Bah! The holiday season is over and it's back to the lab this week. Back to my desk, whose half-filled week-old coffee mugs I mercifully managed to remember to rinse out on the last day of work in December. Back to writing a review article that requires me to struggle through epic treatises with titles like "Top-down systems biology integration of conditional prebiotic modulated transgenomic interactions in a humanized microbiome mouse model" and succinctly summarize them so that some other soul doesn't have to read the whole thing (it took me a solid ten minutes just to work my way through the title of that one, by the way.) And back to step 0 in the great hypothesis hunt.

With the prospect of all this AND 7:15am wake-up alarms looming before me, I figure I need something to look forward to. Thus, I give you Happy Nerd Year 2009: 5 Sciencey Things Nerd Girl Looks Forward to This Year in No Particular Order Whatsoever.

1.       The Return of the Large Hadron Collider

After a promising start on September 10th, everyone's favourite particle accelerator choked just nine days later due to an electrical fault. The repairs themselves shouldn't take long (assuming, of course, CERN's technicians don't operate like cable guys - "We'll be there to fix it sometime between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Or maybe Thursday. Or June."), but restarting the LHC requires cooling it to just  1.9°C  above absolute zero and that takes nearly two months.  When it finally gets up and running, though, we'll have so much to look forward to.  Yeah, the first particle collisions are going to be cool*, but I'm personally looking forward to seeing more of Dr. Brian Cox,  world's dreamiest pop star-turned-particle physicist/TV presenter, and for the resurgence of the black-hole nutbar crowd.**

*Cool, but uninformative. Assuming no more setbacks, it'll be at least 2010 until enough data has been produced to begin drawing conclusions about some of the processes being studied.

**In case they somehow find this blog and show up in the comments section, all of you need a crash course in Hawking Radiation. Go! Read now!  Learn the mathy bits too!

2.       Darwin Hits the Big 2-0-0

February 12, 2009, marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, whilst November 24 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Celebrate our descent from the apes and give thanks that natural selection left the poo-flinging behind by attending one of many worldwide Darwin Day events (http://www.darwinday.org/events/listing.php). If I had a couple thousand to blow on the occasion, I'd be on one of the Galapagos cruises. I don't, though, so I'll probably just bake up a monkey-shaped cake, drink a bunch of wine, and pick a fight on the internet with a Creationist.*

*If God "intelligently designed" everything, why did he make it so that rabbits have to eat their own poop in order to get all their nutrients (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit#Cecal_pellets)? Seriously. What did rabbits do to deserve that? Trashed Eden's vegetable garden?

3.       Science: The Obama Years

The announcement of U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama's science team left scientists the world over drooling with anticipation - his advisers include some seriously bright lights from a range of fields AND he's appointed a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and alternative energy advocate to lead the Department of Energy (compare this to Bush's two DOE Secretaries - a law school prof and a venture capitalist). Add to this Obama's statement that "promoting science isn't just about providing resources - it's about protecting free and open inquiry," and it looks as if the coming years will mark a sea change from the Bush administration's mangling of science funding and policy - a change whose effects will be felt worldwide. To celebrate the end of science under Bush, I will again bake a monkey-shaped cake.

4.       Galileo, Galileo! (Galileo figaro magnifico!)

Darwin's not the only deceased bearded thinker* whose contributions to science are being honoured this year. My stepbrother the rocket scientist** would take back my Christmas present if I failed to note that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (http://www.astronomy2009.org/), celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo making the first astronomical observations with a telescope (and the 401st anniversary of his using the telescope to watch his neighbour undress). Several events for the general public are planned, including global star counts to raise awareness of light pollution, a 100-hour "astronomathon" and the planned distribution of millions of "Galileoscopes" - small, easy-to-assemble telescopes that will allow people everywhere to follow in Galileo's footsteps and stealthily watch their neighbours  from afar.

*Perhaps 2009's focus on the accomplishments of history's most hirsute scientists will lead to a renaissance in Great Beards of Science.  I will note this as item 4b on 5 Sciencey Things Nerd Girl Looks Forward to This Year in No Particular Order Whatsoever.

**Satellite scientist, actually, but still - stuff he makes IS IN SPACE. That's rocket science to me.

5.       2009: The Year of Science

As if celebrating Great Bearded Men of Science wasn't enough, another organization decided to celebrate Everything in All of Sciencedom, Bearded or Otherwise, by declaring 2009 to be the Year of Science (http://www.yearofscience2009.org). Each month has a theme ("Oceans & Water!", "Physics & Technology!", "Spider Solitaire!") and a number of activities based around the theme. This month it's all the about "The Process & Nature of Science" and evidently the organizers have figured out one of the defining motivators of scientific academia (free pizza), as the month's activity is a scientific pizza contest (http://www.yearofscience2009.org/themes_process_nature/fun-zone/). I encourage you all to participate, but don't steal my idea - I'm off to bake my Great Beards of Science Pizza right now.*

*Hair donations gratefully accepted.