I have a love/hate relationship with business travel. On one hand, I enjoy learning about the latest technologies before anyone else. I also enjoy meeting the people who had previously only been voices on the phone or words in an email to me. But on the other, I can't stand how long it takes me to dig out by just missing a few days in the office.

For me, one of the more enjoyable parts about traveling is the trip itself. Granted, there haven't been many things to like about plane travel lately, but it does provide a few advantages. How many times in life can we truly disconnect…no email, no phone calls, no meetings to attend? A long plane ride, for me, represents a great chance to catch up on my reading.

On my most recent trip (to Orlando for Pittcon 2010), I read a profile piece on the Jackson Laboratory in Wired that left an impact. It discussed how the mice were bred to the point where specific traits can be ordered by researchers and why the mouse is such an important research tool. I also learned that some of the mice you have in your labs can trace their genealogy back almost 90 years. Pretty fascinating stuff, and a new perspective on an important research tool.

But travel is not all about the articles read while killing time in the airport or the great products I get to see introduced. There is a price to pay. As I write this, it's nearly three weeks after Pittcon, and I'm still digging out. My in box is bulging, and my to do list is longer than I'm comfortable with. It's around this time that I ask myself, is the travel worth it?

To me, it is. Catching up with old friends at a show or making new ones makes this job a little easier. There's also an excitement that comes with traveling to a trade show. Nothing beats seeing new technologies displayed before anyone else gets to see them (though you'll be seeing many of them in the pages of this issue). I know many of you also travel for business. Do you find it helpful to your work? Drop me a line, and let me know.

I'm a little late to the party, but Time magazine seems to be all over our industry lately. Coming back from LabAutomation 2010, one of the biggest impressions I was left with was the excitement of one vendor whose product photo accompanied the number four scientific discovery of 2009 (according to the editors of Time), "A Robot Performs Science."

Lab automation is nothing new to most researchers, but fully automated experiments are something else entirely. The brief story describes "Adam," a robotic system designed at Aberystwyth University in Wales. Adam and its counterpart "Eve" are projects of the Computational Biology research group at Aberystwyth University. The two so called Robot Scientists are parts of a multidisciplinary research project involving expertise from Computer Science and Microbiology (www.aber.ac.uk/en/cs/research/cb/projects/robotscientist/). Adam is used to investigate yeast functional genomics, while Eve is involved in drug screening. According to the article in Time, Adam became the first robotic system to make a novel scientific discovery with virtually no human intellectual input. Adam was the first to complete the cycle from hypothesis to experiment to reformulated hypothesis without human intervention.

Anyone who has had the chance to attend LabAutomation, and anyone working with these types of instruments, can certainly understand the excitement.

On a broader level, it's pretty cool to see bioscience receive mainstream attention, and I can see many benefits from having the general public gain a better understanding of the work you all are doing. It occurs to me that the more people who know how important your work is, the more funding opportunities you will find.

As I mentioned above, this attention is not a singular instance. The editors of Time chose bioscience related discoveries as five of its top ten scientific discoveries of 2009, and over the past six weeks, Time has run stories on aging, epigenetics, and even a recent study that appeared in Nature on gene therapy and color blindness. Even cooler to me, and a certain point of pride, is that we've covered all of these topics either online or in the pages of this magazine.

That provides a perfect transition to let you know of some recent changes at Bioscience Technology. By now, those of you who receive our eNewsletter, The Life Science Pulse, have probably noticed the increased frequency that it now shows up in your in box. The Pulse is now sent out Monday through Friday with special highlight topics every Wednesday.

Finally, we've extended the deadline for entries to the Bioscience Technology Researcher of the Year competition to April 16. Winners will now be announced in the June issue. This year's contest is judged by Mike May, PhD, Suzanne Tracy (Editor in Chief, Scientific Computing) and C. Shad Thaxton, PhD (2009 Bioscience Technology Researcher of the Year). Visit https://www.regonline.com/bioscience_technology_2010_researcher_of_the_year for your chance to win $2,500 and be the subject of the June cover story. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have on this process.

It’s that time of year again. It’s time for all of you to start thinking about your 2010 Bioscience Technology Researcher of the Year entries. The competition celebrates and rewards innovative, breakthrough, and benefit-driven research, along with the products used to achieve research success. The competition is open to researchers working in academic, government, institutional, or industry labs who have made a significant breakthrough in the past year.

Winners will be chosen by an independent panel of judges. Mike May, PhD, returns to help judge this year’s competition, and he is joined by last year's Bioscience Technology Researcher of the Year, C. Shad Thaxton, PhD, Northwestern University, and Suzanne Tracy, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific Computing.

Just like last year, we’re providing cash prizes of $2,500 for first place, $1,500 for second place, and $1,000 for third place. The first place winner will also be the subject of our May issue’s cover story. Second and third place winners will also be the subject of a brief profile, and honorable mentions will be named in the issue.

Just a brief overview of the last year's competition because I feel it may help those of you looking to enter this year's competition. The majority of entries came from academia, but biotech and pharma companies were also represented. I was excited to see a few international entries come in, and I hope that's a trend that continues in 2010.

I can tell you from experience, that the hardest part of this competition was deciding the winners. Every entry we received featured some pretty impressive research. Thaxton was named the 2009 Bioscience Technology Researcher of the year for his work in creating synthetic high density lipoproteins. Our second place winner, Carrolee Barlow, chief scientific officer, BrainCells, Inc., won for her work on neurogenesis as a target for small molecule therapies to treat various neurological conditions. Ian Macreadie, CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies, was a third place winner for developing an assay to screen for chemo preventative agents for Alzheimer's disease. In addition to the three winners, the judges and editors chose 12 entries as honorable mentions.

So get those entries in. We’ve changed the submission process for this year, and it should be even easier to enter. Just visit www.regonline.com/bioscience_technology_2010_researcher_of_the_year to start the process. And, as always, should you have any questions or concerns about this year’s competition, feel free to contact me at robert.fee@advantagemedia.com. Best of luck to all who enter.

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2009 will be remembered as a year of up and downs for science. We all, naturally, felt the effects of a down economy in the early part of the year. But based on all the vendors I’ve seen at trade shows in the second half of the year offering their own stimulus packages, things started looking up as we headed into 2010. I think it’s time for some renewed optimism.

Certainly, new stem cell regulations can be seen as a good thing. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama signed an order that expanded the use of stem cells for government-funded researchers. Combine this with the Obama administration’s emphasis on health care and sciences, and it looks like increased government support (read funding!) will continue in 2010.

H1N1, or swine flu, made a lot of headlines throughout the year. It was declared a pandemic early this past summer. By fall, vaccinations started rolling out—just in time for flu season. It’s still a scary bug and has infected many, but it seems the worst fears have not come true. As we head into winter and peak flu seasons, let’s hope it stays that way.

Bioscience Technology has seen its fair share of events in 2009 as well. We launched our Researcher of the Year competition in May, and awarded it to C. Shad Thaxton for his work in cardiovascular disease. In 2010, we’ll continue this award program. Instructions for entering will be posted shortly on our Web site and in the January issue of Bioscience Technology.

The most useful change to our readers is the newly redesigned Web site. Even if you’ve had the chance to check out the new site, believe me, you haven’t seen anything yet. We’ll soon add even more functionality into the site that will make it even easier to find the tools and technologies you need to accomplish your research goals. The online Buyers' Guide will be updated in 2010, and we’ll be adding tools to help you post your research, solicit comments, and interact with your peers. Some of this is already in place. If you get a chance, check out the community section on www.biosciencetechnology.com and post in our forums.

Keep me posted on how the new year is going for you and your research. I wish you all a happy and successful 2010.

It should come as no surprise to you all that your profession—science—is highly respected by the general public. I’m sure many of you expected this, but now there is validation in the form of a survey conducted by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

The survey, titled “Public Praise Science: Scientists Fault Public, Media,” asked 2,533 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and 2,001 adults in the general public their perceptions of science and scientists. The full study and analysis is available at http://people-press.org/report/528/

The first thing made crystal clear from the study is that scientists and researchers are well respected by the public—only those in the military and teachers ranked higher on a career perception question. But dig a little deeper and, as the title suggests, there is some disconnect between scientists and the general public. The public may respect science and scientists, but that respect is waning.

While 84% of study respondents believe that science has a mostly positive effect on society, only about one in four believe that the greatest achievements of the past 50 years are related to science, medicine, or technology. And only 17% think American scientists lead in innovation. Ten years ago, a similar study was conducted, and the results to these questions were much more favorable. What went wrong?

The first place to look, according to the scientists, is public knowledge. The biggest problem for science, according to 85% of them, is that the public does not know very much about science and expects results too often and too quickly. The survey included a general scientific quiz (which, I am proud to say, I have taken and scored a perfect 12 out of 12) given to the general public participant of the survey. If this were a quiz given in school, 45% of those taking it would have failed. I’ll be honest with you, the questions weren’t that hard, and I tend to agree that these results point to a lack of knowledge.

But where does most of the public get its knowledge of science? The media. Unfortunately, scientists don’t have a lot of faith in that either. News reports, 76% percent of them claim, fail to distinguish scientific findings that are well founded from those that aren't. Oversimplification is another problem. There's a fine line here though, and science-based stories that are too detailed and complicated wouldn't necessarily lead to greater knowledge.

Science can be an intimidating topic to non-scientists, and oversimplification is often necessary to get the point across. Swine Flu parties, for example, are making a lot of headlines as I write this, and many recent headlines read something along these lines: "Health Experts call Swine Flu Parties A Bad Idea." You think?

I've read a few of those stories, and they're all along the lines: of an expert says don't do this because it's dangerous, but doesn't clearly explain why. Hopefully that’s enough to deter anyone from attending a Swine Flu party.

At Bioscience Technology, we always, of course, want to hear what you think about us. Drop us a line at let us know.