Future Advances

The structural varieties of hemicelluloses offer a number of possibilities for specific chemical, physical, and enzymic modifications. Future advancements will be based on the synthesis of hemicellulose-based polymers with new functionalities and with a well-defined and preset primary structure both on the level of the repeating imit and the polymer chain. Hemicelluloses have also started to be attractive to synthetic polymer chemists as... 

Combining materials synthesis and materials processing. These areas have traditionally been considered separate research areas. Future advances in materials require a fusion of these topics in research and practice. 

Much of the technology used for manufacturing carbon fibers in the United States is licensed from Japanese companies. The high level of Japanese carbon-fiber technology suggests that Japanese companies may produce mat r of the expected future advances in these materials. 

We now return to the theme of Mn(II), though, in a brief departure from our main focus of Ln(III) materials, but which may point the way to future advances. 

Chapter 11 addresses national and personal security, both the role that the chemical sciences can play in dealing with terrorist threats and the other ways in which national and personal security depend on current and future advances. There are serious challenges in this area. How can we detect chemical or biological attacks How can we deal with them when they are detected How can we provide improved materials and weapons to our armed forces, and to our civilian police What can we contribute to increase the security of the average citizen We conclude that this is an area where the chemical sciences are particularly central and relevant. 

Infrastructure what changes in structure and support will be required to permit future advances in the chemical sciences ... 

The creation of nanoscale sandwiches of compound semiconductor heterostructures, with gradients of chemical composition that are precisely sculpted, could produce quantum wells with appropriate properties. One can eventually think of a combined device that incorporates logic, storage, and communication for computing—based on a combination of electronic, spintronic, photonic, and optical technologies. Precise production and integrated use of many different materials will be a hallmark of future advanced device technology. 

Infrastructure Identify infrastructure that will be required to allow the potential of future advances in the chemical sciences to be realized. Identify opportunities that exist to integrate research and teaching, broaden the participation of underrepresented groups, improve the infrastructure for research and education, and demonstrate the value of these activities to society. 

In the future, advances in neuroscience will further our understanding of how the abstract genetic intelligence becomes progressively and continually transformed into the hierarchically organized dynamic networks of information... 

Summarizing progress in the field thus far, the book describes current materials, future advances in materials, and significant technical problems that remain unresolved. The first three chapters explore materials for the electrochemical cell electrolytes, anodes, and cathodes. The next two chapters discuss interconnects and sealants, which are two supporting components of the fuel cell stack. The final chapter addresses the various issues involved in materials processing for SOFC applications, such as the microstructure of the component layers and the processing methods used to fabricate the microstructure. 

The history of drug development for schizophrenia reflects the value of serendipity and may point toward future advances. 

Another major, future advance in the quantum chemical computation of potential energy surfaces for reaction dynamics will be the ability to routinely compute the energies of molecular systems on the fly . The tedious and time-consuming process of fitting computed quantum chemical values to functional forms could be avoided if it were possible to compute the PES as needed during a classical trajectory or quantum dynamics calculation. For many chemical reactions, it should be practical in the near future to prudently select a sufficiently rapid and accurate electronic structure method to facilitate dynamics computations on the fly. 

The relatively small mass differences for most of the elements discussed in this volume requires very high-precision analytical methods, and these are reviewed in Chapter 4 by Albarede and Beard (2004), where it is shown that precisions of 0.05 to 0.2 per mil (%o) are attainable for many isotopic systems. Isotopic analysis may be done using a variety of mass spectrometers, including so-called gas source and solid source mass spectrometers (also referred to as isotope ratio and thermal ionization mass spectrometers, respectively), and, importantly, MC-ICP-MS. Future advancements in instrumentation will include improvement in in situ isotopic analyses using ion microprobes (secondary ion mass spectrometry). Even a small increase in precision is likely to be critical for isotopic analysis of the intermediate- to high-mass elements where, for example, an increase in precision from 0.2 to 0.05%o could result in an increase in signal to noise ratio from 10 to 40. 

To seek compounds with optimal characteristics for external and internal transfer on a rational basis requires an understanding of pesticide availance and how this is influenced by physico-chemical and biophysical properties to predict the most effective compounds then requires a knowledge of the relationship between these properties and molecular structure. This paper briefly reviews the considerable progress which has been made in these directions and the prospects for future advance. 

Future advances may be expected from the following facilities, either separately or in combination ... 

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