Dear Colleagues,
You may have heard about the difficult budget situation
in Japan brought on by the new government. Here is
a message from Hitoshi describing the situation.
Best regards,
Jim
>
> ----------------
> Dear colleagues,
>
> The new Japanese government has formed a task force
> to re-evaluate current and future projects to see if
> any of them can be cut or reduced. The goal is to
> create money to execute election promises such as
> free highway fee and child care supports. Currently,
> the projected spending is about twice as much as
> the projected income.
>
> The task force, which consists of only handful of people,
> is spending about 1 hour each for every kind of
> large projects (from art to science to technologies)
> and recommending budget cuts.
>
> As examples, SPring8 is cut by 1/3 to 1/2 and the
> super-computer project is virtually eliminated.
> KEK B-factory, SuperKamiokande, and ITER etc.
> are facing possibilities of similar cuts. These
> cuts are recommendations at this time, but
> if the government follows them, they will becoming
> reality. Given the need to create money, in fact,
> they are quite likely to be realized more or less
> as recommended.
>
> You can read about it in, for example
>
> http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091117/full/462258a.html
>
> Alarmed by the situation, KEK is collecting comments
> from all concerned. You can express your thoughts at
>
> http://www.kek.jp/shiwake/index_e.html
>
> where you can find additional links for more
> information.
>
> It will be greatly appreciated if you can take
> a moment to support basic sicience in Japan.
>
> Best regards
>
> - Hitoshi Yamamoto
> Co-chair, Worldwide Study on Physics and Detectors for Future
> Linear Colliders
>
>
>
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