Hey how old is your sister...?
Nah, actually sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would interest me... I was reading a book by James Watson the other day (one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA), and in it he talks about cancer research. Apparently there is one specific gene that is *really* important in cancer research, but unfortunately for us, it was discovered by an American crporation in the 80's, and immediately patented. At the time they discovered it, they had no idea what it actually did, they just wanted the money... now anyone involved in cancer research using this specific gene is required to pay them a big fistfull of money...
Interesting theories on Economics - it was never my forte in high school, but I've read two interesting articles about it in the last weekend! The first, the 2004 Nobel for Economics was won by two American professors, for an idea they came up with in the late 70's. Basically, they said that in any economic system, long term stability of goals is the key factor to a stable economy. In this sense, they reasoned, it would be impractical, and bad for the economy, if a politician were making any decisions regarding it, as their decisions would be based on current politcal pressures.
The second article is in last weeks New Scientist - another clever dude has integrated the idea of quantum theory into economics. He's talking about public fund systems - everyone in the community contributes to a system, and everyone benefits from the system. The problem though comes in when one person cheats on the system - imagine tax. Someone can get away with not paying their tax, and still drive on good roads, go to hospital and send their kids to school. If no one contributes (ie no one pays their taxes) then nobody gets any benefit. What this guy reasoned, if you use entangled particles to determine who is cheating, and if each person bases their decisions on the states of these particles, then the whole system is stable - if someone cheats, most people end up cheating and no one benefits, so it's in his best interst not to cheat.
But yeah, interesting theories - why is your sister doing research in the US? She should have gone the Australia option...
Cheers,
Brad