Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 79) RESEARCHNEWS Economic Powerhouse Study shows China is moving ahead of the United States in technology development By John Toon A new study of worldwide technological competitiveness suggests China may soon rival the United States as the principal driver of the world’s economy — a position America has held since the end of World War II. “For the first time in nearly a century, we see leadership in basic research and the economic ability to pursue the benefits of that research — to create and market products based on research — in more than one place on the planet,” says Georgia Tech researcher Nils Newman, co-author of the High Tech Indicators study. “Since World War II, the United States has been the main driver of the global economy. Now we have a situation in which technology products are going to be appearing in the marketplace that were not developed or commercialized here. We won’t have had any involvement with them and may not even know they are coming.” When charted, China’s change in the technological standing of the 33 leading industrial nations reveals a long and continuous upward line moving from “in the weeds” to world technological leadership over the past 15 years. (See chart inset in photo above.) The 2007 statistics show China with a technological standing of 82.8, compared to 76.1 for the United States, 66.8 for The chart inset in the photo of a Chinese factory shows the change in standing of selected nations from 1993 to 2007 as calculated in a study of technological competitiveness conducted by Georgia Tech researchers. Germany and 66.0 for Japan. Just 11 years ago, China’s score was only 22.5. The United States peaked in 1999 with a score of 95.4. “China has really changed the world economic landscape in technology,” says Alan Porter, study co-author and co-director of the Georgia Tech Technology Policy and Assessment Center, which conducted the research. “When you take China’s low-cost manufacturing and focus on technology, then combine them with the increasing emphasis on research and development, the result ultimately won’t leave much room for other countries.” China’s emphasis on training scientists and engineers suggests it will continue to grow its ability to innovate. “It’s like being 40 years old and playing basketball against a competitor who’s only 12 years old but is already at your height,” Newman says. “You are a little better right now and have more experience, but you’re not going to squeeze much more performance out. The future clearly doesn’t look good for the United States.” Unmasking Counterfeiters Georgia Tech researchers help shut down drug operations Georgia Tech researchers were part of a three-continent, multiorganizational effort known as Operation Jupiter that successfully identified and shut down manufacturers who were flooding Southeast Asia with counterfeit — and ineffective — antimalarial drugs. With 11 different organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, Wellcome Trust and ultimately the international law enforcement agency INTERPOL, the global effort provided Chinese officials with enough information to shut down the drugmakers. As their part of the investigation, the Tech researchers used sensitive mass spectrometry techniques to analyze nearly 400 drug samples provided by public health authorities. They also developed methods to speed up analysis, including an ionization process that reduced the time required to test a drug sample from half an hour to just a few seconds. “About 50 percent of the samples obtained from the field in Southeast Asia were fakes,” says Facundo Fernandez, an analytical chemist and assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “They look very real, even down to the hologram in the packaging. It’s very difficult to tell which ones are the fakes and which ones are real.” Fernandez and graduate students Christina Hampton and Leonard Nyadong discovered that the counterfeiters were making their fake antimalarials with a broad range of mostly expired pharmaceuticals. “We found old and ineffective antimalarials like chloroquine,” Fernandez says. “We found antibiotics like erythromycin. We found all sorts of drugs that basically have no effect on resistant malaria parasites. Acetaminophen was one of the most common chemicals we found.” >>> Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008 79
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