The US has 13 million tonnes of rare earth elements but it would take years to extract them, suggests the on the country’s supply.

“Rare earth” is an alternative name for the lanthanides – elements 57 to 71 – plus yttrium and scandium. The elements are integral to modern life, and are used in everything from disc drives, hybrid cars and sunglasses to lasers and aircraft used by the military.

China controls 97 per cent of the world’s supply and has been tightening its export quotas, sparking concerns that the rare earths could live up to their name.

Now, the US Geological Survey has looked at all known national reserves of the elements as part of a larger assessment of the threat posed to defence by limited rare earth supplies.

It found that the domestic pipeline is “rather thin”. The US boasts the third largest reserves in the world after China and the , made up of nations that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. But the only rare earths mine the US has ever operated, at Mountain Pass, California, is currently inactive. Mining may restart there within two years, but any other mines will be far behind.

Down Under

Only a handful of sites are even being explored. “Then it’s literally years before you start applying for permits to start mining or building infrastructure or putting processing facilities in place,” says of consultancy firm Technology Metals Research in Carpentersville, Illinois, who was not involved in the new report. It could be 10 years or more before any new mines open, the report suggests.

The report says one of the most promising sites is Bokan Mountain on the southernmost island of Alaska. Ucore Rare Metals has been exploring there since 2007, and the region was once home to a uranium mine, so some infrastructure is already in place, together with a deep water port. See a map of other rare earth sites in the US.

The report suggests the US might break its dependency on China’s rare earth monopoly by looking to other future suppliers of rare earths, including Australia and Canada. Australia has far fewer rare earths overall than the US, but the ore in its Mount Weld mine contain the highest concentration of the elements known anywhere in the world. Since the mine was completed in 2008, ore has been mined and is now stockpiled, ready for its rare earths to be extracted.

THE US is often considered the land of plenty for budding entrepreneurs, eager for a piece of its pie. That was certainly what Sadik Hafizovic thought in 2007 when he decided to move to California. “I was already looking for an apartment,” he recalls. Then he heard from a potential business partner in Switzerland. “I blew the America idea and went to Switzerland instead,” he says. “Looking back, it was the best decision ever. Switzerland is a place where you can build a company with the least amount of trouble.”

Fast forward a few years and Hafizovic’s company, , is winning awards – as is its homeland. Last year, Switzerland became the most competitive economy in the world, knocking the US off the top spot, according to a published by the World Economic Forum. The country held onto the accolade this year.

The report looked at 12 factors linked to a country’s long-term prosperity. These included infrastructure, the education of its labour force, government policy, the availability of technology, and innovation.

Switzerland scored highly in each category, showing that it has the policies, technology and human expertise to encourage research. As Dhavalkumar Patel, head of in Basel, says: “If you ask a Swiss what they see as their most important resources, the response will likely be ‘the brain power of our citizens’.”

Switzerland’s academic institutions, not to mention its large number of life science, technology and pharmaceutical companies, offer great career prospects for scientists, Patel says. “The fact that it is one of the most beautiful and best places in the world to live does not hurt, either.”

Patel believes the country’s lack of natural resources left it only one option if it was to compete in the global market: innovation. “Switzerland has been forced to build its wealth on the ability to innovate,” he says. And innovate it does. The nation tops the European Commission’s . This means it has everything it needs to develop new products, from the people and financial backing to get ideas rolling, to a willingness to collaborate on new projects, to an impressive ability to secure patents (see bar chart).

For would-be entrepreneurs, the first stop is the (CTI), a state-financed organisation that provides practical guidance every step of the way. This includes educating PhD students in business skills such as marketing, sales, finance and IT, and providing money for research and development. Then CTI Invest takes over, helping start-ups find financial backers. “We do the matchmaking between companies and investors,” says Jean-Pierre Vuilleumier, CTI Invest’s managing director.

Many businesses are now reaping the benefits of CTI’s expertise, says Vuilleumier. One of these is the cultivation of a global outlook. Switzerland is not like the US, where you can get rich without exporting, he says. “You have to be international from day one.” This means Swiss start-ups must be ready to take on the world as they cannot rely on the cosy niche of their home markets.

So what else can Switzerland offer young scientists? Better funding than elsewhere? “I wouldn’t say that there is more money in Switzerland,” says Hafizovic, who took advantage of CTI’s coaching and is now exploiting opportunities outside Switzerland. “But it is smarter money.” Instead of writing long proposals for grants, you have to pitch your idea to one of two types of jury – one interested in whether your idea will generate high-tech jobs and one concerned with the potential profit. “You get the money, if your case is right, with less bureaucracy.”

Hafizovic says another reason for the nation’s success is the ethos at two of its top universities, the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and Lausanne (EPFL). “At these places, it is almost fashionable to start a company,” he says. “If you have an idea you absolutely have to do it.” Technology transfer is taken so seriously it is listed as the third mission of the universities, alongside excellence in education and research.

In some places, such entrepreneurial spirit might be stifled by red tape and bureaucracy. Not in Switzerland. “Things are streamlined to a degree I have not seen in any other country. Setting up a company is absolutely straightforward,” says Hafizovic.

That is something Grégoire Ribordy would agree with. As a founder and CEO of , which applies quantum physics to network encryption and random-number generation, Ribordy sometimes has to export products that could have a military as well as a general use. The special authorisation to do that could take weeks to procure in some places, but in Switzerland things are simpler. “We have direct contact with government people in Bern who make the decisions on this and we get the answer in a few days. It is a very constructive relationship.”

It’s not just business that Switzerland excels in. The nation beats the rest of Europe, as well as the US, when it comes to the number of scientific publications it produces in relation to government money spent on R&D – a common measure of a nation’s scientific status (see graph). Figures from a on science, technology and competitiveness show that, in general, the more spent on R&D as a proportion of GDP, the higher the number of publications per million people, as you might expect. But in Switzerland the number of publications is far higher than you would expect given the level of public spending. In other words, it punches above its weight.

To some extent, Switzerland has always been associated with scientific precision and excellence. It boasts more Nobel prizes per million people than any other rich nation; it has two home-grown pharmaceutical giants, Roche and Novartis; and it is home to the world’s biggest science experiment at CERN. All this lends kudos to new ventures. Matteo Leonardi, who founded , a medical diagnostics company, says: “Swiss-made is really well perceived – everywhere. It is a quality mark.”

Sensimed is developing contact lenses that can help diagnose glaucoma, and Leonardi is hoping to trade on Switzerland’s reputation to help his company expand in the US and the rest of Europe. As well as being a beneficiary of the country’s past triumphs, Leonardi is aware that he has a part to play in its future. “In Switzerland some of the best things we have are research, technology and science,” he says. “We have to keep pushing for those.”

FOR decades, the world has been busy incorporating the so-called elements into all manner of high-tech devices, including disc drives, wind turbines and hybrid cars. The messy business of mining the ore and extracting the elements was left to China, and few people in the west cared that the nation controlled 97 per cent of world supply.

“Rare earth” is an alternative name for the lanthanides – elements 57 to 71 – plus yttrium and scandium, and despite the name most of them were not considered rare at all. The elements hit the headlines a few weeks ago, when China appeared to be blocking exports to Japan and the US. The Chinese government, which has also been tightening its export quotas, claims that it needs to clean up mining procedures and support its own growing demand for rare earths.

So what can the rest of the world do about it? The most obvious course of action is to open mines elsewhere, since China accounts for little more than a third of known reserves. The biggest importer, Japan, is hoping to open a mine in Vietnam. And in the US, Molycorp Minerals plans to reopen its Mountain Pass mine in California, which has not been active since radioactive waste leaked from a pipe there in 2002.

However, facilities to refine rare earths cannot be created overnight, and few US scientists know how to do it anyway. “Even if Molycorp can get material mined and concentrated right now… it would have to send that material to China to get it refined,” says Gareth Hatch of , a consultancy firm in Carpentersville, Illinois.

Recycling is another option, but impurities sneak in during the process, so recycled materials are not always as good as the freshly refined equivalent. The neodymium magnets used in hybrid cars, for example, work less well at high temperatures when recycled neodymium is used.

Some items containing rare earths are reusable. The neodymium magnets in computer disc drives, for example, usually outlast the computer they are in, but disc drive manufacturers have till now found it cheaper to use new magnets than to reuse old ones.

The scarcity issue is being tackled in a different way by Kazuhiro Hono of Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba. Dysprosium is one of the rarer rare earth elements, so Hono is reducing the amount of the element in the permanent magnets used in hybrid cars.

Hono hopes the crisis will encourage more scientists into the field. “The important thing is to recognise the importance worldwide,” he says. With efforts focused on innovation, he adds, “the solution to this problem will come out in the future”.

The story is not what you might expect from your typical technician, but then people become technicians for so many reasons it is hard to say what a typical technician is. Is it the school-leaver looking for something more stimulating than an office job, the graduate who wants hands-on work in the lab, or the postdoc with a family in search of job security? The answer is all of them, which raises the question: what do employers want from their technicians when job applicants have such diverse skills and education? What qualifications does a technician need, what character traits does it take to succeed, and what roles can technicians expect to perform?

Simmonds made it without a degree, although that’s unusual for a technician who carries out experimental work. “Everybody’s a graduate these days,” he says. Louise Hewitt, a chief technician at the University of Manchester, says the level of qualification expected from new research technicians has increased. “Ten years ago technical positions went to people with an HNC – an academic and practical qualification,” she says. “Now there are more degrees, first-class degrees. We sometimes have postdocs applying.” She puts this down to the competitiveness of finding a postdoc position, which encourages people to look elsewhere for a good job.

As the academic credentials of technicians have increased, so has the amount of research they do. “You have your own project as a focus and interest,” Hewitt says. That also means more chances to be an author on papers. Meanwhile, other parts of the role have fallen by the wayside. “If a piece of kit breaks down, you send it away to be repaired now. Twenty years ago I would have done it myself.”

Degrees are not expected for all technician roles however, and are less common among technicians who do not carry out research but focus instead on lab management. Barry Davies is the UK lab services manager at AstraZeneca and employs technicians to “help the laboratory tick”. They do everything from ordering materials to managing waste, looking after machines and overseeing safety. “They are very bright individuals who really manage the labs day-to-day and enable the scientists to focus on research,” he says.

The technicians tend to have A-levels or HNCs, and Davies says they can be split into two broad camps. There are those who would never have imagined themselves working in the R&D labs of a company like AstraZeneca, he says; then there are those who take jobs as a stepping stone to work their way up to R&D positions.

Larry Gifford knows how hard it can be to work your way up. Now a professor and head of the school of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Manchester, he left school at the age of 16 and took a job as a technician in the labs at ICI while studying chemistry at night school. A degree in chemistry and a PhD followed and Gifford’s career took off, but he has not forgotten the long hours spent working all day and studying in the evenings. He says little has changed for the technicians he works with who do not have degrees. “It’s no easier to progress now than when I started,” he says. “We encourage all our technicians to try to gain further qualifications, but it’s much harder to get to a significant position if you start as a technician.”

Even if you have a degree, it can be hard to make the move into research if you are working as a technician. “Once you’re out of academia, it’s hard to get back in,” Hewitt says. “It can be done if you’re in the right lab with the right backing.” Equality between labs is an issue now, she adds. Some university groups are much more supportive of their technicians than others when they want training and new qualifications. “It’s a grey area.”

However, for some there is little incentive to switch jobs, given how good a research technician’s salary, pension scheme and job security can be. For those who enjoy working in a lab, being a research technician can be preferable to being an academic. Sue Patterson, at Newcastle University, studied for a PhD but for personal reasons did not submit her thesis, and became a research technician instead. She has never looked back. “I’ve always been interested in the hands-on side,” she says. “Academics do a lot of teaching, meetings and paperwork.” She avoids most of this, but finds she is at least as involved in the experimental side of research as the academics. “Researchers tend to initiate projects but you might adapt the methodology. Their academic background knowledge is better, but technicians know what happens in the lab.”

The role of a research technician is blurring with that of a research assistant. “The dividing line is very fine,” says Jeremy Barnes, a professor of environmental biology at Newcastle University. Technicians probably take less of a lead in writing and presenting work, but they often contribute in much the same way as research assistants, he adds.

The varied work of a technician makes the ability to multitask important. “It’s probably the most demanding role in the university,” says Barnes. “Patience is the biggest virtue.” Davies cites an enthusiasm for science and the ability to self-manage as important, because many technicians are left to their own devices on a day-to-day basis. Hewitt says you must also be adaptable in order to keep pace with new techniques, and be able to teach these skills to new members of the lab. “You really need to be Wonder Woman,” she says.

“It is probably the most demanding role in the university”

Another necessary trait is taking pride in your work. Shoddy workmanship just won’t wash when it comes to purifying proteins, says Simmonds. This can put technicians in a tricky position if doing the job really well might cost the project time and money. “It’s a can of worms, as you never know how long it will take until you start,” he says. Going that extra mile could mean the job takes twice as long as the scientists expected. “You’re communicating back and forwards when there is a cost involved.”

Multi-talented technicians can be highly valued. Gifford, for example, has not forgotten how he started out. “Having been a technician I can see things from their point of view,” he says. “I know they have a lot to offer.” Davies also knows their importance to industry. “They play a valued role within the organisation,” he says. “It’s great to see individuals getting so close to it and contributing to drug discovery.”

That does not mean it is a glamorous role. “They get a bum deal in terms of publicity,” Barnes says. “They don’t get the accolades or the plaudits.” But Simmonds thinks job satisfaction can more than make up for that. “I used to think I was a second-class scientist, but as I’ve got more experienced I’ve become quite proud of the skills I have. I go to conferences now and then, and as I listen to eminent scientists that I have worked for, the names of proteins we made pop up. I don’t get cited or named, but it’s nice to know my little part of the jigsaw is being used.”

Careers – Find out how to make the most of your career in our comprehensive special report.

Back in reality, you are in the foothills of a career in chemistry or simply fancy a change, and are probably wondering how to get to where you’d like to be. You’ve spent three years bagging your degree and maybe another few slogging for a PhD. Since then, perhaps you’ve taken a couple of short-lived postdoc stints or a ground-floor role in industry. No doubt some of your friends have high-paid jobs in the City, and you’re tempted to leave science altogether.

If you stick with chemistry, you want to make it big, but how? What stones should you turn over to maximise your chances of making a major discovery? What abilities do you need to succeed in modern chemistry?

New �Ӱ�ԭ�� asked some top chemists for their tips. Obviously there’s no blueprint for changing the world, but their answers can at least point you in the right direction.

Start by picking the right field. Some areas of chemistry will have a higher profile than others, attracting the most kudos – and money. “Funding does go in fashions,” says Tim Gallagher, head of the school of chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Today, protecting the environment is one of the more fashionable areas. “It’s one where chemistry makes a direct and topical impact,” says Gallagher. “It has been around a long time but it’s growing in terms of the perceived importance within society.” Chemists help clean up pollution today and minimise pollution tomorrow, for example by finding cleaner ways to make chemicals and their products. Often a simple idea can make a big difference. For instance, researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis developed an environmentally friendly soya-based glue for the wood industry. In doing so, they have given manufacturers an alternative to the carcinogenic formaldehyde used to bind materials such as plywood.

Chemists are also in demand to help wean the world off fossil fuels. “For me the big question is, what happens when all the oil runs out?” Gallagher says. “All the chemicals we use come from broadly petrochemical sources, including drugs and materials.” Chemists can help by developing technology to store hydrogen for fuel cells, for example, designing materials for solar cells or creating alternatives to the plastics and drugs that come from petrochemical sources.

Right now one field that’s as trendy as they come is chemical biology, which addresses problems in biology using the tools of chemistry, often in the form of small molecules created by synthetic chemistry. Nicholas Westwood, a chemist in the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences at the University of St Andrews, works in a part of this field known as chemical genetics, which he says is just taking root in the UK. “If you wanted to figure out how the car works, you might take out the spark plugs and see what happens,” he says. “The same applies to the cell, but you don’t use a spanner.” Instead, chemical geneticists create compounds to block the function of a specific protein in a cell.

Once you have picked a fertile research field, the next step is to develop qualities that will help you stand out. One increasingly important facet of the modern chemist’s work is collaboration with physicists, biologists or engineers. “The multidisciplinary theme pervades science at universities,” says Mark Searle, head of chemistry at the University of Nottingham and a professor of chemical biology. “Chemistry is the hub of the wheel, with spokes going out to all other subjects.”

“Chemistry is the hub of the wheel, with spokes to all other subjects”

Networking outside chemistry could do wonders for your career. “There is no certainty that these types of interactions will pay off,” says Westwood, “but in my experience they do more times than they do not.” A lot of universities have invested heavily in bringing together scientists from different disciplines, Searle says. “I have a pharmacist next door to my office and a molecular biologist two doors down. You can strike up conversations and potential collaborations just by bumping into someone in the corridor,” he says. “Chemists used to work in their own castles and never step outside. Those days are gone.”

A blurring of the traditional boundaries is occurring in industry, too. For example, chemists working in drug discovery are expected to interact with scientists from other disciplines. The ability to explain and exchange ideas has become more valuable, says David Hollinshead, associate director of research and development at AstraZeneca UK. “In the past communication skills were not so important,” he says. “Now we look for more rounded people.”

Before you strike out for the far reaches of chemistry, however, your first priority should be to get a solid grounding in core chemistry, Westwood says. “The principles must be secure before you can branch out,” he says. “You must love and understand chemistry, and then with time you become interested in applying it.” You also have to be flexible enough to make compromises in your own group’s projects for the good of the multidisciplinary team’s work as a whole. “It really helps if you have a broad range of scientific interests.”

Of course, you don’t have to branch out. With so much research going on where chemistry meets biology, physics or engineering, it can be easy to forget that you can still make a career in traditional synthetic chemistry. If you have the right skills, industry will snap you up. As in academia, a sound grounding in basic chemistry is paramount, says Hollinshead. “Synthetic prowess is key,” he says. “It’s the bread and butter of what we do. The more you can contribute on top of that, the more valuable you are.”

Working in industry can be just as glamorous as making discoveries in academia. For example, with your knowledge of small molecules you could be part of the team behind a life-saving blockbuster drug. “People think it’s doctors that deliver medicines and chemists that contribute to pollution and North Sea oil disasters,” says Hollinshead – but chemists make crucial contributions to many things, like healthcare, on which we rely in day-to-day life.

Ironically, if you demonstrate additional talents – such as interpersonal skills – you may find your career as a chemist is short-lived, Hollinshead says. “Chemistry is a passport into practically any career,” he says. “People come in as chemists and end up in human resources, marketing or finance. Our last CEO was a medicinal chemist.”

If you are tempted to turn your back on chemistry, don’t forget that your work could prove invaluable to society, says Jim Feast, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry. “Chemistry is central to a lot of major challenges facing society at the moment: water, energy, climate change and health, for example,” he says. “Without solutions to these challenges we’re due for a pretty grim time. And without the impact of chemistry, there is no way forward.” Maybe changing the world isn’t just a daydream after all.

Even as communities mourned their dead, and started to clear the debris and rebuild their lives, seismologists warned that the massive quake was far from a one-off, because the quake had increased the stress in nearby faults and further south along the fault line of the India and Burma plates. Sadly, they were right. On 28 March, a quake of magnitude 8.7 hit Sumatra. Although it did not generate a tsunami, it killed more than 1000 people.

And it was not the only quake of the year that had been foreseen. �Ӱ�ԭ��s knew that the southern edge of the Himalayas was primed for a major quake; the stress along the converging Indian and Eurasian plates had built up to an equivalent of four magnitude 8.5 earthquakes. Something had to give.

It did. On 8 October Pakistan and neighbouring Kashmir were rocked with a magnitude 7.6 quake. Buildings, bridges and roads that had not been built to withstand such a powerful quake crumbled. To date, more than 80,000 people have died, and a harsh Himalayan winter threatens the many more who are homeless.

While geologists can say with some certainty that earthquakes are due in some areas, predicting the exact location on a fault or even the decade when it will strike remains a long way off.

And here are all of New �Ӱ�ԭ��’s roundup stories for 2005.

Rise and fall of the stem cell king

Climate going crazy

Year of the hurricane

Bird flu flies the coop

Mars rovers roll on

Here’s looking at you, chimp

Einstein remembered

Revenge of the mammals

God on trial

Touchdown on Titan

Days that shook the Earth