Science Progress

The technical principles and practices of the civil nuclear industry are described with particular reference to fission and its products, natural and artificial radioactivity, elements principally concerned and their relationships, main types of reactor, safety issues, the fuel cycle, waste management, issues related to weapon proliferation, environmental considerations and possible future developments.

Our sun is the only sustainable energy source large enough to supply carbonneutral energy to meet humanity's entire energy demand. However, there is a large gap between Europe's solar energy use (less than 1% of the total) and the enormous, untapped potential of the sun. There could be several reasons listed why it is so–social, political, technological–but the fundamental reason is insufficient efficiency of sunlight-to-energy conversion devices manufactured from inexpensive materials thus preventing large scale uptake. Along with thermal and photoelectrochemical sunlight-to-energy conversion, photovoltaics-an approach of converting sunlight directly into electricity–is probably most mature for contributing to the increasing renewable energy use.

This review details the general operating principles of the main types of photovoltaic devices, device efficiencies and the limitations of each technology with due consideration of the commercial requirements and uptake within the global renewable energy sector. There is also a section dedicated to emerging research, particularly within the European academic research base, focussing on overcoming some of the limitations associated with current photovoltaic technology.

For more than a hundred years every generation of microbiologists has isolated so called “cancer germs” from animal and human tumours and some cancer researchers have claimed that these organisms cause cancer and also that in some cases, vaccines could be developed from them to treat this dreaded disease. Despite this longstanding evidence linking microbes and cancer, today's cancer experts believe that, except in the case of a limited number of virus-cancers, microbes do not play an important causative role in cancer. Here, the evidence linking non-virus microorganisms with cancer is discussed and a plea is made that more research interest and funding be directed towards the cancer germ hypothesis.

Within 53 years after the public acceptance of Mendel's laws (in 1900^a,b), the genetic material was identified and described (by Watson and Crick^b,c). Today, 53 years after the modern era began in the scientific study of language (with Chomsky's Syntactic structures ^d ), there is no agreement as to whether universal grammar exists, or whether language as such exists at all ^e , that is, there is no agreement as to which square is square-one. Under the circumstances, a new approach is justified. It is the goal of this paper to place the scientific study of mind, language and brain onto a theoretical basis, beginning with naturally-occurring human language. The human mind has two major components, one with its antecedents in biology and behaviour, the other with its antecedents in geometry. It is the geometric component, consisting of language, tool-use, the mathematical sense, and the sense of truth and falsity, that distinguishes and defines the human being. Thus the constructions of language conform to the commutative, associative and distributive laws, and have their ultimate source in geometry. Equations have a symmetrical deep-structure based on the fact that one side is “equal” to the other: The “equals” symbol represents the axis of symmetry, and functions as a kind of main verb. The deep structure of the ordinary sentence is derived by moving the attachment for the “equals” to one of the branches, generating the asymmetrical Subject–Verb–Object relationship. Tool-use, with its Subject (the tool), Verb (movement of the tool), and Object (the workpiece), and manipulation of mental images, is an extension of the sentence. The sense of truth and falsity shares a common source with the right and wrong answers of arithmetic.

a

Iltis, H. (1932) Life of Mendel. G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London. 336pp.

b

Portugal, F.H. and Cohen, J.S. (1977) A century of DNA. The M.I.T. Press. Cambridge. xii+382 pp.

c

Watson, J.D. and Crick, F.H.C. (1953) A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171 (4356), 737–738.

d

Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. Mouton and Co., The Hague, 116 pp.

e

Evans, N. and Levinson, S.C. (2009) The myth of langage universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5), 429–492.

Whilst scientists are by default motivated by intellectual challenges linked to the area of their interest rather than have an interest in the financial component related to their work, the reality of today is that funding for their work does not come automatically. More and more governments provide project-related funding rather than multipurpose funding that covers the total annual costs of a research performing entity (such as a university department). So, like it or not, researchers have to present their research ideas and convince funding bodies about the usefulness and importance of their intended research work.

Writing the research proposal is not simply typing words and punctuation. It requires succinctly and clearly chronicling the facts, as well as crafting a convincing line of reasoning for funding the project. For the best result, both the logical, verbal left side of the brain and the intuitive, creative right side of the brain need to work as a team.

This article covers the process of writing a proposal, from research idea to submission to the funding body. The key to good writing is linking the text into a logical project flow. Therefore, in the early stage of writing an RTD proposal, developing the chain of reasoning and creating a flow chart is recommended to get a clear overview of the entire project and to visualise how the many work packages are connected.