PDF file: Annual Report 2002/2003 - Scottish Crop Research Institute

Director’s Report
regions of the UK, with low business investments, high
business rates, low numbers of business start-ups, high
water charges, poor revenue-generating patents and
licences per capita, depopulation and an aging population,
more than half the economy in the public sector,
and profound public-sector mistrust of the private sector.
(see also Populations and Conflicts)
OECD Scoreboard The biennial OECD science, technology,
and industry Scoreboard revealed in 2003 the
transformation of the Chinese economy. Using data in
terms of purchasing power parity, total R&D spending
in China in 2001 was estimated at $60 billion, behind
that of Japan ($104 billion), and the USA ($282 billion).
Around 60% of the R&D spend in China was
from the private sector. Across the OECD membership,
R&D spending as a percentage of total output in
2001 was 2.3%, a figure exceeded by Sweden (4.3%),
and the USA (2.8%); in China it was 1.1%, but its
annual rate of growth, adjusted for inflation, in recent
years has been 10-15%. Eurostat, the statistical service
of the European Commission add weight to OECD
reports, noting that EU member states allocated 1.99%
of their GDP to R&D in 2002, compared with 3.11%
in Iceland, 2.98% in Japan, and 2.8% in the USA.
Member states above the EU average were Belgium
(2.17%), Denmark (2.4%), Finland (3.49%), France
(2.2%), Germany (2.49%), and Sweden (4.27%).
Member states at or below the average were Austria
(1.94%), Greece (0.67%), the Republic of Ireland
(1.17%), Italy (1.07%), Luxembourg (1.71%), The
Netherlands (1.94%), Portugal (0.84%), Spain
(0.96%), and the UK (1.84%). It was estimated that
in 2002, €182 billion were spent on R&D in the EU.
Computing While the computer technology industry
suffered from stock-market downgrades and largescale
redundancies, the technology itself experienced
another dynamic year. Web sites, individuals,
Internet service providers, and groups that operated
high-speed networks exercised the music-recording
industry that grew increasingly perplexed about unauthorised
free music distributed over the Internet.
Progress in the adoption of broadband Internet access
was disappointing, with the majority of users dependent
on the slower and lower capacity dial-up Internet
access. Likewise, the adoption of computer applications
available over the Internet was slower than projected.
Internet access varied across several countries, such
that the UN expressed concern about the disadvantage
conferred by not having on-line access – the so-called
‘digital divide’. According to the UN International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), more than 80
countries had fewer than 10 telephone lines for every
100 inhabitants, and in 60% of countries, fewer than
1% of citizens used the Internet. Furthermore, in its
Digital Access Index 2002, the ITU noted that accessibility
to information and communication technology
in 178 countries was not dominated by the
English-speaking countries. The top 12 in the ranking,
where a score of 1 represents universal access and
use, were Sweden (0.85); Denmark (0.83); Iceland
and South Korea (0.82); Norway, the Netherlands,
Hong Kong, Finland, and Taiwan (0.79); Canada and
the USA (0.78); and the UK (0.77). In 2002, according
to the OECD, websites per 1,000 people reached
84.7 for Germany, 71.7 for Denmark, and 66.4 for
Norway. Both the UK and USA had more than 60
sites. The OECD average was 30, and the EU average
39.
University and college students throughout the world
were major Internet users to the point that conventional
libraries were becoming neglected. Plagiarism
was facilitated by accessing the Internet, particularly
sites that sold essays, theses, and reports, although the
existence and deployment of web-plagiarism checkers
or verifiers were thought to have restrained the level of
examination cheating, as much as the variable quality
of the material for sale. Other types of cheating,
including unauthorised use of computers to access
examination questions, faking credentials and certificates,
and modifying marking records, merited a new
type of vigilance by examination authorities and
employers.
Dramatic increases were noted in the onslaught of
infuriating unsolicited commercial e-mail - spam. As
a highly cost-efficient method of distributing advertising,
often anonymously, the spam perpetrators patently
included hackers, distributors of worms and viruses,
and pornographers. Internet marketing was also
dogged by issues of privacy, notably those companies
that without gaining customer authorisation placed
‘cookie’ files on consumers’ computers to track Web
surfing. Some areas of marketing did not grow as fast
as anticipated e.g. on-line education, digital subscriptions
to newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals.
Computer security exercised governments in 2002.
The vulnerability of Internet servers, notably the 13
that handle the Domain Name System, was tested by
terrorists, foreign governments, or hackers, but with-
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