This year’s theme is “Women and Girls in Science Leadership, a New Era for Sustainability” and the subtheme is “Think Science … Think Peace”.

In this regard, Iranian female researchers have managed to play a critical role by strengthening their participation in areas related to science and technology, acquiring a special place in the field of scientific authority at the national and international levels.

Women outnumber men in higher education

Statistics indicate women’s participation in higher education has overtaken men’s, holding a greater share of educational fields.

The number of female students and female faculty members has increased significantly experiencing an upward trend in the last 45 years.

The number of female students has increased from 19,027 in the 1970 -71 academic year to 1,510,426 in 2020-21 which signifies female students’ number increased 56 times. However, the average growth of the total student number during the same period has been 50 times.

Women’s participation in higher education can be considered as a criterion for measuring educational justice and a factor for the progress of society, which can lead to balanced development.

In 2001s, the share of women in Iran’s higher education reached more than 50 percent. Consequently, there were more female than male students.

The number of female faculty members in Iran’s higher education has been on the rise, too.  The number of female faculty members has increased 30 times during the last four decades, while during the same period, the number of faculty members increased only 11 times.

Iranian female scholars

According to the recent report of Islamic World Science and Technology Monitoring and Citation (ISC) in the list of one percent of researchers in the world which is based on the Essential Science Indicators  (ESI) database, a total of 135 Iranian female researchers have been recognized in the areas of Agricultural Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Neuroscience and Psychology, Engineering, Material Science, Psychiatry/Psychology, Computer Science, Interdisciplinary, Social Science, generalities and some have obtained the necessary points even in several fields.

Moreover, according to the Stanford University List which was conducted by a number of researchers from Stanford University and the Elsevier Institute via analyzing the data of the Scopus database, 60 highly cited Iranian female researchers are among the top two percent in the world (service performance) in eight subject areas including Clinical Medicine, Chemistry, Biomedicine, Strategic Technologies (Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, etc.), Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Physics and Astronomy, Information and Communication Technology, and Engineering.

A total of 316 female Iranian highly-cited researchers are among the top two percent of the world (one-year performance) in 14 subject areas of Clinical Medicine, Biomedicine, Chemistry, Engineering, Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Strategic Technologies (Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, etc.), Information and Communication Technology, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Environment, Design and Construction, Public Health and Health Services, Biology, Social Sciences, Communication and Textual Research have obtained the necessary points.

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The lists of top and influential researchers are published every year by various citation databases. The global index categorizes researchers based on different criteria, including the number and citations to their articles.

The larger number of researchers from each country indicates the scientific authority of the country in the international arena.

It is noteworthy that the number of Iranian researchers in the top one percent of highly cited scientists has increased from 685 in the past Iranian calendar year 1400 (March 2021-March 2022) to 840 in the current year.

And the number of researchers of the top two percent of highly cited scientists has increased from 1,870 last year to 1,941 this year.

Iranian women have also played their role in the scientific authority of Iran, and in the list of 2,795 Iranian highly cited researchers, which includes researchers in the top 0.1 percent, top 1 percent, and top 2 percent, there are 345 Iranian women scientists.

Domestic support

The national budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year 1402, which starts on March 21, has increased the budget for women’s affairs by over 50 percent compared to the current year’s budget.

Some 580 billion rials (about $1.5 million) has been proposed by the budget bill for the next year compared with 320 billion rials (about $800,000) for the current year, ISNA reported.

President Ebrahim Raisi submitted the administration’s draft of the national budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year 1402, which starts on March 21, to the Majlis on January 11.

The proposed budget amounted to about 52.616 quadrillion rials (about $131 billion), with a 40 percent rise from the current year’s budget.

The president mentioned stable economic growth, people’s livelihood, observing justice, and efficiency of the government system as the main approaches of the budget bill and stated: “In this bill, the establishment of a progress and justice fund in all provinces is foreseen so that the development credits of the provinces are paid systematically.”

The National Headquarters for Women and Family Affairs has approved six plans to support families and empower women and improve their status in society.

The formation of a loan guarantee fund for women heads of households was one of the plans of the National Headquarters for Women and Family Affairs.

Due to the fact that many female breadwinners could not use business loans due to the lack of a guarantor, the fund was established to help them.

According to official statistics, there are 3.5 million female heads of households, but according to unofficial statistics, the figure reaches more than 6 million.

A plan is entitled ‘Upgrading the structure of the vice president and advisors related to the vice presidency for women and families.’

Highly cited researchers

According to the 2022 list of Highly Cited Researchers revealed by Clarivate, 12 Iranian researchers are among the most cited researchers.

The exceptional individuals designated Highly Cited Researchers 2022 have published multiple highly cited papers, ranking in the top 1% by citations for field and year over the last decade. Of all the world’s researchers, they are one in 1,000.

The analysts use both quantitative and qualitative analysis to identify influential individuals from around the globe and across many research fields. This year, 6,938 scientists and social scientists from nearly 70 countries were recognized.

In the previous edition of the highly cited researchers list, 15 researchers were from Iranian institutions, but in the 2022 edition, 12 Iranian researchers have been included.

In November 2022, the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database listed 841 Iranian researchers among the top one percent of most cited researchers in the world.

The highest number of researchers were included in the engineering category amounting to 229 scientists, followed by clinical medicine with 140, and the multidisciplinary category with 150 people.

In October 2022, Stanford University listed 1,870 Iranian researchers among the top 2 percent of the most-cited scientists in the world, which has grown significantly compared to past years.

Despite U.S. sanctions, the international activities of Iranian scientists have increased year by year, so that more than 35 percent of Iranian articles in Scopus have been multi-national projects, the deputy science minister, Peyman Salehi, has said.

Science diplomacy is the use of scientific collaborations among nations to address common problems and build constructive international partnerships.

In 2021, Iranian scientists published more than 77,000 scientific articles in the Scopus database, ranking 15th worldwide.

The country also ranked 15th and 16th in the world in terms of scientific references.

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In his written message to the congress, Rouhani thanked all scientists and students from Iran and other countries who attended the event to commemorate the 1750th anniversary of Gundi Shapour University, as the world’s oldest university.

Rouhani described scientific and cultural ties between nations as being ‘most lasting and most durable’, stating that the broader these ties are, the deeper the sympathy and friendship among the nations become.

Referring to the registration of Gundi Shapour as the world’s oldest university by UNESCO, the President said that it’s proof that Iranians since ancient times have been heralding science and friendship.

He also underlined that Iranians today, following their ancestors, placed two occasions in their national days: ‘The day of dialog and constructive interaction with the world’ and ‘The day of non-violence and non-extremism.’

“I believe the only durable and lasting way for proximity among nations is to return to lucid sources of science and culture, the same as our ancestors in Iran did by establishing the world’s oldest university,” Rouhani added.

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The paper, published May 1 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, contradicts a 2015 study that theorized giant elliptical galaxies would be 10,000 times more likely than spiral disk galaxies such as the Milky Way to harbor planets that could nurture advanced, technological civilizations, Phys.org reported.

The increased likelihood, the authors of the 2015 study argued, would be because giant elliptical galaxies hold many more stars and have low rates of potentially lethal supernovae.

But Daniel Whitmire, a retired professor of astrophysics who is an instructor in the U of A Department of Mathematical Sciences, believes that the 2015 study contradicts a statistical rule called the principle of mediocrity, also known as the Copernican Principle, which states that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, an object or some property of an object should be considered typical of its class rather than atypical.

Historically, the principle has been employed several times to predict new physical phenomena, such as when Sir Isaac Newton calculated the approximate distance to the star Sirius by assuming that the sun is a typical star and then comparing the relative brightness of the two.

“The 2015 paper had a serious problem with the principle of mediocrity,” said Whitmire. “In other words, why don’t we find ourselves living in a large elliptical galaxy? To me, this raised a red flag. Any time you find yourself as an outlier, i.e. atypical, then that is a problem for the principle of mediocrity.”

He also had to show that most stars and therefore planets reside in large elliptical galaxies in order to nail down his argument that the earlier paper violated the principle of mediocrity.

According to the principle of mediocrity, Earth and its resident technological society should be typical, not atypical, of planets with technological civilizations elsewhere in the universe. That means that its location in a spiral-shaped disk galaxy should also be typical. But the 2015 paper suggests the opposite, that most habitable planets would not be located in galaxies similar to ours, but rather in large, spherical-shaped elliptical galaxies.

In his paper, Whitmire suggests a reason why large elliptical galaxies may not be cradles of life: They were awash in lethal radiation when they were younger and smaller, and they went through a series of the quasar and star-burst supernovae events at that time.

“The evolution of elliptical galaxies is totally different than the Milky Way,” said Whitmire. “These galaxies went through an early phase in which there is so much radiation that it would just completely have nuked any habitable planets in the galaxy and subsequently the star formation rate, and thus any new planets, went to essentially zero. There are no new stars forming and all the old stars have been irradiated and sterilized.”

If habitable planets hosting intelligent life are unlikely in large elliptical galaxies, where most stars and planets reside, then by default galaxies such as the Milky Way will be the primary sites of these civilizations, as expected by the principle of mediocrity, Whitmire said.

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This new data discovery tool will allow researchers to quickly and easily classify a deadly virus like COVID-19 in just minutes—a process and pace of high importance for strategic planning and mobilizing medical needs during a pandemic, Phys reported.

The study also supports the scientific hypothesis that COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) has its origin in bats as Sarbecovirus, a subgroup of Betacoronavirus.

The findings, Machine learning using intrinsic genomic signatures for rapid classification of novel pathogens: COVID-19 case study, were published in PLOS ONE.

The “ultra-fast, scalable, and highly accurate” classification system uses a new graphics-based, specialized software and decision-tree approach to illustrate the classification and arrive at the best choice out of all possible outcomes. The entire method uses a new graphics-based, specialized software to illustrate the best choice out of all tested possible outcomes.

Biology professor Kathleen Hill co-led the study with Western collaborators in Computer Science and Statistical and Actuarial Sciences, along with others at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Computer Science.

The machine-learning method achieves 100 percent accurate classification of the COVID-19 sequences and more importantly, discovers the most relevant relationships among more than 5,000 viral genomes again within minutes.

“All we needed was the COVID-19 DNA sequence to discover its own intrinsic sequence pattern. We used that signature pattern and a logical approach to match that pattern as close as possible to other viruses and achieved a fine level of classification in minutes—not days, not hours but minutes,” Hill said.

This classification tool has already been used to analyze more than 5,000 unique viral genomic sequences, including the 29 COVID-19 sequences available on Jan. 27.

Hill believes the tool, which is able to classify any newly discovered virus sequence COVID-19 or otherwise, will be an essential component in the toolkit for vaccine and drug developers, front-line health-care workers, researchers, and scientists during this global pandemic and beyond.

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According To Iran News, Iranian Vice-President for Science and Technology Affairs Sorena Sattari highlighted the Islamic Republic’s place in the Middle East region in terms of the capacity for producing biotechnological medicines.

Addressing a ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Tuesday, Sattari said currently, 22 types of biotechnological medicines are produced domestically and this has made the country unmatched in the region in terms of medical capacity.

“In addition, there are 600 biotech companies in the country, and we are Asia’s third-largest exporter of these (biotechnological) products,” the vice-president said.

All of the products have been produced under the sever sanctions, Sattari said, adding that these innovations are the outcome of the sanctions.

Back in December, Health Minister Saeed Namaki unveiled plans to inaugurate 1,000 new health and medical projects, saying the ministry has launched the second stage of a grand plan focusing on prevention of diseases.

In comments in October, he also said Iran was exporting pharmaceuticals to countries in Europe, Africa and Central Asia.

In September, secretary of Biotechnology Development Headquarter at the Iranian Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology said Iranian biopharmaceuticals were being exported to major customers like Russia, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Turkey, adding that plans were underway to transfer Iranian biopharmaceuticals technology to Argentina.

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According To Iran News, Iranian Vice-President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari said the Islamic Republic is ranked among the world’s top five countries in the science of chemistry.

During a visit to an exhibition of achievements of Iranian knowledge-based companies in the southern province of Bushehr on Saturday, Sattari said Iran has been ranked among the world’s top 10 countries in terms of scientific articles and among the best five nations in the field of chemistry.

Highlighting the great advances that the Iranian private sector has made in the gas and oil industry in recent years, the vice president said Iranian scientists have managed to produce all catalysts used in the oil industry inside the country.

Iran is the third largest producer of gas in the world, he added, noting that 70 percent of the country’s gas output comes from the South Pars region.

Pointing to the growing number of gas refineries, petrochemical plants and private companies in the South Pars region, Sattari said the energy-rich zone has provided a perfect market for knowledge-based companies.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has on various occasion highlighted the role of science as a means of power and development, urging efforts to maintain the pace of scientific growth in Iran despite enemy efforts to undermine it.

In April 2019, the Leader described a cut in Iran’s reliance on the export of oil as an opportunity, saying such an opportunity will be used for further reliance on internal capabilities.

“Although the sanctions pave the way for problems in certain cases, they will benefit the country if they are dealt with correctly and logically,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

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IRAN NEWS ECONOMIC DESK

Iran’s Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari has underscored the revival of the ecosystem in the country.

Speaking among some cooperatives activists, Sattari said that the country should change its approach for running the affairs.

He added petro approach causes the country to think that it can fix all things with money and this will lead to the destruction of the ecosystem.

He emphasized the existence of ecosystem infrastructures in the country, saying, “In the past 10 years and with petro money, we have destroyed the bases of ecosystem and with the assistance of knowledge and entrepreneurship spirit, we should revive this ecosystem.”

Sattari reiterated that startups do not need loans, adding there are people who are ready to risk for investment in startups and since cooperative are in control of big markets, they should first open their markets for startups and welcome any innovation in their activities.

Meanwhile during the meeting, Head of Iran Chamber of Cooperatives Bahman Abdollahi said that the ICC and Vice President for Science and Technology are to set up a joint committee.

He added, “Cooperatives are the second pillar of the national economy and currently over 94,000 cooperatives with more than 14m members are active in the country and more than 40m people take advantage of their services.

He went on to say that nine percent of occupation in the country equals 1.8m people in the cooperatives sector which indicates the vastness of cooperatives among people.

Abdollahi also noted that cooperatives in terms of quantity have grown significantly in recent years and currently, boosting quality and deepening it in the cooperatives sector is raised.

On the demands of activities of cooperatives sector, he said they are after forming knowledge-based cooperatives, easing condition and employing all capacities of the knowledge-based in the cooperatives.

Meanwhile Deputy Minister of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare Mr. Mohammad Kabiri, for his part, said that currently two centers for innovation and developing cooperative have been inaugurated in Fars and Kurdestan provinces and they will increase to 12 provinces by the yearend.

He added during the past year, the ministry has tried to move towards innovation in the cooperative sector and the ministry has spent considerable time on the issue.

Kabiri further said that one of the actions of the ministry is to inaugurate 10 more centers in the provinces based on capacities by the yearend.

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