Science and Technology Policy Japan

An expert panel will call for the government to set up a team of specialists to monitor the business practices of tech giants in its interim report to be released early next month, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

Japan and India will sign an agreement aimed at promoting development of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, Nikkei has learned. The partnership will include joint research, promotion of startups and development of human resources in both countries.

Japan's government will offer domestic companies financial incentives to ship liquefied natural gas produced in the U.S. to other parts of Asia, a policy change that supports President Donald Trump's goal of selling more American energy overseas.

Japan will make it easier for startups and other technology companies to gain access to medical records as part of an effort to drive innovation and spur investments in the health care sector. To ensure that businesses handle personal health information appropriately, a certification program will be set up by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which has requested 1.1 billion yen ($9.62 million) as part of its fiscal 2019 budget to help fund the program.  A panel of experts will hammer out rules governing privacy, ethics and other considerations.

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry plans to launch an experiment next fiscal year to promote the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to streamline the administrative work of local governments, sources said.

The Environment Ministry has decided to obligate retailers including supermarkets and convenience stores to charge fees for plastic checkout bags or provide loyalty points to shoppers who bring their own bags, officials said Friday.

The economy ministry has decided to test the efficacy of products and services that claim to prevent dementia, ministry officials said. There are many such offerings, including drills that let users solve calculation problems on a touchscreen, but the actual effects of such products and services are not clear. The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry intends to launch a verification project to investigate how much benefit they provide, the officials said.

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tasuku Honjo voiced hope on Tuesday that Japan would invest more in science, a day after he was chosen for this year’s award in physiology or medicine along with American James Allison for their studies on cancer therapy.

The world’s nations will gather at a U.N. conference in South Korea on Monday to review and approve a 20-page bombshell — distilled from more than 6,000 scientific studies — laying out narrowing options for staving off a climate catastrophe.

Symposium on Drug Development between Japan’s and Switzerland's Pharma-Clusters 

While Basel is Europe’s -- if not the world’s! -- pharmaceutical headquarter, the same can be said about Toyama Prefecture in Asia. Basel’s history related to pharmacy can be traced back to the middle ages; Toyama’s industry origined in the Edo period, in the mid 1600s.