[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

This thread will cover current scientific priorities, as well as what they hope to advance and how they function. This thread will not cover what science can currently do, as the technology level in this world is very similar to that of the real world. If it exists in the real world, or if it can be done in the real world, it's safe to assume it can be done in New Sumatra. This is not an exhaustive list, only the bigger subjects right now.

Table of Contents
Biology (talks about current biological research, mostly agriculture, environment and medicine)
Physics and Engineering (talks about current engineering challenges, mostly building height and transportation)
Anthropology and Archaeology (talks about the current role of historical sciences, they used to be dead and are now seeing a resurgence)
Sociology, Psychology, and Social Engineering (talks about current social engineering goals)
Computers and Technology (talks about current technology challenges and security)
Space (talks about what the space program has accomplished and what they hope to do)
Magic (talks about how difficult magic is to research and what people try to do)

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Biology

In the last century or so, a lot of effort went into finding more efficient ways to produce food. Before, it took up a lot of space and people were becoming worried that it would be impossible to support the population. There wasn't any space to expand farms into, and the city needed to be expanded in order to support the growing population. First they started making multi-layered farms and figured out how to simulate sunlight so that plants could grow indoors. Then they started figuring out plant genetics and started altering them to produce more edible crop. Then they figured out how to cultivate cells and eliminated the need for livestock, instead basically growing meat in the lab. Further research was done on combining them to make new different kinds of foods, so that people could have a greater variety of food to eat. There's been interest in seeing how magic could further improve food production.

The other big non-medical topic is environmental research. Some environmental legislation was passed in order to reduce emissions and hopefully help the environment. The effects appear to be helping, as the usable land is growing by about 2cm in diameter each year. However, Twilight Jungle seems to be growing by the same amount, and there are signs of odd plant growth on the city side of the wall surrounding the jungle. A lot of effort is going into figuring out what's causing this additional growth and how to accelerate it. It could be the key to restoring the earth and making life easier for everyone.

One of the biggest worries a civilization with such a high population density has is the spread of disease. A great deal of effort and medical research has gone into mitigating the risk of infection, how to handle people that get sick so that it doesn't spread, and how to cure infectious diseases. It's lead to things like a cure for the common cold, but heart disease is a lot more likely to kill people than it is in the real world. If the disease isn't contagious, it's considered less important and is less likely to get much research behind it. While not all infectious diseases have been cured, most of them at least have something to mitigate the effects or risk of spread. Thus, a lot of modern research is going into combating anti-biotic resistance and coming up with alternative solutions to them should it prove impossible. Suddenly having several infectious diseases be harder to handle would be very bad for society.

There's some research going into helping other conditions, but it's significantly less than that. More resources are actually being put into figuring out how to more efficiently use resources so that people can actually get proper treatment for the problems science already knows how to deal with. People with completely curable life-long problems, such as diabetes or kidney failure, often die from them because it requires too many resources to help them right now. It would be preferable if this didn't happen, thus trying to get more from production and trying to figure out how to use less to get the same results. Similarly, a lot of research is being done on how to clone and create artificial organs and blood to help people with organ failure.

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Physics and Engineering

Much of the research in this area is going into producing stronger metals so the buildings can be bigger. With the city already pushing the limits of what the usable area can hold, being able to continue to build up is important to the city's development. The rest is mostly based on incremental improvements existing things. Better sealing on windows to lower air-conditioning costs and help keep bugs out. Helping with improving medicine, building better tools, and new ways to examine the inside of a human body without cutting it open. Increasing heat resistance on the tram tracks so that faster trams could be built.

There's also a lot of talk about building high speed trains out in the wasteland to help people get from place to place more easily, and possibly to help facilitate exploration. The biggest thing holding them back is not knowing where to put the tracks. Trains can be quite fast, but they're limited by where the tracks are and it's difficult to move them once they're built. Thus, people are watching wasteland expeditions closely for something like this.

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Anthropology and Archaeology

Until recently, these were considered dead subjects. The wasteland had no signs of old civilizations, and New Sumatra had been flattened and rebuilt several times to accommodate the growing population. There were no old buildings, and very little signs of the city's history, with stories and old journals being about the only things researchers could use. Even the wasteland hasn't turned up any signs of history yet. Most of New Sumatra's ancient history has been lost, and there hasn't been any way to find it.

The discovery of the ruins have changed that. The stone in the ruins doesn't come from anywhere near New Sumatra, not even from the nearby wasteland. Based on how it looks and how the plants have grown into the walls, the ruins are quite old. History enthusiasts are excited that there may finally be something for them to research and perhaps more about the world's history can be discovered.

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Sociology, Psychology, and Social Engineering

Given the amount of people in the city, managing people has been a very important part of the city's development and has been a huge point of research. The social sciences have been very goal orientated since it became a serious discipline. It's made it as much as a hard science as physics or chemistry in the sense that they're trying to learn enough about people that they can predict their behavior and build social and building structures around that. It's helped determine the current layout of the city, where connectors and stations go, how they're laid out, how stores are built, where they're put, and how the interior is designed. Schools and daycares were built around years of research so that the children could be as happy and successful as possible, and be ready to contribute to society when they grew up. How to properly control the media and public opinion has been studied extensively and implemented.

Much of what the social sciences have set out to accomplish has already been achieved. Society is orderly and people are content. Much of the current research is more about incremental improvements and optimization. The big fields are improving schooling, and making people feel happier working to increase productivity.

Psychology still has many mysterious about the human mind to discover, so their research is much more about learning new things rather than improving existing things. They frequently work with neuroscientists to figure out the connections between the chemical and electrical processes and human behaviors. Their main goal is to help people with mental diseases, particularly severe ones such as schizophrenia, and to try to find better ways to educate people with severe mental disabilities so that they can better fit into society. Cures for things like autism are being looked at, but how to properly accommodate them, especially those that are considered high functioning and just have social troubles, is considered equally as important.