US will no longer dominate science and research, says Penn State researcher

February 21, 2011 by Editor

A shift in the global research landscape will reposition the United States as a major partner, but not the dominant leader, in science and technology research in the coming decade, according to a Penn State researcher. However, the U.S. could benefit from this research shift if it adopts a policy of knowledge sharing with the growing global community of researchers.

“What is emerging is a global science system in which the U.S. will be one player among many,” said Caroline Wagner, associate professor of international affairs, who presented her findings Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

The entrance of more nations into global science has changed the research landscape. From 1996 to 2008, the share of papers published by U.S. researchers dropped 20 percent. Wagner attributes much of this output shift not to a drop in U.S. research efforts, but to the exponentially increasing research conducted in developing countries, such as China and India.

Ethnic conflicts and civil wars are becoming rarer. Incidents of human rights violations are on the decline, and this is at a time when we're adding more people than ever before. We have three times the people on the planet that we had before World War I, and there are fewer people dying, and human rights violations are down.

Life is better politically for the majority of people on the planet. A higher percentage live in peace than ever before, and that’s likely to continue.

In the nineteenth century, power vacuums used to draw powers in. Nowadays they don't. Countries tend to stay away from them. They don’t want to even send troops into peacekeeping missions. I don’t think invading Iraq has made us safer or less safe. It's just been a mess.

Afghanistan is the same thing. I don’t think it matters much to U.S. security either way. They may well end up having their own civil war. But will it spill over into other countries? Probably not.

We hear that Iran is a threat to the region. But the Iranians have never shown any sign of wanting to attack any of their neighbors. They don’t want to rule Iraq. They don’t want to extend into Pakistan. They're not going to “wipe Israel off the map,” because they know it would be the last thing their government ever does. It's not a good outcome if the Iranians get nuclear weapons, but it won't be the worst thing in the world.

The twenty-first century will probably be the most peaceful hundred years in human history, according to Christopher Fettweis, Tulane University political scientist and author of Dangerous Times?: The International Politics of Great Power Peace. He considers ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other global hotspots exceptions to—rather than rules of—modern geopolitics.

Futurist Reading for 2011

What follows is a selection of new and forthcoming books that have been selected for inclusion in the Global Foresight Books project (www.globalforesightbooks.org) by Michael Marien. and includes titles on medicine, economics, the environment, education, business, and technology. Marien has also included subcategories for later reference.
http://www.wfs.org/content/new-and-forthcoming-fallspring-2010-2011

More-Populous World May Demand 16 Times More Energy by 2050

If the global population rises to 9.5 billion by 2050, and every one of those people adopts the American standard of living, global energy demand could increase by a factor of 16 according to a recent paper by a team of University of New Mexico biologists and other researchers.

The article published in the journal BioScience finds that that low infant mortality, electronics consumption per person, and various other high-standard-of-living variables are closely correlated with energy consumption per person.

“The vast majority of nations we analyzed (74%) increased both energy use and GDP from 1980 to 2003 and exhibited positive correlations [in standard of living] across the 24 years. For example, from 1850 to 2000, while the global human population grew fivefold, world energy use increased 20-fold and fossil fuel-use rose more than 150-fold,” the authors write.

Correlation is not the same as causation. The researchers acknowledge the possibility that future technologies may make the U.S. standard of living less energy intensive. Regardless, the correlations they point out are compelling in the light of continued global dependence on fossil fuels.

Sources: http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/110107_study_finds_energy_limits_global_economic_growth.html