These Are The Scientific Innovations Likely To Win This Year's Nobel Prizes

Thomson Reuters just released their annual forecast of potential winners of this year's Nobel Prize in each category: chemistry, physics, medicine, and economics.

They make their predictions based on the number of citations and references the scientific community has made to the contenders' research and publications. Although not a perfect measure of prediction, Thomson Reuters has managed to successfully predict 35 Nobel winners since 2002, when they developed these forecasts.

Some scientists on this year's docket include the scientists James F. Scott at the University of Cambridge who is up for the Physics Nobel Prize for developing a type of technological memory-device used in PlayStation 2 consoles.

Ching Tang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Steven Van Slyke of Silicon Valley start-up Kateeva Inc, are up for the Chemistry Nobel Prize for their discovery of organic light-emitting diodes that illuminate the screens on your smartphone and tablet.

A contender for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is David Julius at the University of California, San Francisco, for discovering the cellular receptors that trigger the pain we feel when eating hot-peppers and other spicy foods that contain the molecule capsaicin.

Mark S. Granovetter at Stanford University is more of a sociologist than an economist, but his innovative work in economic sociology has landed him on Thomson Reuters' list of contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics. He has criticized some of the assumptions in today's economic research like the thought that social norms and values dominate the market and has emphasized that trust is essential in many transactions.