Discover's scientist of the year

Discover magazine came out with their scientist of the year selection, with two runner-ups. While the scientists themselves are interesting, it's the fields that I'm most curious about. What's the sexiest science in 2007? Well the first scientist is Jay Keasling, working in, you guessed it, synthetic biology. He's famous for making a bug that spits out artemisin, a natural anti-malarial drug. He's now set his sights on making biofuel. Synthetic biology + biofuels is definitely the sexiest science right now. I must admit it wouldn't be my first thought to apply synthetic biology to producing fuel, it doesn't seem like a natural fit to me, and there is so much to figure out before making something as complex as a fuel. maybe it's just me.

The second runner up is John Donoghue, who works on brain/machine interface. Also sexy sexy science. He's working on wireless chips to implant in the brains of paraplegics to allow fine motor control. There has been a lot of progress lately in this field, with artificial retinas etc... A good choice.

The third runner up is Svante Pääbo, who wants to sequence the entire Neanderthal genome. To date, they've only managed 30Mb, still it's no small feat. However it's not the sexiest field, I mean 1999 called and they want their genome project back.

So whatever happened to stem cell biology, the former darling of hot science?

Will Bill Gates Fix Science?

• "Four reasons why academic research is broken", a great little article by Jason over at Unsought Input. He raises some great points regarding the current sad state of access to scientific information and how its hurts society. I think the article's right on the money. I especially like the thing about citations - the way journals cite literature is just like so 1940s.

• On a more optimistic note, the Gates Foundation, now backed by the fortunes of the world's richest two men (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) is changing the landscape of drug development with its mission of prioritizing humanitarian project funding. Even the big pharmas are starting to shake in their boots and will probably have to fall into line and also start developing AIDS drugs and vaccines for underprivileged majority who need them. Serves them right for being so damn greedy in the first place. One cool project that the Gates Foundation is helping to make happen is Jay Keasling's engineering of bacteria to synthesize cheap anti-malarials. Throwing $43 million at project such as this one, which will eventually make a curative dose of Artemisinin available for a quarter, you can see why big pharmas are sleeping with one eye open.

• Finally, just to prove that the bayblab is way ahead of mainstream science: a new study describing a method to distinguish organic from non-organic produce based on measurements of nitrogen isotope content.