research

We're Losing Our High Technology Advantage America

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Howz that globalization workin' out fer ya? A new National Science Board report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, finally shows some bleak statistics for American Scientists and Engineers. High-technology manufacturing has lost 28% of jobs since a 2000 employment high of 2.5 million. That's 687,000 jobs. Below is the NSB report graph of the drop in high-tech manufacturing employment for the last decade.

hightechemp

U.S. employment in high-technology manufacturing reached a peak in 2000, with 2.5 million jobs. The recession of 2001 provided the first big hit causing “substantial and permanent” job losses, the report said. By the end of the decade, more than a quarter of the jobs were gone.

NSB committee chair Dr. José-Marie Griffiths:

We’re seeing the result in the very real, and substantial, loss of good jobs

Research & Development Being Offshore Outsourced

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Research and Development is moving out of the United States and offshore. In a new Economic Policy Institute study titled The Offshoring of Innovation, Dr. Ron Hira made the acceleration clear.

The economic and national security outcomes of increased resource input into the innovation process are going to be different than they have been in the past. We need fresh thinking about policies that will re-shape the new national innovation system to achieve desired outcomes

The Euphoric Drug of Profit - Part II - A Brief History of Drug R&D

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In the previous post, The Euphoric Drug of Profit, I asked the simple question, should pharmaceutical drugs be for profit at all? They are life saving compounds after all, something for the public welfare and good.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), funds billions of taxpayer dollars in public research.

Before 1980, the results of publicly funded research, often performed at United States universities, was considered public domain (de facto).

Some of the problems with this scenario were:

  • basic research was not taken to product and final development
  • funding basic research does not fund the 75% additional costs of bring results to use by the general public

Investing in the Nation - China that is

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You've probably never heard of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, or USCC. Created in 2000, they research and review economic and security ties with China. Yes, someone, somewhere is trying to monitor the situation.

Today this commission held a hearing, " Research and Development, Technological Advances in Key Industries, and Changing Trade Flows with China".

Guess what folks! China doesn't want those low end jobs or even manufacturing as a long term economic strategy. Nope, they are going for high end research and development in key technical areas!

Walsh open statement: