kim said.

To choose the most noticed news, the KOFST picked 422 candidate stories and its selection committee singled out 30 from them and conducted online voting on its webpage for seven days from Dec. 12 to 18. The KOFST said the top 10 news stories were finalized after weighing the opinions from judges at 60 percent and the online vote at 40 percent.

Besides the fine dust and plastic waste issues in the science and technology sector, successful flight test of space rocket engine Nuri and conflicts caused by the Moon Jae-in administration's anti-nuclear energy drive were chosen.

For research achievement, developing technology to produce eco-friendly plastic and an enzyme that increases the capability to decompose polyester were chosen as top stories. Such achievements were made by a research group led by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) professor Lee Sang-yup.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix technical development to produce the second generation 10-nano class DRAM chips ranked second. Commercializing 3D flexible semiconductor packaging and developing lithium-ion batteries that posses twice the energy density were third and fourth.

The KOFST said it has seen an increase in participation of online voting as 32.5 percent from a total of 7,851 voters were general people while the rest is from its members.