Some frontiers in social science

The fundamental challenge in the social sciences is moving from complicated correlations to useful prediction. Progress usually reflects an interplay between theory, data, and tools. Six areas of innovation, principally data and tools, are now pushing at the frontiers of these sciences: longitudinal data, laboratory experimentation, improved statistical methods, geographic information tools, biosocial science, and international replication. These innovations are gaining power as they cross disciplinary boundaries, helping to attribute causality to observed relationships, to understand their nature, and thereby to improve the accuracy and usefulness of predictions.     

The other frontiers of science

Frontiers of science are usually considered as those areas where the boundares of human knowledge are being pushed most vigorousl into the unknown. These are the intemal frontiers. But no less important are the external frontiers. Those bordering on the federal govermment, on education, on private industry and on intemational affairs and the developing world are among the most critical and demanding. Some of the outstanding problems facing science, and scientists in these extemal interactions, are discussed within the context of our changing national and international priorities.     

Electron transfer: classical approaches and new frontiers

Electron transfer, under conditions of weak interaction and a medium acting as a passive thermal bath, is very well understood. When electron transfer is accompanied by transient chemical bonding, such as in interfacial coordination electrochemical mechanisms, strong interaction and molecular selectivity are involved. These mechanisms, which take advantage of "passive self-organization," cannot yet be properly described theoretically, but they show substantial experimental promise for energy conversion and catalysis. The biggest challenge for the future, however, may be dynamic, self-organized electron transfer. As with other energy fluxes, a suitable positive feedback mechanism, through an active molecular environment, can lead to a (transient) decrease of entropy equivalent to an increase of molecular electronic order for the activated complex. A resulting substantial increase in the rate of electron transfer and the possibility of cooperative transfer of several electrons (without intermediates) can be deduced from phenomenological theory. The need to extend our present knowledge may be derived from the observation that chemical syntheses and fuel utilization in industry typically require high temperatures (where catalysis is less relevant), whereas corresponding processes in biological systems are catalyzed at environmental conditions. This article therefore focuses on interfacial or membrane-bound electron transfer and investigates an aspect that nature has developed to a high degree of perfection: self-organization.