The world's biggest science fair opens its doors

Today, Friday 18 February, the 177th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) opened its doors at the Convention Center in Washington D.C. The AAAS is the largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. Founded in 1848 in Philadelphia, the AAAS is dedicated to increasing the public's understanding of science—"a universal currency" as Alice Huang, the conference's president and distinguished virologist, said in her opening address.

 

This year's conference theme "Science without Borders" integrates interdisciplinary science ... from estimating the Earth's human carrying capacity and predicting the state of the oceans in 2050 to the digitalization of science. The 177th issue of the AAAS also celebrates the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie's Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity ... a discovery without which fusion energy and the ITER Project, exhibiting at AAAS, would not be possible.