IRELAND RANKING HIGH IN SCIENCE STANDINGS - Science Foundation Ireland has now been around for about eleven years, and in that time has built a community of 3,000 researchers in Ireland's universities and third level institutions, led by 300 lead scientists.
Dr Graham Love, director general of Science Foundation Ireland, said that over that time SFI had increased the quality of scientific researchers and has ascended to the top ten in the Thomson Reuters rankings. Dr Love said this success is measured by how widely quoted an individual or group's work is. "If you're good people refer to your work, if you're not good they don't,'' he stated.
He said the 3,000 scientists are distributed though the Irish university system and Institutes of Technology. Ireland is ranked third in immunology research, which is important for the understanding of disease. Ireland also ranks highly in materials science, which Dr Love says is important for the semiconductor industry here. A sector with potential to be a success in the future is the "future internet" area, which concentrates on developing mechanisms to make better use of the vast amounts of digital data and content being generated today. Dr Love said the entry costs to this area are low, so it has potential for SMEs to get involved, and the growth areas include fraud detection, regulation, insurance and work on disease and personalised medicine.
Dr Love said the science sector has held up well during the European debt crisis. He said that one of the biggest achievements of 2011 was technology transfer "on two feet", where PhD and post doctoral graduates transfer into industry - 18 recently transferred into Intel in Leixlip. Next year 5,000 of the world's top scientists and policy makers will be in Dublin for the European City of Science. Dr Love said this is an opportunity to place Ireland firmly on the map, cement Ireland's technological reputation and put that to work for the country.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Euro zone governments have agreed to lend €150 billion to the International Monetary Fund for use in stabilising the euro currency area. The aim is still to reach a €200 billion target set by EU leaders at a December 9 summit, despite a British refusal to put up its near €30 billion share based on IMF quotas. Concerns are growing that the euro zone's temporary bail-out mechanism, the EFSF, is not big enough to handle the debt problems and that there is too long to wait until a new permanent mechanism, the ESM, is up and running. EU ministers last evening held a conference call to talk about plans for tighter euro zone budgetary rules agreed at the summit earlier this month. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said progress on the IMF loans and the ESM was made at the talks.
*** The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has said he has "no doubts" about the euro's ability to survive the current crisis. Speaking to the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs yesterday, he said he believed in the currency's "permanence". But, the ECB warned that risks to the euro zone's stability had increased. In its twice-yearly Financial Stability Report it said that, in the worst case, there could be a return to a global recession. It added that the risk of two large banks defaulting within the next year had risen to the highest level in four years and it warned that some euro zone banks had become addicted to central bank funds, and could face "significant challenges". The ECB again criticised politicians' response to the crisis, saying the lack of rapid action had made things worse.
*** On the currency markets the euro is trading at $1.301 cents and 83.8 pence sterling.
