Science 2.0

One of my first posts in this blog was on the iBridge Network, a platform for searching and sharing innovations in universities. Universities can use the platform to license and distribute a variety of items, including software, research tools, databases, teaching materials, surveys, and reference materials.

Obviously I was surprised to read on the URENIO website that the iBridge Network was launched at DEMO 07 in January of this year. Well, it appears that the event I posted about 18 months ago was the announcement of the network, while this was the launch of the actual website and platform.

Laura Dorival Paglione, Director of the Kauffman Innovation Network, which manages the iBridge Network explained in her presentation: (b.t.w. sounds a lot like what the CEO was saying 18 months ago doesn't it? ;)

"Universities are tremendous wellsprings of knowledge. By encouraging widespread access to information and linking researchers with interested parties, we are hoping to more fully realize the innovation potential that research offers."

The platform started as a pilot for five universities: Washington University in St. Louis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Cornell University and the University of Kansas. The University of Chicago and the University of Arizona have joined a few months after the announcement.

I was a bit skeptical in my first post on this service. Looking at the website now, I think that it might eventually work. A video presentation is available at the DEMO 07 website. With all the share and collaborate features, tag clouds, categories and of course the ubiquitous 'beta' indication it looks a lot like Science 2.0. But like any Web 2.0 application, it will be very much dependent on the 'user generated content'. Let's see in another 18 months whether scientists are ready for science 2.0...

Yet Another EIT (or EITs)?

A study team led by Peter Tindemans (former Chair of the OECD Megascience Forum) and Luc Soete, Director of UNU-MERIT, a joint research and training centre of United Nations University and Maastricht University in the Netherlands) has proposed yet another structure for the European Institute of technology.

Originally proposed by Commission President José Manuel Barroso as part of the relaunched Lisbon Agenda, the aim of the EIT is to strengthen the European 'knowledge-triangle' of research, education and technology. The European Commission first expressed a preference for the EIT as a single institution. After a consultation of a wide range of stakeholders it proposed (pdf) a decentralised network structure in October 2006.

This EIT is organised around six Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). These KIC's should be seen as joint-ventures of partner organisations representing universities, research organisations and businesses which are intended to form an integrated partnership in response to calls for proposals from the EIT.

Tindemans and Soete find that the decentralized EIT that has been proposed by the Commission is found to be not feasible. It is too dispersed; it would not increase significantly the research output in a field; it cannot match a top tier university in providing an environment for training graduates; and a dispersed institute cannot adequately organize technology transfer. Instead of the decentralised model, they propose a clustered model. One of the major implications seems to be that there will be multiple EITs and that they will be more geared towards the regional context.

While they acknowledge that the underlying rationale for setting up the EIT is critical, they caution against making blanket assumptions about Europe’s inability to convert knowledge into commerce, to organize critical mass, or to reward entrepreneurship and excellence in research and education. The study team cites evidence from the latest European Commission Innovation Scoreboard, which found that several of the smaller European countries and Germany perform significantly better than, or as well as the US and Japan (see below). Not all EU countries, regions and institutions have problems with converting knowledge into commerce and critical mass, rewarding entrepreneurship and excellence in research and education. The authors warn that ignoring this fact might result in assuming too easily that a European level institutional solution is necessary in cases where national or regional approaches might be more appropriate.

(click to enlarge)

The report proposes an alternative that does support existing local strongholds in research, education and innovation. This so-called Cluster EIT would see ambitious and successful regions and universities compete to create strong institutes of several hundred staff at or linked to a strong university, and working closely with industry on problems that determine long-term industrial development. In the case of the US such institutes too are concentrated around elite institutions such as Massachusetts, Stanford, Austin and San Diego.

Another interesting point made by Soete:

“Nobody in the US would think of establishing an AIT (American Institute of Technology) so if we think of creating a European Institute of Technology it should recognize the present strongholds in research, in graduate training and in innovation. Otherwise, it will represent little more than what the French call ‘un saupoudrage’ of undoubtedly substantial additional research monies but which spread over such a wide number of research centres will barely make an impact.”

In their report (pdf) they further explain their recommendation for a 'cluster EIT' and also provide the financial aspects of this organisational form (see also the news item from Euractive). I only had a quick look at the report but at first glance I think they make some good points. It seems that the role of the Commission would become more distant in this proposal, while the regions would become more involved in the development of the EITs. I wonder how the Commission will react to these suggestions. A public hearing on the EIT takes place in the European Parliament on 8 May this year.

Nano Technology Factory

Watching videos like this make me regret choosing a social science instead of natural sciences or engineering...

Reith Lectures 2007

Today the BBC starts another episode in their Reith Lecture Series. The BBC has broadcasted the series since 1948. The Reith lecture series were initiated by Sir John Reith, the first director general of the BBC. He maintained that broadcasting should be a public service which enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. In its long history the series have covered a wide range of topics in the sciences and social sciences. The first Reith lecturer was philosopher Bertrand Russel, speaking about the Authority and the Individual. In economics and the social sciences it has featured names like Arnold Toynbee, John Kenneth Galbraith and, more recently, Anthony Giddens on the Runaway World. Lectures are available online since 1999, but the BBC has also put some historic lectures online.

This years Reith lecturer will be Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He will give a series of five lectures related to global challenges that the world is facing:

Lecture 1: Bursting at the Seams
The 21st century will be marked by severe natural resource limits, the rise of new economic powers and the threats of failed states. These are tectonic changes with the potential to unleash global-scale upheavals. Global cooperation of an unprecedented depth and scale will be needed but we are not yet prepared for such cooperation.

Lecture 2: Survival in the Anthropocene
The biggest challenges that we face - climate change, alleviation of hunger, water stress, energy - are translated in the shadow of ignorance into "us versus them" problems, with only the weakest links to underlying scientific principles and technological options.

Lecture 3: The Great Convergence
Power and America have seemed synonymous for the last fifty years. No longer. Power in the 21st Century is shifting to the East: to India and above all to China. Facing up to the end of centuries of North Atlantic dominance - first Europe then the U.S. - will pose huge challenges.

Lecture 4: Poverty in the Midst of Plenty
This lecture considers the challenges of extreme poverty and the extreme worry of the rest of the world which fears for its own prosperity. It spells out the limits of the free market to solve these problems and proposes a plan of action which presents choices to those listening.

Lecture 5: A New Politics for a New Age
The key political novelty of our age is mass political awareness and mobilization. Mass mobilization has brought the Age of Empire to an end, and accounts for the failures in Iraq. No society any longer tolerates being ruled by another. Social mobilization can be a dramatic force for positive change.

You can listen to the lectures in streaming audio or download the mp3 files or transcripts. Lecture audio and transcripts will be available after each broadcast. Each lecture will be available as an MP3 download for 7 days after the first broadcast.

The Ivy League Liga: Round 2

2006 has been somewhat of a revolutionary year for German higher education. The system where all universities were considered of equal quality and therefore were subjected to equal treatment by the government, experienced quite a stir.

German Minister of Research and Education Annette Schavan announced in October last year that the Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munchen) and the Technical University of Munchen and the University of Karlsruhe became Germany's first 'elite universities'. The three institutions are the biggest winners in Germany's 'excellence initiative'. This was established to improve the country's chronically under-funded universities (and its decreasing reputation abroad), by encouraging high level research and competition. The three universities will receive around 120 million euros each in federal and state funds over the next five years.

This week, the finalists for the second round were announced. Being one of the winners is crucial considering that getting designated 'elite' will mean enjoying a piece of the 1.9 billion euros pie, made available from 2007 to 2011. This time the result seems less skewed towards technology, and less towards the southern part of Germany than the first round. The finalists include two institutes of higher education in Berlin, the Free University and the Humboldt University. The others are the RWTH Aachen and the universities of Bochum, Freiburg, Gottingen, Heidelberg and Constance.

The final decision on which of these eight will be designated 'elite' will be made in October.

Some interesting views from the German academic community on the excellence initiative can be heard in this radio interview (from NPR; 4:26 in english):

Listen to the interview in Realplayer

Listen to the interview in Windows Media Player

.

The world according to maps

The Spatial and Social Inequalities Research Group of the Geography Department at the University of Sheffield have created an interesting website. Worldmapper: the world as you've never seen it before. It is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

I played around a bit, creating maps reflecting the participation in higher education, the amount higher education spending and the scientific research in terms of the number of scientific articles. Unsurprisingly, this creates maps where the US, Europe and East Asia is dominating. However, if you compare it with a population map, it's clear that the dominance is especially in North America, Europe and Japan.

However, if we look at the maps (click for enlargements) that show the growth in higher education spending...

...and the growth in scientific research over the period 1990-2001, we see some interesting things.

• Australia has basically vanished from the face of the earth, in terms of the growth in spending on higher ed. It looks like it has to illustrate a negative value. Some other countries where growth is not keeping up are the Netherlands and the UK.
• The map on higher education spending already shows that Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore already spent relatively much on higher education. The map on the growth of spending shows that these countries' increasingly see higher education as a priority.
• Singapore's fixation with the emerging knowledge economy seems to bear fruit. Singapore had the greatest per person increase in scientific publications.
• In terms of scientific growth, nearly the whole continent of Africa seems to be swept of the map. But also a populous country like Indonesia has turned from a string of islands into a nearly invisible line.

Publishing & Open Access

Two related issues on the US academic publishing business were widely reported upon in the media in the last 2 weeks. The first was the National Institutes of Health policy on public access to research findings. The second, the proposal of a bill by Republican Senator Cornyn (Texas) and Democratic Senator Lieberman (Connecticut) requiring public access to federally funded research.

On February 3, 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research. Although the NIH strongly encourages that a manuscript be made available to other researchers and the general public immediately after it has been published in a journal, the Policy allows an author to delay the manuscript's release for up to 12 months. Participation in the Public Access Policy is voluntary. The rate of submission to the system in the first 8 months has been less than 4 percent of the total number of articles estimated to be eligible.

The Chronicle however reports that momentum continues to build outside the NIH, and outside the United States, for mandatory posting of manuscripts in centralized free online repositories. In April, the European Commission released a report (pdf) calling for a guarantee of free access to all publicly sponsored research.

But in May, the two senators from Connecticut and Texas introduced a bill that would require every federal agency that sponsors more than $100-million annually in research to establish an online repository and make its grantees deposit their articles within six months of publication. The bill would apply to 11 agencies, including the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and NASA.

"It will ensure that US taxpayers do not have to pay twice for the same research - once to conduct it and a second time to read it," Senator Cornyn told Congress.

Obviously, this proposal ignited a fierce reaction from the scientific publishing industry. Representatives from the publishers come with all kind of reactions:

Science addresses this issue:

Some publishers argue that there's no evidence the public is as interested in, say, high energy physics papers as in health research. "You're just expanding this willy-nilly on the assumption that there's the same clamor," says Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers. Martin Frank, executive director of the American Physiological Society, argues that if the bill became law, it could be especially damaging to "small niche area" journals in disciplines such as ecology that have not yet experimented much with open-access journals that recoup publication costs from authors rather than subscribers.

And so does the New York Times:

Scientific data is easily misinterpreted, said Joann Boughman, executive vice president of the American Society of Human Genetics, publisher of The American Journal of Human Genetics. "Consumers themselves are saying, 'We have the right to know these things as quickly as we can.' That is not incorrect. However, wherever there is a benefit, there is a risk associated with it."

And the Washington Post:

Patricia S. Schroeder, president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, promised a fight. "It is frustrating that we can't seem to get across to people how expensive it is to do the peer review, edit these articles and put them into a form everyone can understand," Schroeder said. [Isn't the peer review something that academics do...for free...? Ed.]

And the Guardian:

But the Association of American Publishers warned that the law would jeopardise the integrity of the scientific publishing process. Association member Brian Crawford warned it "would create unnecessary costs for taxpayers, place an unwarranted burden on research investigators, and expropriate the value-added investments made by scientific publishers, many of them not-for-profit associations who depend on publishing income to support pursuit of their scholarly missions".

I guess there are a lot of vested interests here.. The bill will probably discussed later this year. It would be about time for some fundamental changes in the publishing industry. To me it remains a strange phenomenon that an academic writes an article or book for free, then his or her colleagues do the peer review for free and then (often after 2 years or so) they have to pay to get (on-line) access to the articles or books. Or do I fail to see something here?

All in 1 week

In the past week, three remarkable men have passed away. The best writer of all times, one of the most innovative artists of all times and one of the most influential economists of all times.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) passed away last Sunday (30 April).

For me, his numerous books, short stories and essays are the most remarkable works I have ever read. Both his use of language and his choice of topics make that his books and stories portray a lively picture of Indonesian societies and cultures. Toer brought history to live, from the early Majapahit kingdom to the first stages of colonialism, from the first movements towards independence to the repression of the Suharto regime. I wrote a short post on is work before. Here is my top 5 of his work:

1. Gadis Pantai (The Girl from the Coast, 1962)
2. Buru Quartet: Bumi Manusia (Earth of Mankind, 1980); Anak Semua Bangsa (Child of all Nations, 1980); Jejak Langkah (Footsteps, 1985) and Rumah Kaca (The Glass House, 1988)
3. Korupsi (1954)
4. Keluarga Gerilya (The Guerrilla Family, 1950)
5. Arus Balik (1995)

----

Karel Appel (1921-2006) passed away last Wednesday in Zurich.


Appel was probably the best known contemporary Dutch painter. He was one of the founders of the COBRA group, a group of painters from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, allied with abstract expressionism.






----

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) passed away on Saturday 29 April.

From the Economist:

"At six foot eight, he was a giant. Intellectually he was equally towering, a man who spent more than seven decades either on the stage of American public policy - as a bureaucrat in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, a confidante of John Kennedy and adviser to countless other Democrats - or loudly lambasting Washington from offstage left, as a Harvard professor."

And a well known quote:

"There are two classes of forecasters: those who don't know, and those who don't know they don't know"

Academic Champions League?

In the latest Higher Education section of The Australian it is all about research assessment. The Australian Government has planned to introduce a Research Quality Framework (RQF) which is largely based on the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The RAE is a peer review exercise to evaluate the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. The introduction of the RAE has improved universities' research performance (in terms of impact of publications) and created greater research concentration.

It' s a rather strange moment to introduce the RQF because the UK has plans to abolish the RAE and return to a system that looks more like the current Australian model. In the words of Snitch:

"So Britain is scrapping its research assessment exercise just as Australia prepares to introduce one. What's more, Britain is returning to a metric system of measuring quality, just like the one Australia uses now."

One very visible result of the RAE is the concentration of research. Obviously this gives less concerns to Australia's leading universities (joined in the Group of 8) than to the other players. It's expected that most of the research funding will be concentrated in these 8 research intensive universities.

Although the framework has not been implemented yet, some of the consequences are already visible in anticipation of the RQF:

"In a significant loss for RMIT University, a leading expert in biomedical sciences has left the campus, taking his entire staff of 15, his laboratory and research grants worth nearly $1 million a year to a research quality framework-free medical institute. As universities prepare for greater competition under the framework, global diabetes specialist Mark Febbraio has announced he will leave RMIT for the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, blaming the impending introduction of the RQF and its effect on universities outside the Group of Eight."

Many of the universities outside the group of 8 complain that criteria for societal and economic relevance are missing in the framework, and this will even increase the diversion of funds away from the technological universities to the Group of 8. The concentration of research will likely lead to a 'bidding war on stars'. An Australian equivalent of a European Champions League, where the Barcelonas, the Milans, the Arsenals and the Inters will always be in the semi-finals because they can afford to buy the best players?

On the other hand, maybe not:

"The plan to introduce a national assessment system for research quality has stalled after federal Education Minister Julie Bishop announced yesterday she was setting up another advisory group to consider it."

So that's Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is right up there in the technology hypes, next to biotechnology and information technology (or are we passed that?). Reading this post on your laptop or PC, the results of information technology are hard to ignore. The results from research in biotechnology are maybe harder to grasp, but still pretty obvious (medical applications, food, agriculture). But nanotechnology?

Time for some nanotechnology 101:

Nanotechnology is the art and science of manipulating matter at the nanoscale (down to 1/100,000 the width of a human hair) to create new and unique materials and products. An estimated global research and development investment of nearly $9 billion per year is anticipated to lead to new medical treatments and tools; more efficient energy production, storage and transmission; better access to clean water; more effective pollution reduction and prevention; and stronger, lighter materials. And these are just a few of the more significant ways in which people are discussing using the technology.

If that didn't help: Promotheus' weblog had a post on the release by Woodrow Wilson Center's Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies of an inventory of 200 existing consumer products that claim to incorporate nanotechnology. From chocolate to processors, from sunscreen to washing machines. Click on the picture or go to this BBC-site for the nanotech future. Ever wondered why the iPod Nano is called the iPod Nano?

Outsourcing Drug Trials

Outsourcing has become a well-tried practice in the global economy. Outsourcing manufacturing is a strategy that has become very widespread. Outsourcing services, illustrated by India's call-centers, is more recent but has become common practice for many western multinationals. Even the more knowledge intensive services like accounting are now often being provided overseas. India currently is even becoming increasingly a recipient of outsourced R&D. Even waste management and recycling is outsourced nowadays.

But this article in Wired Magazine gave me another view on outsourcing, and one that increasingly worried me reading through the article. It is about a new outsourcing boom in South Asia: the outsourcing of drug trials. Drug trials in the West are becoming problematic because less people want to participate in the trials, the amount of drugs to be tested increases and because the trials generally take a long time:

Like many in the pharmaceutical industry, Narula (medical director of a contract-research firm that organizes trials for major multinational) believes that the solution to the slow pace of drug trials lies in outsourcing. As many as half of all clinical trials are already conducted in locations far from the pharmaceutical companies' home base, in countries like India, China, and Brazil. And many industry analysts expect the market to skyrocket, particularly as expanding libraries of genetic information increase the number of drugs coming out of the lab. The consulting firm McKinsey calculates that the market in India for outsourcing trials will hit $1.5 billion by 2010.

Ofcourse, the trials bring along benefits. Obviously, the hospitals receive resources that they desperately need. Second, it can be a form of knowledge transfer. However, Kalantri (a local doctor involved in one of such trials) clearly points to problems related to corruption and to the naivety of many of the patients (which come predominantly from the poorer segments of society). Another important point is that the medicines tested are not the ones that are most needed in those countries. And if they are needed, they will be unaffordable for those patients.

When the trial ended, however, Kalantri wondered whether he had served his patients well by enrolling them. At 800 rupees a day, the drug they had taken was too expensive for any of them to afford. Plus, even when it worked, it showed results for just a month. Such a minute and costly improvement might make sense in the US, Kalantri felt, but was it really the kind of medication that poor Indians should be testing? "The biggest problems around here are snakebite and insecticide poisoning," he points out. "We could really use a trial for one of those." He mentioned that the emergency ward contained a number of patients with a mysterious fever, one that epidemiological tests had been unable to identify. "It would be good to study it," Kalantri murmured, sounding a bit regretful. "Maybe we will, one day."

Technology Transfer and the Ownership of Science

The Association of University Technology Managers represents professionals in the field of technology transfer and tries to develop and promote best practices in the profession. Universities have seen a significant increase in technology transfer activity. Before 1980, fewer than 250 patents were issued to U.S. universities each year and discoveries were seldom commercialized for the public's benefit. In contrast, in 2002, AUTM members reported that 4673 new license agreements were signed. Between 1991 and 2002, new patents filed increased more than 310 percent to 7741 and new licenses and options executed increased more than 365 percent to 4673.

The AUTM contributes much of the success in university technology transfer and the resulting economic and health benefits to the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980:

Co-sponsored by Senators Birch Bayh and Robert Dole, the Bayh-Dole Act enabled universities, nonprofit research institutions and small businesses to own and patent inventions developed under federally funded research programs. Before the passage of this legislation, new discoveries resulting from federally sponsored research passed immediately into the public domain. The provisions of the act, however, provided an incentive for universities to protect their innovations and, therefore, for industry to make high-risk investments resulting in products made from those innovations.

In 2005, the AUTM launched The Better World Project to explain in everyday terms how academic research and technology transfer have changed our way of life and made the world a better place (their words, not mine, ed). Recently they issued two reports that provide information on technology transfer projects ranging from Honeycrisp apples, Google, the V-chip, nicotine patches and Taxol. The reports are available online:

The Better World Report.

Technology Transfer Stories: 25 Innovations That Changed the World (1 MB)

and the other one:

Reports From the Field.

Technology Transfer Works: 100 Cases From Research to Realization (1.2 MB)

In 2004, two institutions in New York City accounted for about 20 percent of all revenues reported. Columbia University earned more than $116-million, and New York University reported earnings of more than $109-million. The concentration of licensing revenue among a small number of universities is typical. Eight institutions accounted for more than half of all revenues reported. At least 22 institutions besides Columbia reported earnings of $10-million or more.

Universities share proceeds from commercialization with inventors. Although formulas vary, inventors typically receive about one-third of the total. In many cases, additional allocations from the institution's share go to their school, department, or laboratory.

Obviously, allowing universities to generate profits for themselves and the companies that license the inventions, while the research is funded by tax-payers, does raise questions and criticism. Who should own science? In the past years, several books have been published that critique the commercialization of research (and other academic capitalist activities in the knowledge factory / university in ruins) or at least point to the risk of the market or the paradox of the marketplace.

Despite all the criticism, the US approach to technology transfer is still used as the model for many non-US universities. Their approach is increasingly being copied in countries in Europe and Asia and other parts of the world.

Globalisation: 99 Definitions & Perspectives

While I was looking for a file in my computer I stumbled upon an old document. It's a file with a list of different perspectives and definitions of globalisation that I assembled for my doctoral research some years ago. I thought it might be of useful for students and scholars that are trying to grasp the possible meanings of the term.

It is a list of 99 (give or take a few) views from different disciplines and different sectors. Most are from academics, ranging from anthropologists to economists and from philosophers to business gurus. It includes statements from people as diverse as Bill Gates, Karl Marx and Vandana Shiva and organisations ranging from Greenpeace to the World Bank.

I converted the list into a website that can be found here (pdf also available). If you think any perspectives should be added, let me know..

Science Dollars, Shekels, Rand and Reals

A newsfeed from the Science and Development Network brought me to this article on science spending. The article is based on the UNESCO Science Report 2005. We have heard a lot of talk about how Asia is catching up with Europe in terms of spending on R&D and Science. In the case of science spending, Asia has already overtaken Europe, mainly due to China's increase in spending on science.

It says that from 1997 to 2002, Asian funding from public and private sources rose by four per cent, enabling Asia to account for 32 per cent of global research spending. In those five years, China's share of global spending more than doubled, from four to nine per cent. Meanwhile, the Latin America and the Caribbean region's share of the global total fell from 3.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent. Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa contributed just 0.1 per cent of the global total

But what probably surprised me more were the figures on the spending per researcher. This number is very low for the Asian states of the former Soviet Union: US$ 8,900. The average spending per researcher in OECD countries is US$ 191,900, while for the United States this is US$ 230,000 and for the EU the number is US$177,000. Most surprising are the countries that spend most per researcher:

1. Israel US$ 661,000
2. South Africa US$ 357,600
3. Brazil US$ 238,000

I can image that the high numbers in Israel (and in the US) are somehow related to military spending (this table shows that Israel and the US also rank 1st and 2nd in gross expenditure on R&D per inhabitant: 922 resp. 1005 US$ per inhabitant). But why do Brazil and especially South Africa spent so much money per researcher?

One ERC...or 25?

Now that I have returned from my visit last month to CHEPS in the Netherlands and the University of Aveiro in Portugal, I’ll try to post more regularly again. That said…let’s start with a short item in last weeks Economist:

“Historically, the European Union has not bothered with funding much basic scientific research. Such activities have mainly remained the preserve of national governments, not least because giving scientists free rein can lead to discoveries that not only make money but ultimately enhance military might. That attitude is now changing. The European Commission proposes to establish a European Research Council (ERC) that would spend a maximum of euro12 billion ($14 billion) over seven years on “blue skies” research. While the plans are being generally welcomed by Europe's member states, their details are problematic.”

In many respects, I’m a supporter of the creation of a European Research Council. Expanding the opportunities for researchers to apply for research funding will create a healthy form of competition, especially for those in the smaller countries of the EU. Whether I am a believer of this European version of the NSF (the US National Science Foundation)? …I’m not so sure. Europe is simply not a federation of states like the US. It is a grouping of sovereign nation states with some common goals and a lot of different peculiarities. And this is exactly what should not be taken into account when deciding upon the way in which the ERC will be legally organised. Basically the choice is between an independent organisation that allocates funding on the basis of merit and an organisation that allocates funding on the basis of national quota. It should be like the former option, but it will probably be more like the latter… This time I agree with the Economist:

“If both are genuine in their support for the ERC and Europe's aim of becoming more competitive, then they must find a way of keeping the ERC free from political interference. Europe would benefit from a competition for its best researchers which rewards scientific excellence. A quasi-competition that recognises how many votes each member state is allotted would be pointless.”

One more to go

Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling have been awarded The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2005 (a.k.a. the Nobel Prize in Economics) “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis".

This means we have only one more to go for 2005: the Nobel Prize for Literature. Let’s all hope this time the prize is finally going to Pramoedya Ananta Toer.    

Oz Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2005 was awarded to two Australians. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Medicine prize for discovering a bacterium that causes gastritis and stomach ulcers, according to the Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute.