In the Swiss winter resort of Davos last week, there appeared to be two groups of delegates at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Europe and the rest of world with two distinct outlooks: optimism in most of the world and pessimism from European attendees.  The picture might have been different if the delegates had known that the next news about the world economy was likely to be less than optimistic, but again much of this week’s bad news has been from Europe.

Despite the hand wringing about the economic outlook, there was some ‘good news’ in terms of health initiatives, from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation amongst others, and there was still room for optimism regarding the outlook for feeding the world's ever-growing population.

Bill Gates reconfirmed the foundation’s commitment to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, announcing that the foundation would donate $750m to the fund. ‘By supporting the Global Fund, we can change the fortunes of the poorest countries in the world, ‘he said. ‘I can’t think of more important work.’

But Gates was also encouraged that the issue of food security is back on the G20 agenda. He also believes that the challenge of feeding the world can be met through innovations in crop science, access to information for farmers and new models of cooperation between governments and provate enterprises. ‘I believe the opportunity to double or even triple [food] productivity is there,’ he said.

A co-leader of discussions on agricultural development, Sandra Peterson, ceo of Bayer CropScience, said that the private sector is committed to playing a strong role in transforming agriculture to address urgent global needs. ‘Through our work with stakeholders across the food chain, we are uniquely positioned to understand evolving trends and challenges, to connect the dots and drive new solutions....We need to connect the dots ... from seed to shelf.’

The discussions were held as part of the WEF initiative New Vision for Agriculture, which was launched in 2011 and aims to foster the sustainable intensification of agriculture through a novel partnership model involving public and private collaborations. Six countries have already initiated action plans for such collaborations: Tanzania, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and India.

It has been said many times before that chemical and their related industry companies are the key to solving the major challenges that we all face, whether it be alternative energy or new ways of growing food. But just because it has been said before doesn’t mean that the industry and chemists themselves shouldn’t keep reminding everyone they meet that chemistry is the enabling science that can address these challenges.

Neil Eisberg - Editor

More than a billion people in Asia welcomed the Year of the Dragon on Monday 23 January. The fifth sign of the zodiac, the dragon is regarded as a symbol of strength, power and good luck. Though, arguably, China has had more than its fair share of luck already. After all, the world’s fastest growing economy has seen eye-watering average growth rates of 10%/year over the past three decades. 

But with the threat of world recession a distinct possibility, as both this week’s International Monetary Fund and the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report in January make clear, then we should all be hopeful that this year’s dragon makes good on its promises. As the largest exporter and second largest importer of goods in the world, China’s economic health and well-being also plays a major part in determining our own economic prosperity around the rest of the world.

Signs thus far, however, are not encouraging. China’s long housing boom is clearly faltering which could portend a damaging slowdown in the construction and related sectors. ‘If they build the same amount (in 2012) as they did last year, which is still a phenomenal rate of construction, then it would take GDP down to 6.6%,’ Patrick Chovanec, an economist at Tsinghua University’s school of economics and management in Beijing, is quoted as saying in an online article for The Economist.

This would trigger a dramatic slowdown from the 9.2% growth rate for China in 2011, according to a report by news agency Reuters – adding that this is without factoring in the effects of falling demand for building materials or a rise in banks’ bad debts.

Looking on the positive side, however, Chinese consumers’ appetite for electronic gadgets shows no signs of diminishing with a report by Bloomberg Businessweek this week that Apple seriously underestimated the ‘staggering’ demand for its latest iPhone4 model. Crowds of disappointed people were reported to have pelted the Apple store in Beijing with eggs in frustration. Meanwhile, a slowdown in the economy – and hence production - could also be good news for the environment since China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Indeed, one newspaper reports that closure of Chinese factories this week to mark the new year celebrations is expected to result in a 40% drop in electricity consumption.

Cath O’Driscoll, Deputy editor

One is tempted to say: here we are again – as we seem to have been so many times in recent years. UK science is under threat once again, according to a letter from nearly 80 prominent UK scientists including Nobel Laureate Sir Harry Kroto, published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper last week.

The reason? Yet another threat to the scientific base of the UK; this time from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). 

These eminent letter writers claimed that the EPSRC is making ‘disastrous errors in its operations’ and making changes that are ‘damaging scientific discovery in Britain’. The signatories believe it has ‘exceeded its remit so spectacularly that it has lost the confidence of a significant proportion of the scientific community’.

And what has the EPSRC actually done to incur this wrath? According to the letter: ‘The council’s pronouncements that research PhD students will no longer be funded through standard grants; that fellowships will only be open in areas chosen by unqualified EPSRC officials; that grant applications must present an assessment of the “impact” or their work over 10 to 50 years; and that the EPSRC will decide without consulting researchers what level of support is available for every subject, are all seriously flawed.’

Just to take one of these pronouncements – the requirement for an assessment of the impact of the research – would be laughable if it were not so serious. Scientific research is notorious for ending up with a totally different result from that originally envisaged and, particularly in the life sciences, what looked like promising research can end in spectacular failure. 

One is reminded of the old adage about advertising: only a very small proportion of the money spent on advertising is successful - the big problem is working out which proportion is going to be successful. Some of the greatest scientific successes have come from ‘blue sky’ research, research that was carried out for its own sake rather than a specific end in view. 

And to try to look up to 50 years ahead is ludicrous – even in the chemical industry where production facilities are built to run for up to 20-30 years, new process development can dramatically alter the capacity or efficiency of a plant within a few years of coming onstream.

In the UK’s case, another problem has been the inability to turn ground-breaking research with a recognised commercial application into real commercial success, something that governments have been trying to address for a number of years with only some measure of success.

Indeed the current UK government has said that it recognises this problem and is acting to overcome this problem. And in addition David Willetts, the universities and science minister, has pledged to make the UK ‘the best place in the world to do science’. The signatories to the Daily Telegraph letter point out that this will be difficult to achieve under the current EPSRC regime and call on the minister to overrule or replace the council.

As I said in last week’s blog, one step forward and two steps back – UK science staggers from crisis to crisis yet still manages to achieve world-class research. Just think what could be achieved if so much time wasn’t wasted in all these diversions?

Neil Eisberg - Editor

Just when we can see an upturn in students attracted to take undergraduate courses in chemistry and chemical engineering, and UK universities dusting off their chemistry departments to meet the increased demand, the UK government has set the whole process back with proposals to scrap mandatory work experience for GCSE pupils. 

The UK Department for Education is currently consulting on plans to remove the statutory requirement for Key Stage 4 pupils, 14-16 year-olds, to complete at least two weeks of work experience. And this comes at a time when the UK government is committed to re-balancing the UK economy back towards the manufacturing sector.

The move has been criticised by the Forum of Private Business, the not-for-profit organisation that represents thousands of small UK businesses, the very sector that has proved to be the best developer of new job opportunities in the private sector – another target for the UK government.

The Forum believes that the government should be looking at expanding work experience placements to further ready young people on the brink of starting their working lives, not cutting it back. After all, the chemical sector doesn’t just need graduates, it also needs technicians.

The chemical industry’s Open Doors programmes have demonstrated that the public has an interest in what it is doing, and by showing the young the benefits the industry brings, the sector can address its reputation issues as well.

‘There is no better place than a proper working environment to test out a career choice, and it’s also by far the best arena for young adults to learn the skills critical to success,’ says Jane Bennett, head of campaigns at the Forum of Private Business.

‘Work-linked learning can also be extraordinarily powerful in engaging students who are bored or turned off by conventional classroom teaching. It’s hard to see how any plan to reduce work experience for school pupils fits with government’s pledge to significantly increase the number of apprenticeships.’

There is little that needs to be added to this – just a request that future steps are all in a forward direction, not like a drunkard’s one step forward, two steps back.

Neil Eisberg - Editor

But this is not the threat from the current unrest resulting from the so-called Arab Spring, but the return of a much earlier threat – the resurgence of the chemicals sector in the Middle East and the threat it represents for the European chemical industry.

A couple of decades ago, the European industry was pushed into restructuring and consolidation by the threat of petrochemical developments in the region, based on the abundance of feedstocks derived from crude oil production. Back then the threat was limited to basic petrochemical exports from the Middle East to Asia, a major market for European producers at the time. 

Today the threat takes a different form – now those Middle East producers are also moving into specialty chemical production – again for export to Asia. Apart from a pressing need to develop employment in the region, producers are looking to add value to their hydrocarbon base while diversifying away from oil, gas and petrochemicals.

As consultancy KPMG points out, downstream chemical production generates more employment, compared with petrochemicals, up to 20 job for every $1m of investment , compared with just one for the same investment in an ethylene cracker.

A recent report from KPMG says that the Arabian Gulf region is set to capture 20% of global petrochemical capacity by 2015, with five or six of the top ten global chemical producers by revenue headquartered in the Middle East or Asia, compare with just two in 2008.

So history is repeating itself, with a renewed threat for European chemicals, not just from the Middle East, but also now from the US, which once again is set to cash in on low natural gas prices resulting from the shale gas supplies that are now coming on stream.

Europe managed to weather the threat last time but does it have the resolve, the funds and the resilience to weather it again?

Neil Eisberg - Editor

The title of the lecture presentation sounded so interesting. It promised to be an insight an area about which I knew very little, but was already starting to generate a little publicity.  I still couldn’t tell you much about it, though – even after sitting through a 40 minute presentation. 

Talking to some of the other attendees, it’s clear I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just the breakneck speed of the delivery – clearly intended for a more specialist audience than the one presently assembled – but also the content of the talk itself: too much time spent thanking people most of the audience had never heard of and plugging a company with information that could have been had with a five minute visit to the firm’s website. 

Frustratingly, the really new and interesting bit of the talk was relegated right to the end, by which time the speaker was already receiving signals that he was going over-time.

A quick headcount indicated there were 50 people in the room. Assuming, optimistically that half of them had really appreciated (understood) the talk, that’s still 1000 hours wasted – not to mention the loss of salary and productivity when they could have been back in the office at work. As a journalist, I generally get to go to these events free of course – but staggeringly, most of the people in the room had actually paid. 

We’ve all been there before of course, so why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? 

It’s all very well asking people for feedback after these events – as conference organisers typically do these days, sometimes way after they occurred – but they also need to act on it more quickly, and think of different ways of organising their meetings. So here are three of my own ideas for starters:

International speakers should have the benefit of a professional translator, rather than struggling to have their messages heard in a second language;  

The International Year of Chemistry 2011 (IYC) has now formally come to an end – in Europe the closing ceremony was organised by the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) in Brussels last week. And once the dust has settled, there will be a period of analysis looking at how successful the year of chemically related events has been.

Certainly in the UK there has been a marked increase in the numbers of students applying for university courses involving chemistry – so much so that some university chemistry departments have been expanded and even re-opened as C&I will report in its first issue of the New Year!

But one disturbing aspect did come to light towards the end of the year, indicating that perhaps knowledge about the IYC was not as widespread as those of us involved more directly might care to think. 

The well-known UK tv presenter, author, actor and polymath Stephen Fry only became aware of the IYC in November, indicating a rather surprising and disturbing failure in fostering general awareness about such an important global effort. For such a well-know personality, especially someone who prides himself on the breadth of his knowledge, to be unaware of such a major event is extremely worrying.

The chemical industry has often been accused of talking to itself when trying to explain the benefits it brings and in responding to criticism from environmental groups and others, but it would be disappointing if the same thing were to be said about the whole area of chemistry.

One thing that chemistry and the chemical industry lacks is larger than life personalities – gone are the days of John Harvey-Jones, when he ran ICI, another name that has disappeared. We need more people in industry like Martyn Poliakoff and his elemental video project! People who are memorable and can explain our science and industry in words that excite as well encourage support.

We need to show that we are proud of what we do – and again this is something that will be addressed in C&I in the first issue of 2012. We need people who are sufficiently proud and motivated to stand up and be counted in support of chemistry and chemicals.

What are your thoughts about the impact of IYC? And where should we go from here?

Neil Eisberg – Editor

It is official: sustainability is now a global science that continues to grow, at least that is what US researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Indiana University believe. They have reviewed 20,000 academic papers written by 37,000 separate authors from 174 countries and more than 2200 cities over the period 1974 to 2010 – a mammoth task in anyone’s language.

Although in areas like natural sciences, there is a concentration in a few cities in the developed world, however, such centres of excellence do not exist when considering the science of sustainability. 

‘The field is widely distributed internationally and has a strong presence not only in nations with traditional strength in science – the US, Western Europe and Japan –but also elsewhere,’ says researcher Jasleen Kaur from the school of informatics and computing at Indiana University Bloomington. ‘It is also perhaps surprising that the world’s leading city in terms of publications in the field is Washington DC, outpacing the productivity of Boston or the [San Francisco] Bay Area, which in other fields are several-fold greater than that of the US capital.’

The evidence also shows a strong presence for sustainability science in smaller universities and laboratories around the world, from Australia and the Netherlands, to Nigeria, Kenya and Turkey. Other fields contributing to this new science include social science, as might be expected, with environmental policy representing over 20% of its total output; weed management representing almost 17% of the total output of the biology total; and soil science accounting for 23.6% of the engineering total.

‘We believe that all this evidence, when taken together, establishes the case for the existence of a young and fast-growing unified scientific practice of sustainability science,’ says co-author of the study, Luis Bettencourt, from the Los Alamos laboratory.

But the science of sustainability is also a business imperative as BASF’s chairman Kurt Bock pointed out this week at the company’s headquarters in Ludwigshafen, Germany. ‘The motivation for more sustainability has changed over the years,’ he said. ‘From the 1960s to the 1980s, stricter regulations were the main reason for companies to become more sustainable. In the 1990s, sustainability was driven by efforts to cut costs; lower energy consumption in production saves hard cash.’

But he noted that towards the millennium, corporate sustainability engagement expanded to social responsibility and in the future, ‘sustainability will be one of the main growth drivers for business’. 

‘This means that sustainability will be much more closely integrated into business and will therefore be a major driver to create value. More sustainability can only be achieved through innovation – and that is where chemistry plays an essential role.’

Neil Eisberg - Editor

Can we live forever?’ was the question posed by Subhash Anand, presenting his talk on ‘Nonwoven fabrics in healthcare and medical devices’ at SCI headquarters in Belgrave Square, London, last week. The answer it would seem is quite possibly, as Anand,  professor of technical textiles at the University of Bolton, UK, went on to outline examples of how researchers have already been able to recreate a welter of new body parts in the laboratory, including new bladders, ears, tracheas and even a living, beating human heart. ‘It’s already being done,’ Anand enthused. What is more progress of the technology from the lab to the clinic is ‘only years away, not decades,’ he contends – remarking how advances in the preparation of polymer-based scaffolds are helping to bring us closer to the day when we might keep spare body parts in the fridge at home, ready for use whenever they are needed.

Anand’s own contribution to the field has been to create speciality medical materials from nonwoven textiles  – fabrics made from continuous filaments or from staple fibre webs strengthened by bonding – with the ideal combination of properties, for example, for producing artificial alternatives to blood vessels. Nonwovens have high porosity that allows permeation and growth of cells in vitro and in vivo, Anand remarked, which also explains their increasing usefulness as a substrate for three-dimensional tissue engineering to make, for example, chondrocytes, endocrine cells and as patches to cover large areas of injured tissue. The group is interested too in making nanofibres, useful for tissue engineering and wound care as well as for filters and membranes, by an electrospinning process that also allows them to impart functionality via various additives and fillers.

But as the lively discussion that followed Anand’s presentation highlighted, being able to recreate ourselves in the laboratory is only one part of the story. The other question we should ask is not just whether we can live forever, but would we really want to?  With world population currently expected to hit the 9bn mark by 2050, questions are already being asked about the strains this will put on the planet’s increasingly over-stretched resources. Did anyone, I wonder, take into account the impact of all these new medical advances on longevity when making these projections about future demographics?

Cath O’Driscoll – Deputy editor

Sustainability is a word that is much in vogue these days. So what does it actually mean? According to the much-quoted Brundtland definition: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ In other words, we need to be respectful of our impact on the planet and how this affects our children and those who come after them. Another popular definition, much cited of late by the agricultural community, is the concept ‘to do less, with more [resources]’.

At a press day at its headquarters in Ludwigshafen this week, the world’s leading chemical company BASF claimed to have attempted to have gone one step further by assigning a value to the concept – an overall sustainability score that the company says will provide a tool for farmers and other interested stakeholders to evaluate the merits of the company’s various agrochemical products and processes, as well as to inform its own R&D programmes and direct research spending. It is, in principle, a laudable idea and one that knowledge-hungry farmers will no doubt be eager to take on board, yet one can’t help wondering whether this is really the best way of going about things.

For all its talk about independent assurances – reportedly from the TUV SUD, DNV Business Assurance and NSF International – and about the transparent publication of all its various ‘AgBalance’ studies, several of which are already under way or nearing completion, BASF is at the end of the day a company interested in making money by selling its products. The final sustainability scores will ultimately be decided by what are the various inputs and by the relative weightings that each of these is then assigned – subjective values that will surely reflect the nature of the organisation(s) involved. A sustainability score for a particular product or process by AgBalance may – and indeed is very likely to be quite different from a sustainability rating for the same product or process from  a different set up involving, say, an NGO.  

Putting a score on sustainability is a nice idea but at the end of the day it may simply be perceived by some as a clever marketing exercise.

Cath O’Driscoll - Deputy editor