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Academia Sinica announced its white paper, “Policy Recommendations for Monetary and Financial Reforms in Taiwan,” today. Its purpose is to provide comprehensive and forward-looking suggestions to revitalize Taiwan’s capital market, enhance Central Bank monetary and exchange rate policy-making, and improve financial supervision and stability mechanism, so as to promote financial development and economic growth.
In the first half of 2022, the world was affected by the Russia-Ukraine war, which pushed prices of energy and food up. Reappearance of the COVID-19 epidemic in Mainland China and implementation of lockdown measures in many cities exacerbated the already disruptive supply chain disorders. Global inflation remained high, adding to uncertainty of economic growth. However, in Taiwan, in the first quarter of the current financial year, demand for innovative technological applications continued to be strong and digital transformation progressed further. Both import and export orders continued to grow. The real GDP growth rate in the first quarter reached 3.14%. However, apprehensions about a new wave of domestic epidemic have grown. In the face of domestic and foreign political and economic uncertainties, pressure on economic growth is likely to be felt in the second half of the year. The projected real economic growth rate for 2022 has been revised to 3.52%.
Newly elected Academicians and Honorary Academicians were announced by President James C. Liao and Conveners for the Convocation of Academicians in the press conference after the closing of the Convocation on July 7. This year, a total of 19 new Academicians and 3 Honorary Academicians were elected.
The 4th World Congress of Taiwan Studies (WCTS) will be held June 27-29 (Pacific Daylight Time), 2022 at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. The theme this year is “Taiwan in the Making,” looking at Taiwan from a global perspective and connecting with the world through Taiwan Studies. As the event will be livestreamed on both YouTube and Facebook, the 4th WCTS committee invites audiences from across the world to attend this international and interdisciplinary academic feast online.
At the 2022 Taipei International Book Exhibition, Academia Sinica will present an exhibition— “EUREKA × Academia Sinica,” which comprised of two exhibition areas, “Seeking Truth in Research” and “Looking for Light in the Trend of Thoughts.” Through a compilation of the people and books at Academia Sinica, the exhibition will showcase the process of knowledge discovery and creation. Furthermore, this year’s exhibition features three speeches, where Academia Sinica scholars share their eureka moments over their years of research.
Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures has responded to the International Museum Day (May 18) for three consecutive years. Using the "Open Museum" as a platform, calling on domestic archival institutes to join in as a group to demonstrate multiple roles that "digital" museums can play in the pandemic. This year, the event is held with the main theme "Linking ∞ Connecting the World". More than 500 collections from various countries are displayed. By breaking boundaries of regions and museums, it allows the public to conduct digital explorations through seeking relationships among collections. It is considered the nation’s first of its kind.
Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes.
Cell division is a fundamental process for life. Besides mitosis in somatic cells and meiosis in germ cells, a research team led by Dr. Chen-Hui Chen at the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica discovered a deviant form of cell division in live zebrafish larvae that accounts for a drastic increase of cell number during development. The study is published in April 2022 in the journal Nature.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused numerous Ukrainian citizens to leave their homes and suspend their studies. In order to provide meaningful support for Ukraine, Academia Sinica launched the Taiwan Scholarships for Ukrainian Students and Scholars program on March 16, 2022 in order to assist Ukrainian scholars and students who wish to visit AS for research or internships. This program provides roundtrip flight tickets, accommodation, plus a living allowance for up to three months, and may be extended should the need arise.
Academia Sinica takes a great leap forward in its South Campus (ASSC) construction! The beam raising ceremony for the second construction phase was held on March 15, with President Tsai Ing-wen and Academia Sinica President James C. Liao participating.
High entropy alloys have emerged as promising novel materials recently. Dr. Chun-Wei Pao from the Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica and international collaborators recently reported a novel ultraelastic high entropy alloys in the journal “Nature”. This novel alloy exhibits the highest normalized strength among known metals, very low loss factor, and the Young’s modulus is insensitive to temperature, namely, the Elinvar effect. This novel material could be utilized for future high-precision devices owing to its ultraelasticity.
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