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The Howard government has gone further than any in Australian history to make explicitly political choices in its appointments. While ideology may not play an obvious role in ranking proposals in pure mathematics, it certainly does in some other fields of inquiry – including some of the most obvious forms of artificial photosynthesis. The range of fields covered poses the third and most intractable problem. If we leave aside the issue of objectivity, it would be possible, in principle, for the peer review process to rank research proposals in a narrow area where accurate comparisons can be made: inorganic chemistry, number theory, behavioral psychology, or medieval history.

These would probably be evaporated metal and SnO2 on glass. 1 Milestones 1. Identify and synthesize potential chromophore scaffolds (molrac, peptide, or other constructs) and basic bilayer-hydrophilic repeating units. 2. Develop and test strategies to incorporate scaffolds in bilayer units. Spectroscopically test chromophores and isolated constructs for absorption and charge-separation characteristics. 3. Identify and test appropriate electrode materials (conducting polymer, transparent types).

The synthetic membranes have far higher breakdown voltages (> 1 V) than do natural lipid systems. The overall efficiency of the system should be several-fold higher than current solar cell technologies. The base electrodes would probably be conducting polymer [19] on metal, with surface texturing to optimize overall trapping effectiveness. Exclusion of molecular O2 will be vital to enhance component lifetimes. At present there are few data that bear quantitatively on this, but some experience with conventional organic photovoltaics suggests that the lifetime improvement can be dramatic and that O2-induced damage is the principal source of performance degradation in these systems [20].