Washington, DC, USA. A shift in the global research landscape will reposition the United States as a major partner, but not the dominant leader, in science and technology research in the coming decade, according to a Penn State researcher. However, the U.S. could benefit from this shift if it adopts a policy of knowledge sharing with the growing global community of researchers.

"What is emerging is a global science system in which the U.S. will be one player among many," said Caroline Wagner, associate professor in the Penn State School of International Affairs. Wagner presented her findings at the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

The entrance of more nations into global science has changed the research landscape. From 1996 to 2008, the share of papers published by U.S. researchers dropped 20 percent. Wagner attributes much of this output shift not to a drop in U.S. research efforts, but to the exponentially increasing research conducted in developing countries, such as China and India.

Ithaca, NY, USA. There is a pervasive belief that women are underrepresented in science, math and engineering fields because they face sex discrimination in the interviewing, hiring, and grant and manuscript review processes, but a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) says it is just not true.

Acknowledging that the subject is incendiary in academia, two Cornell University social scientists say it is not discrimination, but differences in resources that are attributable to career and family-related choices that set women back in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

The study authors are Stephen J. Ceci, professor of developmental psychology, and Wendy M. Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science (CIWS), both in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. They say that the substantial resources universities expend to sponsor gender-sensitivity training and interviewing workshops would be better spent on addressing the real causes of women's underrepresentation, through creative problem-solving and policy changes that respond to differing biological and social realities of the sexes.

Chicago, IL, USA. Metaknowledge, the study of knowledge itself as a separate discipline, can potentially develop a better understanding of the social context and biases of science that can affect research findings and choices of research topics, according to a new article in the journal Science.

Pooling the increasing quantities of research-related information online can illuminate how the personal backgrounds or funding sources of scientists shape their research approaches, and could open up new fields of study, wrote James Evans, assistant professor in sociology at the University of Chicago, and Jacob Foster, a post-doctoral scholar.

The internet has become not only a tool for disseminating knowledge through scientific publications, but also has the potential to shape scientific research. "The computational production and consumption of metaknowledge will allow researchers and policymakers to leverage more scientific knowledge — explicit, implicit, contextual — in their efforts to advance science," the two wrote.

Washington, DC, USA. A memo from the US Federal government says science agencies and research institutions should build infrastructures to evaluate the quality, impact, and results of scientific research. This can be sensitive since congressional budgets target results and shy from multi-year appropriations, while basic research can be lengthy and exploratory in nature.

The administrative memo was written by Julia Lane, program director of Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and her co-author Stefano Bertuzzi, Office of Science Policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Issued late in 2010, the memo calls on all federal agencies and executive departments to develop tools to "better assess the impact of [...] science and technology investments." It says "There is increasing pressure to document the results of [...] research investments in a scientific manner". They make the observation in a Policy Forum paper that appears in the journal Science.

Los Angeles, CA, USA. A study in the journal Science calculates the world's total technological capacity — how much information humankind is able to store, communicate and compute.

Martin Hilbert and Priscila Lopez think they know how much information you must contend with and it is a lot more than most people know — or can know.

"We live in a world where economies, political freedom and cultural growth increasingly depend on our technological capabilities," said Hilbert. "This is the first time-series study to quantify humankind's ability to handle information."

Martin Hilbert, the lead author, is with the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). Co-author Priscila Lopez is with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC).