I am a total noob at this game, but I am loving it.  Not sure if this is the forum for this question, but here goes:

Where do you see if you have research points to spend, and how many?  I see little "1" appear when I click on the non greyed out options, but what does that "1" represent?  I think some of them require 2 points to go up one level, right?  Also, what makes the research options even available, is it the different lab types? 

I played through the tutorials, maybe I'll do it again, but I couldn't figure this stuff out  Thanks!