Due to the Christmas and New Year's Day holidays, the next issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest will be published during the week of Jan. 8, 2007. Publication of the Funding Supplement also will resume in January, following this week's issue (Dec. 18, due out by Thursday).

Britain’s Pre Budget Report 2005, released Dec. 5, calls for the United Kingdom to double spending for stem cell research to £100M within the next two years and launch a number of new initiatives to sustain innovation and science.

In China, leaders of the rapidly growing nation dogged by soaring energy needs and unrelenting pollution problems made a commitment to double the nation’s use of renewable energy resources within the next 15 years.

Steven Weathers is the new president and CEO of the Regional Growth Partnership in Toledo, Ohio.

The University of Toledo and its partners are seeking a director for the Toledo Science and Technology Corridor. The Corridor is an initiative to enhance the region's innovation-based economy through investments that promote linkages and collaboration among academic institutions, business industries and government entities.

To spur job creation in Ontario, the provincial government recently announced two initiatives focusing on innovation and regional economic growth -- the new Fuel Cell Innovation Program and the newly refocused Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC).

The University of Cincinnati has appointed Anne Chasser to serve as associate vice president for technology transfer and commercialization in the school's Office of Research.

So far this year, SSTI's Funding Supplement has made its subscribers aware of more than 1,400 different opportunities to secure funding. If you aren't a subscriber, your client companies, academic researchers, and state and local TBED efforts are at a significant disadvantage!

Complete descriptions of these opportunities and others are available at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm.

If the innovation powerhouse that represents the U.S. economy for the past century were a cinder block foundation of a house, then China and India would present two of the more significant cracks. These two great nations may grab the headlines, but the improved innovation and research capacities of any country provide new challenges for continued U.S. domination of the world's economy. As this week's article on the Czech Republic and Singapore reveals, these are just two more blocks in the U.S.

While the U.S. commitment to science is threatened by flattening federal R&D investments, two more countries demonstrate their shared belief that the way to economic prosperity is through science and innovation.

Should policymakers focus on urban core centers as keys to economic growth or seek greater economic equity in the less developed periphery? A new study on regional policy and economic geography suggest policies should be directed toward core growth.

Following defeat at the polls two years ago, Ohio's state legislature has agreed nearly unanimously to again have voters decide on whether or not the state can issue bonds in support of the final component of Gov. Bob Taft's tech-based economic development strategy -- Ohio's Third Frontier Initiative.

SSTI is proud to announce the addition of two new staff members to its team. Sheri Stickely will join SSTI on Aug. 15 as a Vice President. Sheri is leaving the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Technology (OCAST) to join SSTI. She has served most recently as Interim Executive Director and has been with OCAST since its inception in 1987.

The U.S. can watch as another country significantly expands its investments in innovation. This time it's France, as newly appointed Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin last month announced that the national government will double its funding from €500 million to €1 billion for the Industrial Innovation Agency (IIA), and give €350 million to the National Research Agency (ANR).

Ed Morrison, formerly with the Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland, opened the Institute for Open Source Economic Development. He will continue to maintain the EDPro weblog.

A study suggests policies enacted in 1999 to encourage cooperative research, establish tech transfer structures and provide venture capital contributed to a dramatic shift in the biotech topography in France.

While many regions, states and countries are lamenting a drain of talent from their area, the Pakistan Higher Education Commission is taking an opposite strategy to strengthen the nation's science and research capacity: sending up to 15,000 of its brightest students to study selected disciplines abroad through its Foreign Ph.D. Scholarship Program.