On the Horizon

Materials that in the past were never considered to pose a viable threat have been successfully utilized in numerous attacks. If explosive screening technology hopes to match the growing threats, it will have to expand into the realm of reactive chemicals, which were previously discounted as nonviable for illicit use. 

The list of precursors that can be utilized to produce improvised explosives is large. Luckily oxidizers efficacious for this purpose tend to fall into smaller groups or families. Thus the family of peroxides would constitute a logical next step for screening technologies to focus on. Chlorate, perchlorates, and permanganates would also need to be further addressed. 

Terrorists have shown an ability to learn, improvise, and adapt. What only 10 years ago would have been considered too improbable a threat to consider addressing has in many cases become almost routine. Technology and training must take their cue from this trend and attempt to counter the next wave of threats in a proactive fashion. The alternative is to allow the enemy to exploit a weakness that thoughtful anticipation might have been able to eliminate. 

Photograph courtesy of Robert Hopler, Powderman Consulting Inc. 

The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives. Wiley, New York, 1956. 

---

Using MRI as a substitute for X ray tomography IS only the first of what are many medical applica tions More he on the horizon If for example the rate of data acquisition could be increased then it would become possible to make the leap from the equivalent of still photographs to motion pictures One could watch the inside of the body as it works— see the heart beat see the lungs expand and con tract—rather than merely examine the structure of an organ... 

The mature Haber-Bosch technology is unlikely to change substantiaHy in the foreseeable future. The centers for commercial ammonia production may, however, relocate to sites where large quantities of natural gas are flared from cmde oil production, eg, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Relocation would not offset the problems for agriculture of high transportation and storage costs for ammonia production and distribution. Whereas the development of improved lower temperature and pressure catalysts is feasible, none is on the horizon as of this writing. 

AH discussion of the post-1965 era must begin with the Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 402A. The person responsible for this section was Dean William Prosser, who became the reporter for American Law Institute s Restatement (Second) of Torts at a time when change was on the horizon in the field of products HabiUty. His initiative in drafting Section 402A provided the courts with a ready-made formulation for the adoption of strict tort HabiUty. Entitled "Special Liabihty of Seller of Product for Physical Harm to the User or Consumer," Section 402A reads as follows ... 

In many places, the need for desalination is even more urgent than the production of food, which is limited by water shortages. These shortages exist both in the petroleum-rich countries and in many of the least-developed and poorest countries of the world. In the case of the former, the improved water supply obtained through desalination has already had stunning effects by contrast, Httie hope for progress is on the horizon for the poor countries. 

New Therapeutic Anticoagulant Agents. There ate some patients who cannot receive heparin or warfaria but who aeed anticoagulatioa. To deal with this aeed, appreciable iavestigatioa is ia progress to ideatify aew anticoagulants. Several such agents ate on the horizon. 

Future brakes must satisfy health standards and most vehicle manufacturers have moved toward removing all asbestos from brakes. Lighter weight rotors and caUpers based on aluminum-based metal-matrix materials are also on the horizon for lighter vehicles requiring a whole new family of compatible friction materials. 

The latest review of the status and prospects of polymer electronics (Samuel 2000), by a young physicist working in Durham University, England, goes at length into the possibilities on the horizon, including the use of copolymer chains with a series of blocks with distinct functions, and the possible use of dendrimer molecules... 

New raw materials will be the key to unlocking the opportunities above and to creating the possibility for new sets of adhesive properties. On the horizon are new types of moisture curable systems and a variety of novel block copolymers. The future may find entirely new mechanisms or morphologies for strength development on cooling. 

Chiomatograirilic methods often devdop in a cyclic manner The discovery of a new separation technique naturally stimulates interest concerning the method this attention wanes when another technique appears on the horizon and soon interest is directed at the new technique. There is then a confrontation between the methods and a critical comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the two m hods. This sometimes leads to a renaissance of the older method, which has been the subject of further development in the meantime. In this context discover-les made in connection with the modem technique are often used to advantage in / the older one... 

The year 1926 was an exciting one. Schrddinger, Heisenberg and Dirac, all working independently, solved the hydrogen atom problem. Schrddinger s treatment, which we refer to as wave mechanics, is the version that you will be fanuliar with. The only cloud on the horizon was summarized by Dirac, in his famous statement ... 

The most valuable attribute of the laboratories is the vast human and physical resources that can be called upon to solve national problems of great complexity and scope. However, without a national problem or crisis on the horizon, as was the case in the 1990s, the vast funding needed to tnaintain this national resource comes into question. And since the laboratories are all funded almost exclusively by federal dollars, the ultimate customer is the U.S. taxpayer, a taxpayer who asks What have I received for my investment Wliat can I hope for in the future ... 

New vehicles, propulsion systems, and fuels are on the horizon hybrid automobiles (combining an electric motor, batteries, and a gasoline or diesel engine), better electric cars, greater use of compressed natural gas (CNG) and propane for urban fleet vehi-... 

There are a few developments on the horizon that will increase our ability to date bones and teeth reliability. Both y- and a-spectrometric methods can measure Pa/ U and °Th/U and concordance between dates calculated using the two can provide a measure of reliability. However, the discordance between the two is not very sensitive to different uptake regimes, and it is difficult to resolve, for example, bones that have undergone EU from those that have undergone LU with the analytical errors commonly encountered in measurements by y- and a-spectrometry. On the other hand, it has been shown recently that TIMS can measure both isotopic ratios with a precision usually better than 1% (Edwards et al. 1997). TIMS measurements of Pa/ U and °Th/U have yet to be routinely applied to dating fossil remains, but in the future, concordance between the two decay series will provide further evidence of the validity of a particular uptake model to a particular sample. 

There are also other clouds on the horizon. In 1971 there were over 10,000 train accidents.9 Many of these involved hazardous chemicals. There were also similar accidents involving barges, pipelines, and trucks. As a result the federal govern-... 

Finally, paradigms frequently have the look of a sensible refuge in a chaotic sea of competing ideas. Monophyly is portrayed in precisely this way even if several alternative refuges are lurking on the horizon. For example, Carl Woese s alternative, which he calls the genetic annealing model (Woese,... 

Hopefully, just on the horizon is a thorough understanding of possible defect metastability. The results of a number of computational studies now support the notion that there may be one metastable configuration for H-acceptor pair (Si—AB) and perhaps two for H-donor pairs (X—AB and BC). This would be consistent with the experimental evidence for metastability from channeling and PAC studies for the acceptor complexes however, quantitative agreement may be lacking. 

Ivarie, R. 2006. Competitive bioreactor hens on the horizon. Trends in Biotechnology 24(3), 99-101. 

In advanced (phase III) stages of their clinical development, three SERMs are currently on the horizon bazedoxifene, lasofoxifene, and arzoxifene. What these new molecules can offer will be known shortly in a field - the selective regulation of hormone receptor - that has opened unsuspected perspectives for the better management of patients. 

If there is any technology on the horizon with the potential to replace the IC engine, iVs fuel cells. Almost every automaker has a fuel cell program underway, and over the years, fuel cells have shrunk to one-tenth their original size. Energy output has risen by a factor of five in this time period. 

In this new millennium, during which human activity will bring about unprecedented change in the natural world, ocean scientists are called upon to address a variety of important challenges. The National Research Council (1998) chose to highlight three related research areas in a report, Opportunities in Ocean Sciences Challenges on the Horizon. The focal areas selected were ... 

---