Technological research in the EU is less efficient than the world average. EU research policy risks Europeans’ future

We have studied the efficiency of research in the EU by a percentile-based citation approach that analyzes the distribution of country papers among the world papers. Going up in the citation scale, the frequency of papers from efficient countries increases while the frequency from inefficient countries decreases. In the percentile-based approach, this trend, which is uniform at any citation level, is measured by the e_p index that equals the P_{top 1%}/P_{top 10%} ratio. By using the e_p index we demonstrate that EU research on fast-evolving technological topics is less efficient than the world average and that the EU is far from being able to compete with the most advanced countries. The e_p index also shows that the USA is well ahead of the EU in both fast- and slow-evolving technologies, which suggests that the advantage of the USA over the EU in innovation is due to low research efficiency in the EU. In accord with some previous studies, our results show that the European Commission’s ongoing claims about the excellence of EU research are based on a wrong diagnosis. The EU must focus its research policy on the improvement of its inefficient research. Otherwise, the future of Europeans is at risk.     

Rollback,scissor-like closure of the Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean and formation of an orocline:magmatic migration based on a large archive of age dataOA

Tracing the closure of oceans with irregular margins and the formation of an orocline are crucial for understanding plate reconstruction and continental assembly.The eastern Central Asian Orogenic Belt,where the Mongol-Okhotsk orocline is situated,is one of the world’s largest magmatic provinces.Using a large data set of U-Pb zircon ages,we updated the timing of many published igneous rocks,which allowed us to recognize tightly ’folded’ linear Carboniferous-Jurassic magmatic belts that wrap arou...