Knowledge into products, transformation

The purpose of this overview is to provide a broad picture of the commercializing of the products of the new chemical and biological technologies. It does so by relating enterprise-level developments—particularly expansion, diversification, and restructuring—as well as macroeconomic events and eras. In this way, the transformation of new scientific knowledge into prodncts that have so revolntionized daily life and work over the past century can be properly explained. 

The fundamental basis of nanosciences is the creation of nanoobjects as well as the study of their properties. Superimposed, moreover, is knowledge allowing the transformation of nanoobjects into material. This corresponds to the discovery and the development of specific assembly and organization methods. It is also necessary that these methods be able to allow the production of devices in the form of films, fibers, matrixes, composites or even porosity-controlled solids. The materials thus created must present precise and useable physical, mechanical or chemical properties. In the case of smart materials these properties must be organized each in relation to the others and coupled between them in an interactively controlled manner. 

In the environment, thorium and its compounds do not degrade or mineralize like many organic compounds, but instead speciate into different chemical compounds and form radioactive decay products. Analytical methods for the quantification of radioactive decay products, such as radium, radon, polonium and lead are available. However, the decay products of thorium are rarely analyzed in environmental samples. Since radon-220 (thoron, a decay product of thorium-232) is a gas, determination of thoron decay products in some environmental samples may be simpler, and their concentrations may be used as an indirect measure of the parent compound in the environment if a secular equilibrium is reached between thorium-232 and all its decay products. There are few analytical methods that will allow quantification of the speciation products formed as a result of environmental interactions of thorium (e.g., formation of complex). A knowledge of the environmental transformation processes of thorium and the compounds formed as a result is important in the understanding of their transport in environmental media. For example, in aquatic media, formation of soluble complexes will increase thorium mobility, whereas formation of insoluble species will enhance its incorporation into the sediment and limit its mobility. 

---