Future remote research

It is difficult to envision that balloon-borne techniques will be able to satisfy the demand for more complex and frequent measurements. Therefore it is critical for maximizing the scientific return of balloon-borne flights to include simultaneous measurements of the right mix of species and photolysis rates. In the absence of frequent balloon-borne measurements it is nonetheless very gratifying to have achieved the coalescence of results by independent techniques as a zero-order substitute for intercomparisons. A possible direction for future stratospheric research with a new platform, remotely piloted aircraft, that alleviates some disadvantages of balloon-borne platforms is discussed in the last section of this chapter. 

There are no major commercial uses for curium because of the extremely small amount produced. In the future, the most important use of curium may be to provide the power for small, compact thermoelectric sources of electricity, by generating heat through the nuclear decay of radioisotope curium-241. These small, efficient power sources can be used in individual homes or remote regions to provide electricity to areas that cannot secure it from other sources. It could also be used as a source of electricity in spacecraft. However, today curium s main use is for basic scientific laboratory research. 

Although the above discussion might indicate that the attachment of amino acids to food proteins under commercial conditions is only remotely possible in the foreseeable future, many of the questions raised can be answered through carefully planned research. Some of the modifications may be useful, if not alone, perhaps in conjunction with enzymological methods. Therefore we encourage continued research in this potentially important area. 

Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dreams of science fiction but the remote possibility must always be considered that the energy once liberated will be completely uncontrollable and by its intense violence detonate all neighboring substances. In this event the whole of the hydrogen on the earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star. 

Third, advances in biochemistry are enabling researchers to tackle some of the most exciting questions in biology and medicine. How does a fertilized egg give rise to cells as different as those in muscle, brain, and liver How do the senses work What are the molecular bases for mental disorders such as Alzheimer disease and schizophrenia How does the immune system distinguish between self and nonself What are the molecular mechanisms of short-term and long-term memory The answers to such questions, which once seemed remote, have been partly uncovered and are likely to be more thoroughly revealed in the near future. 

Despite all these impressive progress, we are still too far from the ultimate theory of everything. I listed some obvious avenues for future research in particle physics and cosmology. If I am allowed to say my personal prejudice, I would say that the flavor problem is beyond our reach for years to come, but our understanding of the law of force may further be advanced by a new discovery of violation of empirical conservation laws. The Majorana nature of neutrino masses and proton decay are just manifestation of violation of lepton and baryon numbers, and in my view there is no fundamental obstacle against these being discovered in future, however remote it might be. 

Since the 1960s natural surface films ( sea slicks ), that tend to exhibit thicknesses of one molecule only, have been in the focus of interdisciplinary research that required input by various disciplines such as oceanography, meteorology, physics and chemistry. Albeit the thickness of such monomolecular surface films is small compared to that of mineral oil films their wave damping capability and, thus, their influence on air-sea interactions is comparable. Consequently, they are still often mixed up with mineral oil films ( oil spills ), particularly in the Same of remote sensing applications. It is the aim of the present book to provide a scientific basis that allows avoiding such misinterpretation in the future. 

Of course, we recognize that progress in health is utterly dependent upon science and that ultimately all science, at least all natural science, springs from a common base. No research is so fundamental that we can say that it does not have and never will have relevance to health. Nevertheless, we must recognize a level sufficiently remote from biomedical research that its present contributions can have little if any import for the foreseeable future. For example, current work in subatomic particle physics is unlikely to have an early influence, despite the tremendous importance in biomedical research of the atomic physics of a generation ago. Few people would expect the NIH to support work in present-day atomic physics. 

Recent developments are related to both batch and continuous processes, including environmental monitoring (see Chapter 18). Applications in relatively inaccessible zones such as explosive, nuclear or high-temperature containments require new specific components and a control organization, revealing the considerable repercussions on the structure of future plants. This section attempts to summarize the most significant research of the past few years on remote control of chemical processes. The new concepts, multi-point measurement techniques, associated components, and aspects of real-time measurement techniques are also examined. 

---