X PRIZE Foundation

Waiting for Synthia - that has been the script for enthusiasts of synthetic life for the past two years, ever since genomics pioneer Craig Venter promised to unveil a living bacterial cell carrying a genome made from scratch in the lab. 2010 is the year for him to deliver. Synthia is the popular name for a species containing a lab-built set of genetic instructions that are close to the minimum necessary to support bacterial life - based on the DNA of a microbe called Mycoplasma genitalium. - X PRIZE Foundation

I never thought I would be a famous historian. This is largely because I'm not an academic or a biographer or particularly interested in history. I am, however, very interested in being famous. So when TIME didn't pick a Person of the Decade this year, I decided to do it myself. Not wanting to read a bunch of old newspapers, I sought advice from former TIME editor Henry Muller, who picked Mikhail Gorbachev as the 1980s Person of the Decade. "The process is pretty simple. Pretend to consult a lot of people, and then make the decision yourself," he told me. I did him one better. I pretended to pretend to consult a lot of people and made the decision myself. - X PRIZE Foundation