Why this beautiful shot of newborn stars shows Scotland is world leader

Published on Friday 29 January 2010 21:57

SCOTLAND is producing scientific research that is leading the world in medicine, engineering and space exploration, a report by the Scottish Government's chief scientific adviser has said.

• Picture: ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA.

The report, which looked at the extent to which Scottish research is picked up internationally, suggests that Scotland's research base is among the best in the world.

The report commissioned by Professor Anne Glover showed that researchers around the world cite work carried out in Scotland's universities, institutes, industry and the NHS more often than work done in any other country, relative to GDP.

When the number of citations in scientific papers were measured, Scotland achieved 1.8 per cent of world citations in 2008, despite the country having a population share of less than 0.1 per cent.

The impact of Scottish research, as measured by citations per paper, has been well above the world average in recent years and rose by a further 21 per cent in 2008, with only Switzerland ranked higher.

Scotland is ranked third in the world for citations per researcher, behind Switzerland and the Netherlands and ahead of all the other G8 countries.

Among the work highlighted at the launch of Prof Glover's report were the remarkable images of stars being born 1,650 light years away in the middle of the constellation of Orion.

The pictures were created using Vista, the world's largest wide-field telescope, in the Atacama desert in Chile, which has a main mirror 4.1m across and was designed by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh.

The new pictures, taken using infrared sensors cooled to -200C, show the hot swirling mixture of dust and gases that combine to make new stars, which had previously been hidden by dust.

"Scotland is number one in space science research," Prof Glover said. "But in every area of science we are outperforming the world average. The performance is truly stunning for a nation of five million people."

At the document's launch in Bute House, Alex Salmond admitted that Scotland had not always made the most of its scientific expertise in terms of translating it into commercial success.

He said a problem had been that industrial research and development departments tended to be based at the headquarters of large companies.

But he said that his council of economic advisers had made it a priority to build more economic success from Scotland's strong science.

Mr Salmond added that work was being done to create an "interface" between universities and business.

He added: "This report makes inspirational reading and reinforces Scotland's proud scientific reputation."

KEY PROJECTS

SCOTLAND'S world-class research includes the work of Professor Claude Wischik at Aberdeen University, who has investigated the possibility that Alzheimer's disease could be stopped in its tracks.

A new drug to halt or even reverse the disease may be tested on patients this year.

UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh, designs and builds instruments for major telescopes and has contributed to the first image of the Flame Nebula (a star nursery in Orion) which was captured by the Vista telescope.

The Advance Forming Research Centre is a 25 million unit at Strathclyde University, which designs aircraft wings, engines, cars, ships, medical devices, generators and turbines.