Physics - A unifying framework in the development of science and technology

(Fifth of a series)

CS&E complements the two traditional avenues of research and development, namely analytical theory-building and laboratory-based experimentation, and has become the third approach to research and development. Numerical simulations present many unforeseen scenarios, providing a test of the physical theories employed to model the energetics and dynamics of a system, to examine the validity of the approximations and the initial conditions. Furthermore, they offer guidance to the experimentalists as to what type of phenomena to expect and to look for. The scientific community is experiencing a numerical-simulation revolution in physical, biological and social sciences, and their associated fields and technologies. CS&E is widely accepted, along with theory and experiment, as a crucial third mode of scientific investigation and engineering design. Aerospace, weather prediction and forecasting, automotive, biological, chemical, semiconductor, and other industrial sectors now rely on computer simulation for technical decision support. For government agencies also, CS&E has become an essential support for decisions on resources, transportation, and defense. Finally, in many new areas such as medicine, the life sciences, management and marketing (e.g. data- and stream mining), and finance, techniques and algorithms from CS&E are of growing importance.

Moreover, CS&E activities are generally nonpolluting to the environment and are clearly beneficial to the maintenance of the tourism industry of the Philippines.

One of the most active and very productive applications of CS&E is in the field of computational nanoscience and nanotechnology and its associated field of computational molecular nanotechnology. Nanoscience and nanotechnology, together with molecular biology, molecular genetics, information technology and cognitive science, form the pillars of the current information-industrial-scientific and medical revolution. These convergent science and technology will provide the real possibility to artificially design biomimetic-based functional devices, and complex smart systems that embody the basic characteristics and performance of biological intelligent systems, for example their ability to self-repair, self-assemble, self-organize and make optimum decisions. (Biomimetic refers to human-made processes, substances, devices, or systems that imitate nature). This convergence will take place at the nanoscopic level, namely the convergence of the fundamental building blocks, namely the physical and biological nanostructures.

* * *

Dr. Felixberto A. Buot is a research physicist (retired) from the US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. He is currently a research professor at the Center for Computational Materials Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. He is a fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and a senior member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). He is the guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience on “Transport Physics of Low-Dimensional Systems, Mesoscopic Structures and Nanodevices: Theory, Modeling, and Simulation” (American Scientific Publishers, August 2009 issue). He authored a new book entitled “Nonequilibrium Quantum Transport Physics in Nanosystems” with subtitle “Foundation of Computational Nonequilibrium Physics in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology” (World Scientific Publishing Co., July 2009). E-mail him at [email protected].