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Frame and Carpenter (1979) analysed the pattern of international research collaboration among scientific fields in 1970s. Starting from this pioneering work, this paper investigates international collaborations over 1997-2012 and compares the critical results with earlier studies to detect the evolution of collaboration patterns in different scientific fields. Empirical analysis supports two vital findings, given by: a) a relatively stable structure of international research collaborations over time across different scientific fields; b) a convergent process of collaboration patterns between theoretical and applied research fields. One important deter-minant of the latter result might be due to the increasing interdisciplinary nature of research fields that supports the convergence between basic and applied sciences.

An interesting problem in the economics of innovation and strategic management of labs is to explain the drivers of breakthroughs and paradigm shifts in science. This study confronts the issue by analysing a main case study: the technological determinant of the discovery of quasi-periodic materials that has generated a scientific paradigm shift in crystallography. Unlike user-friendly radical innovations, the study here detects some specific radical innovations, defined lab-oriented and adopted by high-skilled users (i.e. researchers) such as Transmission Electron Microscopy, which tend to support breakthroughs and scientific discoveries. This finding is the foundation for a framework, which endeavours to pinpoint the main characteristics and properties of these strategic lab-oriented radical innovations, which in turn spur scientific advances. Technological analysis of this study explains the critical role of specific technologies supporting knowledge creation and scientific discoveries to understand vital drivers of scientific fields and fruitful linkages that run from technological to scientific progress.

Technological change is a vital human activity that interacts with geographic factors and environment. The purpose of the study here is to analyse the relationship between geo-climate zones of the globe and technological outputs in order to detect favourable areas that spur higher technological change and, as a consequence, human development. The main finding is that innovative outputs are higher in geographical areas with a temperate climate (latitudes). In fact, warm temperate climates are favourable environments for human societies that, by a long-run process of adaptation and learning, create platforms of institutions and communications systems, infrastructures, legal systems, economic governance and socio-economic networks that support inventions and diffusion of innovations. The linkages between observed facts show the vital geo-climate sources of fruitful patterns of the technological innovation and economic growth.

A fundamental question is how to detect likely successful anticancer treatments based on nanotechnology. We confront this question here by analysing the trajectories of nanotechnologies applied to path-breaking cancer treatments, which endeavour to pinpoint ground-breaking and fruitful directions in nanomedicine. Results tend to show two main technological waves of cancer treatments by nanotechnology applications. The early technological wave in the early 2000s was embodied in some types of chemotherapy agents with a broad spectrum, while after 2006 the second technological wave appeared with new nanotechnological applications in both chemotherapy agents and molecular target therapy. The present study shows new directions of nanotechnology-based chemotherapy and molecular cancer therapy in new treatments for breast, lung, brain and colon cancers. A main finding of this study is the recognition that, since the late 2000s, the sharp increase of several technological trajectories of nanotechnologies and anticancer drugs seems to be driven by high rates of mortality of some types of cancers (e.g. pancreatic and brain) in order to find more effective anticancer therapies that increase the survival of patients. The study also shows that global research leaders specialize in nanotechnology applications for specific cancers (e.g. Switzerland in prostate cancer, Japan in colon cancer, China in ovarian cancer and Greece in pancreatic cancer). These ground-breaking technological trajectories are paving new directions in biomedicine and generating a revolution in clinical practice that may lead to more effective anticancer treatments in the not-too-distant future. Keywords: Nanotechnology, Nanoscience, Biomedicine, Nanomedicine, Target Therapy, Chemotherapy, Cancer, Bibliometrics, Publications, Technological Trajectories.

An interesting problem is the analysis of effects of the predominant impact of technological change on the health of societies. This study considers technological change as the human activity that generates a huge impact on societies and causes environmental disorders affecting the health of population. In particular, technical innovations support the industrialisation and human development, which by a social change based on population growth, mass production and consumption, and resources depletion, engenders pollution and several environmental carcinogens. This study shows that a main effect of the critical impact of technological change on societies is the high cancer incidence of population living in industrialised areas of opulent and advanced countries. Vital empirical evidence and linkages between observed facts endeavour to explain the major relationships concerning the interactions among technology, ecosystems and the health of societies.

The fundamental problem in the field of the economics of innovation is which economic subjects are the sources of radical innovations and high technological performances. The study here confronts this problem by developing a theoretical framework underpinned in the concept of purposeful system having a purpose of global leadership, which endeavours to analyse the sources of General-Purpose Technologies (GPTs) in a Schumpeterian world of innovation-based competition. Through an inductive study based on some societies that in the history have generated technological and economic change (Roman and Britain Empire, and current USA), the analysis shows vital characteristics that can be the sources of changes in the techno-economic paradigm. In particular, purposeful country-systems with high economic military potential, supported by a strategy of high R&D expenditures, and the objective of global leadership, winning international conflicts against other great powers (a very strong competition for the hegemony), tend to generate several inventions and radical innovations that are spread, in the long run, across wide geo-economic areas. It seems that the initial sources of GPTs (e.g. aqueduct, steam engine, jet aircraft, computer, etc.) are, de facto, associated with the global posture of great powers to achieve/sustain global leadership in intensive (effective and/or potential) international competitions, rather than warfare per se. This study refers to this nexus as leadership-driven innovation. International conflict is the context that spurs the GPTs, which are driven by global leadership of critical societies, whereas initial military R&D, demand and procurement are important mechanisms underlying the process that induces emerging path-breaking technologies. The vital linkages between observed facts can support a general socio-economic framework of the sources of path-breaking innovations based on a leadership of main economic subjects that support innovative activity (mainly in communications and energy systems parallel to transportation technology) and the evolution and development of human societies.