After 50 years of paying for roads, power and schools, and helping poor countries to liberalize their economies, the World Bank—the financial aim of the United Nations system—has started shifting some of the focus of its activities to supporting 'knowledge development', including science. Two separate internal World Bank task groups are investigating a potential role for the bank in supporting science in developing countries. Each group will report back this year with proposals on how the bank can best support basic research, something it has never before considered, how to make its expertise more available to developing countries, and whether it needs a science department to oversee its new initiatives. The bank, which is owned by 180 governments, provides long-term loans at commercial interest rates, mainly to developing countries. One quarter of its lending is interest-free and goes to the poorest. In the 1980s, with its focus on infrastructure development and trade liberalization, it closed its science department and abolished the science adviser's post. Direct support for research in developing countries is now seen as more of a priority. This is because the bank believes research will help to find solutions to its priority issues, such as providing the poor with access to food, clean water and a disease-free environment. But it also comes from a belief that developing countries need to build up knowledge-based industries to remain economically competitive. In an attempt to help the poorest countries, particularly those in Africa, to catch up with those better off, the bank is helping to fund information technology infrastructure under a programme called 'info. Dev.' As a sign of this new thinking, the bank devoted the latest edition of its annual World Development Report to bridging the 'knowledge gap' between rich and poor countries. Last month it agreed to partly fund in Chile the first in a chain of centres of excellence in scientific research.—known as Millennium Institutes—in developing countries. Both events represent the culmination of a three-year study by the bank into how it can fund science in developing countries in partnership with governments and philanthropic foundations. Ian Johnson, the bank's vice-president for environment, acknowledges that the bank previously considered research to be a luxury for developing countries. But he says that attitudes have changed. From the passage we learn that the World Bank______.