Twenty-first century, developments needed

As the result of many years of nuclear reactor research and development and weapons production in U.S. defense programs, a large number of sites were contarninated by radioactive materials. A thorough cleanup of this residue of the Cold War is expected to extend well into the twenty-first century and cost many billions of dollars. New technologies are needed to minimi2e the cost of the cleanup operation. 

The twenty-first century demands novel materials of the scientist. New instruments have made possible the field of nanotechnology, in which chemists study particles between 1 and 100 nm in diameter, intermediate between the atomic and the bulk levels of matter. Nanotechnology has the promise to provide new materials such as biosensors that monitor and even repair bodily processes, microscopic computers, artificial bone, and lightweight, remarkably strong materials. To conceive and develop such materials, scientists need a thorough knowledge of the elements and their compounds. 

Many academic texts are available to teach chemists the fundamental tools of their trade, but few books are designed to give future industrial research and development chemists the knowledge they need to contribute, with confidence and relevance, to the development of new environmentally benign chemical technology. This book aims to be a handbook for those chemists attempting to develop new processes and products for the twenty-first century, which meet the evermore stringent demands of a society that wants new products with improved performance, and with a lower financial and environmental price tag. 

Chang TT. 1999. The prospect of rice production increase. In Food Needs of the Developing World in the Early Twenty-first Century. Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Oxford University Press, Oxford. 

Along with this background, sociology and politics have made a number of advances in the scientific position that underlies the developments needed in the twenty-first century. These developments have been described above and are only briefly repeated here. 

Parallel to many technological developments, the twentieth century saw an evolution of medical ethics and medical legislation that went way beyond the content of the Hippocratic Oath. The need for all these considerations was precisely because the Hippocratic Oath provided no guidance to twentieth and early twenty-first century issues, such as the patient s rights, the ethics of experimentation, team care, and a medical researcher s or healthcare practitioner s societal or legal responsibilities. 

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