A green week for Massachusetts
On my way to work this chili morning, I saw quite a few heating oil trucks in my neighborhood. It’s that time of year. So it was quite timely this week that the state legislature saw two bills introduced on renewable/alternative energy. One would require that at least 2 percent of diesel and heating oil used in the state come from “renewable biobased alternatives” by 2010, and 5 percent by 2013. This bill also called for a gas tax exemption for ethanol not from corn. The Globe said these measures would be the first of their kind in the US.

The other bill would mandate that the state obtain 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (eg solar, wind, biofuels) by 2020 (only 4 percent of our electricity comes from these sources now.) Several other measures were included in this bill, such as requiring that the state lowers its energy consumption by 10 percent by 2017.

Both of these bills were filed by leading state legislators along with Gov. Patrick so it’s expected that both will pass easily. Americans love burning fuel and I think it will require some real hard push and incentives to get us to conserve and switch energy sources, so we’ll see if these kinds of measures will be enough to wean us off of fossil fuels.

Biotech hiring
If you’re looking for a job in biotech in Boston, now’s the time. This story from the Boston Business Journal says that several smaller biotech companies are growing their staff by at least 30 percent: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (RNAi company), BIND Biosciences (mentioned in this NNB article), Sirtris Pharmaceuticals (drugs for age-related diseases) and others.

Health care in a virtual world
On Second Life, the 3D virtual world inhabited by ‘residents’, your avatar can hang out, buy things, and even attend scientific talks organized by Nature. Now you can participate in a clinical trial, run by Partners Healthcare, Boston’s biggest network of hospitals, according to Mass High Tech. The Center for Connected Health bought an island on SL for about $1000 and plans on doing a trial to see if patients can learn to reduce their stress through sessions in SL.

Discover magazine has named Harvard astronomer David Charbonneau Scientist of the Year for 2007, for his work discovering and learning about planets orbiting other sun-like stars. NNB ran a story about research on such exoplanets, which included some of Charbonneau’s work.