Research and development

Surpassed only by the United States, China and Japan for R&D allocated funds, Germany has decided to raise the biddings and has pledged around 31.6 million dollar in the next 6 years to support specials research and higher education programmes. Germany, which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, is the most populous nation in Europe and the most important economy of the Old Continent, with 100 billion dollars spent every year in research and development.

The Italian technology and start-ups are having an interesting season.

How is managed the process to set up the calls of proposal in Horizon 2020? A good example of its functioning has been given by the stakeholders consultation, ended in June 2014. The consultation is the first step towards the definition of 2016-17 working program for the Societal Challenge 5, the one dealing with environmental issues.

The US Navy has been funding for many years a collaboration with CNR scientific research in the field of marine industry. On July 23, at the Marine Technology Research Institute (INSEAN) in Rome, the Admiral Matthew L. Klunder of the US Navy delegation has visited the Italian Institute in order to further strengthen this scientific collaboration.

To understand the reasons behind such cooperation, we have talked with Emilio Campana, the INSEAN director.

Climate change today is a reality. It involves lot of problems, the toughest ones being the loss of biodiversity, the rise of sea levels and the increase of temperatures. But there are also other less known phenomena connected with the global warming. One of them is the urban heat island, which is induced by materials composing the urban environment and involves numerous cities across Europe. Cement retains heat, sewer systems carry water away quickly, impeding the cooling, and heat is trapped between surfaces because of the so-called canyon effect.

A specific call of Horizon 2020 promotes cooperation between Europe and Africa for scientific research, funding project for €80 billion between 2014 and 2020: €24.5 billion for strengthening research in science, €22.6 billion for strengthening industrial leadership in innovation and €31 billion addressed to societal challenges, like global warming, sustainable transport, food or renewal energy.

Although the scientific performance of the Western Balkan countries (WBC) has improved in recent years, the lack of human resources, research funding and facilities, as well as a weak regulatory regime, are the main obstacles to an improvement of the situation. At the same time, in 2012 the Western Balkans have required 38 patents in the United States, compared to an average of 25 patents for universities and leading research institutes in the U.S.

The condition of Italian research is far from being positive. From some perspectives, it may be described as dramatic. The lack of financial resources, aggravated by the indiscriminate cuts that public research continues to suffer, is not the only issue of the Italian research system, which clearly needs a strong intervention in order to save it from the decline it is running towards. But how and where to intervene?

Agroindustrial is one of the sector that most contributes to the positive imagine of the “made in Italy”. Together with the metalworking and textile-manufacturer, it is one of the principal sectors in terms of turnover - exceeding 180 billion of euro, 12% of the national GDP – amount of companies and occupation, with almost two million people employed.

What can be simpler than a pencil? What dark secrets are hidden in the traces it leaves behind? Why should we begin to start studying graphite, which is the heart of the pencil? Why should scientists studying the physics of matter waste their time on something so common and ordinary? And yet physics is becoming increasingly interested in pencils. There are those who are using graphite and adhesive tape to try to find new material and those who are trying to understand how to use a pencil to get something that might end up in the display screen of a smart phone.

Researchers working at universities or in independent research centers cannot by themselves change the fate of the sick. They can identify crucial mechanisms underlying a disease and find out how to correct them; they can test their intuitions in vitro and in animal models, they can even perform the first stage of a clinical trial, if they find the appropriate funding, but, especially when it comes to innovative therapies, they will never be able to bring the treatments to all those who need them.

The recent call for applications for the next PRIN (and FIRB) Italian research programmes, whose expiration is forthcoming, encourages a ruefully ethnographic reflection. Let me explain.

Upset by drastic budget cuts imposed by the finance ministry, the vice-chancellors of 71 public sector universities are threatening to resign en-bloc. They rightly say that development projects are grounded, bills unpaid, and some buildings only half-constructed. Paying teacher salaries is also at risk. But a cash-strapped government retorts that its number-one priority is dealing with the flood devastation. It says it cannot afford the inflated budgets of previous years.