Some work can only be done with international collaboration. Many facilities are such large undertakings that they can only be accomplished with input from many countries. Their work is variously aimed at unlocking the secrets of the universe or solving global challenges such as the provision of secure, clean energy.
Dr Beth Taylor
The Institute of Physics' Dr Beth Taylor discusses how the growth of physics can be a power for good, not only for the countries in which it takes place, but for the wider world…
What's in the lab today is in the shops tomorrow – this is obviously a slight exaggeration, but most of the commonplace features of everyday life started out as a piece of fundamental scientific research – from the smartphone in a person's pocket to lifesaving MRI machines in hospitals.
Physics punches above its weight in the economy, contributing as great a share of GDP as the construction or finance sectors and accounting for almost half of all manufacturing jobs.
The continuing contribution of science to the UK economy is dependent on the strength of the research base. Physicists came through the recession still standing
but not totally unscathed.
Restoring prior funding targets once the UK has recovered economically would help to secure its long-term future growth, and would reassure the community that its contribution is recognised. This is not to say that the flat-cash settlement for science in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review went unappreciated amid deep cuts to public services. But inflation has had an effect on real levels of funding and there has been little capital investment – at least, not until the announcement last year of £195m earmarked for research into supercomputing and graphene.
Graphene itself is just one example of the value of an international approach to the sciences. Russian-born Professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov carried out their Nobel Prize-winning work at the University of Manchester, having come to the UK via the Netherlands.
Attracting top scientists and engineers from all over the world is one of the ways in which the UK has developed such a strong research base. More than a third of academic appointments in the UK's physics departments are of staff from other EU countries and a further 18 per cent of them hail from outside it. This has been under threat of late due to the new migrant cap.
However, the upheaval of an international house-move is not the only way in which scientists can collaborate with others from overseas. Increasing numbers of journal papers are being co-authored by researchers living in different countries – 41per cent of articles in UK-published journals in 2008 were written in this way, a 15 per cent increase on the 2003 figure.
Some work can only be done with international collaboration. Many facilities are such large undertakings that they can only be accomplished with input from many countries. Their work is variously aimed at unlocking the secrets of the universe or solving global challenges such as the provision of secure, clean energy.
CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider, is the most familiar example, with 28 member or observer countries, and cooperation agreements with a further 38. The countries collaborating on ITER, the fusion project based in France, represent more than half the world's population.
And yet science is still often dominated by a minority of privileged nations – just 20 countries account for 86 per cent of all research publications. Organisations such as the 60-member International Union of Pure and Applied Physics work to strengthen international collaboration and encourage research and education.
Meanwhile, the Institute of Physics' efforts in the developing world – assisting with the training of physics teachers and guiding scientists and engineers in entrepreneurship – help to build scientific capacity. The institute has sometimes found an obstacle, however, in that there are few grants available that are small enough for individual projects of this type.
With effective support, this kind of work could prove to be key to meeting international development goals. But more than this, the ongoing growth of physics internationally will not only prove a power of good for the countries in which it takes place, but also for the world as a whole. For the obvious truth is that the more science there is going on in the world, the more innovations there will be as a result – from which more people will benefit, wherever they may live.
This article originally appeared on Publicservice.co.uk: From nations to space stations
As we are not nocturnal animals by nature, then we must benefit from sunlight, in several ways. It then follows that we can deal with sunlight - maybe we need to be more in touch with how to deal with exposure. This research shows that we do not know all the ways that we use sunlight naturally, which is probably true of other environmental factors. I will be very interested in outcomes of further research. Is there any research about sunlight and cognition?
