LAHORE: Speakers at a symposium have underlined the need to spend more on education and research.

The three-day 14th National Symposium on frontiers in physics is organised by the GCU Salam chair and the Pakistan Physical Society in collaboration with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, GCU Centre for Advanced Studies in Physics, Punjab Higher Education Commission, Pakistan Academy of Sciences, COMSTECH, Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF), University of Peshawar and Khan Research Laboratories.

Physicists from top universities and R&D organisations here and abroad are participating in the event.

`We need to change our investment priorities with a greater focus on education and research anddevelopment,` eminent nuclear physicist Prof Shaukat Hameed Khan said.

He said Pakistan had a very low number of research patents -just 978 whereas Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia had 2,724 and 4,258, respectively. Due to insufficient investment and wrong educational priorities,Pakistan`s labor productivity was also verylowincomparisontoIran,Turkey and Indonesia, Prof Khan said.

Plasma physicist and mathematician Dr G. Murtaza said the world of science was witnessing rapid developments and the knowledge was accumulating at a very fast rate, unlocking the deep mysteriesof nature.

He said major breakthroughs in the field of physics in the recent years had resulted in development of topological insulators, new energy efficient blue light, quantum computer and atomic clocks.

`These recent atomic clocks are so precise that if this clock is set with beginning of the Big Bang, today it would be off just by five seconds over the whole course of 14 billion years,` he said.

GCU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah said the investment was nee de d in the knowle dgebased economy.

He said the symposium would provide an opportunity to young students to interact and learn from the senior physicists.

Eminent theoretical physicist Prof Dr Ahmed Ali presented a key note on `the Standard Model of Physics -one of the greatest achievements of the century`