EH - 61 : Science

Mike Rozeff is a money guy - a professor of finance. But he seems to have his finger on the pulse of social issues. In this piece, he demonstrates the pseudoscience of social control on the backdrop of nano-technology. I enjoy Mike's spin!

Dr. Lenny's observations are in agreement, except for one minor detail. The structure of investment in corporations is bottom line oriented to the next quarter, so invest in the future is 2-5 years out, not 20 years out. As a young research scientist, i worked on applying the techniques that i understood to a NASA low tier water purification project. I worked with enzymes, trying to increase the turnover rate - how many molecules could be converted per unit time, at a given concentration. The technical science innovation was unique, but the PTB of the company claimed the patent, put my boss on it with them (a younger, hotshot with a chocolate nose and schmooze) and they lost a very productive scientist to 'why bother'. They got the next few grants and bought a few more years, but the project went to the shelf.

Now that i understand why to bother, basic science is not being done. Years of playing fast and loose with the facts and using knowledge to pidgeonhole information in profits have taken the game away from the curious. If it works, that's what you do. Modifications must be only to save costs. But - the people who actually understand how the natural systems work are not working the systems. They are off observing other systems. That's why when it all comes down, the frame within the frame will still be there. Form and substance are both necesssary for activity - today we play with the substances without form. When scarcity arrives (if it ever really does - i have some doubts), the substance will have absolute value and the form will increase the relative value.

One major problem is that when we left the path of the descriptive and headed onto the path of the theory, we stopped checking the premises and repeating the prior work efforts. You do not get anywhere in any field without spending the time working in that field. It works for agronomists, for laborers, for scientists and for children. The more time you spend searching for learning and understanding of how things work, the more you learn and understand the mechanisms, the forms and the substances that make the spacial coordinates align. Reactions need proximity and energy - luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Math is a tool that allows us to speak in both finance and chemistry. It is a foreign language that is much more than tallying up coins for change. Chemistry is to biology as math is to chemistry, a tool for understanding the form that things must take to be valuable. If we look at the products of our industry, focus on using wastes as raw materials and retool the process design, then there are significant economies of scale that can increase efficiency with less material use. But - to do this we have to understand molecular chemistry on the nano-tech level. take 10 to the power of 23 and divide by 10 to the power of 9. This gives 10 to the power of 2.5 or about 300. Nanoscale is still 300 times bigger than molecular scale (you see now that nano is not the proper descriptive term for where thay are working), so bulk materials will still be dominated by surface effects. Individual molecular design, the building of the 23 atom IBM sign, is electron microscopy stuff and not practical. The key is going to be the mixing parameters - how to efficiently pass molecules through each one of the micromanipulations necessary for the proper transformation. In other words - catalysis effects.

The adventure of a lifetime is to figure out how to do something that everybody wants to do and nobody can currently do. Like time travel, or beam me down scotty. Chemistry provides the basic substance building blocks, and the manipulation of form adds value. Come help me realize that value by developing a science network channel, one learning student at a time. See you at your classroom.