Among the other answers given to this question: "There are more male engineers working on this field" and "Most major breakthroughs are supported by military funding: most armed forces are made up primarily of males".
It is in this area that the most unexpected breakthroughs are likely to come, says Steven Koonin, BP's chief scientist.
Most medical breakthroughs are not the result of work with animals, although the law requires the new breakthrough to be tested on animals before it can be applied to people.
And such technologies are now emerging, fuelled by a surge in venture-capital investment (see chart) and the prediction that, within a decade, the market for such equipment may be more than $60 billion a year.Powerful choicesThe most dramatic breakthroughs are taking place in the field of fuel cells.
Many -- perhaps most -- apparent breakthroughs are just wrong.
6– 8 Great advances have been made in TAM research over the past dozen years or so, with one of the most significant breakthroughs being the development of immunohistochemical methods for identifying TAMs in tumor tissue.
A final application is thus not the main motivation, although most technological or medical breakthroughs are based on such work.
Critically important, also, is that breakthroughs are most likely to emerge at the intersection of disciplines for example, the overlaps among physics, chemistry, biology and engineering.
Adrian Slywotzky of Mercer Management Consulting says that, "in most industries, truly differentiating new-product breakthroughs are becoming increasingly rare".
Of the forces that propel our economy and world, breakthroughs are among the most mercurial and powerful.
