The so-called index of economic complexity, based on nations’ exports, was initially proposed as an alternative to traditional macroeconomic metrics just as the scientific productivity of countries which has also been deemed as a better predictor of economic growth. Adequate scrutiny to the relationship between these two factors, however, remains little explored. This paper aims to examine the relationship between economic complexity and scientific production while identifying which areas of knowledge hold to this relationship best. By applying panel data techniques to a sample of 91 countries between 2003 and 2014, we found that scientific productivity in basic sciences and engineering has a significant positive effect on the economic complexity of countries. This relationship, however, only remains stable for high-income countries, where university-industry-government capabilities interact to stimulate and generate innovation and strategies for economic growth of firms.

 

Can scientific productivity impact the economic complexity of countries?

Henry Laverde-Rojas & Juan C. Correa

Scientometrics
pp 1–16

Source: link.springer.com

Scientists seek a single description of reality. But modern physics allows for many different descriptions, many equivalent to one another, connected through a vast landscape of mathematical possibility.

Source: www.quantamagazine.org

Led by dozens of top theorists, with input from mathematicians, researchers have already classified a huge swath of phases that can arise in one or two spatial dimensions by relating them to topology: the math that describes invariant properties of shapes like the sphere and the torus. They’ve also begun to explore the wilderness of phases that can arise near absolute zero in 3-D matter.

Source: www.quantamagazine.org

Leonardo’s thinking was interdisciplinary. When he injected wax into the brain or into the heart to make casts of the inner workings of the body, he was borrowing the “lost wax” technique familiar to sculptors. When he studied friction and invented roller bearings and ball bearings he reasoned that frictional resistance differs according to the nature of the surfaces in contact, and increases in direct proportion to load, and he even estimated (for the first time) a coefficient of friction. But he went further to realize its relevance not just to machines but to the movements of tendons over bones; to the creation of heat by the heart; and to the production of voice by the friction of air on the vocal cords.

Source: blogs.scientificamerican.com