The New York Times is running an interesting piece chronicling the poor fortune of Columbia, South Carolina, a metropolitan area that "came closer than any other to being a microcosm of the nation over the last decade".

The article goes on to recite the litany of poor economic indicators, but like all good human interest stories, offers a glimmer of hope towards the middle of the piece:

In a major address last week in Bangalore, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh announced a major expansion of funding for science research and infrastructure in India. As the SSTI weekly digest reported, "the country would form a quasi-independent panel modeled on the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to promote research in science and engineering. The new National Science and Engineering Research Board (NSERB) would make decisions regarding research funding and the creation of research centers around India."

Openness is rocking the scientific world. Accept it or proceed at your own risk. As an article last week in Nature points out: scientists are posting unprecedented amounts of experimental data online in “open notebooks”.

But wait.
Science in academia is becoming more closed, driven by regulatory shifts in how funding is tied to ownership of research products. As the New York Times reports:

London-based consultancy Innovaro, whose monthly Innovation Update newsletter is one of my favorite sources of critical insight, published an article yesterday on "Global Innovation Hot Spots".

The article argues that while there are many qualitative and quantitative indicators that point to various up-and-coming hubs of innovation, patenting activity is a "primary and hence critical source of underlying foresight that can help guide R&D location priorities".