Asia's Great Science Experiment
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/printout/0,13675,501061030-1549364,00.html
A potent brew of talent, ambition and serious money are making the
region a leader in innovation
BY HANNAH BEECH
Everywhere you look in this corner of Shanghai, there are mice. For
Wang Zhugang, this is cause for great delight. After spending several
years researching molecular medicine at New York City's Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Wang received a call from an official in
his native Shanghai. Would he be interested in returning home? Wang
initially declined. He was working for one of the world's top
scientific institutions, and he recalled from his undergraduate days
the wretched state of Chinese labs. The official presented a different
vision: Wang would be given tens of millions of dollars to run a new
state-of-the-art facility. A place at the best school in town would be
reserved for his daughter. And, best of all, he would be given
thousands and thousands of mice. In 2001, Wang founded the Shanghai
Research Center for Biomodel Organisms, which in just five years has
bred more than 100 types of genetically engineered mice to help decode
diseases like cancer and diabetes. Next year, Wang will move into a new
$25 million lab that will house 150,000 mice, compared to the mere
7,000 he keeps today. "My colleagues who stayed in the U.S. are still
cooking in their labs, while I have the opportunity to run an entire
research center," says the 45-year-old biologist. "If you move back to
China, you have more room to develop your potential. It's a very
exciting environment."
Could Asia be home to the next scientific revolution? We all know of
the region's rich history of innovation?paper, the magnetic compass, a
smallpox inoculation, even the number zero originated in Asia. In the
first few millenniums of human civilization, no other continent could
rival it. Yet China, which invented gunpowder in the 10th century,
failed to adequately develop the technology and succumbed to Western
cannons by the 19th century. As its rulers turned inward, the Middle
Kingdom even abandoned the mechanical clock, which it had devised
centuries before. India, despite a proud mathematical and astronomical
tradition, also proceeded to slumber for centuries. Meanwhile, the
West, with its Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and Space Race,
became synonymous with scientific achievement. Many years ahead of the
rest of the scientific pack, America, Europe and, more recently, Japan
overwhelmingly claimed the economic fruits of innovation.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501061030/story.html
The Rise of Early Modern Science : Islam, China and the West
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521529948/
by Toby E. Huff
Toby Huff
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/6b129271e26e5b9e
Is the wakening giant a monster?
http://tinyurl.com/iws6
A Blueprint for the Future
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/0566c3afe4d81c92
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