and the
OECD WORKING GROUP:
Dear Colleagues:
Below you will find my report to the members of our Commission (C12) on two meetings which are relevant to our business. The first of these is the IUPAP meeting of Council and Chairman held in Paris a few weeks ago. The second pertains to the meetings and work of the OECD Working Group on Nuclear Physics under the able leadership of our C12 Vice-Chairman, Bernard Frois. (Note that Frois should be contacted at: "b.frois@cea.fr" NOT "frois@phnx7.saclay.cea.fr".)
I apologize for the length of these reports but I thought that it was important that all of our C12 members understand what is happening with our own ICNP subcommittee and with the OECD Working Group in Nuclear Physics. Therefore the first of the reports below attempts to give a rather complete picture of the OECD Megascience Forum and its various Working Groups. The second then tries to place the Working Group in Nuclear Physics in that context. I hope this is helpful. A few days ago I found out how necessary this clarification is. At the Whistler annual meeting of the American Division of Nuclear Physics Meeting last week David Hendrie (who was present at the May meeting of the OECD working group) gave his "state of the union" address and reported that C12 has established its ICNP panel in Beijing, two years ago but that this panel was now completely moribund! I was pleased to correct that impression for the audience and I hope that my two reports below succeed in doing that for all of you.
I will be happy to carry forward any suggestions that you have about either IUPAP business of the business of the Working Group, but I also give below the full membership of these organizations so that you can also feed in suggestions and obtain more information from your national members. Also, we shall need to reactivate our ICNP when the OECD Working Group winds up in a few months time. The two reports below are intended to provide you with some of the information needed for that purpose. Please do no hesitate to contact me about any matter pertaining to these two reports or about any other C12 matter.
Erich Vogt (Chair C12)
October 1997
REPORT TO C12 ON THE IUPAP COUNCIL MEETING, PARIS, SEPT.26-27,1997
Since the last IUPAP General Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden, Sept.18-21, 1996 the IUPAP Council meets annually with the chairmen of all of the IUPAP Commissions. Such a meeting took place in Paris last week. I attended that meeting as the chairman of C12 (almost all of the other 20 Commission chairmen were also present). This is my report to C12 of the highlights of that meeting, emphasizing the matters which pertain directly to C12. Our vice-chairman, Bernard Frois, was also present for several important matters pertaining directly to C12 and in which he is heavily involved. The following list gives the participants of the meeting.
IUPAP Council: Nilsson, J.S. Sweden
IUPAP Council: Yamaguchi, Y. Japan
IUPAP Council: Richter, B. USA
IUPAP Council: Turlay, R. France
IUPAP Council: Barber, R.C. Canada
IUPAP Council & C14: Black, P.J. UK
IUPAP Council: Garcia-Moliner, F. Spain
IUPAP Council & C13: Gyulai, J. Hungary
IUPAP Council & C10: Klein, R. Germany
IUPAP Council & C17: Righini, G.C. Italy
IUPAP Council & C16: Sluijter, F.W. Netherlands
C2: Petley, B.W. UK
C3: Derrida, B. France
C4: Arafune, J. Japan
C5: Krusius Finland
C6: Go, N. Japan
C7: Kihlman, T. Sweden
C8: Cardona, M. Germany
C11: Barish, B. USA
C12: Vogt, E. Canada
C15: Drake, G.W.F. Canada
C19: Sato, H. Japan
C20: Nadrchal, J. Czech. Republ.
AC1: Chavel, P. France
WG1: Sens, J.C. Netherlands
The only Commissions not represented were C9 and C18. The list also indicates the five chairmen (all Europeans!) who were elected to Council at the previous meeting (Feb. 7-9, 1997, in Geneva - which I could not attend and at which C12 was represented by Frois). The IUPAP Council meets once a year with the Commission chairmen but also meets on its own in between.
The following are not minutes of the meeting but rather my remarks on matters which were on the agenda.
COMMISSION AFFAIRS
The meeting approved additions to the associate members of the various Commissions, including the addition of B. Barish (from C11) to C12. Barish is in addition to the four associate members which C12 already has (as listed in the IUPAP General Report, 1997: Imry, Y. [C10, Structure and Dynamics of Condensed Matter], Martinson, L. [C15, Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics], Savrin, V. [C11, Particles and Fields], Truemper, J. [C19, Astrophysics]). The associate members are our liaison with other Commissions. C12 will need to review this list at its next meeting because some of the associate members are no longer serving on the indicated Commissions.
There was also discussion of the relationship of AC1 to IUPAP and of the IUPAP liaison to SCOSTEP (Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestial Physics).
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES
Information was provided about the financial requests from all Commissions for conferences in 1998, Including the three which we approved at our C12 Meeting in Seattle in June, 1997. I believe that our C12 priority ratings and funding requests will be noted by IUPAP in making its decisions on the matter. Our very large conference in Paris could likely have asked (and received) more. Such large conference generally receive about 15,000 SF plus about 6,000 SF for bringing dlegates from underdeveloped countries, or a total of 20,000 Sf or a little more. Our Paris conference seems to have asked for only a total of 15,000 SF. We should remember this for future meetings.
REPORTS
Among the Reports to the Council was one by Frois who had been asked to provide advice about the IUPAP home pages on the worldwide web. Frois will provide a more complete update at a later time of what is being recommended but he gave an oral presentation to the Council and Chairmen. Apparently the present links for IUPAP are very slow: for example, for IUPAP itself one has to connect to Manitoba (where the Associate Secretary-General, Barber, resides) or for C12 to Adelaide. It is being proposed that one use CERN and also establish links through 12 mirror systems worldwide. Further, Frois is suggesting that each Commission have a much more complete web page describing fully the mandate of the Commission and its role and activities. It seems that C14 is very close to being a model for the kind of web page that is being aimed at. Frois and Thomas will be expected to work out whatever is appropriate for our C12.
There was also a lengthy report by Professor Sens pertaining to the working group on communication in physics. This group is to meet shortly and in the absence of a working group report Sens gave his own views about how physics archives and other communications might develop. It was clear from the discussion that there is at present no consensus among Council members and Chairmen about either the direction or the substance of this important matter.
OECD and UNESCO
The final meeting of the IUPAP Council and Chairman on Saturday morning began with reports from UNESCO and OECD - both headquartered in Paris - about their activities relevant to physics.
The UNESCO report (by a UNESCO physicist, Siegbert Raither) described some conferences being sponsored by UNESCO but none of the activities caught the imagination of this chairman.
The OECD report on the MEGASCIENCE Forum, by an OECD physicist, Stefan Michalowski, who is a coordinator for the Forum, was another matter and pertains to our own Nuclear Physics Working Group (see below) which is now very active under the leadership of Bernard Frois. Michalowski described the Forum. OECD itself was established in 1961 and now has 27 member countries (the industrialized democracies). It is headquartered in Paris and it has about 1800 employees (four for the Megascience Forum). It has no legislative or funding authority. The OECD Megascience Forum was given its first mandate for the period 1992-1995 and involved setting up six "experts meetings" in Astronomy, Particle Physics, Neutron and SR Sources, Global Change, Deep Drilling. Papers and discussions on selected policy issues emerged.
The OECD Megascience Forum was given a second mandate for 1995-1998. It was directed by Ministers to solve specific problems and authorized to establish working groups. The Megascience Forum functions include:
information exchange on national priorities and plans;
promoting coordination and cooperation;
removing obstacles to cooperation.
However, the Forum does not set scientific priorities, manage projects, evaluate proposals or provide funding. As Michalowski described it the OECD Megascience Forum is limited to megascience and provides a service function to governments. it is not a scientific organization and has no executive function in project management. It works by consensus (no voting). The Forum members are: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Protugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, European Commission, Further, observers include Russia, Slovak Republic, Israel. The Megascience Forum has a Bureau whose chairman is Peter Tindemans (Netherlands) and whose vice-chairs include Kerri-Ann Jones (USA), Pardeep Ahluwalia (Canada), Allesandro Bettini (Italy), Daniel Cribier (France), Jorgen Kjems (Denmark) and Hiroshi Tani (Japan).
During its present mandate the prime instrument of the Forum is the working group of which there are two kinds: discipline-specific and generic policy. Working Groups are proposed by a member country. The General Forum meets twice each year ot review progress, pick new working groups and to debate poplicy issues.
The present Megascience Forum Working Groups are as follows:
Neutron Sources (U.K. lead), concerned with the refurbishing and upgrading of existing sources, with neutron instrumentation and with R&D for new sources.
Nuclear Physics (France lead), described in more detail below.
Radio Astronomy (Netherlands lead), concerned with electromagnetic interference, with the Square Kilometer Array, with the coordination of priorities for radio astronomy and with international access to facilities.
Bioinformatics (U.S. lead), concerned with neuroinformatics, biodiversity informatics and, in addition (under the leadership of France) with intellectual property rights and ethical issues.
Removing Obstacles to Cooperation (France lead), concerned with administrative and legislative problems and, under Canada's lead, with access to facilities.
In addition to the above Working Groups the Megascience Forum also sponsors workshops. Examples include a Workshop on Deep-Sea Neutrino Laboratories Italy and Greece lead) held in Taormina, Sicily on May 22/23, 1997 and on Global Scale Issues (Japan lead) to be held in Stockholm on March 4/6, 1998. The first of these is likely to lead to the establishment of a committee under IUPAP similar to ICFA.
After the report by Michalowski there was considerable discussion about IUPAP and the Megascience Forum. By Frois' action in initiating a Nuclear Physics Working Group - which Bernard reported on at the Council Meeting - it appears that the C12 community is exemplar in response to the opportunities arising from the Forum. In contrast, the condensed matter communities do not yet appear to have their act together about responding to the Working Group on Neutron Sources. During this discussion it was pointed out that the C12 subcommittee (the Internationalization Committee for Nuclear Physics, ICNP) which we established in Beijing and which led directly to the present Working Group, needs to be formally approved by IUPAP Council. In the past, ICFA, a corresponding particle physics subcommittee of C11, was formally approved by IUPAP. I assume that Frois, the chairman of our ICNP will take appropriate
action on this matter.
Large Scale Non-Accelerator Based High Energy Physics
Whereas ICFA covers particle physics carried out with accelerators and ICNP performs a similar function for nuclear physics, there is no IUPAP subcommittee dealing with large-scale non-accelerator based high energy physics. This matter had been raised with the IUPAP vice-chairman, Burt Richter, by Alesandro Bettini of Italy. The Council referred this matter to four Commissions, C4, C11, C12 and C19. Under the leadership of the chairman of C4 there will be an exploration of whether or not an ICFA-like subcommittee needs to be established.
PROGRESS REPORT ON OECD WORKING GROUP ON NUCLEAR PHYSICS
This Working Group of OECD was a direct consequence of the discussion at Beijing (August 1995) at which we disbanded our ICHIA subcommittee and replaced it with ICNP (International Cooperation in Nuclear Physics). The chairmanship of ICNP was given to Bernard Frois. Before that Beijing meeting Frois had arranged several ad hoc meetings (in Paris, May, 1994 and in Geneva, October, 1994) from which the ideas for ICNP emerged. The purpose of ICNP was to prepare our nuclear physics community for being properly involved in the kind of Working
Groups then being established by OECD and also to continue to provide a forum (not unlike the ICFA forum in particle physics) through which international cooperation in nuclear physics might be facilitated. It was a "bottoms up" approach in which the nuclear physicists could clarify their ideas before the world's science administrators went into action.
Some months after Beijing Frois saw the opportunity for establishment of an OECD Working Group in Nuclear Physics and he helped to program France (see the report on OECD Working Groups above) to do so. This requires some explanation because the whole purpose of our ICNP was to get our act together so that we could properly participate in the OECD Working Group in which the administrators are also involved. In its second mandate OECD was moving quickly. Frois saw that we needed to act quickly and that it was possible to establish the Working Group so that it was being led by the very scientists whom we had envisaged for our own ICNP and was not "hijacked" by the administrators involved. As you will see below, that is very much what has happened. Frois himself was named the chairman of the Working Group and he had a strong hand in determining its members. It is my judgment that the intended "bottoms up" approach has not been significantly compromised in what has emerged.
The OECD Working Group is a "one-shot" effort which will finish soon, after which our own ICNP will need to continue the work for which it was established. In the meantime, ICNP can remain dormant until the Working Group finishes. The Working Group met in Europe in early 1997, then in Vancouver (May 26/27, 1997) and will have its final meeting in Paris on Nov 20/21, 1997. (I joined the Working Group, as chairman of C12 and as a Canadian representative, at the Vancouver meeting). It has the following Study Panels which meet separately to carry out their work:
The participants in the Vancouver meeting in May included:
Belgium
Prof. Jean Vervier
Prof. Kris Heyde
Canada
Dr. Jean-Michel Poutissou
Dr. Pardeep Ahluwalia
Prof. Erich Vogt
ECM
Mr. Nicholas Newman
Mr. Markku Warras
Prof. Sydney Gales
Finland
Prof. Juha Aysto
France
Dr. Claude Detraz
Mr. Gerard Fontaine
Dr. Hubert Flocard
Dr. Jacques Martino
Dr. Bernard Frois (chairman)
Germany
Prof. Volker Metag
Prof. Ulrich Mosel
Dr. Dieter Muelller
Dr. Hermann Schunck
Greece
Prof. Costas Papanicolas
Italy Prof. Emilio Migneco
Prof. Enzo De Sanctis
Prof. Antonio Bertin
Prof. Stefan Fantoni
Japan
Prof. Masayasu Ishihara
Prof. Shoji Nagamiya
Prof. Isao Tanihata
Netherlands
Dr. Hans Chang
Prof. Muhsin Harakeh
Prof. Ger van Middelkoop
Portugal
Dr. Antonio Fonseca
Russia
Dr. Spartak Belyaev
Dr. Aleksei Oglobin
Spain
Dr. Jose Martinez Val
Sweden
Prof. Orjan Skeppstedt
Switzerland
Prof. Hans Christian Walter
United Kingdom
Prof. Alan Shotter
Dr. Gordon Walker
Mr. Neil Williams
United States
Dr. David Hendrie
Dr. Harold Jaffe
Dr. John Lightbody
Prof. Robert Redwine
Dr. Klaus Gelbke
Dr. T. Ludlam
CERN
Dr. Jurgen Schukraft
This is actually a list of the expected participants but almost all of them were actually present.
The Vancouver meeting heard reports about the Megascience Forum (from Stefan Michalowski) and about the Megascience Forum Subgroup on Access to Large-Scale Facilities (from Pardeep Ahluwalia). It also heard reports on long-range regional plans [from Gelke, chairman of the US Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, Gales, chairman of NUPECC, Shukraft from CERN, from Ishihara, chairman of long-range planning for nuclear physics in Japan, and from Ogoblin of Russia]. There was also a report and discussion about each of the Working Group's Study Panels.
The Working Group plans to have its meeting in Paris in November and then to prepare a report to the Megascience Forum in the spring of 1998. I expect that I shall be able to report the substance of its recommendations to C12 in a few months time which should then enable us to have a substantive discussion about all of the issues involved - including the relaunching of our own ICNP - when we meet in Paris ourselves at the International Conference on Nuclear Structure, in August of 1998.