European Commission

The L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science were first created in 1998. They are awarded on an annual basis to one researcher in each of the five continents.
In the 2008 prize announcement, the researchers from Europe and Asia-Pacific region were Prof. Akiko Kobayashi (Professor and Chair at the Department of Chemistry of Nihon University) for her work on the development of molecular conductors and the design and synthesis of a single-component molecular metal.
In Europe, Prof. Athene M. Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge was awarded for her work on unraveling the mysteries of the physics of messy materials, which range from cement to starch.

Further Information can be found at the L’Oreal-Unesco homepage.

Asian and European University Rectors' met in Berlin in late October. The university leaders gathered to discuss issues such as governance and management, as well as trends of cooperation among universities in Asia and Europe. Participants from Japan included representatives from Hiroshima, Waseda, and Tsukuba Universities.
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Japan’s new Prime Minister, Taro Aso, participated in his first meeting of the Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP). The CSTP is the major decision-making body for science and technology within Japan’s Cabinet Office.

The meeting on 31 Oct. discussed the annual budget for science and technology for 2009 and the important issues which should be prioritized within the budget. With a requested increase of 14% for the overall science and technology budget, greater importance is being placed on areas of research such as innovative technologies, environmental energy technologies, science and technology diplomacy, activation of science and technology in the regions, and projects for the solution of social problems. Overall the budgetary requests for these areas increased by 43% on last year.

The budget requests were received from each Government Ministry in August 2008. The Cabinet will decide on the 2009 budget in December. The Diet, Japan’s Parliament will vote on the budget before 1 April 2009.

Panasonic have signed a joint research contract with the nanoelectronics research center, IMEC, for research on semiconductors, networks, wireless, and biomedical fields. The research will be performed at Leuven facilities and IMEC's research unit at Holst Centre in Eindhoven.

Panasonic has been participating in IMEC’s joint research since 2004 working on advanced semiconductor process technologies.

The Panasonic IMEC Center will be established at the IMEC premises in December 2008 and will conduct R&D on network technology such as dynamically reconfigurable software-defined radio, ultra-low power consumption wireless communication technology for healthcare and lifestyle monitoring, and biomedical technology such as next generation biosensors.
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On 17 November, cases selected for the latest initiative by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry were announced. These are in the medical field.
The “Super Zone” initiative seeks to promote the development of innovative technologies through allowing the selected “Zones” greater freedom to comprehensively use research budgets for efficiency, and to allow the easy movement between different stages of research, for instance from the development stage to product stage.

In 2008, the priority was towards advanced medical technology development in five fields:

1. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) applications
2. Regenerative Medicine
3. Innovative Medical Equipment Development
4. Innovative bio-pharmaceutical development
5. R&D for important medical equipment and supplies for treating national health

Following the call for applications over the summer period, 24 out of 143 applications were selected in November. Each will now be funded for 5 years.
According to the above five fields, 2 were in iPS applications, 5 in regerative medicine, 8 in innovative medical equipment, 4 in innovative bio-pharmaceutical development, and 5 for tackling national health issues.
Further Information (in Japanese)

Postdocs are currently a subject of some interest in Japan with debates having featured prominently in the media, and November seeing an event organized specifically about the theme of Postdoc Mondai, or the postdoc problem, which was mentioned on NHK’s evening news.

In October a study was published on the Research Activities and Attitudes of Postdocs* by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP). The report provides an interesting insight into how Japan’s postdocs view their research and the issues many of them confront.

Since the Japanese government began heavily investing in science and technology in the mid 1990s, early targets for the number of postdocs were set. The First Science and Technology Basic Plan (1996-2000) set the target of creating 10,000 postdocs by 2000. Consequently, postdocs increased from 6,224 in 1995 to just over 10,000 in 2000. However, while creating postdocs was achievable, providing lasting jobs proved to be more difficult with recent statistics suggesting that only around 60% of PhD holders’ gain employment. With this in mind, recently emphasis has begun to be placed on nurturing postdoc autonomy and developing the ability for researchers to enter a variety of careers, including, but not limited to academic research.

NISTEP, which is a specialist research institute attached to the Ministry of Education that analyses Japan’s science and technology policy, sought to review how postdocs evaluated their career through a questionnaire survey. From the 1,035 responses to the online questionnaire (a response rate of 66%), the report found a number of interesting insights into Japan’s postdocs. This includes:

• The average contract duration is 2.7 years
• The average monthly salary of postdocs in Japan is ￥306,000 (€2,500), with ￥314,000 for men and ￥282,000 for women. By discipline, engineering postdocs earn the most (￥330,000) and the humanities the lowest (￥213,000).
• On a per year basis, the average number of book articles produced is 1.6; journal publications 0.3; the number of conference presentations 3.4
• Around 70 per cent of postdocs are doing their own research, 20 per cent are doing other research or teaching, 10 per cent are engaged in other routine activities
• Asked on their satisfaction for a range of issues, 45.6 percent stated that they were satisfied with their current research, 52.9 per cent that they were satisfied with the opportunities to present their results at conferences and research meetings; least satisfaction (14.9 per cent level of satisfaction) was with their “total lifestyle”. The employment situation saw 41.8 per cent of respondent’s state that they were fairly dissatisfied or dissatisfied.

*Research Materials No. 159, National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, available (in Japanese) from the NISTEP homepage.

The revision of Directive 86/609/EEC on the protection of Animals used for Experimental and other scientific purposes continues to excite debate in Europe, following its adoption by the European Commission in November.

The Directive, which was first introduced in 1986, sought to improve the controls on the use of laboratory animals, set minimum standards for housing and care as well as for the training of personnel handling animals and supervising the experiments. It also aimed at reducing the numbers of animals used for experiments by requiring that an animal experiment should not be performed when an alternative method exists, and by encouraging the development and validation of alternative methods to replace animal methods.

In light of progress in science and new techniques, such as use of transgenic animals, xenotransplantation and cloning, as well as greater knowledge of animals with a higher degree of neurophysiological sensitivity who are not specifically regulated it was felt that the original Directive required revision.

The process for deciding upon a revision dates back to 2002 where an initial opinion to proceed with revision was established by an expert working group. The European Parliament also promoted this idea by calling on the Commission to revise the Directive. In 2003 a Technical Expert Working Group was established to review the issues involved and in 2006 and 2007 an impact assessment of the initiative was performed.

The revised directive will apply to the following:

• A ban on the use of great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans) in scientific procedures.
• Widening the scope of the proposal to include specific invertebrate species, foetal forms from the last 1/3rd of their development, and animals used in basic research, education and training.
• Introducing measures regarding housing and care of experimental animals. Minimum requirements for housing and care will be firmly laid down in the new Directive.
• Second or higher generation non-human primates will be required, with appropriate transitional periods, in order to avoid taking animals from the wild, and exhausting the wild population.

The Commission argues that the proposal will considerably improve the welfare of animals used in scientific procedures, reduce to the absolute minimum necessary the number of animals used in scientific procedures, ensure fair competition for industry and research, and boost the development and validation of alternative methods to replace, reduce and refine the use of experimental animals.

While the need to update the directive was recognized and is broadly welcomed, on the one hand there are calls by animal rights advocacy groups to further extend the scope of the directive to further reduce animal use in research; on the other hand, research funding bodies caution that there may be increased bureaucracy that hampers essential research.

The proposed directive will now be sent to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union for debate by MEPs and Member States over coming months.

See: European Commission for an explanation of the Directive.
For other opinions, see: Dr Hadwen Trust, UK Research Councils: MRC, NERC and BBSRC

Following on from earlier studies, in October Eurobarometer published the analytical report for the latest survey into young European’s attitudes towards science and technology. This was a telephone based survey with 25,000 randomly selected young people (18-25 years old) in the 27 member states, with around 1,000 in each country. The survey concerns interest in science and technology, opinions about science and technology, awareness of innovations, health risks, and decisions about studying science in the future.

Some of the main findings of the report, which runs to 206 pages, are that:

• Young Europeans have a positive view about science and technology, e.g. one-third (35%) of respondents agreed strongly that science brings more benefits than harm
• Young men had a more positive view about science and technology, e.g. four out of 10 men agreed strongly that science makes lives healthier and easier (vs. three out of 10 women)

Regarding what students would like to study in the future:

• Most young people have preference for studying the social sciences, with a minority expressing an interest in scientific subjects, though respondents in the new member states have stronger interest in science and technology.
• Young women were more likely to study natural science or mathematics in order to become a health professional, teacher or public sector researcher.

The full report is available at the Eurobarometer Homepage.

In September, the European Commission called on Member State governments to jointly develop a new strategy for strengthening science and technology cooperation with non-EU countries, notably in the field of Information and Communication Technologies. The Commission's objective is to contribute to sustainable development worldwide while at the same time as improving Europe's competitiveness in S&T and increasing impact of such cooperation. The main points within the strategy include:

• Strengthening the international dimension of the European Research Area (ERA) by integrating Europe's neighbours into the ERA and fostering strategic cooperation with key non-member countries through geographic and thematic targeting;
• Improving the frameworks for international cooperation in science and technology and for the promotion of European technologies worldwide. This includes the joint development of global large-scale research infrastructures (such as GEANT), support to mobility of researchers or management of intellectual property.

Further information is available from the European Commission.

On 7 November the European Research Council announced the results of the first ERC Advanced Grant. The Advanced Grant targets researchers who have already established themselves as independent research leaders in their own right. ERC Advanced Grants allow exceptional established research leaders in any field of science, engineering and scholarship to pursue frontier research of their choice.

Accompanying the publication of the results was a brief statistical outline of the awardees. In total, 275 out of 2167 (12.7%) applications were selected and will be funded over 5 years at a total cost of €542m.

By country, the largest number of successful applications were from the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland, with no successful candidates from Japan.

For mobility, 6 grantees will be moving to Europe to perform the grant, 3 of which are from the United States.

The average age was 51 years old, within a range of 36 to 76 years old. 12% of grantees were female.

By domain, 41.5% of successful proposals were in Physical Sciences and Engineering, 30.5% in Life Sciences, 17.5% in Social Sciences and the Humanities, 10.5% were in the Interdisciplinary Research domain.

The next application deadlines for the ERC Advanced Research Grant are:
Physical Sciences and Engineering: 25 March 2009
Social Sciences and Humanities: 15 April 2009
Life Sciences: 6 May 2009
Further information can be obtained from the European Research Council.

To support the Network of European Researchers in Japan, the EURAXESS Links Japan homepage was launched in November 2008. The pages are updated on a weekly basis.

The pages provide information on the frameworks for research collaboration between the European Union and Japan.

Within the Careers and Funding Section, all the latest Marie Curie, Japanese and European country funding can be found. This is organized into three sections:

• Forthcoming Call Information
• Career Related Funding
• Project Based Grants

Within each section there is basic information on the application period, field of research, duration of project, and a link to further information.

The pages also include a listing of some events in Japan.

We welcome any information you may have on events that you are involved in, such as research presentations or conferences.

We feel that the EURAXESS Links Japan web pages are a unique and potentially essential source of information for research related information in Japan and Europe.

Please check at: this link.

**All events in Japanese, unless otherwise stated

Postdoctoral Position at Osaka University
The Systems Immunology Laboratory at Osaka University is currently seeking a postdoctoral researcher. Further information is available from the Systems Immunology Group homepages.

R&D Biologist/Neurobiologist at Aleria Biodevices, Barcelona
Aleria Biodevices is a biomedical devices company located at the Barcelona Science Park in Spain. Required qualifications or experience are a relevant degree (biology, medicine, bioengineering, biophysics); at least 3 years experience in industry or 5 years in academia at PhD level in neurobiology; experience with electrophysiology and neuron culture/slice preparations; fluent English.

Further information is available within Message Board on Sinapse.