SHARING SCIENCE INFORMATION

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28050, 18 August 1956, Page 11

SHARING SCIENCE INFORMATION

Commonwealth Fund Suggested

(Special Corresponaent N.Z.P A.) ißec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 17. The creation of a Commonwealth fund to enable a much greater exchange between Britain, Australia and New Zealand of first-hand scientific and technological information is advocated in a letter to “The Times” by Mr J. B. M. Coppock, of the Baking Industries Research Station, Hertfordshire, who has just returned from a visit to Australia and New Zealand. I here he discussed with scientists businessmen and Government officials problems connected with cereal and dairy products and the use of these materials m baked foods. Australia and New Zealand, he says, feel they are starved of such information. Although Australians and New Zealanders were frequent visitors to Britain, the traffic seemed largely one way, and far too few people ftoru Britain visited the two Dominions to impart the benefit of their experience, and at the same time learn something of the problems in Australia and New Zealand which, even in the limited field of cereal science, differed in many respects from those of Britain. “It became very clear that the Australians and New Zealanders to whom I spoke looked to Britain for increased help from her senior executives, and that they believed we should act before our American friends seized too much of the initiative.” Mr Coppock said. “I therefore suggest that some Commonwealth fund be created, to which those interested parties of the Commonwealth might contribute for the purpose of promoting further travel beyond that now done, thereby increasing the speed and quantity of information that our • Commonwealth friends are desirous of receiving and which they really feel it is our duty to provide.”