Social development and different regional growth trends in the world are causing changes in the global architecture of science and engineering research, education and business activities. Today, decades after the United States, the European Union and Japan dominated Science and Engineering (S&E), the trend toward world multi-polarization has become increasingly obvious. In January 2016, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) released its Science and Engineering Indicators Report, which describes changes in science and engineering and highlights the current scientific and technological activities of both developing countries and developed countries as one group vies to advance and the other maintains a leading position. This article presents excerpts from an overview of the report, focusing on a comparison of indicators in different economies and regions, including scientific and engineering human resources, research results, the creation and use of intellectual property rights, the output of knowledge-intensive industries and other related subjects.
Key words:  Multi-polarization, research results, intellectual property rights, knowledge-intensive