The Web Scene » Scientists

Fighting Trend, China Is Luring Scientists Home

sparky3887 — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:00:55 +0000

China is using financial incentives and appeals to national pride to reverse the drain of top science and engineering talent to the West. China’s spending on research and development (R&D) has steadily increased over the last 10 years and now amount to 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The United States spends 2.7 percent of its GDP on R&D, but China’s share is much higher than most other developing countries. Although China excels in certain scientific fields, such as nanotechnology, it struggles in other areas and has never had a Nobel Prize winner for research conducted in mainland China and ranked only 10th in the number of patents granted in the United States in 2008. Chinese students have been leaving at an increasing rate for several years. Almost 180,000 scientists left in 2008, nearly 25 percent more than in 2007. Those who obtained science or engineering degrees were among the least likely to return to China. However, China has been able to draw some prominent scientists back. Many scientists are lured by their patriotism, their desire to affect change, and their belief in the Chinese government. “I felt I owed China something,” says Shi Yigong, a molecular biologist who left Princeton University and returned to China last year. Many Asian scientists also confronted a glass ceiling in the United States, Shi says. Since his arrival in China, Shi has been actively recruiting more scientists to leave the West. In less than two years, he has recruited about 18 post doctoral fellows, almost all of them coming from the United States.

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Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels

sparky3887 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:04:21 +0000

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) president Susan Hockfield notes that the majority of the 2009 Nobel Prize winners for physics, chemistry, and medicine are immigrants who came to the United States as scientists or as graduate or post-doctoral students. She writes that they were drawn by the openness and prestige of the U.S. system of higher education and advanced research, but “that openness stands in sharp contrast to arcane U.S. immigration policies that discourage young scholars from settling in the U.S.” Student immigrants play a vital role in job creation, and Hockfield notes that foreign MIT graduates have started 2,340 active U.S. businesses in which more than 100,000 people are employed. She points out that U.S. immigration statutes require that students go back to their homelands after graduation and then apply for a visa if they wish to return and seek employment in the United States. “It would be hard to invent a policy more counterproductive to our national interest,” Hockfield says. She advocates the creation of a wider-ranging immigration policy that would allow foreign students who earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math to easily obtain legal permanent residence. Also critical is the aggressive cultivation of more domestic talent, especially Ph.D.s in the sciences, as other countries’ graduation rates are outpacing those of the United States. “To be part of [the] global creative network we must inspire more young Americans to pursue scientific careers, and we must rapidly reform U.S. immigration policies that drive away talented young scholars who would otherwise decide to live, work, and innovate here,” Hockfield concludes.

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Bangor Scientists Make Star Trek’s Holodeck Virtually a Reality

sparky3887 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:26:52 +0000

Bangor University computer scientists Nigel John and Jonathan Roberts are developing a “virtual cocoon” that will enable users to experience virtual sites using all of their senses. The scientists say their research could be the first step toward an immersive experience similar to Star Trek’s holodeck. The virtual cocoon also could help the environment by reducing the need for travel through the expansion of virtual tourism. “This gives a valid alternative and you could see the site not only as it is today, but as it was when it was first built and smell the smells and hear the sounds associated with that place,” John says. The scientists are working on applications that recreate the physical feel of specific actions, such as using a joystick as though it were a syringe for medical training, creating the slight sensation of pushing through the skin when inserting the needle. Bangor vision scientist Simon Watt is working with John and Roberts to ensure that the system’s display fits how the brain recreates the sense of three-dimensional objects. The project is part of a United Kingdom-wide real-virtuality network that involves scientists from all over the country in an effort to develop the technology.

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Computer Scientists Deploy First Practical Web-Based Secure, Verifiable Voting System

sparky3887 — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:24:50 +0000

The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) and scientists at the University Catholique de Louvain in Belgium deployed a Web-based, secure, verifiable-voting system for the Belgium presidential election that was held in early March. Called Helios, the system was developed by CRCS fellow Ben Adida. “Helios allows any participant to verify that their ballot was correctly captured, and any observer to verify that all captured ballots were correctly tallied,” Adida says. “We call this open-audit voting because the complete auditing process is now available to any observer.” The open source software uses advanced cryptographic techniques to maintain ballot secrecy while providing a mathematical proof that the election tally was correctly computed. Helios uses public-key homomorphic encryption, a method in which a public key is used to encrypt a message, or a vote. Homomorphic encryption allows messages to be combined while still encrypted, which works for counting votes, and requires multiple private keys to decrypt a message, which was the election tally. In an election, voters receive a tracking number for each of their votes, and each vote is encrypted with the election public key before leaving the voter’s browser. Voters can then use their tracking numbers to verify that their ballot was correctly captured by the voting system, which publishes a list of all tracking numbers received before tallying. Finally, the voter, or any observer, can verify that the tracking numbers and votes were tallied appropriately. Adida says the encryption allows the entire verification process to take place without revealing the contents of each vote.

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