Science & Technology
Science & Technology
Fair Observer's analysis of key issues, discoveries and ethical dilemmas in science and inventions, breakthroughs and commercial applications of technology.
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Antony Evans / crowd-funding / Deeba Fahami / Fundraising / Glowing Plants Project / Kickstarter / Stanford / synthetic biology / United States / Vibrio Fischeri / Focus Article / Science & Technology / Environment & SustainabilityBy Deeba FahamiIn a world of austerity and shrinking research budgets, the crowd-funding method at the core of the Glowing Plant Project offers a radically different approach to scientific research funding. The first synthetic biology project that has launched on Kickstarter, the Glowing Plant Project, brings a whole new approach to scientific research. This project, which has raised over $365k in under four weeks, aims to create a real glowing plant using synthetic biology. The project is testing the new frontier of science in which science is conducted outside the walls of a big institution. About the Project Antony Evans, the project manager says: "The goal of the project is to educate the public...
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Economic Development / Ethiopia / India / Indonesia / Lee-Roy Chetty / Mobile Technology / Nigeria / Social Development / Wireless Technology / Focus Article / Global Change / Africa / Asia / Science & TechnologyMobile technology offers extensive help on various forms of social and economic development. Lee-Roy Chetty explores why such initiatives can have a positive impact in Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, and beyond. Technological innovation and Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) represent a way for developing world nations to foster economic development, improve levels of education and training, as well as address gender issues within society. Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic development around the world. In countries such as Nigeria, Egypt and Indonesia, micro-entrepreneurs generate 38% of the gross domestic product. Analysis from the World Bank in 2011 indicates that small...
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360° Analysis / Ari Katz / Counter-Piracy measures / Global Piracy / Maritime Technology / Naval Collaborative Approach / United States / Europe / Africa / Global Security / Asia / Science & Technology / OceaniaBy Ari KatzSynergizing resources and technology from private and public stakeholders, can produce more effective and cost efficient counter-maritime piracy measures. With both sequestration and tensions ramping up in Asia, experts project that countering maritime piracy will take a back seat to the Asia rebalancing and other more existential US foreign policy issues. Unfortunately, this rationing of focus has the potential to undermine and reverse a recent downward trend in maritime piracy incidents, particularly along the Somali coast. However, with piracy still costing the world economy $7 to $12 billion a year, fiscal challenges should ideally spur innovative efficiency, rather than obstructive...
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Politics / United States / Europe / Finance & Economics / 360° Context / BRIC / Global Change / Arts & Culture / Middle East / Americas / Business & Entrepreneurship / Africa / Global Security / Asia / Science & Technology / Health / Oceania / Environment & SustainabilityFair Observer's Top 15 articles of 2012. Click here to view the "Fair Observer: The Year in Pictures" photo feature. As we wind down the old year and ring in the new, it is time for some reflections. Like any year, 2012 was packed with events, some of which will go down as historic while others will fade away with time. For Fair Observer, it is a time to thank everyone in our team, our contributors and our readers for taking us another step forward. The past year has confirmed that our community is our greatest source of strength. For years, the world has assumed that rigorous analysis of global issues is possible only if there is a huge...
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By Felix HaasWhat is this mysterious particle that the mainstream media calls "the God particle" and that governments spend billions trying to find? Scientists working in particle physics were under real pressure to deliver something new, when the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva started measuring its first low energy collisions in March 2010. They were particularly eager to find the last particle predicted by the Standard Model which so far had escaped detection: The Higgs boson. First proposed in 1964 by Englert, Brout, Higgs, Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble, about three years later Salam and Weinberg incorporated the new particle into a theory, which came to make up the electroweak part...
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360° Analysis / BRIC / Asia / Science & Technology / HealthWhen talking about agriculture in China, you are likely to hear two statistics over and over again: China is home to 22% of the world's population and has less than 10% of the world's arable land. In a country that has vowed to maintain 95% self-sufficiency in agriculture, this gap has put agricultural reform at the top of the China's political agenda. And it makes China one of the prime spots in the world for the adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops. Over the past five years, research into GM crops has become a pillar of China's agricultural reform strategy. Government investment in the technology has increased steadily, and more and more multinationals are investing...
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By Ivo OliveiraA glimpse at what is at the centre of the controversial publication of the papers concerning the genetically modified H5N1 virus. In 2005, the publication of a paper containing detailed analysis of a strain of the flu virus sparked controversy. This particular strain caused a pandemic in 1918 and many argued that was the same as printing a “how to create the 1918 flu virus” pamphlet. Today, a similar debate has emerged around recent lab experiments with the H5N1 virus. Last year, teams led by Prof. Ron Fourchier at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and led by Prof. Yoshihiro Kawaoka at Wisconsin-Madison University researched the necessary genetic mutations that H5N1 would...
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An introduction to the issue of censorship in the scientific community. Censorship and science are two words one would not expect to hear in the same sentence in the 21st century. Yet this pair has been cavorting together throughout human history. The music, the characters, and the plot may have changed but they are inseparable. Today, their relationship has become more exquisite, shadowy and complicated. Restricting and bending scientific research has always been prevalent. Knowledge is power. Governments – democracies, dictatorships and all kinds of disguised oligarchies – cherish it. Their interest ranges from propaganda purposes to the common good of the nation and...
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By Vikram SoodThe changing concept of security influences the development of new weapons and security measures. H.G. Wells gave us The War of the Worlds, the first science fiction novel about Martians landing on earth, and is sometimes credited with thinking up the tank in his 1903 short story The Land Ironclads. Jules Verne, after whom the French have named their elegant restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris, was more famous for his science fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which spoke of the first fictional submarine, the Nautilus. The Bruce Willis-starrer Armageddon was probably as real as John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Real wars have provided opportunities to...