As half of 2009 has passed away and a lot has happened in scientific arena, that can influence us. In the year, many projects have been started and many are under way. Below are 8 big scientific stories of the year which can make favorable impression upon course of activities around the Globe.

Starts of project Nebula by NASA: In a recent US government decision, it has given nod to NASA to jump into cloud computing. In order to carry out things, smoothly, NASA has hired a few seasoned Internet entrepreneurs to proliferate NASA data into the cloud.

Attempt to save ozone layer: Researchers under Paul Newman, at Goddard Space Flight Center are working upon the models if chlorofluorocarbons levels are not controlled, what can happen to the Ozone layer by 2065 and how would it affect. Dr. Newman commented from his research and summed up consequences in following  comment, “If chlorofluorocarbons had not been regulated by the Montreal Protocol, two-thirds of the ozone layer would have been destroyed by the year 2065 with a consequent increase of surface ultraviolet radiation to extreme levels.”

This one is obvious: H1N1, the “Swine Flu”: HINI influenza virus which has been declared as pandemic by World Health Organization, finally, is very scary as it has some odd similarities with flu of 1918 that killed 40- 100 million people.    However, this one is weaker from other flu strains, but being widespread is declared as pandemic. And some scientist are advising to host “flu parties” where friends can be get infected from  a  weaker form of virus instead of getting sick from the more serious one.

Academic publishing to be slow down: This phenomenon is related to demise of newspapers as print media and is further shadowing academic publishing.

iPS cells via proteins: iPS, that is also understood as Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell can be injected into your body and can turn into another type of cell and can contribute to the growth of new organs. Contrary to earlier research, where scientist added genes into the genome of regular cells to convert them into regular cells, this time addition of merely four proteins worked effectively in favor of scientists.

Arrival of “Web Squared”: The Phrase “Web 2.0” as popularized by Tim O’ Reilly is getting to be over by time, has contributed heavily in formation of Social Media and concepts like Wikipedia, Facebook and Digg. Presently, it is not only popular for but is paying heavy role by government in decision making policy. The next step of online community is Web 3.0 or web squared, where everything, offline things would be connected online.Every equipment connected would be synced with sensory information, like location, health, or habits.

Google Waves: Released at Google I/O conference in June, Google wave can be the biggest changes of its time which can transform behavior of communicating through e-mails. However, it is to be operated within Gmail and outside developers would have to integrate with it.

Addition of seismic value to research papers: In a new and recent change it is decided that most of the research papers online happens to be static but soon in coming they all would go seismic as shown by David Shotten and colleagues from University of Oxford