News by Subject Business & Economics

American scientific teams still publish significantly more biomedical research discoveries than teams from any other country, a new study shows, and the US still leads the world in research and development expenditures. But American dominance is slowly shrinking, the analysis finds, as China's skyrocketing investing on science over the last two decades begins to pay off.

In a study published in PLOS Medicine, Aleksandra Jakubowski of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US, and colleagues show that funding from the US President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 19 sub-Saharan African countries was associated with a 16 person reduction in the annual risk of under-five child mortality in the years following introduction of the Initiative.

As the threats of climate change and economic instability loom large, public energy investment can seem like roll of the dice. Now, new research has analyzed scientific publications to identify the 'good bets' for governments committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions even in the face of growing constraints on public R&D budgets.

In medical diagnostics, the importance of genetic code assays is growing day by day and modern molecular biology could not do without it. Current DNA analysis techniques, however, are far from perfect. Working on a record high speed genetic research tool Curiosity Diagnostics, a spin-off company of IPC PAS and part of the Scope Fluidics group, has developed a new method of DNA analysis, combining the key advantages of the two currently most used methods.

Young scientists from colleges and universities across the United States will arrive on Capitol Hill on Thursday to talk with senators and representatives about the value of biomedical research.

A new paper co-authored by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health's Bhaven Sampat, PhD, shows that 30 percent of all NIH-funded grants produce research that is cited by a private-sector patent. The publicly-funded research creates knowledge that links to private companies' efforts to develop drugs, medical devices, and other patented biomedical products.

Research grants issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) contribute to a significant number of private-sector patents in biomedicine, according to a new study co-authored by an MIT professor. The study, published in the journal Science, examines 27 years of data and finds that 31 percent of NIH grants, which are publicly funded, produce articles that are later cited by patents in the biomedical sector.

Are powerful, well-to-do people more charitable? It depends. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, wealthier people are more likely to donate to charity if they endorse social inequality while less wealthy people are more likely to make donations if they endorse greater equality.