Future 2020 visions

For the first issue of the new decade, Nature asked a selection of leading researchers and policy-makers where their fields will be ten years from now. We invited them to identify the key questions their disciplines face, the major roadblocks and the pressing next steps.

It is really interesting, you may want to read to get insight about future studies. It is good to see how far your study area goes.

Supersize quantum mechanics

It is so interesting that a team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

Largest ever object put into quantum state.
Hands in motion (hands have motion blur) doing a drum roll on an old brass snare drum.

A quantum drum has become the first visible object to be put into a superposition of quantum states.A. Olsen/iStockphoto

Natural products

Natural products have been a major source of drugs for centuries. With more than 25% of the pharmaceuticals in use today from natural products. This can be attributed to several factors, including unmet therapeutic needs that drive drug discovery, the remarkable diversity of both chemical structures and biological activities of naturally occuring secondary metabolities and etc.

Prior to the early-mid 20th century, the use of natural products was limited pricipally to crude plant preparations and was based largely on empirical observation.

Surface plasmon resonance

At an interface between two transparent media of different refractive index (glass and water), light coming from the side of higher refractive index is partly reflected and partly refracted.

Above a certain critical angle of incidence, no light is refracted across the interface, and total internal reflection is observed. While incident light is totally reflected the electromagnetic field component penetrates a short (tens of nanometers) distance into a medium of a lower refractive index creating an exponentially detenuating evanescent wave. If the interface between the media is coated with a thin layer of metal (gold), and light is monochromatic and p-polarized, the intensity of the reflected light is reduced at a specific incident angle producing a sharp shadow (called surface plasmon resonance) due to the resonance energy transfer between evanescent wave and surface plasmons.