A New Year is a time of anticipation – whether you're thinking about a career change, working up to your first half marathon, or finally reading that novel that's been on your nightstand for six months.

As we look ahead to 2015, we thought we'd call up some of our favorite past guests and see what they are looking forward to this year.

•  Yahoo! Tech columnist David Pogue thinks personal health tracking is going to be big in the coming months:

I don't just mean the FitBits that count steps. I'm talking about the emergence of far more sophisticated and capable wearable gadgets that keep track of your heart rate, your blood oxygen, your skin temperature… They're getting smaller, they're getting more comfortable, and I think this could be the year that they really become a thing and really become useful and more than just glorified pedometers.

•  Ashley Merryman, co-author of Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, is obsessed with new research on challenge and threat. Studies have shown that if you tell yourself something is a fun challenge, instead of a stressful, threatening situation, you can actually change your physical response to the situation. And she's applying that research in her own life:

I'm not waiting for New Year's. The one thing that's going to be important in the next year or two of my life is that idea of asking myself when I'm stressed: Is this a challenge, or a threat? If I have the skills to succeed, then what am I nervous about? It's an opportunity for growth, to show people what I can do. Constantly reminding yourself it's a challenge and it's an opportunity for growth – that's when you do get excited.

•  Paula Hammond, MIT professor and nano tech researcher is excited about the current explosion in gene editing technologies:

There has been, over the past couple of years, extreme growth in this area of gene editing, which essentially uses natural genetic components that are in the body already, but that can be designed to remove a part of a gene. I think there's some challenges and some barriers, but in 2015 we might be able to ask: 'Can we use gene editing to address or modify disease, either by changing or modifying genes that are native to the body; or by changing genes of some of the parasites in our body, like bacteria, that can then enable or address disease in some way.'