International Congress on Membranes and Membrane Processes (ICOM) is the largest and the most important conference on membrane science and technology. ICOM has been held by the Membrane Society of Japan (MSJ) in Japan, by the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) in North America and by the European membrane Society (EMS) in Europe every three years. During ICOM 1996 held in Yokohama, the Membrane Society of Korea (MSK) intended to have ICOM in Korea in future because membrane research was becoming active in Korea. MSJ and MSK discussed to organize the membrane society representing Asia and Oceania area, and the “Aseanian Membrane Society (AMS)” was established in May 18, 2001. The First Conference of Aseanian Membrane Society was held in May 15, 2002 in Tokyo, and in ICOM 2002 held in Toulouse, France, the establishment of AMS was announced and AMS was authorized by NAMS and EMS. AMS announced to have ICOM 2005 in Seoul, Korea for the membrane world. In this moment AMS consists of six membrane societies, MSJ, MSK, and the Membrane Society in Australia and New Zealand, China, Taiwan and Singapore. AMS Conference is held in every year except for ICOM year, and AMS is the largest Membrane Society in the world.

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The worldwide recognized role of Membrane Science and Membrane Engineering is today well documented by the significant growth in the Scientific organizations and Scientific Networks created in the years in all the Continents and in most of the Industrialized Countries. In the late 70ies and early 80ties the Membrane Society of Japan and the European Membrane Society were the only existing organizations. Today we have more than 10 Membrane Societies and new ones are under construction. The Journal of Membrane Science created by Harry Lonsdale in the 70ies, is today still the most representative but in a field where 9–10 new other Journals are already present. It is impressive the number of events organized yearly worldwide devoted to our field. Efforts for more high education in membrane science and engineering in the traditional curricula for Masters and PhD has to be promoted as multinational large scale research projects in areas of strategic importance as water stress, global warming, energy production, raw materials depletion, artificial hybrid organs, neurosciences, technical textile, etc. The central role of Membrane Science and Engineering for the industrial sustainable growth has to be recognized.

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Here, we prepared a poly(L–lactic acid) (PLLA) microporous membrane with open finger–like pores as a scaffold for tissue engineering by a nonsolvent–induced phase separation method with the aid of a surfactant. The increase of surfactant content in the polymer solution caused the mold (glass plate) side of the membrane to adopt an indented structure with open finger–like pores to enhance the internal surface area. Osteoblast–like cells inoculated on the indented side grew on and in the PLLA membrane scaffold to reach 2 ～ 3 times higher cell density per unit apparent area compared to that attained in monolayer cultures. The cells on the membrane deposited calcium compounds by osteoinduction with ascorbic acid 2–phosphate, dexamethasone, and β– glycerophosphate. The PLLA membrane with open finger–like pores will likely be useful as scaffolds to support the implantation of osteogenic cells in bone tissue engineering.

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Kuraray has developed and launched a new hollow fiber membrane module, “GL”. This module consists of high permeability hydrophilic PVDF membrane and accordingly is expected to enable higher design flux. Moreover, the physical cleaning process has been improved by employing the one–end–free fiber structure and an air and water distributor located at the center of the module. It was proven in a verification test using river surface water that “GL” had twice as high operating flux as conventional modules.

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