January 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
That too many people, including policy-makers and media figures “are out of their intellectual depth and easily manipulated” by the bewildering complexity of the financial-political feedback-loop is almost irrefutable, and I agree with comments in this debate it’s “a symptom of the limitations of our neural architecture”. But I don’t know if we should take the question of neural architecture in the biological sense. There’s a cultural and practical response that needs to be considered at least as strongly.
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January 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The field of ecological research and reporting is a part of the basic human urge to engage the world through reason and a quest for understanding. It is not about seizing control of society’s urges and services and limiting the freedom of anyone, but rather about making sure we have the information we need to make the best choices, then advocating for those choices, when inertia and custom stand in the way of better health — for individuals and in the manner in which human individuals respond to their social and natural environments.
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October 8, 2009 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Clean, safe drinking water is scarce for over 3 billion people across the world. At least 1 billion literally never have access to clean, safe drinking water, putting them at constant risk of severe thirst-related ill health effects, infectious diseases or toxic contamination. Over 100 countries face either sporadic or chronic crisis-level problems related to [...]
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August 30, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Like the Amazon Kindle family of e-readers, the Sony Reader Touch Edition uses an e-Ink e-paper display. But it’s interface works like a touchscreen. The advance is a major improvement for the standards of design in e-paper e-book readers. The touchscreen standard may be the most significant challenge Sony has put forth for the Amazon Kindle readers, none of which uses a touchscreen interface.
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August 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The quest for the most fuel-efficient vehicles has entered a new phase, with major government private-sector investment in research and development for industrial-scale commercial production of a new class of gas-electric hybrid vehicles and EVs (all-electric cars). Swiss-based Solar Impulse is building the world’s first 100% solar-powered airplane, an achievement that will revolutionize the travel, industrial production, transport and fuel sectors.
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July 14, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
What methods and strategies can be developed for speeding MRSA-effective Manuka honey to production and distribution for clinical treatment? What similar discoveries hold promise for treating multi-resistant bacteria?
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July 8, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A crop-borne fungus that targets wheat, named Ug99 because it was first identified in Uganda in 1999, has become one of the primary threats to global food security. Newfound virulence in the evolving stem-rust strain suggests the fungus could destroy as much as 80% of the world’s most widely grown crop: wheat.
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June 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Swiss-based Solar Impulse unveiled this month the first ever 100% solar-powered airplane with global reach. The HB-SIA is the culmination of six years of daring research and hard work. The aim of Solar Impulse is to demonstrate the ability of solar power to enable a plane to fly around the world with no combustible fuel.
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June 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Earlier this year, Chinese finance officials chastised the US for perceived risks to long-term fiscal solvency. Many economists of widely diverging views on best economic practice or theory have observed that a “symbiotic” relationship has emerged, in which cheap goods from China are sold in the US, where consumer spending is enabled by easy credit, funded by low interest rates, in part supported by the expanding market for US government bonds, funded by Chinese buyers, who are essentially closing the circuit, turning US consumer dollars into Chinese bond buys, which in turn facilitate consumer spending.
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June 10, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
How can we reach the state of affairs in which online activity is entirely secure against identity theft? Hyper-convergence means media and services of all kinds will be increasingly integrated across a broad-spectrum multi-media fabric, where one’s actions and interests, private information and financial data, will be increasingly widespread.
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June 9, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Overfishing has depleted fish-stocks the world over. Subsidies and lack of enforcement of sustainability measures drive the fishing industry to deplete the very stocks on which its existence depends, while climate interference and global contamination are leaving oceans so hypoxic (oxygen deprived) they cannot support marine life. At least 405 such ‘dead zones’ have been identified across the globe.
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June 9, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The underlying problem in the financial system —which allowed banking institutions to hide bad debt in bundled assets, and resell it to trading partners who may not have been given full disclosure on the unsustainable nature of much of the underlying debt— is transparency. A fierce individualist ideology led to a convenient clouding over of the reporting mechanisms intended to make financial institutions more ethical, more stable, and more useful to those outside their walls.
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June 6, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The European Parliamentary elections are the world’s largest transnational democratic vote, with 375 million people across 27 nations, choosing among 650 parties for 785 seats in the Parliament. It is worth asking what effect these elections, held once every 5 years for all the seats in the European Parliament, will have on EU environmental policy. Will these elections speed the spread of clean energy resources, like wind, solar and wave power, across the EU member states and neighboring states?
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June 5, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Urban Institute found that 22,000 people died in 2006, in the United States, specifically from lack of health insurance. Other projections, which count the accumulation of long-term pathologies, compounded ill health or medical “error” involving staff calculations about the wisdom of providing the most costly care to those who can’t pay, run into the hundreds of thousands.
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June 4, 2009 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
The elections for the EU parliament are notorious for low turnout. Though the EU parliament takes many decisions and sets policy across the 27-member international union, public understanding of the legislative body, let alone faith in its relevance to daily life in the EU member states, is seriously lacking.
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