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710 NATURE | VOL 402 | 16 DECEMBER 1999 | www.nature.com

MunichAll vacancies for scientific directors at Ger-many’s Max Planck Institutes will in futurebe advertised, and a worldwide search fornew institute heads will be coordinated bycentral search commissions, announcedHubert Markl, president of the Max PlanckSociety (MPS), this week.

The reform of the appointment system isone of the moves being taken in response toan external evaluation of Germany’s mainbasic research organizations published lastspring (see Nature 399, 395–396; 1999).

More than half of the MPS’s 240 scientificdirectors will retire within the next eightyears. “Systematic head-hunting” of leadingGerman and international scientists is tobegin at least three years before a directorretires, according to Markl.

By increasing centralized control overappointments, the MPS is keen significantlyto strengthen its influence on the areas ofresearch at the 80 institutes. Adopting a morestrategic approach to research funding wasone of the principal suggestions of the inter-national evaluation committee.

As for the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-schaft (DFG), Germany’s grants agency foruniversity research, the committee com-plained that its inflexible and conservativefunding policy would tend to block promis-ing new ideas.

After six months of intensive discussions,the MPS and DFG have now accepted inprinciple to put most of the committee’s sug-gestions into action. But officials at bothorganizations stress that constant annualincreases in their budgets — currentlyaround DM2 billion (US$1.03 billion) each

— are essential for the pro-posed reorganization.

Markl and Ernst-LudwigWinnacker, president ofthe DFG, presented theirorganizations’ final reportson the evaluation at a pressconference this week. Theyannounced plans to createbetter and more flexiblecareer opportunities foryoung scientists andwomen. They also agreed

to cooperate more closely in the training ofPhD students, and to promote innovativeinterdisciplinary research.

But the MPS added the qualification thatthe number of additional junior indepen-dent research groups at its institutes wouldbe limited by the need to ensure an “appro-priately high scientific level”, as well as by thelack of “sufficient follow-up positions”.

The DFG agreed to revise and speed up itspeer-review system. It wants to limit theexclusive right of Germany’s scientific soci-eties to nominate referees, in the hope ofincreasing the number of younger scientistsand women among elected referees. But itsays it will not introduce a quota system.

The committee had recommended thatthe DFG should “actively influence the long-term developments of science”, rather thanjust responding to them. But the agencyargues that the panel “underestimated theDFG’s actual strategic activities”.

The MPS and DFG are calling on the gov-ernment to help put the reforms into actionby providing adequate finance and relaxingrestrictive employment laws. Quirin Schiermeier

converge to heat a tiny target — was only$30,000. A senior official values theradiation-temperature diagnosticssystem, which France will provide at the NIF in exchange for the chamber, at $1 million.

Unlike the NIF, which was designed tobe fully functional by 2003, the LaserMegajoule will be constructedincrementally, starting with a few lasersfiring targets in the chamber borrowedfrom the United States, and later addinglasers and new target chambers toaccommodate higher energies.

Both facilities aim to achieve‘ignition’, at which the fusion ofdeuterium and tritium fuel inside thetarget provides enough heat to sustainitself for a short period.

France and the United States have beenworking increasingly closely on usinglasers for nuclear weapons physics sincethey signed an agreement to collaborateon this in 1994. It has been reported thatthe French demanded the agreement inexchange for making a commitment tostop nuclear testing.

According to Matt Mckenzie, whomonitors nuclear weapons research forthe Natural Resources Defense Council, aWashington-based environmental group,the collaboration has moved beyondworking together on laser equipment tothe design of the targets, calledhohlraums, which are heated by the lasersto reproduce conditions inside adetonating nuclear weapon.

Both the Laser Megajoule and the NIFare intended primarily to help trainnuclear weapons physicists and tosimulate conditions inside nuclearweapons. But they will also be used byplasma physicists to explore the feasibilityof inertial confinement fusion as anenergy source. Colin Macilwain

Germany’s research agenciesopen up recruiting practices

China and Hong Kong pool effort in high-tech projectsBeijingChina’s desire to strengthen scientific linkswith its Hong Kong Special AdministrativeRegion has been confirmed by theannouncement of 14 jointly fundedresearch projects.

The Natural Science Foundation ofChina (NSFC) and the Research GrantsCouncil of Hong Kong (RGC) will financethe research over the next three years. Thewinning projects were selected from 229applications by a panel consisting of sixexperts from the mainland and six fromHong Kong. The work will be funded under ajoint research scheme established by the tworesearch councils in November 1998.

Some RMB5 million (US$604,000) willcome from NSFC and HK$10 million(US$1.3 million) from RGC each year. Theprojects are in six fields: new materials,marine and environmental science, life sci-ence, management science, information sci-ence, and traditional Chinese medicine.

Surprisingly, only one application fromthe Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’sleading research organization, wasapproved, compared to 11 approved applica-tions from Chinese universities, includingthe prestigious Beijing University andTsinghua University.

The NSFC says it has been paying atten-tion to funding scientific exchanges between

mainland China and Hong Kong. About 300such projects were supported by the founda-tion during 1991–98.

Before the establishment of the jointresearch scheme, cooperation between thetwo sides was sporadic and unorganized,without any security for intellectual proper-ty, according to Tang Xifang, an official incharge of the scheme at the NSFC.

“The central government asked main-land China to support the scientific researchefforts of Hong Kong, so that Hong Kong canbecome a centre for high-technology devel-opment. The establishment of this grant pro-gramme is one step taken in response to thegovernment’s call,” says Tang. Tian Xuewen

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Markl: reform ofrecruitmentsystem needed.