Chemistry 
Upstream:
£36bn and 800,000 jobs
The upstream chemicals industry is an enabling industry, helping provide technological solutions to many challenges faced by other parts of the economy – it underpins sustainability in downstream industries such as healthcare, electronics, and textiles.
Interviewees reported that chemistry research is essential in keeping their businesses competitive through innovation, meeting evolving customer needs, and responding to market pressure from regulatory and environmental concerns. The study concludes
The products of chemistry research are all around us, from the water we drink and the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, the cars we drive and the energy used to heat and light our homes, chemistry research has changed our way of living and increased our quality of life.
This study has been commissioned by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Royal Society of Chemistry to examine the many channels through which chemistry research contributes to the UK economy and to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of just how much it benefits the UK. The evidence presented in this report shows that the direct and indirect (‘spillover’) benefits from fundamental chemistry research are significant to the UK. More crucially, it will be the outcomes of this fundamental research that will be a vital ingredient to help answer important technical and societal challenges facing the UK over the years ahead.
Chemistry-reliant industries contributed £258 billion value added to the UK economy in 2007 - equivalent to 21% of UK GDP - and supported 6 million jobs, accounting for at least 15% of the UK’s exported goods and attracting significant inward investment.
• Today the UK’s upstream1 chemicals industry supports over 800,000 jobs, including those in its supply-chain, contributing £36 billion to the UK’s economy in 2007.
• The 15 identified downstream industries, in which chemistry research is a necessary but not sufficient condition for their operation, support an additional 5.1 million jobs and directly contributed £222 billion to the UK’s GDP in 2007.
• The upstream chemicals industry is one of the UK’s highest exporters, accounting for 15% of the UK export of goods, comparable to UK’s transport equipment sector, which includes famous global brands such as Rolls-Royce aerospace and Bombardier trains. The chemistry research reliant pharmaceuticals industry is the third largest exporting sector in the UK. Trade performance is a key determinant of economic growth and prosperity. Innovative exploitation of fundamental research discoveries enables UK industries to improve their price and product competitiveness in a global market.
• The quality of UK chemists and the reputation for excellence of the UK’s science base significantly influences companies choosing to locate in the UK, or to retain a UK-based research presence. For example a Japanese health care firm, Eisai, has invested £100 million in its ‘European Knowledge Centre’ at Hatfield.
and is indispensible to the search for answers to some of the most important technological and societal challenges facing both the UK and the wider world
• Climate change – underpinning on-going research to identify the best ways to reduce our impact on the climate and support the Government’s climate change agenda (e.g. technologies to deliver cleaner fuels and reduce carbon emissions).
• Energy – chemistry research to improve the efficiency with which energy is generated, transmitted and used is a critical aspect of securing future energy requirements. For example, advanced materials research is helping to produce more efficient photovoltaic products, to enable
conventional vehicles to operate with improved fuel economy, and to increase the longevity, safety and efficiency of nuclear reactors.
• Food supply – agricultural and bio-chemistry research leading to increased yields is critical to securing future global food supplies.
• Security – increasingly sophisticated ‘Lab on a chip’ technology is leading to improved public safety through enabling the development of faster, more accurate methods to detect and measure potentially harmful chemical compounds. Forensic chemistry research is leading to improved detection rates by increasing the ability to generate information from a crime scene (e.g. DNA profiling and advanced fingerprint technology)
• Health – chemistry research helps to improve the quality of life, and to save lives, not only through new or more effective medical treatments, but also by enabling improvements to products ranging from healthier foods to safer fire resistant materials used in clothing and buildings
Mathematics
Computer science
The computer science field includes a wide array of interesting and diverse occupations— from software developers to database administrators to web developers. In addition to the more traditional opportunities within the field, another expanding area is the world of artificial intelligence. This is the next big frontier for computer scientists who will be developing computers “that simulate learning and reasoning ability.” Cybersecurity is another rapidly developing area where computer science professionals are in great demand to protect businesses, government, and individuals from the growing threat of cybercrime.
Computer scientists can be found in many different working environments, including “academia, research, industry, government, private, and business organizations.” This variety provides significant flexibility when it comes to finding the right fit for where and how a person prefers to work.
Physics
Physics education has a high inertia towards change. While high-school students in today’s biology labs are doing genetic engineering and making bacteria glow green, while students in physics labs are still dropping lead weights and finding differences of squares almost the same way as Galileo did back in 1610. Even as undergraduates, physicists end up learning about topics that were last researched seriously about 100 years ago. The time is overdue for the physics curriculum to catch up with the times.
Open any textbook on modern physics and you will see chapters on the usual topics: special relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics, particle physics and astrophysics. Missing, however, are modern topics in dynamics that most physicists will use in their careers such as nonlinearity, chaos, network theory, econophysics, game theory, neural nets and curved geometry among many others.
These topics are at the forefront of physics that drive hi-tech businesses and start-ups today, which is where almost half of all physicists end up working. However, they have not yet filtered down to the undergraduate curriculum. And it is my hope is that they soon will.
Biology
The ‘bio-based economy’ represents an increasing area of global development and covers a wide range of activities incorporating bio-based materials. ‘Bio-based’ in this context means that the materials and products are derived/made from renewable resources, with the criteria that a renewable resource recovers faster than it is drained, in contrast to many mineral and fossil resources. The processing of the forest biomass into value-adding and durable building materials and products, also taking into account the by-product streams, clearly fulfills these criteria today and, with proactive strategies, will also fulfill the criteria in the future. In addition to this, compared with aluminium, steel and concrete, most such bio-based materials are made with considerable lower energy consumption, and their use acts as a carbon sink, which means that a replacement of materials made from nonrenewable resources directly reduces CO2 emissions. The future strategies for the world's energy and material supply must consider these facts since some prognoses indicate that the fast growth of the bioenergy sector could result in a higher use than the growth of Europe's forest and agricultural biomass.
The development of building materials incorporating bio-based materials is also an area of rapid development. As well as solid timber, wood fibres and other materials, such as bamboo, miscanthus, phragmites and other gramineae, are now being used for structural purposes as well as for roofing and cladding. In particular the combined use of wood-based and other bio-based materials allows the configuration of diverse composites, such as particle and fibreboards and sandwich panels, or in combinations with polymers, such as extruded profile members and shaped components. Traditional agricultural food plants also have the potential to be used for various building applications, eg, lightweight building boards or insulation wall fillings. Flax, hemp, sisal, coir, corn cobs and rice or wheat straw are just a few of the more commonly used examples of biofibres used in different applications in the building trade. Wood itself is used in its native character, but is also chemically and thermally modified. Finally, the use of classical and new preservatives allows the use of timber products even under severe outdoor exposure conditions. Cobra
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