Transportation is a large energy consumer in modern societies. In a future with considerably less fossil fuels and restrictive policies towards global warming it seems improbable that transportation can still increase its share of the available energy. The term Sustainable Transport is used as a signal of a new development in transportation, which involves strategy shifts with regards to for example energy-efficient transport, the use of renewable energy sources, motor and vehicle technologies, taxation systems, private/public transportation, and physical planning. Countries and regions aim to reduce emissions of CO2, to ensure security of energy supply, to maintain mobility and to protect their economy and growth – and Sustainable Transportation seems to be a key concept.
No country or region can claim to have a sustainable transportation system in place yet. Many of the needed technologies are not commercially available. The transitions needed involve enormous investments, from society, industry and for the citizens. And not least, we demand effective and cheap transportation, which provides us with the mobility we need at any time – and therefore, the claim for a large transition is often met with scepticism. Accordingly, new policy options are discussed, experimented with and evaluated.
The purpose of this report is to help to exchange knowledge to policy-makers by providing an overview of current developments, major challenges, policies and strategies in the EPTA member countries and regions. The presentations from the various countries share a common structure, while at the same time allowing for a focus on country-specific issues. Each country is reporting on issues concerning:
# The State of Policy
# Energy Use for Transport
# Regulation and Technology Options for Sustainable Transport
# Land Use and Physical Planning
# Border-crossing Transport in Europe

Non-scientific factors such as general attitudes, media coverage and political support influence the public image of a scientific-technological field – but how does a new field find its image? To shed light on relevant processes, COSY did investigations in three areas: public attitude formation, media reporting and program funding. As an example we chose the emerging field of Synthetic Biology (SB), being considered a “hot topic”. Having received increased media attention recently, it provides a living communication experiment: prone to elicit attitudes, they are not yet determined. To find out how lay people cope with challenging insights from SB using their everyday knowledge, we performed an experiment shaped after the flow of information as it actually occurs: scientists wrote press releases on their work, Austrian journalists made newspaper articles thereof and focus groups of lay people summarised and discussed them. Journalists and scientists were then confronted with the outcome. The results show that popularisation and framing start early; for example, press releases tended to omit technical terms and emphasised benefits. Journalists considered applications to be most important for the reader and thought their main task was to present balanced information on risks and benefits. In the focus groups, attention shifted further to risks and ethical issues, and concerns and hopes were similar to those over genetic engineering years ago. While most participants felt better informed after the discussions, attitudes to SB polarised along pre-existing opinions on biotechnology. In addition, many attendants thought that what SB promises had already been achieved – which means that science only catches up with long-standing projections. Groups dominated by female participant raised the “playing god” metaphor more often. However, in serial reproduction experiments (“Chinese whispers”) morally tainted issues, even “creating artificial life”, disappeared quicker compared

There has been a dramatic increase in paediatric asthma rates over the last few decades. Despite the development of effective treatment options and innovations in patient education and trigger avoidance, the chronicity of the disease in a considerable proportion of patients poses an important socio-economic problem. There is increasing evidence that an interplay of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to a number of agents, including air pollutants, allergens and infectious agents, are operative in the inception and persistence of the clinical asthma phenotype. Therefore, future research has to be performed with large cohorts that are appropriately genotyped, and their environment will then need to be monitored in relation to all possible environmental risk factors. Given the current limited research funding possibilities in a number of European countries, it may be necessary to direct and organise such research activities on a European level.
This fast-track study is aimed at the identification of the amount of on-going research on asthma-related topics and the allocation of funding for such research. It focuses on EU25 countries and is restricted, as much as possible, to research on genetics and environmental factors in paediatric asthma.

The study “Cyberscience” analysed the impact of information and communication technologies in academia. In a first step, we collected data on the status quo. E-mail is used practically universal and online databases are spread very widely. While E-mail discussion lists are partly considered very important, Internet video-conferencing is, so far, the rare exception. Virtual research institute exist only to some extent, but there is a trend to more. Electronic journals, full text databases for digital working papers, as well as digital libraries are gaining ground. Altogether, we elaborated and compared 13 case studies of academic disciplines. Contrary to expectations, not only the natural sciences use increasingly these new technologies. Also several fields in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies, such as parts of history and papyrology, are well advanced in this respect. In a second step, we analysed in-depth what kinds of impact the use of new media already has today, and which effects are to be expected in the future. In cyberscience, spatial distances (e.g. with regard to libraries) become less important. Peripheral research distant to the centres will be easier to some extent. In the field of academic publishing, in particular, important changes are looming. In academia, electronic publishing will replace print and paper in the not so distant future. New procedures of quality control are in the making and will complement the existing ones. New formats of knowledge representation (hypertext, multimedia) are likely to be seen soon next to the classical scientific article or book. In addition, the much cheaper electronic publishing opens up the opportunity that academia gets eventually rid of the financial burdens that are laid upon it by the present commercialised publishing system. As regards copyright law, there is urgent need for action in order to guarantee research the necessary access to all important information. Finally, the study found