Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Bellarmine Nneji

Education remains the bootstrap of both human and national developments. It is the solvent to the myriads of societal and economic challenges. As the world marks the International Day of Education, there is need to ensure that education both at national and international levels match and address the current local and global challenges.

According to the UNESCO, the theme for this year is Learning for people, planet, posterity and peace. This years theme calls for a multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning, a multidimensional approach to societal problems and challenges, a concerted effort and sincerity of purpose from both governments and individuals. It is also a direct clarion call for education for sustainability. Sustainability is a word that is loaded with meanings and responsibilities. Bearing this in mind, this years theme appears holistic in that it stresses the fact that the survival and extension of humanity is dependent on people acquiring the right education for the sake of survival and extension of the human race. Thus education that is adequate for the current national and global challenges must focus on the preservation and sustenance of the planet earth both for the present humans and posterity. This challenge to preserve and sustain the present humans and posterity can only be possible if there is peace at all levels and societies of the globe. The reality of this is that violence and similar acts which deny the society of peace has butterfly effects across the globe. It has both spiral and trickle down effect.

The summary of this years theme is a call for values orientation and reorientation. Education remains a major route to this. This challenge needs a revisit to our traditional pedagogic and andragogic approaches and routines. A critical analysis of the theme is a good starting point.

Education and learning for people is to ensure that the curriculum has objectives of ensuring that we learn to appreciate our humanity. Humanity has been dangerously challenged that we no longer know what it means to be human. We are becoming more like, if not worse than, animals. Ironically some who think and believe that they are not animals see others as animals and treat them so. Individuals are kidnapping their fellow citizens sometimes killing them if no ransoms are paid. Even younger ones are involved in the get-rich-quick syndrome which has graduated from the former yahoo yahoo swindling to the current yahoo yahoo rituals. Humanity is commodified. Some are now involved in organ selling. Also some Governments across the globe no longer have regard for people. Incarcerations are becoming the order of the day. Citizens are being treated like puppets. We also live like people who have no future. We think only of the moment. There is need to appreciate diversity. Every Nigerian needs to have an ideas of what it means to respect life and the associated human rights. Civic education at all levels must reflect this. There must be sanctity of life.

As we learn to have regard for people and humanity we need to appreciate the fact that we live on a fragile spot known as the planet earth which is diminishable and with limited and diminishable resources. There is need for this understanding. The educational curricula should ensure that there is need for appreciation of prudent use and management of available resources. The introduction of environmental-appreciation-related courses like environmental ethics should be incorporated at all levels of education for this special purpose. Environmental sustainability is a challenge for all. However there is need to understand and appreciate the justification for prudent management of planetary resources in the face of opposition by climate contrarians and those who believe that planetary resources are infinite. There is need to balance our material quests for prosperity and the challenge for sustenance. Many are yet to appreciate the enormity of the challenges posed by climate change. The impacts are already with us. There is to appreciate the reality the challenges faced by the planet earth.

The need for education and learning to appreciate our humanity and also to protect and sustain our planet earth are all geared towards the present generation but most importantly for the sake of posterity. What we the present humans should understand is that we were once people categorized as posterity. If we had inherited an inhabitable and nonconducive planet, we wouldnt be as we are today. Our genes could have been distorted. This is just one of the strands of logic for education and learning for posterity through sustainability (education for sustainability). We owe posterity a healthy planet. Education for posterity (as an aspect of this years theme) is not only from the perspective of sustainability of the planet earth but also from the perspective of extension of humanity. Humanity is challenged already by extinction and certain posthuman drifts through technology and its advancements. The present human race is being challenged by what may be rightly called technological beings. The current species of human beings may become the minority to be discriminated against in the nearest future. Genetic engineering is seen as both a disease and a cure. This is what deconstruction philosophers call pharmakon. This calls for the introduction of technology ethics or philosophy of technology into the curriculum of all technology institutions and departments across the globe. This will help to ensure that technological developments and innovations have human faces. Our policy makers should be wary and circumspect of technologies and its advancements. There is need to adopt the precautionary principles in the areas of genetic engineering with special references to genetically modified organisms and products. The cases of Monsanto and Dupont remain eye openers. Side effects of certain contentious issues sometimes take more time than the period of study and trials to emerge. Thats the message of the precautionary principle.

It is only people that are humans that can understand how to treat people like human beings and persons. It is also human beings that will understand the need to preserve the planet and ensure intergenerational equity. We owe a lot to posterity.

In all, the entire quests become a mirage and the challenges become herculean if there is no peace. Peace remains one of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the realization of the entire quest of the theme for this years World International Day of Education.

Education for peace demands a lot. There is need for appreciation of cultural and religious diversities. Terrorism has become a global threat that is unsettling many societies. There is need for nipping this from the bud. Education for peace and antiterrorism needs orientation in critical thinking. Uncritically individuals are easily recruited into terrorism and its organizations. The curriculum should emphasize the need for Learning to Live Together. This has been one of the four pillars of education according to UNESCO. There is need for tolerance. We are one humanity irrespective of creed. Inclusive humanism and critical thinking should prevail in our educational curricula.

Nneji writes from Lagos

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The International Day of Education - Daily Sun

GLOBAL

Development of human intelligence

This new revolution is just one in a long line of revolutions in human history over the past 10,000 years. The first major revolution was the Agricultural Revolution (also known as the Neolithic Revolution), which occurred in the Middle East around 10,000 BCE. This transition marked a turning away from nomadic hunting and gathering to stationary agricultural societies.

During this period, humans established non-nomadic societies centred on crop and animal farming. Humans domesticated both plants (for example, wheat, lentils and flax) and animals (for example, poultry and livestock) in order to establish a readily available and predictable source of food and clothing. The development of human intelligence allowed people to find a variety of uses for plants and animals.

Animals were also a source of transportation and labour as well as having symbolic value (for example, artistic, mythological and religious purposes) and a familial use (for example, for protection and companionship). The wide range of ways animals were used suggests that human intellectual ability and capacity advanced very quickly over a relatively short period of time and paved the way, cognitively and socially, for the development of written language around 3,000 BCE.

Growth of human intelligence

The ancient period (circa 3,000 BCE to 500 CE) and medieval period (circa 500 CE to 1450 CE) represented an era of continued social development, although at a relatively slow pace.

However, with the advent of the Democratic Revolution (circa 1760 CE), as well as the Industrial Revolution (circa 1760 CE), brought about by the use of water power and machinery to mechanise production systems, and the use of electrical power and steel in the 19th century to create mass production systems, the development of human societies shifted into high gear.

With innovations in information and digital technology starting in the mid-20th century, societies became more service-oriented and digitised. As a result, they have progressed from being predominantly agricultural and industrial-based societies to service and technology-based societies.

Political, economic, social and environmental changes have challenged our ability to respond effectively to these changes, especially with regards to upholding justice, rights and other democratic ideals.

The survival-of-the-fittest and a winner-takes-all paradigm, which largely characterised the agricultural and industrial-based eras, tends to create a society with greater political, economic and social inequalities and instabilities.

Thus, one of the main challenges for service- and technology-based societies is to find effective ways to make innovation work for all people. The development of civil society, democratic systems, universal education and universal human rights in the 20th century are a few such ways.

Impact of human intelligence

Every revolution was the result of new ways of thinking and transferring knowledge within and across societies. Not only do innovations bring about greater possibilities for a higher quality of life, but they also bring about greater risk and uncertainty. Without a framework of laws and ethics to guide their use, innovations can create greater levels of inequality and result in increased social tensions.

Thus, in the modern era, in addition to a humane rule of law, lifelong and lifewide education is a necessary condition for equity and inclusion. Today, humans live in a highly globalised world. Through mobile technology and the internet, they can transcend space and time boundaries to instantly connect to people and information that is, their access to knowledge is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

As we develop the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, mixed realities, synthetic biology and neural interfaces, the global systems of producing and consuming knowledge will be transformed, and, as a result, our entire political, economic and social way of life will change. This emerging paradigm will alter the relationships and interdependency among living and non-living entities in many ways.

Rethinking higher education

This emerging paradigm will also bring challenges and opportunities for higher education. The question then becomes: how do we steer and manage the direction of this emerging reality so that we can control it for the betterment of the planet (people, animals and the environment)?

Innovation is a catalyst for change and often results in major disruptions in the daily lives of people. This not only occurs in the disruption of labour markets through the demand for new knowledge and skills, but also in the way humans understand and interact with others and the environment. Thus, lifelong and lifewide learning is now viewed as a universal human right.

People must have the opportunity and means to continually learn though formal and non-formal systems of education in order to equip themselves with the knowledge and skills needed to function effectively in the emerging global knowledge society.

This also means learning how to learn and learning how to think both critically and creatively. All else being equal, talent development and creative thinking have now become as important as knowledge and skills. Fortunately, talent development and creative thinking can be learned by anyone just as the acquisition of knowledge and skills can be learned by anyone.

Talent development and creative thinking should be viewed as a renewable resource and should therefore become an essential component of higher education if it wants to remain relevant in the lives of people and society.

It is important for decision-makers not to become stuck in antiquated modes of thinking which no longer address the realities of the modern era. Higher education institutions, like all institutions, must learn to adapt to change. For instance, most universities now offer multiple ways to access teaching and learning through innovative e-learning systems (for example, web-enabled, hybrid and online courses).

The aim is to provide high-quality, lifelong access to education in ways that fit the needs of all students. The University of South Africa, for example, is able to serve 400,000 students from Africa and around the world because of its innovative use of e-learning.

Adapting to the contemporary needs of students and society means universities can help shape the future of education.

Patrick Blessinger is an adjunct associate professor of education at St Johns University, New York City, United States, and chief research scientist for the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association or HETL. Enakshi Sengupta is director of the Center for Advanced Research in Education at HETL. Mandla Makhanya is principal, vice-chancellor and professor at the University of South Africa and president of HETL. HETL will explore the issues raised in this article in its upcoming conference, The International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Conference.

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HE institutions must learn to adapt to innovate - University World News

On a daily basis, we interact with hundreds or thousands of materials that range in complexity from the water we drink to the OLED screens on our smartphones. The development of new materials can be linked to nearly every major advance in human history, and breakthroughs made by material scientists have profoundly affected our society and daily lives from transportation to how we receive information.

Some of the most expensive materials on this list are naturally occurring, while others, such as two-dimensional materials, have been developed in laboratories and are on the cutting edge of scientific progress.

Human epochs are defined by the materials that enabled advancement, First the Stone Age, then bronze, then iron, then steel, then plastics, and now were firmly in the semiconductor age, said Alex Kozen, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. I expect the next great advance in materials to be biological materials, where genetic engineering could be used to create organisms that provide better nutrition, grow structural materials and much more.

The following is a list of some of the most expensive materials used today in manufacturing, tech products, research, and other applications. They include precious metals, compounds, rare earth elements, and ultra-thin two-dimensional materials.

Click here to see the most expensive materials on Earth

The cost of different materials is determined by several factors, including supply and demand, mining costs, raw materials costs, how rare or abundant a material is, purity of the material, engineering costs whether it is a complex material to produce among many other factors. The materials on this list are not meant to represent a complete list of every expensive material. The materials on our list were selected in part because they are used commonly in industry and research.

To compile our list, we used various scientific journals, the Defense Logistics Agencys list of Strategic Materials, the USGSs Mineral Commodities Summary 2019, and prices were estimated from various suppliers websites.

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The Most Expensive Materials on Earth - 24/7 Wall St.

The legendary Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), which tracks issues related to technology and global security, has issued a terrifying warning: We are less than two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday clock. Its very bad news, representing the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced.

What makes this moment so perilous? The scientists statement includes warnings over the cyber-weaponization of information, the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) in making military decisions, the destruction of treaties meant to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, the abandonment of global agreements to limit climate chaos, the spread of genetic engineering and synthetic biology technologies, and more. It does not account for the escalated likelihood of atomic reactor disasters, but based on at least one BAS publication, it should.

Since 1947, this prestigious band of elite scientists and global thinkers has been putting out a clock meant to time the peril of a global apocalypse. First issued at the dawn of the Cold War, it has mostly focused on the dangers of atomic warfare. Its countdown to Armageddon has been set as far away as 17 minutes from midnight, a hypothetical time of human extinction. That relatively optimistic assessment came in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the definitive end of the Cold War.

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.

In 2018, the BAS set it at two minutes, the closest to catastrophe it had ever been. They repeated that estimate in 2019. But this years announcement has taken us inside the two-minute warning with a hair-raising litany of likely lethal catastrophes set to occur within 100 theoretical seconds.

Donald Trump is mentioned only once by name, in conjunction with his decision to trash the Paris Accords on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. The scientists urge whoever wins the 2020 election to reinstate the U.S. commitment limiting carbon and other climate-destroying emissions. The BAS also cites Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro for his decision to allow the destruction of the Amazon, with huge impacts on climate.

The BAS strives to maintain a non-partisan image. But Trumps presence in the White House clearly hangs over any assessment of humankinds survivability. The specter of his finger on the nuclear, ecological and financial buttons for the next four years hangs over humankind like a pall but goes otherwise unmentioned in this Doomsday assessment.

Also unmentioned is the question of more than 450 atomic power reactors worldwide. A small but vocal outlier coterie has argued that nuclear energy combats global warming by emitting less carbon that coal burners. But the Bulletin recently enshrined a major assessment by the esteemed Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, warning that commercial reactors pose a serious threat to human survival on this planet.

Published in August 2019, The false promise of nuclear power in an age of climate change argues that the 450 atomic reactors now deteriorating worldwide pose an existential threat to our survival. Writing with Professor Naomi Oreskes, Lifton warns that atomic energy is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. Citing costs of nuclear juice at $100 per megawatt-hour versus $50 for solar and $30-40 for onshore wind, the authors say that the industry suffers from a negative learning curve, driving nuke costs constantly higher while those for renewables head consistently down.

Citing the unsolved problem of radioactive waste management, the BAS article warns of the ongoing impacts of major disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl (and potentially more to come), whose fallout kills humans and does untold damage to the global ecology. Lipton and Oreskes say we need to free ourselves from the false hope that a technology designed for ultimate destruction can lead to our salvation. They favor making renewable energies integral to the American way of life.

In addition to nuclear and climate issues, the 2020 Doomsday assessment emphasizes some relatively new concerns. In the last year, it says, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet.

By attacking both science and the fabric of international peace accords, some global leaders have created a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later.

That situation includes AI and hypersonic warfare, both escalating at a frenzied pace. Now used in ultra-fast attacks, AI is dangerously vulnerable to hacking and manipulation while making kill decisions without human supervision. In nuclear command and control systems, the BAS warns, research and experience have demonstrated the vulnerability of these systems to hacking and manipulation.

This is an absolutely terrifying brew. The spread of disinformation, the contempt for science and expert opinion, the undermining of global agreements on arms control, and climate change are all deadly. Add in the new world of AI and hyper-sonic warfare, then pile on autocrats like Trump and Bolsonaro, and finish with the certainty of more disasters from 450 crumbling, obsolete atomic reactors.

All in all, its small wonder the Bulletin has taken us past the two-minute warning. It will clearly take every ounce of our activist strength to save our species from the final whistle.

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Trump's Presidency Brings Us Closer to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock - Truthout

Nature always has its own set of solutions for any mechanical and structural problems without generating excess wastes. Mimicking nature needs an amalgamation of biological sense and technological data together. Although both systems have a different evolutionary timescale, for instance, the biological process has been evolving for the past thousands of centuries, while technology has been escalating only for a couple of hundred years. The differences between the technology and the protocols that nature follows are immense, including the genetic codes, environment, and biological clock.

Despite these challenges, Frosch and Gallapoulous once presented a special note on developing ecosystems keeping a balance between nature and humankind. The concept is presumed to be the inception of the new terms in the twenty-first century, such as Biomimicry, biomimetic, bionic, Biodesign, biomorphic, bioutilisation, biophilia, and bioderivation. With the evolution of science, Biomimicry has taken a new direction that connects sustainability with technology and ecological frame of reference to evaluate the viability of our inventions.

The context of Biomimicry may be classified into three stages, such as the form, the process, and the ecosystem. The process is initiated with the duplication of the characteristic traits of the organism, namely, appearance, visual shape, components, materials, and morphological features. The next step is to investigate further the viability of the attributes to apply to the medium under observations. If both of these processes exhibit a positive result, the method then seeks to duplicate the form and processes of an ecosystem.

Mazzoleni and Price stated that Biomimicry surpasses an analogy and executes on diverse stages, such as organism, behavior, and ecosystem. Biomimicry ranges from architecture to material science and chemistry where it continues to provide new and innovative insights into engineering problems. The evolution of Biomimicry has escalated over the last 30 years, inspired by insects, reptiles, mammals, and other invertebrate species.

Adaptive envelopes are the first generation bio-inspired material that was mimicked from the valvulae pollination mechanism in Strelitzia reginae flower called Flectofins. The envelope employs the traits of the reversible material deformation in the presence of an external force, inducing an external shading system. The investigation of the shading stem was further attributed to the kinematic mechanism inspired by the motions of the planned movement known as FlectoFins. A shading system adapts and responds to changing sunlight conditions during the daytime. Active materials are now being prepared based on the natural phenomena of the response of the spruce cones when they come in contact with the humidity. Hygroskin uses such inspiration and uses relative humidity to sense and interact with the surroundings.

However, although efforts are being made to enact nature, stress must be laid on how these techniques may be used to develop a greener future and a sustainable future.

Here is the 5 best third-generation biomimetics developed in the field of engineering science

1. Bullet Trains Inspired by Kingfisher Birds2. Water Harvesting as Ctenocara beetle3. Cephalopod Camouflage4. Shock Absorbing mimicking the woodpeckers5. Wind Turbines analogous to humpback whales

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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The Evolution of Biomimicry in Human innovation - Economic Times

As the labour market rapidly changes, new, nearly real-time data and metrics give us better insight than ever before into what the jobs of the future will look like.

The kinds of jobs emerging in the global economy span a wide range of professions and skills, reflecting the opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels to take advantage of emerging jobs and the new economy. Identifying emerging jobs and the skills that they require provides valuable insights to inform training investments, and paves the way for a Reskilling Revolution, as individuals seek new skills to keep pace with change.

But for all of the opportunities that the new economy will bring, there are stark skills gaps and gender gaps that must be addressed. If we dont, they will continue to widen in the future.

Here are five things we can learn from this new data:

Not every emerging job requires hard tech skills, but every emerging job does require basic tech skills such as digital literacy, web development or graphic design. Three of the jobs in the World Economic Forum's Jobs of Tomorrow report cloud, engineering and data clusters, which are also among the fastest-growing overall require disruptive tech skills like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, or cloud computing. Because technologies like AI are so pervasive, many roles in areas like sales and marketing will require a basic understanding of AI.

These disruptive tech skills are in high demand across the board. Blockchain, cloud computing, analytical reasoning and AI are among the most in-demand tech skills we see on LinkedIn.

While they arent growing as quickly as tech-dominated jobs, new sales, content production and HR roles are also emerging as a complement to the rapidly growing tech industry. Our research shows talent acquisition specialists, customer success specialists and social media assistants among the fastest growing professions all roles that rely on more diverse skills sets, especially soft skills.

Share of skills clusters by selected professional cluster

Image: World Economic Forum

Demand for soft skills is likely to continue to increase as automation becomes more widespread. Our latest Global Talent Trends Report shows that HR professionals are identifying the demand for soft skills as the most important trend globally. Skills like creativity, persuasion, and collaboration which all top our list of most in-demand soft skills are all virtually impossible to automate, which means if you have these skills youll be even more valuable to organizations in the future.

While the data reflects a diversity of opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels, further analysis shows a worrying imbalance in those obtaining the latest skills. In our ongoing research on gender with the World Economic Forum, we found that the largest gender gaps among emerging jobs are in roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills, with the share of women represented across cloud, engineering and data jobs below 30% (for cloud computing its as low as 12%). Its critical to close this gap because these disruptive tech skills will have an outsized impact on the direction of society and the economy.

While there is certainly room to improve gender parity by embracing greater diversity in hiring and more inclusive managerial practices, our data suggests that those gains, while important, will not be sufficient to achieve parity.

We have to think creatively about ways to fill these emerging skills and roles so that we prevent these gaps from intensifying in the future. Our research to understand these issues has uncovered some very achievable, scalable solutions.

Firstly, taking advantage of existing and adjacent talent can make a massive contribution to the rapid expansion of talent pipelines. Our research reveals that training and up-skilling near AI talent could double the pipeline of AI talent in Europe.

Opportunities by selected professional cluster and occupation, 2014-2019

Image: World Economic Forum

Taking a similar approach with the gender gap, weve found that sub-groups of disruptive tech skills where women have higher representation genetic engineering, data science, nanotechnology and human-computer interaction could expand the pipeline of talent for the broader set of tech roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills.

While both of these approaches can help us make meaningful progress, closing the skills and gender gaps depends on a lot more than just making sure talent has the right skills. Its a simple truth that who you know matters, so we also have to close the network gap the advantage some people have over others based purely on who they know.

Our research on the network gap shows that living in a high-income neighbourhood, going to a top school and working at a top company can lead to a 12x advantage in accessing opportunities. This means that two people with the exact same skills, but who were born into different neighbourhoods, may be worlds apart when it comes to the opportunities afforded them.

All of these new metrics and insights can help us pinpoint the skills and jobs of the future, but its going to take more than data to ensure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an equitable one. If we are going to make meaningful change, we need businesses and political leaders to re-evaluate the norms through which we shape policy, make hiring decisions and ultimately level the playing field for those who face barriers to opportunity.

As we convene at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Im asking leaders to join us in making progress towards closing these gaps. It will create better, more innovative businesses, stronger economies and ultimately help create fairer societies.

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Written by

Allen Blue, Co-Founder and Vice President, Product Management, LinkedIn

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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5 things we know about the jobs of the future - World Economic Forum