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−3−Preface : A journal of original papers of Type Tow Basic Research (H. Yoshikawa)Synthesiology - English edition Vol.1 No.1 (2008) to its origins, a new viewpoint was needed. For example, enterprises throughout the world are required to enhance their competitiveness by using original knowledge acquired through basic research. In the age of mega-competition, however, industry can no longer spare time for basic research. Instead, universities and public institutions are expected to conduct basic research to serve the needs of industry. This has become the style not only in Europe and the United States, but also in many developing countries. Japan needed its own agenda for change, and the integration of the institutes under the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology was part of this effort. This integration was a change in a true sense because it involved the integration of individual researchers rather than that of the organizations. Fifteen research institutes were dissolved, and 3,000 researchers were distributed into 60 new research units with specific purposes to make contributions to industrial technology. Researchers selected their affiliation by their industrial contribution rather than selecting institutes to which they formerly belonged. As a result, each research unit consisted of researchers from diverse fields. Researchers thus have been organized according to objective rather than field of study.The research units are autonomous in conducting research and are operated under leadership of their unit directors. They are free to do any type of research but are required to have clear goals to make contributions to industry. They are expected to carry out basic research and to contribute to industry at the same time. Therefore, some researchers of the unit engage in basic research while others engage in industrial applications of the research (since 3,000 researchers were divided into 60 research units, the average number of researchers per unit is 50, but in practice there are units of various sizes ranging from 10 to 250 researchers.). Traditionally, these two tasks are handled by researchers of different disciplines in separate organizations. Basic research is conducted by universities while product realization is done by private companies. Basic research is further divided into specialized fields, such as natural sciences and engineering at universities. There must be an effective relationship between basic research and product realization so that industry can reap the benefit of basic research. This is often accomplished by industry-academia cooperation, intellectual property licensing, and ventures, but it is commonly recognized worldwide that such attempts are not always successful. Basic research and commercialization may not be continuous. Cooperation between researchers of industry and academia is often difficult, and this has been long regarded as a problem, but has never been solved. The new research units at AIST are, however, required to simultaneously realize both basic research and industrial contributions. Here, general basic research is called Type 1 Basic Research. It is necessary to have a new group of researchers who merge the contents of Type 1 Basic Research to Product Realization Research. This new category is referred to as Type 2 Basic Research. Therefore in a research unit, there are three kinds of researchers: researchers of Type 1 Basic Research, researchers of Type 2 Basic Research, and researchers of Product Realization Research. The research collectively conducted by these groups of researchers is called Full Research.3 Type Two Basic Research and knowledge - Mission of the journalThe new journal provides a place to publish the papers of Type 2 Basic Research and to exhibit the original thinking of the researchers. It is necessary, therefore, to define Type 2 Basic Research, but this task is not simple, and not completely possible as of now due to its diversity. Let us study the significance of the original Type 2 Basic Research papers by referring to the following definition that I presented in an article in which I discussed the matter in detail [1]. The definition of Type 2 Basic Research is as follows: “A form of research that integrates the knowledge of different disciplines or creates new knowledge when necessary, and transforms a concept into artifacts (product or service) that can be recognized by society”Such activity is nothing new since it has been done widely with new inventions and industrial product creation. Yet it has not historically been called “research”. Furthermore, it has never been called basic research. It is necessary therefore to consider this as a form of basic research referred to here as Type 2 Basic Research.First, it is necessary to ask, “What is basic research?” If it can be said that basic research without an adjective has no purpose, a new category of purposeful basic research can be defined . Limiting the discussion to basic research in natural sciences, such research enriches the body of knowledge of natural science by creating new knowledge. Strictly speaking, the value of scientific knowledge depends on the kind of “enrichment” pursued, but researchers may not necessarily be aware of this concept, and research may “lack purpose” in this sense.In general, although individual research carried out by a researcher only aims to enrich the body of knowledge, or in other words, is basic research not intended to be immediately useful in society, the knowledge acquired may become extremely useful for societal activities regardless of the intentions of the researcher. This is self-evident from the fact that almost all contemporary technologies are grounded in scientific knowledge. Thus, it can be said that the “basic” of basic research is the “base” that underpins real societal

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