Science and Engineering Indicators 2010
ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2010) — The state of the science and engineering (S&E) enterprise in America is strong, yet its lead is slipping, according to data released at the White House January 15 by the National Science Board (NSB). Prepared biennially and delivered to the President and Congress on even numbered years by Jan. 15 as statutorily mandated, Science and Engineering Indicators (SEI) provides information on the scope, quality and vitality of America's science and engineering enterprise. SEI 2010 sheds light on America's position in the global economy.
"The data begin to tell a worrisome story," said Kei Koizumi, assistant director for federal research and development (R&D)in the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Calling SEI 2010 a "State of the Union on science, technology, engineering and mathematics," he noted that quot;U.S. dominance has eroded significantly."
Koizumi and OSTP hosted the public rollout at which NSB Chairman Steven Beering, National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Arden L. Bement, Jr., and NSB members presented SEI 2010 data and described a mixed picture. NSB's SEI Committee Chairman Lou Lanzerotti noted the good news for those in the S&E community about public attitudes, "Scientists are about the same as firefighters in terms of prestige," he said. His presentation focused attention on NSB's Digest, also released January 15, highlighting important trends and data points from across SEI 2010.
Over the past decade, R&D intensity--how much of a country's economic activity or gross domestic product is expended on R&D--has grown considerably in Asia, while remaining steady in the U.S. Annual growth of R&D expenditures in the U.S. averaged 5 to 6 percent while in Asia, it has skyrocketed. In some Asian countries, R&D growth rate is two, three, even four, times that of the U.S.
In terms of R&D expenditures as a share of economic output, while Japan has surpassed the U.S. for quite some time, South Korea is now in the lead--ahead of the U.S. and Japan. And why does this matter? Investment in R&D is a major driver of innovation, which builds on new knowledge and technologies, contributes to national competitiveness and furthers social welfare. R&D expenditures indicate the priority given to advancing science and technology (S&T) relative to other national goals.
NSB SEI 2010 Committee Member Jose-Marie Griffiths discussed another key indicator: intellectual research outputs. "While the U.S. continues to lead the world in research publications, China has become the second most prolific contributor." China's rapidly developing science base now produces 8 percent of the world's research publications, up from its just 2 percent of the world's share in 1995, when it ranked 14th.
Patents are another measure of valuable contributions to knowledge and inventions to societies. Inventors from around the globe seek patent protection in the U.S. U.S. patents awarded to foreign inventors offer a broad indication of the distribution of inventive activity around the world. While inventors in the U.S., the European Union (EU) and Japan produce almost all of these patents, and U.S. patenting by Chinese and Indian inventors remains modest, the number of patents earned by Asian inventors is on the rise, driven by activity in Taiwan and South Korea.
The Digest contains these and other key indicators, such as the globalization of capability; funding, performance and portfolio of U.S. R&D trends; and the composition of the U.S. S&E workforce. What's more, the Digest is electronically linked with detailed data tables and discussions in the main volumes of SEI. It can also be downloaded to laptops, iPods or other devices. "This makes the data much more accessible and digestable to policymakers, as well as to members of the general public who may wish to read about and understand the data that describe the state of their economy," said Lanzerotti.
Calling SEI a "biennial production and a daily source of pride for NSF," Bement characterized it as a guide to the future. "It is not just where we stand; it's about where we're heading," he said, quoting 19th century British scientist Lord Kelvin, "'If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.'"
Representing OSTP Director John Holdren and his OSTP colleagues, in closing Koizumi said, "We promise to put your work to good use."
SEI is prepared by NSF's Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) on behalf of the National Science Board. The publication is subject to extensive review by outside experts, interested federal agencies, Board members and SRS internal reviewers for accuracy, coverage and balance.
In further carrying out its responsibility to advise the President and Congress on science and engineering issues, in February, the NSB will release a companion, policy piece, Globalization of Science and Engineering Research.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Will China rule the world?
Will China rule the world?
By Dani Rodrik
First Published: January 13, 2010
CAMBRIDGE – Thirty years ago, China had a tiny footprint on the global economy and little influence outside its borders, save for a few countries with which it had close political and military relationships. Today, the country is a remarkable economic power: the world’s manufacturing workshop, its foremost financier, a leading investor across the globe from Africa to Latin America, and, increasingly, a major source of research and development.
The Chinese government sits atop an astonishing level of foreign reserves – greater than $2 trillion. There is not a single business anywhere in the world that has not felt China’s impact, either as a low-cost supplier, or more threateningly, as a formidable competitor.
China is still a poor country. Although average incomes have risen very rapidly in recent decades, they still stand at between one-seventh and one-eighth the levels in the United States – lower than in Turkey or Colombia and not much higher than in El Salvador or Egypt. While coastal China and its major metropolises evince tremendous wealth, large swaths of Western China remain mired in poverty. Nevertheless, China’s economy is projected to surpass that of the US in size sometime in the next two decades.
Meanwhile, the US, the world’s sole economic hyper-power until recently, remains a diminished giant. It stands humbled by its foreign-policy blunders and a massive financial crisis. Its credibility after the disastrous invasion of Iraq is at an all-time low, notwithstanding the global sympathy for President Barack Obama, and its economic model is in tatters. The once-almighty dollar totters at the mercy of China and the oil-rich states.
All of which raises the question of whether China will eventually replace the US as the world’s hegemon, the global economy’s rule setter and enforcer. In a fascinating new book, revealingly titled When China Rules the World , the British scholar and journalist Martin Jacques is unequivocal: if you think China will be integrated smoothly into a liberal, capitalist, and democratic world system, Jacques argues, you are in for a big surprise. Not only is China the next economic superpower, but the world order that it will construct will look very different from what we have had under American leadership.
Americans and Europeans blithely assume that China will become more like them as its economy develops and its population gets richer. This is a mirage, Jacques says. The Chinese and their government are wedded to a different conception of society and polity: community-based rather than individualist, state-centric rather than liberal, authoritarian rather than democratic. China has 2,000 years of history as a distinct civilization from which to draw strength. It will not simply fold under Western values and institutions.
A world order centered on China will reflect Chinese values rather than Western ones, Jacques argues. Beijing will overshadow New York, the renminbi will replace the dollar, Mandarin will take over from English, and schoolchildren around the world will learn about Zheng He’s voyages of discovery along the Eastern coast of Africa rather than about Vasco de Gama or Christopher Columbus.
Gone will be the evangelism of markets and democracy. China is much less likely to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states. But, in return, it will demand that smaller, less powerful states explicitly recognize China’s primacy (just as in the tributary systems of old).
Before any of this comes to pass, however, China will have to continue its rapid economic growth and maintain its social cohesion and political unity. None of this is guaranteed. Beneath China’s powerful economic dynamo lie deep tensions, inequalities, and cleavages that could well derail a smooth progression to global hegemony. Throughout its long history, centrifugal forces have often pushed the country into disarray and disintegration.
China’s stability hinges critically on its government’s ability to deliver steady economic gains to the vast majority of the population. China is the only country in the world where anything less than 8% growth year after year is believed to be dangerous because it would unleash social unrest. Most of the rest of the world only dreams about growth at that rate, which speaks volumes about the underlying fragility of the Chinese system.
The authoritarian nature of the political regime is at the core of this fragility. It allows only repression when the government faces protests and opposition outside the established channels.
The trouble is that it will become increasingly difficult for China to maintain the kind of growth that it has experienced in recent years. China’s growth currently relies on an undervalued currency and a huge trade surplus. This is unsustainable, and sooner or later it will precipitate a major confrontation with the US (and Europe). There are no easy ways out of this dilemma. China will likely have to settle for lower growth.
If China surmounts these hurdles and does eventually become the world’s predominant economic power, globalization will, indeed, take on Chinese characteristics. Democracy and human rights will then likely lose their luster as global norms. That is the bad news.
The good news is that a Chinese global order will display greater respect for national sovereignty and more tolerance for national diversity. There will be greater room for experimentation with different economic models.
Dani Rodrik, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the first recipient of the Social Science Research Council’s Albert O. Hirschman Prize. His latest book is One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth.
This commentary is publioshed by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
By Dani Rodrik
First Published: January 13, 2010
CAMBRIDGE – Thirty years ago, China had a tiny footprint on the global economy and little influence outside its borders, save for a few countries with which it had close political and military relationships. Today, the country is a remarkable economic power: the world’s manufacturing workshop, its foremost financier, a leading investor across the globe from Africa to Latin America, and, increasingly, a major source of research and development.
The Chinese government sits atop an astonishing level of foreign reserves – greater than $2 trillion. There is not a single business anywhere in the world that has not felt China’s impact, either as a low-cost supplier, or more threateningly, as a formidable competitor.
China is still a poor country. Although average incomes have risen very rapidly in recent decades, they still stand at between one-seventh and one-eighth the levels in the United States – lower than in Turkey or Colombia and not much higher than in El Salvador or Egypt. While coastal China and its major metropolises evince tremendous wealth, large swaths of Western China remain mired in poverty. Nevertheless, China’s economy is projected to surpass that of the US in size sometime in the next two decades.
Meanwhile, the US, the world’s sole economic hyper-power until recently, remains a diminished giant. It stands humbled by its foreign-policy blunders and a massive financial crisis. Its credibility after the disastrous invasion of Iraq is at an all-time low, notwithstanding the global sympathy for President Barack Obama, and its economic model is in tatters. The once-almighty dollar totters at the mercy of China and the oil-rich states.
All of which raises the question of whether China will eventually replace the US as the world’s hegemon, the global economy’s rule setter and enforcer. In a fascinating new book, revealingly titled When China Rules the World , the British scholar and journalist Martin Jacques is unequivocal: if you think China will be integrated smoothly into a liberal, capitalist, and democratic world system, Jacques argues, you are in for a big surprise. Not only is China the next economic superpower, but the world order that it will construct will look very different from what we have had under American leadership.
Americans and Europeans blithely assume that China will become more like them as its economy develops and its population gets richer. This is a mirage, Jacques says. The Chinese and their government are wedded to a different conception of society and polity: community-based rather than individualist, state-centric rather than liberal, authoritarian rather than democratic. China has 2,000 years of history as a distinct civilization from which to draw strength. It will not simply fold under Western values and institutions.
A world order centered on China will reflect Chinese values rather than Western ones, Jacques argues. Beijing will overshadow New York, the renminbi will replace the dollar, Mandarin will take over from English, and schoolchildren around the world will learn about Zheng He’s voyages of discovery along the Eastern coast of Africa rather than about Vasco de Gama or Christopher Columbus.
Gone will be the evangelism of markets and democracy. China is much less likely to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states. But, in return, it will demand that smaller, less powerful states explicitly recognize China’s primacy (just as in the tributary systems of old).
Before any of this comes to pass, however, China will have to continue its rapid economic growth and maintain its social cohesion and political unity. None of this is guaranteed. Beneath China’s powerful economic dynamo lie deep tensions, inequalities, and cleavages that could well derail a smooth progression to global hegemony. Throughout its long history, centrifugal forces have often pushed the country into disarray and disintegration.
China’s stability hinges critically on its government’s ability to deliver steady economic gains to the vast majority of the population. China is the only country in the world where anything less than 8% growth year after year is believed to be dangerous because it would unleash social unrest. Most of the rest of the world only dreams about growth at that rate, which speaks volumes about the underlying fragility of the Chinese system.
The authoritarian nature of the political regime is at the core of this fragility. It allows only repression when the government faces protests and opposition outside the established channels.
The trouble is that it will become increasingly difficult for China to maintain the kind of growth that it has experienced in recent years. China’s growth currently relies on an undervalued currency and a huge trade surplus. This is unsustainable, and sooner or later it will precipitate a major confrontation with the US (and Europe). There are no easy ways out of this dilemma. China will likely have to settle for lower growth.
If China surmounts these hurdles and does eventually become the world’s predominant economic power, globalization will, indeed, take on Chinese characteristics. Democracy and human rights will then likely lose their luster as global norms. That is the bad news.
The good news is that a Chinese global order will display greater respect for national sovereignty and more tolerance for national diversity. There will be greater room for experimentation with different economic models.
Dani Rodrik, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the first recipient of the Social Science Research Council’s Albert O. Hirschman Prize. His latest book is One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth.
This commentary is publioshed by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
Google banned 30,000 advertisers post Economic Resurrection, Ad police suddenly affordable
Google banned 30,000 advertisers post Economic Resurrection
Ad police suddenly affordable
By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author
Posted in Music and Media, 15th January 2010 21:40 GMT
In the fall of 2008, when the worldwide economy began to melt, Google responded by shamelessly expanding ad coverage on its web-dominating search engine, letting more ads onto more pages. But now that the economy has recovered, the web giant has suddenly become more much vigilant in its efforts to weed out what it considers low-quality advertising.
According to new data from AdGooRoo - a search marketing consultant that tracks search ads from a network of servers across the globe - Google permanently banned 30,000 accounts from its AdWords ad system at the beginning of December. That's roughly 5.3 per cent of its active advertisers. Ad coverage dipped nearly 10 per cent in the wake of the mass axing, and yet AdGooRoo's data indicates that Google's revenues surged in the fourth quarter, thanks to increased competition for placement among the web's top ad spenders.
Click here to find out more!
In other words, when the economy was in the tank, Google needed all the extra revenue it could get. But now that the economy is healthy again, it can step up efforts up to remove what it sees as inappropriate ads. The big boys are spending more, so it doesn't need as many clicks to boost the bottom line. What's more, by shrinking ad coverage, Google can actually drive more traffic to the big spenders. If you cut 30,000 advertisers, those still on the search engine get more clicks - and the more clicks, the more those big spenders pay.
Google announces its fourth quarter financials next week, and AdGooRoo data is typically a reliable indicator of what's to come. "Our ad coverage metric confirms that something big went down at the Googleplex last month. Ad coverage, which has been steadily climbing for the past 12 months took a sudden and precipitous dive in December," reads the firms latest search-ad report, due out on Monday. "Ordinarily, this would foreshadow a weak quarter, but we believe that this small drop will be more than offset by strong ad revenues."
Two years ago, in January 2008, Google famously began an effort to shrink ad coverage on the world's most popular search engine. This continued through the middle of 2008, and when the subject came up during Google's quarterly earnings call that July, senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg attributed the shrinkage to Google's "continued focus on quality" advertising.
"[Google co-founder] Larry [Page] says we'd be better off showing just one ad [per page] - the perfect ad," Rosenberg said, indicating that coverage would continue to shrink.
But then he was interrupted by Google's other co-founder, Sergey Brin, who piped up with what can only be described as a shocking moment of candor. "There is some evidence that we've been a little bit more aggressive in decreasing coverage than we ought to have been," Brin said. "We've been reexamining some of that."
The economy was softening, and sure enough, coverage soon began to expand. According to AdGooRoo's numbers, Google's search engine showed 57 per cent more ads per page in the fourth quarter of 2008 than it did in Q3, as the economy imploded following the infamous demise of Wall Street stalwarts Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.
Google had made significant changes to AdWords that fall, and naturally it said this would also improve ad "quality." So, whether Google is shrinking ad coverage or expanding it, the only aim to provide the world with better ads.
But surely it's obvious that Google is dialing up and down as the economy rises and falls. And now that the economy is on the rise again, the company has renewed efforts to crack down on ads it doesn't like. Google started banning advertisers en masse in early October - just as it was about to announce that the economic meltdown was over - and this house-cleaning came to head on December 3.
The official line is what you'd expect from the Mountain View Chocolate Factory. "Google is constantly working to ensure that we’re showing ads to our users that are relevant, in accordance with our ad policies, and safe for users. To that end, we perform regular reviews, using both manual and automated processes, in order to detect and disable ads that violate our policies," it told Search Engine Land.
But surely, the timing is no coincidence. ®
Ad police suddenly affordable
By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author
Posted in Music and Media, 15th January 2010 21:40 GMT
In the fall of 2008, when the worldwide economy began to melt, Google responded by shamelessly expanding ad coverage on its web-dominating search engine, letting more ads onto more pages. But now that the economy has recovered, the web giant has suddenly become more much vigilant in its efforts to weed out what it considers low-quality advertising.
According to new data from AdGooRoo - a search marketing consultant that tracks search ads from a network of servers across the globe - Google permanently banned 30,000 accounts from its AdWords ad system at the beginning of December. That's roughly 5.3 per cent of its active advertisers. Ad coverage dipped nearly 10 per cent in the wake of the mass axing, and yet AdGooRoo's data indicates that Google's revenues surged in the fourth quarter, thanks to increased competition for placement among the web's top ad spenders.
Click here to find out more!
In other words, when the economy was in the tank, Google needed all the extra revenue it could get. But now that the economy is healthy again, it can step up efforts up to remove what it sees as inappropriate ads. The big boys are spending more, so it doesn't need as many clicks to boost the bottom line. What's more, by shrinking ad coverage, Google can actually drive more traffic to the big spenders. If you cut 30,000 advertisers, those still on the search engine get more clicks - and the more clicks, the more those big spenders pay.
Google announces its fourth quarter financials next week, and AdGooRoo data is typically a reliable indicator of what's to come. "Our ad coverage metric confirms that something big went down at the Googleplex last month. Ad coverage, which has been steadily climbing for the past 12 months took a sudden and precipitous dive in December," reads the firms latest search-ad report, due out on Monday. "Ordinarily, this would foreshadow a weak quarter, but we believe that this small drop will be more than offset by strong ad revenues."
Two years ago, in January 2008, Google famously began an effort to shrink ad coverage on the world's most popular search engine. This continued through the middle of 2008, and when the subject came up during Google's quarterly earnings call that July, senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg attributed the shrinkage to Google's "continued focus on quality" advertising.
"[Google co-founder] Larry [Page] says we'd be better off showing just one ad [per page] - the perfect ad," Rosenberg said, indicating that coverage would continue to shrink.
But then he was interrupted by Google's other co-founder, Sergey Brin, who piped up with what can only be described as a shocking moment of candor. "There is some evidence that we've been a little bit more aggressive in decreasing coverage than we ought to have been," Brin said. "We've been reexamining some of that."
The economy was softening, and sure enough, coverage soon began to expand. According to AdGooRoo's numbers, Google's search engine showed 57 per cent more ads per page in the fourth quarter of 2008 than it did in Q3, as the economy imploded following the infamous demise of Wall Street stalwarts Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.
Google had made significant changes to AdWords that fall, and naturally it said this would also improve ad "quality." So, whether Google is shrinking ad coverage or expanding it, the only aim to provide the world with better ads.
But surely it's obvious that Google is dialing up and down as the economy rises and falls. And now that the economy is on the rise again, the company has renewed efforts to crack down on ads it doesn't like. Google started banning advertisers en masse in early October - just as it was about to announce that the economic meltdown was over - and this house-cleaning came to head on December 3.
The official line is what you'd expect from the Mountain View Chocolate Factory. "Google is constantly working to ensure that we’re showing ads to our users that are relevant, in accordance with our ad policies, and safe for users. To that end, we perform regular reviews, using both manual and automated processes, in order to detect and disable ads that violate our policies," it told Search Engine Land.
But surely, the timing is no coincidence. ®
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)