Breakthroughs In Chemistry: Predictions For The Next 25 Years (Part I)

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BREAKTHROUGHS IN CHEMISTRY: PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT 25 YEARS
ACS's Chemical & Engineering News Magazine Marks Its 75th Anniversary with a Look Ahead

WASHINGTON -- "Bionic" implants to monitor human health, the ultimate in miniaturization of electronic devices, and an energy-efficient car to wipe the haze from the world's cities are among the advances that chemists predict their discipline will achieve before 2023.

Fourteen experts in the field were assembled by the editors of Chemical & Engineering News to salute the magazine's 75th anniversary of publication. This weekly newsmagazine reaches all of the 155,000 chemists and chemical engineers of the nonprofit American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, as well as thousands of other professionals in science. Chemical & Engineering News will publish its diamond-jubilee issue on January 12, 1998.

The panel's predictions are the focus of one of the special issue's feature articles, entitled "Chemistry's Golden Age." Among them:

Biomaterials--materials science applied to medicine--will create artificial tissues to mimic skin, cartilage, and even nerves. The field will also develop customized drug-delivery systems, and perhaps even the first artificial but living cell.

Builders of all varieties will use "designer materials" to best fit form to function. For example, civil engineers constructing a bridge in an earthquake-prone area without accessible bedrock will be able to choose structural additives, specific for their purposes, from a library of materials.

The lessons of alternative medicine will lead to a breakthrough in pharmaceuticals. Rather than consisting of a single active compound, the new drugs will contain a complex that works together synergistically--like the compounds in many medicinal herbs do.

The internal-combustion engine will be a museum exhibit, while batteries and fuel cells will finally provide efficient, zero-emission transportation. With this advance, the primary privately owned culprits of urban smog and pollution will virtually disappear; industries, too, will reinvigorate solar and nuclear sources of energy as dwindling fossil resources are reserved increasingly to make materials.

The line between human and machine will blur, as tiny implants to monitor health integrate further with the body's chemistry. These bionic watchmen would act like the indicator lights on a car's dashboard, alerting their human hosts of chemical imbalances before medical problems occur.

Electronic engineers will work on a molecular, not a microscopic, scale. They will assemble devices molecule by molecule: the ultimate in both miniaturization and precision. Buckytubes, a new form of carbon, and other organic materials -- not traditional metals -- will be the keystone of this technology.

In a practical and fundamental fashion, brain-chemistry research will better elucidate memory, behavior, intelligence, and other neurological activities. For example, once scientists learn why organisms sleep, they may be able to develop compounds that serve the same need -- and thus effectively, if not literally, lengthen one's lifespan.

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Members of the panel making these predictions:

Ronald Breslow, chemistry professor, Columbia University (Moderator) John D. Baldeschwieler, chemistry professor, California Institute of Technology Allen J. Bard, chemistry professor, University of Texas, Austin Jacqueline K. Barton, chemistry professor, California Institute of Technology Theodore L. Brown, chemistry professor emeritus), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Barbara Imperiali, chemistry professor, California Institute of Technology Robert S. Langer, chemical engineering professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Koji Nakanishi, chemistry professor, Columbia University Daniel G. Nocera, chemistry professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Douglas Raber, director, Board on Chemical Sciences & Technology, National Research Council Stuart A. Rice, chemistry professor, University of Chicago Richard E. Smalley, chemistry and physics professor, Rice University

Also interviewed: Richard N. Zare, chairman of the National Science Board and chemistry professor,

Stanford University Stephen J. Lippard, chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemistry department

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For interviews with the panelists or more information, please call Jim Bohning, 202/872-6041. For a copy of the article, please call News Service, 202/872-4451.