Since the eighties environment surrounding Japan has been drastically changing. Everybody finds that the nation’ economy is driven by knowledge or science and technology at the current age. In 1996 the Japanese Government formulated the first Science and Technology Basic Plan resulting in that nation’s budget allocated to science and technology has increased rapidly. Entering the year of 2001 Council for Science and Technology was reorganized as Council for Science and Technology Policy due to administrative reform the Government has proceeded. Then the Second Science and Technology Basic Plan was formulated. The main two items of this Plan are 1) to set four emphasized science and technology areas; life science, information and telecommunications, environment and nano-technology materials, and 2) to reform the current science and technology R & D systems. For the latter several issues are raised including industry-academia collaboration, researches with flexible and free idea, fostering of international R & D competitiveness, and training or fostering of young scholars, and science and technology education for the juveniles. The speaker also talked over post-genome age, and post-genomics researches.
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