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Science Magazine's Top Stories of 2007

Posted by Zonk on from the weighty-science dept.

ahab_2001 writes "The journal Science has put up its annual Breakthrough of the Year list. They're looking at the top-ten scientific accomplishments for 2007. Leading the list are studies of human genetic variation, and a flood of new discoveries that point toward a future of genomic medicine and even "personal genomics" — with all of the potential issues of ethics and privacy that entails. Runners-up include advances in cellular and structural biology, astrophysics, physics, immunology, synthetic chemistry, neuroscience, and computer science. In addition to the articles from the journal, there's a video on human genetic variation and a podcast as well." Some similarities here to Time magazine's list on the same subject.

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. They missed one by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    Missing option: the aperture labs handheld portal device.

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    liqbase :: faster than paper
  2. Sadly the funding didn't match the results by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 3, Informative

    Funding isn't even at the nominal rate of inflation (4 percent) - NIH/NIIT/NIA/etc is about 0.5 percent higher for 2008 than 2007. And with the cost of research materials being about 8 to 10 percent, this represents a substantial cut in US funding.

    But, it's a great time to be working on medical genetics as a bioinformatician.

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    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  3. perennial runner-up for Breakthrough of the Year by Paul+Pierce · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Global Warming? Why? I don't see how this could compete with the others on the list. I didn't see any real breakthrough here (maybe I missed it), but I wouldn't count Al Gore's movie such.

    The study of Global warming has been pretty steady over the past years. An Inconvenient Truth didn't make any new discoveries in the field that I know of. It looked more like a sob story to me, look more ice is melting, but don't you love nature like I do? Maybe we needed a movie to get people's attention, but it makes you feel like he is blaming YOU. If you are willing to dedicate your life to this noble cause, then don't take a private Jet to the showings.