Ebook: Sharing Knowledge Across the Mediterranean Area

This volume gives the proceedings of the third conference of the series “Sharing knowledge across the Mediterranean”, which was organized jointly by the AFAS, the French association for the advancement of sciences, and the University Hassan II of Casablanca and which was held in this city on September, 5th to 7th 2005. This conference was sponsored by a dozen of organizations, among which NATO, which decided to make it as an Advanced Scientific Workshop.

In addition to the opening session, nine different sessions were organized, with the following topics:

• Session 1: Extension of the European space for research to the Mediterranean zone,

• Session 2: New energies for development,

• Session 3: Participation of scientist from the South to international projects: SESAME,

• Session 5: From food security to food safety in the Euro Mediterranean space,

• Session 6: Fighting the numerical divide,

• Session 7: Participation of scientist from the South to international projects: CERN,

• Session 8: Desalination of sea water and recycling of waste water,

• Session 9: Natural risks in the Mediterranean.

Session 4 dealt with possible future topics and is not reported here, as it was mainly in the form of an open discussion.

Authors were requested to write down their own contribution. Some have kindly accepted to do it and they are gratefully acknowledged. The contributions written in English are published as such; those written in French were subsequently translated in English.

The whole conference was recorded on video tapes. For financial and time reasons, it was not possible to transcribe all the exposés for which we didn't receive a written contribution. Somewhat arbitrarily, we restricted ourselves to guest speakers and to the oral exposés, which were not touched in the previous conferences. Transcription was done in the original language of the speaker and was followed by some filtering to eliminate spoken jargon. Translation into English was subsequently made whenever needed. A footnote at the title of each article indicates the nature of the following document: original English, original French, translated, transcription from oral in English, transcription from oral in French and translation in English.

Apologies are due to those whose contribution couldn't be transcribed and reported here. Nevertheless, the author's name, affiliation and title of each contribution is mentioned in due place. However, interested readers can ask the editor to get a copy on a CD-ROM of the slides of all presentations.

The publication of these proceedings has been made possible thanks to a specific financial support of some of our sponsors, namely NATO, the Canon Foundation and CIEHAM. These specific contributions for the English edition are gratefully acknowledged.

Warm thanks are finally due to Ms Marie-Laure Blanchet, editorial assistant of AFAS, who took care of the proceedings layout and of shaping the contributions, as well as the proof reading of some of the texts.

France and Morocco have developed for long an intense partnership, especially in the domain of education and research. Most of these programs are lasting several years, are decided by sector-based thematic committees and involve large French research institutions. One recent action is aiming in particular at developing networks of young enterprises in Morocco.

Founded by Abdus Salam and established near Triete, ICTP main goal is to make the most advance scientific knowledge available to everybody, especially the least advanced countries. Visitors coming from all over the world for a variable duration can continue there their own research or follow specialized courses. Links with local institutes are being developed, to follow and continue helping visitors, in particular in Africa, but are difficult to implement because of the lack of Internet communication means.

My presentation will be an outline of the EU context, and will in particular include a brief presentation of:

• Marie Curie actions open for co-operation with 3d countries

• Charter/Code

Training and career development of researchers are key in research policy. EU actions include general policy actions as well as financial instruments.

The author has been involved in a number of evaluations of individuals, institutes or even countries. Although performed in his own field, i.e. mathematics, the experience gained over the year is valuable for other science domains and show that evaluation is essential for insuring excellence level and must be adapted to those being evaluated, researchers, structures and countries.

Women have gained access to education in Tunisia more recently than Western countries. They more or less catch up but are suffering the same kind of problems: weak diversification of scientific careers, concentration of women in a limited number of scientific professions, higher unemployment rate. One remedy would be to insure parity in the juries for examinations.

The past century has witnessed the scientific contributions of women rise significantly in many areas of science and in many parts of the world. We hope that in the new century this positive trend will continue, enabling increased numbers and retention of women in the sciences and, in addition, facilitating the leadership of women at all levels of academia, national laboratories, and industry.

Nowadays, energy is a severe problem for the mankind, not only because of the population explosion but also because human beings are calling for less poverty and better life. Fossil energies are limited and pose severe problems. New forms of energy can be expected from solar energy and from non-proliferating nuclear energy in various forms (Thorium cycle fission, nuclear fusion). Developed countries are urged to largely invest in the development of these new forms of energy, as this is their duty for the whole mankind.

CIEMAT is the only research center on solar energy operative in Europ. It aims at testing various technologies and devices for using solar energy to produce high temperatures, direct steam generation, solar detoxification, solar desalination. Components are also tested and experimental installations in various countries designed.

In this paper the authors describe progress made in the area of wind-power technology throughout the world in general, and then present a project for electric power transmission using wind energy from the south of Morocco to the European Union. The cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of wind energy would be 0.05 euro at its arrival in central Europe.

EUROGIA's fundamental purpose is to initiate the technological developments which are fundamental to ensure a better management of fossil fuels for securing the world energy needs for the next decades, while respecting environmental quality and facilitating the migration towards the hydrogen economy and the use of renewable energy sources.

The large population growth as well as the increase demand of energy per capita poses severe problems to the Southern Mediterranean countries. The basic trend scenario (laissez faire) leads to an explosion of the demand and may induce instabilities in the region. A more sustainable scenario is possible but requires a concerted political action of all countries involved.

SESAME is an international centre for research being set up in Jordan, near Amman. It will promote science and technology in the Middle-East by making available a facility for synchrotron radiation which can be used for research in many domains. At the same time, it will offer invaluable opportunities to develop cooperation and solidarity in the troubled region through joint efforts in science.

Synchrotron radiation sources have been an important research tool over the last decades. Developed countries have numerous sources and it is important that Middle-east countries have their own to promote research in atomic and molecular physics, structural and molecular biology, material sciences, environment and archaeology. Scientists from these different disciplines and from different countries will then be in close contact, which can only be beneficial to sciences and peace in the region.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a brief introduction to the applications of Synchrotron Radiation (and in particular the SESAME ring) in the area of Atomic Physics. Atomic physicists are usually among the first to become involved in Synchrotron radiation experiments, and atomic physics remains an excellent introduction to the subject area of synchrotron radiation as a whole.

The steady growth of the population in the Mediterranean region, which grew by 150 million inhabitants between 1975 and 2000, is the result of very different demographic dynamics between the northern countries, on the one hand, and the southern and eastern countries, on the other hand. This demographic growth has been accompanied by heavy urbanization and concentration in the coastal zone. Other disparities are developing between the northern Mediterranean countries and the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (the SEM countries), especially in terms of economic growth and human development. Poverty strongly affects the rural sector of the SEM countries, the majority of whose inhabitants live from an often family-based agriculture with unpredictable results. The pressure on the resources of the Mediterranean region is growing. The dependence of the SEM countries for basic food products is strong and the recourse to imports is growing. In this paper, data is presented to give a better idea of the state of food safety and food security for the countries of the Mediterranean region. Complementary research paths between the north and south sides of the Mediterranean are envisaged, in order to reduce the disparities and build a veritable Euro-Mediterranean rural entity benefiting from new basic knowledge produced by a network of regional research and higher education institutions working together in order to promote sustainable rural development.