Messages from the Editorial Board

There has been a wide gap between science and society. The last three hundred years of the history of modern science indicates to us that many research results disappeared or took a long time to become useful to society. Due to the difficulties of bridging this gap, it has been recently called the valley of death or the nightmare stage (Note 1). Rather than passively waiting, therefore, researchers and engineers who understand the potential of the research should be active. To bridge the gap, technology integration (i.e. Type 2 Basic Research − Note 2) of scientific findings for utilizing them in society, in addition to analytical research, has been one of the wheels of progress. Traditional journals, have been collecting much analytical type knowledge that is factual knowledge and establishing many scientific disciplines. Technology integration research activities, on the other hand, have been kept as personal know-how. They have not been formalized as universal knowledge of what ought to be done. As there must be common theories, principles, and practices in the methodologies of technology integration, we regard it as basic research. This is the reason why we have decided to publish " Synthesiology " , a new academic journal. Synthesiology is a coined word combining " synthesis " and " ology ". Synthesis which has its origin in Greek means integration. Ology is a suffix attached to scientific disciplines. Each paper in this journal will present scenarios selected for their societal value, identify elemental knowledge and/or technologies to be integrated, and describe the procedures and processes to achieve this goal. Through the publishing of papers in this journal, researchers and engineers can enhance the transformation of scientific outputs into the societal prosperity and make technical contributions to sustainable development. Efforts such as this will serve to increase the significance of research activities to society. We look forward to your active contributions of papers on technology integration to the journal. Addendum to Synthesiology-English edition, " Synthesiology-English edition " is a translated version of " Synthesiology " which is published quarterly, ISSN 1882-6229, by AIST. Papers or articles published in " Synthesiology-English edition " appear approximately four months after the publication of the original " Synthesiology ". The views expressed in translated version are exclusively those of the Japanese authors and editors. The Japanese authors are generally consulted regarding the translation of their papers, but are not responsible for the published …