Manufacturing potential efficiency improvement

We conclude that treatment of crops with methanol has the potential to improve photosynthetic productivity under a variety of conditions, but it is economically favored under the very hi li t intensities typical of agricultural crops in the sun belt particularly for alternative crops. Methanol is the least expensive of industrially manufactured fixed-carbon nutrient sources for plants. As the mechanism of action of methanol on photosynthesis is elucidated, it is quite likely that other plant treatments will be designed for ever greater efficiencies of U t energy capture. Factoring in the low commodity cost of methanol, however, ensures its utilization in agriculture over a very long future. 

As the computational methods used in pharmaceutical development have improved, receptor binding analysis has led to many potential new drug candidates that are polycyclic. Such leads are often not pursued, however, because of the perception that even if it turned out to be active, an enantiomerically-pure polycyclic agent would be too expensive to manufacture. Taking this as a challenge, academic research groups continue to develop clever approaches for the efficient synthesis of complex polycarbocyclic target structures. Three recent approaches are outlined here. 

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