JUST after Australia鈥檚 university administrators have made deep cuts in
physics, signs are beginning to emerge of a growing unmet demand for physicists
and engineers.
In fact, there is evidence from overseas that a shortage of such technical
staff is limiting growth in the booming photonics industry (which uses light to
transmit information). Rory McGuire from the Faculty of Science and Technology
at the University of New South Wales says that at a recent US meeting the
photonics industry was lamenting the lack of qualified people, especially in
specialised areas.
The field of photonics is also exploding in Australia. Four years ago a small
company, Indx, began life as a spin-off from the Australian Photonics
Cooperative Research Centre in Sydney. Indx now employs 200 people, including 40
working on R&D alone.
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One of the company鈥檚 founders, David Psaila, estimates there are about 1000
specialists working on opto-electronics in Australia. He predicts there will be
work for another 5000 in the next three or four years. 鈥淲e already can鈥檛 meet
all our R&D commitments because we can鈥檛 get the people,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hile
physicists and electrical engineers are our greatest need, we are also
struggling to get production, mechanical, design, maintenance, manufacturing and
software engineers.鈥�
And the rewards for physicists are beginning to reflect the imbalance between
demand and supply. Psaila says raw graduates in opto-electronics can expect to
earn up to A$40 000 a year, while those with five years experience in
R&D are being offered up to A$90 000 a year, which is about the
salary of a university professor and approaching the levels politicians pay
themselves. In the US, the National Science Foundation recently reported that
salaries of graduates with a PhD in physics rose 17.5 per cent between 1995 and
1997. Unfortunately there would be little point in blowing the dust off my
ancient qualification in physics鈥攖he biggest pay increases went to those
within five years of graduating.
For years, enrolments in the physical sciences have been falling because of
the perception that the hard work involved would not be rewarded. It will take
many years to reverse this trend and provide the skilled scientists that
industry requires.
THE dinosaurs are on the march again. Flat-earth economists and fossil fuel
interests have succeeded in persuading the Australian government to hold a
parliamentary inquiry into the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.
Their case was based on discredited arguments that greenhouse science is
uncertain, and that responding to the problem of global warming would cause
economic disaster for the nation. These ideas are no longer accepted even by the
Business Council of Australia, which affirmed earlier this year that it believed
the science certain enough to be the basis for government and business
responses.
Internationally, the group which lobbied against the Kyoto agreement, the
Global Climate Coalition, has all but collapsed with the withdrawal of most of
the large car firms and several major oil companies. So the inquiry is a waste
of time. The so-called 鈥渃limate sceptics鈥� have little or no scientific basis for
their claims.
We shouldn鈥檛 let an issue as important as this be decided by economic
ideology or other forms of superstition. I think Australia鈥檚 response should
recognise the strength of the scientific assessment, and will be saying so to
the inquiry.
THE old adage was that an apple a day kept the doctor away. Now, research
from Cornell University in the US, since recounted on ABC Radio鈥檚 Health Report,
is beginning to show why this might well be true.
Many people buy Vitamin C in powder or tablet form to supplement their diet.
They are particularly interested in its anti-oxidant activity as an aid to
preventing various health problems. The team from Cornell has found that one
100-gram Red Delicious apple contains as much anti-oxidant as 1.5 kilograms of
Vitamin C. The secret is that the apple doesn鈥檛 only contain Vitamin C, but also
about 100 other anti-oxidant compounds, mainly polyphenyls and flavenoids. In
other words, it鈥檚 much better to receive our vitamins from fresh fruit than from
a bottle. What a surprise.