China to Overtake Silicon Valley, Claims Report

[RiazHaq]

Don't be so sure.

The key to America's dominance has been and continues to be its technology prowess.

It's on display nowhere better than in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Silicon Valley which is predominantly nonwhite. Enable by top talent and risk capital, there is huge research & development going on here on everything from biotechnology to nanotechnology and advanced AI. If you get a chance, please read about the work of Singularity University. Abundance, a recent book by Peter Diamandis, sheds some light on it.

This is what will maintain significant US lead over competitors in the 21st century.

Haq's Musings: Minorities Are Majority in America's Silicon Valley

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Math chem and physics are liberal arts subjects which are difficult to attract funding in every countries especially less from corporate sponsors though I agree they are very important fundamentals to applied and advanced disciplines, in particular, math (statistics) which is important to almost all graduate studies. As for the funding of pure sciences in China, there is none or very few private foundations which can provide financial support to these pure science departments.

理科 =/= "liberal arts" 文科 = liberal arts. 理科最好翻译成 "physical sciences".

OK, can't type Chinese because of rules.

biosciences are extremely cost ineffective. let me just give an example.

if we made a robot that can swim through a bloodstream that automatically destroys cancer cells, how much does our life expectancy increase? not much, because we are already at biological limits. however, even if we were to get this technology, how much would it cost?

We don't need private funding either. Funding in US is completely by the public NSF. There's almost zero private funding for physics and chemistry, especially now that the corporation labs are closed. In China there's good funding for physics and chemistry, but more than that, in physics and chemistry China is not behind, and physics and chemistry has direct applications. The transistor and integrated circuit was invented by physicists, after all, and the importance of applied physics and chemistry is widely known throughout the world.

Also, corporations do frequently fund physics and chemistry (such as Huawei Photonics Lab).

 

[DF-41 ICBM]

Don't be so sure.

The key to America's dominance has been and continues to be its technology prowess.

It's on display nowhere better than in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Silicon Valley which is predominantly nonwhite. Enable by top talent and risk capital, there is huge research & development going on here on everything from biotechnology to nanotechnology and advanced AI. If you get a chance, please read about the work of Singularity University. Abundance, a recent book by Peter Diamandis, sheds some light on it.

This is what will maintain significant US lead over competitors in the 21st century.

Haq's Musings: Minorities Are Majority in America's Silicon Valley

yes its a great challenge to overtake silicon valley but we are getting better with attracting talent and also our capital markets are being developed to support start ups. we also have a strong venture capital industry.
dont ever underestimate us.

 

[shuttler]

理科 =/= "liberal arts" 文科 = liberal arts. 理科最好翻译成 "physical sciences".

OK, can't type Chinese because of rules.

haha, get u!

The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects (called the Trivium) were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy (which included the study of astrology). This extended curriculum was called the Quadrivium. Together the Trivium and Quadrivium constituted the seven liberal arts of the medieval university curriculum.

In modern times liberal arts is a term which can be interpreted in different ways. It can refer to certain areas of literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology, and science. It can also refer to studies on a liberal arts degree program. For example, Harvard University offers a Master of Liberal Arts degree, which covers biological and social sciences as well as the humanities. For both interpretations, the term generally refers to matters not relating to the professional, vocational, or technical curricula.

Liberal arts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some colleges categorize 文科 as fine arts or letters but many universities do define liberal arts as a school that comprises pure sciences!
.

biosciences are extremely cost ineffective. let me just give an example.

if we made a robot that can swim through a bloodstream that automatically destroys cancer cells, how much does our life expectancy increase? not much, because we are already at biological limits. however, even if we were to get this technology, how much would it cost?

I think the biotech researches are doing quite well in China. They can be able to set up their own companies attracting funding from all sources: government, venture capitalists, drug manufacturers, hospitals / health care institutions, overseas foundations or university collaborations

BioTechniques - BGI’s Big Plan | Sequencing Feature
.

We don't need private funding either. Funding in US is completely by the public NSF. There's almost zero private funding for physics and chemistry, especially now that the corporation labs are closed. In China there's good funding for physics and chemistry, but more than that, in physics and chemistry China is not behind, and physics and chemistry has direct applications. The transistor and integrated circuit was invented by physicists, after all, and the importance of applied physics and chemistry is widely known throughout the world.

Also, corporations do frequently fund physics and chemistry (such as Huawei Photonics Lab).

Here is an article about R n D funding. it doesnt give a breakdown by discipline though :

United States will lead 2011 R&D funding, China now No. 2 | SmartPlanet

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

In my school, the University of California at Irvine, science is in "School of Physical Sciences" - mathematics, geology, physics and chemistry. Life sciences is separate. In China, also, we have 理学院 which is separate from 生命科学院.

Also, Harvard's "MA in Liberal Arts" covers only BIOLOGICAL and SOCIAL SCIENCES, not PHYSICAL sciences like physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc.

I have some experience in the RD process in both industry as a scientist in the materials industry (specialty polymers), and as a graduate student in physics. There's somethings that should be cleared up. Industrial RD is very different from academic RD.

Industrial RD, except for the top tier corporate labs like IBM, Bell Labs, Intel, etc. and over here, in Huawei and SMIC, are focused on immediate payoffs and improvements to existing products, not entirely new inventions. Nothing wrong with that, but the scope is different, and they mostly improve engineers that are familiar with yesterday's and current technology, and push the technology barriers a little bit. Scientists are also employed by regular corporate labs, but also working on yesterday's and current technology. For example, the biggest demand for physicists by private industry, is in photonic device design, materials fabrication, and surprisingly, finance. The biggest demand for chemists is in pharmaceutical industry.

In academic RD, the focus is on high risk high reward, at least in applied research. I am an experimental applied physicist, not a theorist, so my focus is on creating new technologies that are high risk, but potentially high reward, such as carbon nanotube sensors or quantum computing, which is totally new, unrelated to old technology, but could possibly replace old technologies. These things are so risky that no company could possibly sponsor them, and must leave them to universities. If you can imagine though, these labs don't push the barrier, they try to jump the barrier. Most of the time we trip on the barrier, but sometimes, we will go over, and that's when technological revolutions happen.