SSTI Digest

For the 12th consecutive year, the University of California tops all universities for the most patents for inventions, according to a list recently released by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office. The preliminary list reveals the top 13 U.S. universities receiving the most utility patents during calendar year 2005. All campuses are included in each school's total.

While the University of California's 390 patents in 2005 earned it top honors again, the figure reflects an 8 percent decline from the institution's 424 total in 2004 and 11 percent less than 2003. The California Institute of Technology experienced an even greater drop in patent activity between 2004 and 2005, slipping 25 percent to third overall with 101 patents. Massachusetts Institute of Technology moved into second with 136, a 3 percent increase over 2004.

Increasingly states are making it easier for high school students to participate in college courses while still attending high school. The goal of dual enrollment is to encourage more students to attend college, giving them a leg up on a degree. A new report by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education suggests the efforts are not working in Kentucky. Encouraging dual enrollment programs to provide academic rather than technical coursework may increase the matriculation rates of dually enrolled students, though.

Dual enrollment has doubled in Kentucky over the last five years. However, findings of a recent study examining dual enrollment data between 2001-02 and 2004-05 indicate that dual credit programs do not appear to enhance overall college matriculation rates.

Using data from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, SSTI has prepared a table presenting business churning statistics and rankings for all 50 states and the District of Columbia for 2004. Business churning, a measure of new firm births and existing firm deaths as a share of total firms (small businesses with employees), is seen as a major driver of innovation and growth. Churning increases as the number of new start-ups and existing business failures per year increase.

There were an estimated 899,688 new business start-ups and 930,452 business terminations throughout the U.S. in 2004, resulting in a national business churning average of 26.10 percent - up 6.3 percent from 2003. Washington saw the largest churning rate at 40.57 percent, followed by Nevada (39.62 percent), Utah (38.89 percent), New Jersey (33.99 percent) and Idaho (31.92 percent).

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds selected Richard Benda as the new Secretary for the Department of Tourism and State Development.

Bob Dayton was named president of the Delaware BioScience Association.

Effective in May, Ken Janoski will be the president and CEO of BioGenerator, a nonprofit in St. Louis that helps scientists commercialize their discoveries.

Medical Alley and MNBIO, two organizations that merged in 2005 to promote medical sciences in Minnesota, have changed their name LifeScience Alley.

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds selected Richard Benda as the new Secretary for the Department of Tourism and State Development.

Bob Dayton was named president of the Delaware BioScience Association.

Effective in May, Ken Janoski will be the president and CEO of BioGenerator, a nonprofit in St. Louis that helps scientists commercialize their discoveries.

Medical Alley and MNBIO, two organizations that merged in 2005 to promote medical sciences in Minnesota, have changed their name LifeScience Alley.

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development appointed Christine Plater as its new director of small business programs.

The South Dakota Biotech Industry Association, a new resource for biotech companies in the state, has formed.

The on/off binary fundamental of information and communication technology (ICT) could just as well describe the U.S. position in the field. For the third time in five years, the U.S. leads all nations on the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) contained in the World Economic Forum's Global Information Technology Report 2005-2006.

Expanded to track 115 economies worldwide in its fifth edition, the new Global Information Technology Report assesses the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations. The NRI measures the propensity for countries to leverage the opportunities offered by ICT for development and increased competitiveness. It also establishes a broad international framework mapping out the enabling factors of such capacity.

African-American and Hispanic students begin college interested in majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields at rates similar to those of white and Asian-American students and persist in these fields through their third year of study, but do not earn their bachelor’s degrees at the same rate as their peers, according to a new analysis conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE).

Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology also finds that the majority of the African-American and Hispanic students majoring in STEM fields who persisted beyond the third year did not drop out, but were still enrolled and working toward a degree after six years.