The Decline of American Technological Edge

Orgasmo

Orgasmo

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Warning: It's going to be a long read and requires some patience.

http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?year=2015&area=3300
Some of you may have heard of SCImago Journal Rank, or SJR indicator. It keeps track of science and scholarly researches being published each year and categorize them according to journal and country, which sub-categories in subject areas. Most of these are peer reviewed. While US still has a definitive edge on total number of research today, an emerging trend is starting to appear. Take a look at the year 2015 number of American research being published compared against China, the closest competitor.

All Subject Areas:
US - 567007
China - 416409

Arts and Humanities:
US - 27298
China - 2338 (Ranked 11th)

Business Management and Accounting:
US - 12656
China - 3127 (Ranked 3rd)

Economics, Econometric and Finance:
US - 9689
China - 1763 (Ranked 7th)

Social Sciences:
US - 53708
China - 7051 (Ranked 7th)

US is also a clear front-runner in areas of research involving health sciences and biology. You may be asking what in the hell I'm talking about in the thread title with these crushing numbers. Well you see, here is where the problem emerges:

Chemistry:
China - 63193
US - 35610

Computer Sciences:
China - 48609
US - 41237

Engineering:
China - 120373
US - 66898

Energy:
China - 21769
US - 11321

Material Sciences:
China - 75205
US - 37954

Mathematics:
China - 33844
US - 28131

Physics and Astronomy:
China - 67402
US - 52452

Starting to see a trend there? Focus of research in the two countries are clearly different. While US still enjoys its technological edge today, the gap is narrowing very quickly. China for the most part, has been quietly beefing up its research and gearing them towards hard sciences. If this keeps up, China becoming the world's technological powerhouse is an inevitability.

Since when did you think the US higher education system shifted from its focus to soft sciences and do you think anything could be done to reverse the trend?
 


America is too busy focusing on terrorist,gun control, and nonsense bullshit instead of focusing on the real shit that matter.


Technology will fix most of the worlds problems, it is the best thing we have to solve Poverty,hunger,etc....yet we don't invest as much as we should.


As for China, Im happy that other parts of the world want to advance themselves thru technology...Good for them, Humanity will benefit no matter what.
 
I actually feel our problem is some of our recent technologies being used horribly. When the focus of the internet in America became sextapes and gossip we fell hard towards a vacuous black hole.

We haven't propelled ourselves into a mindset of using our advances for anything but instant gratification when it should've been like opening a door to a room with a billion more doors.

Hopefully some of the newer advances can inspire a new wave of inspiration like space travel and computing did.
 
And its not just China though they're definitely the biggest challenger. A lot of other developing countries are trying to follow that model. Iran might be one of the more surprising examples since they're a theocracy and one might imagine that would hinder scientific development. But that hasn't been the case, even before the sanctions

The Islamic Republic of Iran ranked 17th in terms of science production in the world in 2012, according to the latest statistics released by the Scopus database.

According to the statistics, Iran produced 34,155 articles in 2012, which gained the country the world's 17th rank in science production and fixed its top position in the region, above Turkey. Scientific progress over the past few years was the result of the country's recent policies and programs to develop knowledge and facilitate researchers' access to the world's top academic resources. Iran has the world's fastest-growing scientific output, measured by the number of peer-reviewed papers published in international journals. In addition, Iran ranked first in scientific growth in the world in 2011. In 2000, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranked 53rd in the world in terms of highly cited medical articles, but improved to the 23rd rank in 2011. According to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Iranian researchers and scientists published a total of 60,979 scientific articles in major international journals from 1999 to 2008. It is being said that scientific growth in Iran has been fastest in the world, even more than China. Whatever the reason, it is commendable that the country has achieved this even at the worst possible sanctions from the most powerful and most influential country in the world. Iran with a science and technology yearly growth rate of 25% is doubling its total output every three years and at this rate will reach the level of Canadian annual output in 2017. “If Iran keeps moving with the present momentum, it can ascend to the 4th place from the current 17th (in the world ranking of scientific growth and scientific production) in the next 6 years”.

How about quality and impact? The USA still has a clear lead; taking as a measure of world impact the share of the most highly cited papers (taken as the top 1% in each discipline) puts the USA in the lead with 61%, while the UK outperforms its volume share with 13% of highly cited papers. Iran still underperforms on this measure but the gap is closing, and is likely to close further as citation counts are a lagging indicator – it takes some years for spending on science to translate, first into publication outputs, and only later into citations of those papers by other scientists.

Under Iran's ‘comprehensive plan for science’, the country plans to be spending four per cent of GDP on research and development by 2030. Unfortunately, heavy sanctions against Iran and financial crisis over the last two years slowed down this scientific growth. Now Iranian scientific society hopes to next president to fasten this growth and again back to future.
Click to expand...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3732862/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3732862/
With the sanctions off this trend could accelerate. And its not social sciences they're investing in

http://www.scimagojr.com/countrysearch.php?country=ir
http://www.scimagojr.com/countrysearch.php?country=ir
Look where its invested. Genetics, Molecular Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Medicine, Materials Science, and Physics and Astronomy. This is planting the seed for a future harvest.
 
The most intelligent countries and well taught are not in the top 20 highest populaces. The brightest nations have smaller populations thus schooling can be a priority. The only priority in the big nations is business.
 
It's cause we took God out of the class room and started teaching pseudo science like evolution.


Okay now that that's been said there is no need for it to be brought up by the WR holy trinity crew.

We need more of a push towards hardwork and achieving your goals because their hard not taking the easy route because "I'm not good at math". The whole letting kids off the hook with sub par math and science skills to pass highschool needs to stop.
 
The same is happening in India. It´s because of economic pressures and the number of people focusing on stem fields. There's an interesting article by Andreas Schleicher (OECD education director):

China opens a new university every week
16 March 2016
In terms of producing graduates, China has overtaken the United States and the combined university systems of European Union countries.
(...)
Students in China and India are much more likely to study mathematics, sciences, computing and engineering - the subjects most relevant to innovation and technological advance.

In 2013, 40% of Chinese graduates completed their studies in a Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subject - more than twice the share of US graduates.
Click to expand...
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35776555
 
Orgasmo said:
Since when did you think the US higher education system shifted from its focus to soft sciences and do you think anything could be done to reverse the trend? [/SIZE]
Click to expand...

The only way to reverse this is to simply reverse it. It is really just a matter of choice.

And also i is not a prblem of higher education but below it. Hard sciences and math need to be beefed up in Elementary, middle and high school. They need teachers who are up to date in the latest.

Plus I hear our elementary, middle school, and high school are far behind many countries.

Now I dont believe in public education, but if we keeping it, then it needs to be improved
 
caxias said:
The same is happening in India. It´s because of economic pressures and the number of people focusing on stem fields. There's an interesting article by Andreas Schleicher (OECD education director):

China opens a new university every week
16 March 2016

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35776555
Click to expand...

But you also have to have the money to throw at STEM for more people to focus on it.
 
HendoRuaGOAT said:
Social Sciences:
US - 53708
China - 7051 (Ranked 7th)

#Triggered
Click to expand...

US is busy teaching the upcoming generation to be non-competitive, sensitive, addicted to being offended, and requiring of safe spaces.

In it to win it?
 
A lot of those Chinese engineering degrees are junk degrees.

I have seen some really elegant code written by Indian/Chinese grade school children. It's a pretty scary field to jump into at this point, unless you're 100% committed to working tirelessly and being one of the best in the world. Programming isn't a 40 or 60 hour a week job within 20 years; it's either your passion/calling or nothing. IMO
 
IDL said:
US is busy teaching the upcoming generation to be non-competitive, sensitive, addicted to being offended, and requiring of safe spaces.

In it to win it?
Click to expand...

Well atleast it is uniformed, and comes with a Common Core.

This way we know everyone is getting the same shitty education.
 
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