Another moment in history I remember well was the US election in which George W Bush became US president. I was visiting some of the main  Lucent offices in New Jersey (there were a lot of them) at the time and was in a hotel bar on the evening of the election result.

Of course you may remember that it turned into a complete non-event as the result was too close to call and resulted in a recount, some dodgy ballot papers in Florida and a legal battle before ‘W’ headed for the White House and Al Gore made an award winning film using a PowerPoint presentation.

Aside from his anger inducing rhetoric and ill-judged warmongering, ‘The Decider’ as Dubya liked to be known ‘Decided’ against some significant areas of scientific and medical research during his 8 years in charge largely it would seem due to a dangerous combination of ignorance and religious belief.

Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House has been met with almost Messianic fervour in some quarters and ironically none more so than the scientific and medical communities who see a new golden age (versus the dark age the W years are already known as) before them as decisions made by the previous administration are reversed.

So – with a combination of political will and research organisations such as Bell Labs to call on I am indeed hopeful that some significant advances can be made in environmentally orientated research and development and hopefully less developments aimed at military purposes.