How Will Science Fare?

摘要

In an annual rite of summer, the education ministry's budget requests are trimmed by advisory bodies, politicians, and the powerful finance ministry. This year, there is a new twist: The newly elected Democratic Party now has responsibility for finalizing the budget-and no one knows how R&D will fare.rnThe Democratic Party's platform keys in on the importance of research. But the party also promised to cut wasteful governmental spending, without being specific, and party politiciansrnhave called for reining in bureaucracy. "It's very difficult to say at this stage what to expect," says Reiko Kuroda, a biochemist at the University of Tokyo and a former member of the Council for Science and Technology Policy, the nation's top science advisory body.