Georgia Institute of Technology Assistant Professor Aaron Levine said his study found that bolstered by supportive policies and public research dollars, the United Kingdom, Israel, China, Singapore and Australia are producing unusually large shares of human embryonic stem cell research.

Levine studied how a nation's output of human embryonic stem cell research papers compared with their output in less contentious fields. He found that while the United States produces far more research in the field than any other single country, when one compares the amount of human embryonic stem cell research to other forms of research in molecular biology and genetics, the U.S. falls behind.

Levine found the United Kingdom and Israel produce substantially more research in that area than in other fields -- the United Kingdom produced 5.3 percent more research related to human embryonic stem cells than research performed in other areas of molecular biology and genetics. Israel produced 4.6 percent more research.

The full study appears in the journal Cell Stem Cell.