The Middle East's international synchrotron research facility, which will bring together scientists from at least 11 countries, has finally been given a home. The new centre will be in Jordan, at a site halfway between the country's capital, Amman, and the West Bank.
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Jordan is the first-choice site for a synchrotron light source intended to promote peace and science in the Middle East. That outcome of a vote this past April by representatives from 10 of the project's 11 member states is expected to be ratified in late June at a meeting in Amman, Jordan. However, supporters of opening the facility in Armenia, the backup site, continue to campaign for a fresh vote.
A new international centre for synchrotron radiation research could do for the science of the Middle East what CERN has done for science in Europe.
Funding has been found for dismantling Germany's synchrotron light source BESSY I. The pieces will be carefully packed and tracked in preparation for putting the facility back together somewhere in the Middle East.
A scheme to build an international research centre in the Middle East using a synchrotron donated by Germany crossed a major hurdle last week. Eleven countries in the region agreed to provide sufficient funds to pay for disman tling the machine, now located in Berlin.
Scientists will tour the Middle East this month to drum up support for a planned synchrotron facility, which is threatened by lack of funding.
Last year, Nature Structural Biology published a special supplement to accompany the August issue, highlighting the wide variety of biological research that benefits from the use of synchrotron radiation and the unprecedented worldwide increase in demand for use of synchrotron facilities.
Scientists and policymakers agreed in June to press ahead with a plan to turn a secondhand synchrotron light source from Germany into an international facility intended to promote peace, as well as science, in the Middle East.
A proposal for an international research centre in the Middle East, built around a synchrotron to be donated by Germany, was officially launched at a meeting in Paris last week. Bids to host the centre were submitted by Turkey, Cyprus, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt.
It's too easy for Nature to urge the world to spend more money on science. On the whole, that temptation is resisted. But there are honourable exceptions. A proposal -- as yet unfunded -- to establish a joint synchrotron radiation facility in the Middle East is one such, and deserves immediate attention.