The Early 21st Century

The pharmaceutical and biotech industries had now esponsed combinatorial chemistry for over a decade and poured billions of dollars into its implementation. Nevertheless, this neither severely reduced the timelines of drug discovery, the overall cost of the process, nor increased the rate of production of new chemical entities that met FDA approval. The reasons for this apparent failure are complex. First, combinatorial chemistry chiefly impacts the less expensive early stage of drug discovery, which is usually not the bottleneck. Combinatorial chemistry may do everything right in lead discovery and optimization, only to have a compound fail later for other reasons. 

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Arnold, D. B., Cutting Tools into the Early 21st. Century, 2 /. Int. Conf. on Cutting Tools, Gorham Advance Materials Inst., Gorham, ME (1996)... 

The interdependency of environmental processes is diverse and has been experimentally studied spatiotemporally, though only a small fraction of processes have been studied. Analysis of satellite data shows that in recent years natural processes have changed substantially due to urbanization. Indeed, cities are one of the most important and vivid phenomena of civilization. From 1970 to 2004, the size of world urban population increased from 35% to 50.1%. The contribution of developing countries to this increase was about 90%. On the whole, the level of urbanization in the early 21st century was North America 77.2%, Latin America 75.3%, Europe 74.8%, Oceania and Australia 70.2%, Africa 37.9%, and Asia 36.7%. In 2004, 3.3 billion people lived in cities. 

Callan JF, de Silva AP, Magria DC. Luminescent sensors and switches in the early 21st century. Tetrahedron 2005 61 8551-88. 

In the early 21st century, the problems of selenium in the environment have yet to be resolved. Some biologists warn that levels of the element permitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are still too high and pose a threat to birds, fish, and other organisms. Other biologists say the selenium standards are too severe, creating an undue burden on industries. 

To observers in the early 21st century, the mistake of the alchemists is immediately clear They did not follow the scientific method. In the scientific method, a new idea is accepted only temporarily, in the form of a hypothesis. It is then subjected to rigorous testing, in carefully controlled experiments. Only by surviving many such tests is a hypothesis elevated to become a scientific law. In addition to having explained the results of numerous experiments, a scientific law must be predictive failure to accurately predict the results of a new experiment is sufficient to invalidate a scientific law. Concepts or ideas that have earned the status of scientific laws by direct and repeated testing then can be applied with confidence in new environments. Had a proper set of tests been made in separate, independent experiments, the alchemists would have recognized that the properties of a material are, in fact, intrinsic, inherent characteristics of that material and cannot be separated from it. 

It is valid to ask what might be different about pollution in the early 21st century. One of the most notable issues in the last decade or so has been a rise in concern about fine particles (or aerosols) in the atmosphere. Some of this concern has come about because fine particles are now more noticeable because we have lessened the emission of many pollutant gases and smoke into the atmosphere. In some cases the concentrations of these particles have increased in urban air. There has also been a growing awareness that fine particles have a significant impact on health. 

Therefore, the petroleum refining industry faces a major challenge to meet the new stricter sulfur specifications and the need for fuel cell applications in the early 21st century when the quality of the crude oils continue to decline in terms of increased sulfur content and decreased API gravity. 

FIGURE 2.6 Effect of the sintering temperature of the SE matrix on the catalytic activity to the gas-phase decomposition reaction of NOj. (Reprinted from Zhuiykov, S. and Minra, N., Development of zirconia-based potentiometiic NOx sensors for antomotive and energy industries in the early 21st century What are the prospects for sensors Sensors and Actuators B Chem. 121 (2007) 639-651, with permission from Elsevier Science.)... 

The excellent stability of chlorofluorocarbons also is a problem. Their stability allows them to rise high into the earth s atmosphere and they are suspected to act as a catalyst in the destruction of ozone. For this reason, self-restrictions and bans have been placed on their use and, as a result, their production is being phased out by the early 21st century. 

The coke ovens available currently have various problems, e.g. restrictions on coal brand such that coal with a high coking property is essential, low productivity, intensive energy-consumption structure, environmental pollution, and so on. In the early 21st century many coke ovens are due for renewal, a difficult process with current oven systems. 

Due to the cancellation of aircraft orders the demand for titanium metal slowed down heavily during the early 21st century, and this led to plant closures and job redundancies worldwide (Pawlek 2000). 

Peregrine Phillips, a British vinegar merchant from England, develops the contact process for making sulfuric acid. In the early 21st century it is still the most common way to make sulfuric acid. 

Certainly one of the most serious threats to human health during the 21st century is the rapid development of resistance by bacteria to antibiotics. This has been exacerbated by careless use and overprescription of commercial antibiotics. If bacteria, the most abundant organisms on Earth, triumph in this race, the last half of the 20th century may seem to be merely a brief respite from epidemics such as plague and flu. The isolation by Selman A. Waxman of streptomycin from soil bacteria in 1944 was the start of decades of discoveries of new compounds from various species of soil bacteria collectively tevm d Actinomycetes. In the early 21st century... 

In the early 21st century there is grave concern over the possibility of a flu pandemic as widespread and dangerous as the flu pandemic that followed World War I. Bird flu, similar to the flu that crossed over into a contagious human flu, recently appeared in Southeast Asia and has, by 2006, been discovered throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. More than 200 humans have died from infection by diseased (domesticated) birds. The flu has not yet evolved into one capable of passing the infection between humans, but the concern is that it is only a matter of time before this happens. Antibiotics did not exist in 1918 to treat the secondary bacterial infections that are associated with flu. The situation... 

Luminescent sensors and switches in the early 21st century 05T8551. 

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