Month: April 2017

Neutron Scattering in Asia

I was doing a research on neutron scattering societies in Asia. Neutron scattering is one techniques to study condensed matter physics. Neutron is one of most useful and suitable quantum beam for studying structures and interactions in material. To produce neutron, we need either reactor and accelerated (these days we have another compact neutron source but I don’t write about it here.). Today, I am not writing techniques but people. The figure is showing the number of member who belong to the neutron scattering society in Asia. Statistics I have taken from AONSA (Asia Oceania neutron scattering association). Globally, we have three organization, which are European ENSA and American NSSA, and AONSA. AONSA is the newest but the others are not also so old either. We have conference every 4 years, the first one was held at Tsukuba, Japan in 2011 and 2nd one was held at Sydney, Australia in 2015.

According to statistics, Japan has 31 percent share as the number of member in Asia. Japan started neutron scattering experiment earlier that other Asian countries so I also want to emphasize the quality of researcher you are watching here is very high. Japan has invested long time to cultivate the community and science. Now, Japanese research reactor JRR3M (20MW) is going to be back in 2018 April after the earthquake 2011 March, finally authority is going to approve to use it. So, we will have one research reactor JRR3M and one world top class accelerator J-PARC (1MW). We will have more than 50 neutron scattering instruments in total. (OPAL reactor (20MW) in Australia who I work for has 14 instruments) Now J-PARC impressed me even compared with SNS, Oak Ridge, TN, U.S.. The problem of J-PARC, they are not producing paper. (Oh, I have to write more) Of course Chinese community is growing faster and will do more experiment and science in Asia, which occupies 18 percent. But Chinese could not start research reactor close to Beijing yet which is ready from 2012 and their accelerator is now under construction, it still takes time to have their own research. I believe Japanese have to reach them to help them to pursuit their science while they develop their own community. Korean has built their community which occupies 16 percent. They have state of arts reactor (30 MW) while they have issue of structure of reactor so they had to step back for 2 years (as long as I remenber). I know a few distinguish professors who retired helping them. They have many researchers I hope reactor will run smoothly and they can grow. Taiwan has community of 12 percent. Taiwan has grown community while the biggest problem for them was budgeting. Taiwan decided to invest synchrotron X-ray scattering instead of neutron scattering, so they haven’t built any reactor or accelerator as their neutron source. So they have agreement with Australia to build their instrument in Australia OPAL reactor and neuron scattering cultivation program. That is the reason why I am sent here. Australia and New zealand has 14 percent. I will write next paragraph. Unfortunately I don’t have much information for India.

Australia has OPAL reactor (20 MW) and working very well. They run reactor 300 days which is very impressive. The other institutes in the world have limited beam time because of budgeting. Australian can run because they are making IR so they can make money because OPAL is only reactor this country has. Scientifically speaking, there is almost no excerpt in inelastic neutron scattering (which I am currently working on) in Universities here. I only know one who is not Australian. I know very good one in our institute but it is good to have professors in universities because professors can have students and students become graduate students and some of them becomes researchers and professors. The reason we don’t have local expert is because experiment instrument we have are basically only instrument we can study inelastic neutron. We have three inelastic neutron scattering instruments which are running less than 10 years as far as I know. Ours is open to user for almost 2 years. So it takes time to cultivate community. One reason I came to Australia for Taiwan, I spent 30 percent of my presentation time in interview for how do I expand this the instrument and community in Taiwan and Australia. Whilst, I can have a lot of time experimenting and experiences because community hasn’t grown yet. Roughly, they are 10 of instrument in the world. Japan has two of them but we are not using because JRR3M is not running. So only Australia is running these instrument in Asia. I thought Australia was good time to grow and expand for Asia and Oceania. I personally think Japanese have to provide more opportunity for Asian. I am very sure JRR3M will be ready soon. JRR3M (20MW) is bit old which was built 1990 while I realized in here Australia how difficult to make good instrument from scratch. So 30 instruments has run for 20 years already should be able to provide good science if research idea is good.

Some of you realized that ratio of female researcher in Japan is low. This is generally seen in Japan. The economist showed on daily chart on “The gender gap in science”, Japan is the worst among the subjected 27 area. “In the EU, and in eight of the countries considered, the share of women authors grew from about 30% in the late 1990s to about 40% two decades later. Brazil and Portugal are closest to equality, each just a percentage point shy of a 50-50 split. In Japan, by contrast, barely a fifth of researchers are female. ” the Economist says. In neutron scattering, Japanese is doing worse than that statistics. Compared with the other countries in Asia as well, I wonder why female researchers are so few in Japan. I hope female researcher will grow in Japan so we will have more researcher and diversity. The one concern is I knew one big professor moved from one of women universities to Riken. As you can see, even though it is not perfect, 25 percent of member in China is female. I hope a lot of Chinese female researcher inspire Japanese people to work in neutron scattering. Australian female researcher who are in advisory committee she reports on the meeting there was no female at advisory committee in Japan, our neutron scattering society is dominated by male. Advisory committee is the place the beam time allocates so I want them to have less inequality. I know still gender inequality is happening in the world but for Japan have to work harder than other countries. Since more women are working in Japanese society, I hope that happens in neutron scattering community too. Japanese have a lot of room to improve here to contribute neutron scattering science in Asia.

Thoughts on Australian Economy

 

I am not economist so I don’t know but I want to make some sense on Australian Economy. Since I was born in Japan, had lived in the U.S. and am living in Australia. I can see the clear differences between Japan, the U.S., and Australia. So today, I would challenge myself to understand, at least make sense, on Australian economy. I wanted to write this when I understand Australia fully but it never happens anyway. And I wanted to make clear on what I felt when I just came this country, I honestly thought like “what is wrong with the economy of this country?” After living few years, my feeling was bit relieved, I might say paralyzed,  but it is good time to reflect on it to have conclusion.  

 The biggest question here is why I have to pay so much for properties, foods, and daily essentials even though I am paid better than in Japan and the U.S.? Economic indicators look solid at a first glance for people outside of Australia however you quickly realize you don’t feel richness as indicators tell you if you live here. You will get higher salary but you have to pay a lot for almost everything. If the world were truly global, this economy would have to be adjusted. But it seems not. Anyways. Let’s see the facts backed by data. Again, I am not economist so please excuse me if I am using wrong parameters to see.

 Let’s see 9 factors in Australian economy to get snapshot. The data was published Federal Reserve Bank Australia published March 8, 2017. GDP growth 2.4 % annually, inflation rate 1.5 %, cash rate (interest rate) 1.5% , Australia dollar A$=US$0.7671, Population 24.1 million, with 1.4 % annual growth, unemployment rate 5.8 % (which is suppose to be 5 % is full employment, so 0.8 % people are out of work). Average weekly Earning $1162, Household saving ratio 6.3 %, Residential dwellings $631000, these are 8 of them. I will talk about industry share of output key factors later.

Did you get snapshot? Yes? I realized that I had believed this country is growing but it is not. Australia is supposed to, and people still believe, have fundamentally strong economy since GDP of Australia grows faster than that of developed countries, such as Japan, the U.S, and Europeans. I was blindly thinking so too. But see, its GDP grows 2.4 % annually, while inflation rate is 1.5 %, and its population grow 1.4 %. (Figure (A)) They are not getting richer? No. Now I am feeling Japan is not bad after all. GDP grows slowly while its population is shrinking and they are in deflation for long time. And Japan has no natural resources as Australia does. So next question is when this slowing started? As long as I find in few years data, it has been for at least 3 years.  It is convincing that the wage is not growing and A$ is getting cheaper last 5 years. 

“Many people are struggling to make ends meet. We have the lowest wage growth in a generation.” Treasurer Scott Masison said in March, 2017. I see.  Average weekly Earning $1162 but grew only 1.6 % in 2016, and saving ratio 6.3 % and drop rapidly since last July. So Australia is not growing as I thought. Growing slow is not problem. But, Australia now is the problem. The problem is Australia has gone 25 years makes people here paralyzed like they are doing O.K. even when they are not. There are two big problems, they are mining boom and housing bubble. 

Australia is called “Lucky country”, people outside of this countries have called them so enviously.  Australia continent is huge and weather is very nice. People can enjoy gorgeous beaches and mountains and there are not so many people here. Australia is fundamentally strong country. They have mining, so they can sell iron ore and coal. They have become rich while they took it for granted too much. Mining boom has ended as China is running slow. As the author of Boom to bust put it “Australia was then in the middle of the biggest mining boom in its history, stemming from increased demand in China. In the decade to 2012, the value of its mined exports tripled; mining investment rose from 2% of GDP to 8%. From January 2003 to February 2011 the price of iron ore, which these days comprises 17% of Australia’s exports by value, rose from $13.8 to $187.2 a tonne. Australian thermal coal, which accounts for 12% of its exports, rose from $26.7 to $141.9” Mining industry became too big compared to the size of Australian economy and it is going to fail.

 Who buys iron and coal? China, South Korea, and Japan. The biggest problem now is China. China is growing slowly now but the Chinese government says China would grow 6.5 percent every year? Since GDP = C + I + G + (Ex-Im), the  authority can directly control is only government spending. My friend told me Shanghai’s road are remade every few years. They are throwing money just to make up the GDP growth. The communism still would keep country running but the world have to adjusted sometime in the future. But the problem here is Australia depends too much on China. 

 So the next is housing bubble.  I don’t know how many people have been taking seriously. As experience of Japan and the U.S.. I know this very well. Let’s look at stock market here, I can give you link. (http://www.marketindex.com.au/all-ordinaries) And you can plot companies market capitalization and growth last year. You can get it? If you don’t get it, I can give you a hint. Look at top 4 (if this is too easy for you, then 5th). If you don’t get it, you should learn history. Commonwealth Bank (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ, and Westpac (WBC) are known as the Big 4 banks in Australia, controlling more than 80% of the domestic banking business. Globally, no one has heard these banks. They should be too big to fail because they are controlling 80 %. Have you read the too big to fail. Just one Lehman Brothers could shake entire American economy. Big 4 is too too big.

 Then next is residential properties. Australia’s foreign investment policy for residential real estate is very clear, it is basically saying non resident foreigner has to buy newly build new properties, which leads to further bubble, who is going to live new properties after the Chinese leave?  People buy home not to live but to invest. How come REIT market here is ranked 3rd largest REIT market in the world, which is 9.86 trillion yen? (2nd Japan 11.17 trillion yen and 1st U.S 85.52 trillion yen). Japan’s GDP is three times larger than here and its population is at least 5 times larger than that of Australia. Can you believe it? So finally, as shown in Figure (B), residential properties is growing, earnings stay almost same, so naturally the average of household debt is growing (Figure (C)).

 Here I add finally 9th factor, industry share odf output key factors they are Service 59 %, retail trade 5% , construction 9%, manufacture 7% , mining 6% , and the rest 14 %  as shown in Figure (I didn’t get the number for agriculture this country should do very good.).  Did you get it? There are too much of banking (I didn’t get the number either), retail, construction, and mining industry, is this developed country? I don’t think so. What would happen when both mining and housing have problem? How this country comes back after the bubble collapse?

 This really depends on how China lands finally. I know China can avoid collapsing for a while but history told us they can’t do it forever. I am a Japanese, I know it. As no one in America and European had not believed Japanese had said before they have experienced bubble collapse. I know China and Australia don’t believe us. Now China and then Australian, people says “this time is or we are different” I know it is not. And I know everyone used to say so.