Vukoni:
We are no where! We are to figure out our own things too if we are interested in cutting this scientific dependency on the West.
Zakoomu M.
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Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
And where are we in this scheme of things?
On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 10:13, Lisa Toro wrote:
> What they stole from germans is now over and they can not figure out
> their own!!
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: J Ssemakula
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 4:14 PM
> Subject: ugnet_: U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
>
> The New York Times
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> May 3, 2004
> U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
> By WILLIAM J. BROAD
>
>
> The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance
> in critical areas of science and innovation, according to
> federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like
> prizes awarded to Americans and th e number of papers in major
> professional journals.
>
> Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even
> exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of
> the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national
> security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and
> cultural life.
>
> "The rest of the world is catching up," said John E.
> Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science
> Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends.
> "Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the U.S."
>
> Even analysts worried by the trend concede that an expansion
> of the world's brain trust, with new approaches, could
> invigorate the fight against disease, develop new sources of
> energy and wrestle with knotty environmental problems. But
> profits from the breakthroughs are likely to stay overseas,
> and this country will face competition for things like hiring
> scientific talent and getting space to showcase its work in
> top journals.
>
> One area of international competition involves patents.
> Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage
> is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more
> active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The
> United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen
> steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
>
> A more concrete decline can be seen in published research.
> Physical Review, a series of top physics journals, recently
> tracked a reversal in which American papers, in two decades,
> fell from the most to a minority. Last year the total was just
> 29 percent, down from 61 percent in 1983.
>
> China, said Martin Blume, the journals' editor, has surged
> ahead by submitting more th an 1,000 papers a year. "Other
> scientific publishers are seeing the same kind of thing," he
> added.
>
> Another downturn centers on the Nobel Prizes, an icon of
> scientific excellence. Traditionally, the United States,
> powered by heavy federal investments in basic research, the
> kind that pursues fundamental questions of nature, dominated
> the awards.
>
> But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's through
> the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half, 51
> percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany,
> Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.
>
> "We are in a new world, and it's increasingly going to be
> dominated by countries other than the United States," Denis
> Simon, dean of management and technology at the Rensselaer
> Polytechnic Institute, recently said at a scientific meeting
> in Washington.
>
> Europe and Asi a are ascendant, analysts say, even if their
> achievements go unnoticed in the United States. In March, for
> example, European scientists announced that one of their
> planetary probes had detected methane in the atmosphere of
> Mars — a possible sign that alien microbes live beneath the
> planet's surface. The finding made headlines from Paris to
> Melbourne. But most Americans, bombarded with images from
> America's own rovers successfully exploring the red planet,
> missed the foreign news.
>
> More aggressively, Europe is seeking to dominate particle
> physics by building the world's most powerful atom smasher,
> set for its debut in 2007. Its circular tunnel is 17 miles
> around.
>
> Science analysts say Asia's push for excellence promises to be
> even more challenging.
>
> "It's unbelievable," Diana Hicks, chairwoman of the school of
> public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said of
> Asia's growth in science and technical innovation. "It's
> amazing to see these output numbers of papers and patents
> going up so fast."
>
> Analysts say comparative American declines are an inevitable
> result of rising standards of living around the globe.
>
> "It's all in the ebb and flow of globalization," said Jack
> Fritz, a senior officer at the National Academy of
> Engineering, an advisory body to the federal government. He
> called the declines "the next big thing we will have to adjust
> to."
>
> The rapidly changing American status has not gone unnoticed by
> politicians, with Democrats on the attack and the White House
> on the defensive.
>
> "We stand at a pivotal moment," Tom Daschle, the Senate
> Democratic leader, recently said at a policy forum in
> Washington at the American Association for the Adva ncement of
> Science, the nation's top general science group. "For all our
> past successes, there are disturbing signs that America's
> dominant position in the scientific world is being shaken."
>
> Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening the
> nation's science base by failing to provide enough money for
> cutting-edge research.
>
> The president's science adviser, John H. Marburger III, who
> attended the forum, strongly denied that charge, saying in an
> interview that overall research budgets during the Bush
> administration have soared to record highs and that the
> science establishment is strong.
>
> "The sky is not falling on science," Dr. Marburger said.
> "Maybe there are some clouds — no, things that need
> attention." Any problems, he added, are within the power of
> the United States to deal with in a way that maintains the
> vitality of the research enterprise.
>
> Analysts say Mr. Daschle and Dr. Marburger can both supply
> data that supports their positions.
>
> A major question, they add, is whether big spending
> automatically translates into big rewards, as it did in the
> past. During the cold war, the government pumped more than $1
> trillion into research, with a wealth of benefits including
> lasers, longer life expectancies, men on the Moon and the
> prestige of many Nobel Prizes.
>
> Today, federal research budgets are still at record highs;
> this year more than $126 billion has been allocated to
> research. Moreover, American industry makes extensive use of
> federal research in producing its innovations and adds its own
> vast sums of money, the combination dwarfing that of any other
> nation or bloc.
>
> But the edifice is less formidable than it seems, in part
> because of the nation's costly and unique military role. This
> year, financing for military research hit $66 billion, higher
> in fixed dollars than in the cold war and far higher than in
> any other country.
>
> For all the spending, the United States began to experience a
> number of scientific declines in the 1990's, boom years for
> the nation's overall economy.
>
> For instance, scientific papers by Americans peaked in 1992
> and then fell roughly 10 percent, the National Science
> Foundation reports. Why? Many analysts point to rising foreign
> competition, as does the European Commission, which also
> monitors global science trends. In a study last year, the
> commission said Europe surpassed the United States in the
> mid-1990's as the world's largest producer of scientific
> literature.
>
> Dr. Hicks of Georgia Tech said that American scientists, when
> top journal s reject their papers, usually have no idea that
> rising foreign competition may be to blame.
>
> On another front, the numbers of new doctorates in the
> sciences peaked in 1998 and then fell 5 percent the next year,
> a loss of more than 1,300 new scientists, according to the
> foundation.
>
> A minor exodus also hit one of the hidden strengths of
> American science: vast ranks of bright foreigners. In a
> significant shift of demographics, they began to leave in what
> experts call a reverse brain drain. After peaking in the
> mid-1990's, the number of doctoral students from China, India
> and Taiwan with plans to stay in the United States began to
> fall by the hundreds, according to the foundation.
>
> These declines are important, analysts say, because new
> scientific knowledge is an engine of the American economy and
> technical innovation, its influence evident in everything from
> potent drugs to fast computer chips.
>
> Patents are a main way that companies and inventors reap
> commercial rewards from their ideas and stay competitive in
> the marketplace while improving the lives of millions.
>
> Foreigners outside the United States are playing an
> increasingly important role in these expressions of industrial
> creativity. In a recent study, CHI Research, a consulting firm
> in Haddon Heights, N.J., found that researchers in Japan,
> Taiwan and South Korea now account for more than a quarter of
> all United States industrial patents awarded each year,
> generating revenue for their own countries and limiting it in
> the United States.
>
> Moreover, their growth rates are rapid. Between 1980 and 2003,
> South Korea went from 0 to 2 percent of the total, Taiwan from
> 0 to 3 percent and Japan from 12 to 21 percent.
>
> "It's not just lots of patents," Francis Narin, CHI's
> president, said of the Asian rise. "It's lots of good patents
> that have a high impact," as measured by how often subsequent
> patents cite them.
>
> Recently, Dr. Narin added, both Taiwan and Singapore surged
> ahead of the United States in the overall number of citations.
> Singapore's patents include ones in chemicals, semiconductors,
> electronics and industrial tools.
>
> China represents the next wave, experts agree, its scientific
> rise still too fresh to show up in most statistics but already
> apparent. Dr. Simon of Rensselaer said that about 400 foreign
> companies had recently set up research centers in China, with
> General Electric, for instance, doing important work there on
> medical scanners, which means fewer skilled jobs in America.
>
> Ross Armbrecht, president of the Industrial Research
> Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington that represents
> large American companies, said businesses were going to China
> not just because of low costs but to take advantage of China's
> growing scientific excellence.
>
> "It's frightening," Dr. Armbrecht said. "But you've got to go
> where the horses are." An eventual danger, he added, is the
> slow loss of intellectual property as local professionals
> start their own businesses with what they have learned from
> American companies.
>
> For the United States, future trends look challenging, many
> analysts say.
>
> In a report last month, the American Association for the
> Advancement of Science said the Bush administration, to live
> up to its pledge to halve the nation's budget deficit in the
> next five years, would cut research financing at 21 of 24
> federal agencies — all those that do or finance scienc e except
> those involved in space and national and domestic security.
>
> More troubling to some experts is the likelihood of an
> accelerating loss of quality scientists. Applications from
> foreign graduate students to research universities are down by
> a quarter, experts say, partly because of the federal
> government's tightening of visas after the 2001 terrorist
> attacks.
>
> Shirley Ann Jackson, president of the American Association for
> the Advancement of Science, told the recent forum audience
> that the drop in foreign students, the apparently declining
> interest of young Americans in science careers and the aging
> of the technical work force were, taken together, a perilous
> combination of developments.
>
> "Who," she asked, "will do the science of this millennium?"
>
> Several private groups, including the Council on
> Competitiveness, a n organization in Washington that seeks
> policies to promote industrial vigor, have begun to agitate
> for wide debate and action.
>
> "Many other countries have realized that science and
> technology are key to economic growth and prosperity," said
> Jennifer Bond, the council's vice president for international
> affairs. "They're catching up to us," she said, warning
> Americans not to "rest on our laurels."
>
>
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