Saturday, July 08, 2006

EurekaUK

There is a recent report from UK universities about the most remarkable discoveries done in UK universities, in a previous post I had done a similar thing for the mexican case.

Despite some points in which I disagree, like the claim of the contraceptives which were first sintetized in 1951 by Luis Miramontes in Mexico who was aware of the contraceptive use of norethindrone (the work in 1961 by Herchel Smith produced cheaper contraceptive pills which is of course a significant advance, but it seems clear that the report try to sell the idea that contraceptive pills are an UK invention which is false), and also the CFC stuff where the really important role was played by Crutzen, Molina and Rowland (again the work of James Lovelock was an important precedent, but it seems to me they are trying to oversell it), this kind of reports are really important because many countries are facing serious problems with research budgets.

In the case of Mexico the situation is of near disaster with only 0.34% of the gross domestic product going to research despite some countries invest more of the 10%. This situation has only resulted in that most of the inversions in technology have gone to Asia where the situations is radically diferent, let's see how the new president faces this challenge.

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