Directions: Read the passage and answer the following questions.

If you look at any major company today, it’s impossible to miss the positive impact of collaboration. Technological advances and international travel have enabled companies to benefit from access to new ideas and perspectives. Bringing people together from diverse backgrounds, often across borders, has led to new ways of thinking, better solutions and faster progress.

The same is true in science. When we think about some of the greatest achievements in the last century, these were often the result of hundreds of people working together across the globe. Initiatives like the International Space Station, one of the most ambitious political and scientific collaborations ever, or the Human Genome Project, the combined effort of thousands of scientists and 18 countries to sequence the DNA of the human genome. A group of Nobel Prize winners recently highlighted that without collaboration they may never have won their individual accolades.

Collaboration and international mobility make science stronger. Countries with mobile scientific workforces produce more highly cited papers. Researchers who work in more than one country have 40% higher average citation rates, while internationally collaborative papers have greater impact than domestic papers.

The attitudes and actions of governments shape research culture. If countries turn inwards and lose sight of the vital importance of international collaboration, this will have damaging consequences for science and the world around us. The world is changing at an unprecedented rate. We’re facing huge challenges – climate change, demographic shifts and the spread of drug-resistant infections, to name a few – but they are not insurmountable. Together, we can make discoveries that will further our knowledge and improve our lives in ways we cannot imagine.