Summer Schools on Ethics of nanotechnology and one on ethics of converging technologies.

I should say that I am part of the Converging technology meeting in Sept as a faculty

The European Commission currently tries to stimulate responsible development of nanotechnology by recommending a Code of Conduct to EU member states. This Code is actually a form of “soft law”, governing nanotechnology research. Evaluators of EU project proposals are asked to use this code in their selection process. Ambitious and prudent researchers in natural as well as social sciences may want to learn more about nanoethics in general and this code in particular, and discuss the practical consequences.

The EthicSchool on Ethics of Nanotechnology offers a good opportunity for this. It is held 24-29 August 2008 at the University of Twente. Prof. Dr Arie Rip of the University of Twente and Prof. Dr. Jean-Pierre Wils of Radboud University in Nijmegen are co-presidents of the EthicSchool.

The EthicSchool on Ethics of Converging Technologies is held 21-26 September 2008 at the Dormotel Vogelsberg in Alsfeld /Omrod in Germany. Prof. Dr. Alfred Nordmann of the TU Darmstadt and an international group of renowned scholars will lead discussions at the forefront of the scientific debate on current trends in the converging sciences and technologies (nano, bio, info, cogno) and the philosophical, societal and policy implications.

PhD students, postdocs and others with a genuine interest are welcome to join the EU funded EthicSchool Summerschools. There are still a number of places left for both EthicSchools. If you are interested in presenting a paper, the deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended until 1 June 2008. Find out more and register online at www.ethicschool.eu

or contact Ineke Malsch: postbus@malsch.demon.nl

Call for Papers Human Security, Social Cohesion and Disability

May be of interest to some. Feel free to distribute as you see fit.

Call for Papers – Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal (www.rds.hawaii.edu)

Human Security, Social Cohesion and Disability

Guest Editors: Gregor Wolbring, Program in Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Dept of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary;

Anita Ghai, Department of Psychology Jesus and Mary College, New Delhi;

Kirk Allison, Program in Human Rights and Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota;

Human security and social cohesion are two central requisites for the medical and social well being of disabled people. Science and technology (S&T) advances often seen as essential for disabled people also impact on human security and on social cohesion. Human security according to the Commission on Human Security is concerned with safeguarding and expanding people’s vital freedoms. It requires both shielding people from acute threats and empowering people to take charge of their own lives. The Commission identified economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, political security, freedom from fear, and freedom from want as primary concerns.

Social cohesion in very general terms means: All that which brings people together (European New Towns Platform). In Canada the following description is in use: “Social cohesion is the ongoing process of developing a community of shared values, shared challenges and equal opportunity within Canada, based on a sense of trust, hope and reciprocity among all Canadians.” (Jeannotte and Sharon, 2001). This has also been articulated complementarily in terms of social capital which has been defined among others as “features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 1995).

More about the concepts can be found in the below references:

· Gregor Wolbring (2006). Human Security and NBICS http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours.2006.12.30.htm

· Gregor Wolbring (2007). NBICS and Social Cohesion http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours-2007-01-15.htm

· Caroline Beauvais and Jane Jenson.(2002) Social Cohesion: Updating the State of Research. Canadian Policy, Research Networks, Canadian Heritage, Ottawa. http://www.cprn.com/doc.cfm?doc=167&l=en

· European New Towns Platform. (2005). “The Top 8 Specific Challenges for Social Cohesion in New Towns.” http://www.newtowns.net/themes

· Definitions of Social Capital http://www.analytictech.com/networks/definitions_of_social_capital.htm

· Social Captial Initiative, Working Paper 1, 1998, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20194767~menuPK:418848~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html

We are honored that the theme for an issue of The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal will be human security, social cohesion and disability. This topic is chosen because the discourse around human security and social cohesion is of central importance for disability studies and for the well-being of persons with disabilities. At the same time discourses in disability studies can crucially clarify and test the discourses of human security and social cohesion.

Thus, we urge potential contributors, regardless of their fields of training, to articulate their ideas about human security, social cohesion and disability. We especially encourage contributors to envision:

· Future threats to human security and social cohesion including threats linked to new and emerging sciences and technologies processes and products and their impact on disabled people.

· How disability studies discourses have generated tools and will continue to generate tools which can be used to minimize future threats to social cohesion and human security.

· Other possible prevention strategies and fixes to possible future threat to human security and social cohesion.

We encourage the submission of empirical case studies and theoretical models and we especially encourage contributions which cover the topic from a low income country background.

Potential contributors to this Special Issue might consider:

1. What is the “disability,” the discrimination angle of human security and social cohesion?
2. What is the body image angle of human security and social cohesion?
3. What is the importance of the disability studies angle on human security and social cohesion for other marginalized groups, for the marginalized majority of the world?
4. What are potential future threats to human security and social cohesion and what would the impact be on disabled people?
5. What are the cultural angles of human security and social cohesion?
6. What is the role and potential of law?
7. What empirical evidence and theoretical models illuminate the processes and effects?
8. What is the impact of emerging social concepts such as transhumanism, which is?
9. What is the impact of new and emerging sciences and technologies?
10. What role does or could disability studies be playing in the interaction between new and emerging sciences and technologies and human security and social cohesion?
11. How do or do not the human security and social cohesion discourses serve the needs of disabled people?
12. What are the connections between human security and violent conflict?
13. What are the relationships between development and poverty reduction, human security, and the prevention of violent conflict?
14. What is the impact of natural disasters on those with disabilities in terms of security and cohesion
15. How can social capital be discussed in context of disabled people, human security and social cohesion?

Send via email 250-word abstracts, by March 31st, 2008 to Guest Editors Gregor Wolbring gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca ; Anita Ghai anita.satyapal@gmail.com and Kirk Allison alli0001@umn.edu. Please be sure to send abstracts to all editors. For those abstracts that are selected, we will request completed articles of approximately 3000-5000 words two months after the note of invitation to submit a full article was sent. Note that an invitation to submit an article based on an abstract does not guarantee publication of that article in The Review of Disability Studies.

For more information about The Review of Disability Studies, please go to www.rds.hawaii.edu

U.K.’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) – Smart materials and systems

more here

“Bionic” Contact Lens May Create Tiny Personal Displays

A new contact lens embedded with electronic circuits could be the seed for “bionic eyes” that can see displays overlaid on a person’s field of view, researchers say.

more here

Wide Varieties of Cationic Nanoparticles Induce Defects in Supported Lipid Bilayers

Wide Varieties of Cationic Nanoparticles Induce Defects in Supported Lipid Bilayers

Pascale R. Leroueil, Stephanie A. Berry, Kristen Duthie, Gang Han, Vincent M. Rotello, Daniel Q. McNerny, James R. Baker, Jr., Bradford G. Orr, and Mark M. Banaszak Holl*
Nano Lett., ASAP Article 10.1021/nl0722929 S1530-6984(07)02292-8
Web Release Date: January 25, 2008
more here

US National Cancer Institute meeting on Nanotechnology tools for Cell Biology

Saturday, December, 1 pm- 5:30 pm
Location: Washington Convention Center, Room 203

This session will showcase the nanotechnology tools enabling novel biological studies which provide means to investigate, monitor, and alter multiple systems and pathways relevant to the cancer process and to identify key biochemical and genetic effectors which might be best directed using novel molecular therapies.

Speakers include:

* Jerry Lee (Chair), National Cancer Institute, NIH
* Piotr Grodzinski, National Cancer Institute, NIH
* Milan Mrksich, University of Chicago
* David Sept, Washington University in St. Louis
* Zong Ling (ZL) Wang, Georgia Tech
* Muhammad Yousaf, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
* Raoul Kopelman, University of Michigan
* Leland WK Chung, Emory School of Medicine
* Douglas Hanahan, University of California, San Francisco

We hope you will be able to join us.

The NCI Alliance for Nanotechnolgy in Cancer

Lieberman-Warner Bill Includes Climate and Conflict Provisions

On the first of November, Senators Lieberman and Warner teamed up to move the America’s Climate Security Act (S. 2191) to the full Committee on Environment and Public Works. The act would go beyond recent legislation mandating that the intelligence community assess climate-security linkages and would create more formal institutional structures and resources for addressing climate-conflict connections.
morehere

NIO Unveils Top 10 Neuroscience Trends of 2007

more here

$10M for New MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project

morehere

Microsoft enters EEG based brain machine interface

more here

Preferences for Psychological Enhancements: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits

Preferences for Psychological Enhancements: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits
morehere
JASON RIIS
New York University – Stern School of Business
JOSEPH P. SIMMONS
Yale School of Management
GEOFFREY P. GOODWIN
Princeton University – Department of Psychology August 30, 2007

Abstract:
Four studies examined young healthy individuals’ willingness to take drugs intended to enhance various social, emotional, and cognitive abilities. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be highly fundamental to the self (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental (e.g., concentration ability). Moral acceptability of a trait enhancement strongly predicted people’s desire to legalize those enhancements, but not their willingness to take those enhancements. Ad taglines that framed enhancements as enabling rather than enhancing the fundamental self increased people’s interest in a fundamental enhancement, and eliminated the preference for non-fundamental over fundamental enhancements.

15 Surprising Ways RFID Will Affect Your Life in 2007

morehere

Risk Network Newsletter

The Risk Newsletter provides information and links to news items with relevance to risk and benefit in science, health and everyday issues. more here

Xerox to Fund Green, Nano, Imaging Fellowships at MIT School of Engineering

more here

2007 State of the Future

more here

A Blue Sky Vision for the Future of Neuroscience

USA deadline August 31, 2007

European Research Key figures of science, technology and innovation

Highlights of the Key Figures include discussion of the following topics:

* The diminishing weight of Europe in the multi-polar world of science and technology, and its implications for research strategies
* Transition towards knowledge-intensive economies: the need to intensify the pace of Lisbon-driven reforms
* The nature and dynamics of the EU’s industrial structure is the reason for the R&D investment deficit with the US
* The important role of the public sector
* Less opportunities for high-tech venture capital
* Research excellence: the EU remains second behind the US, but excels in traditional domains
* Scientific output is more dispersed across scientific disciplines in the EU than in the US
* Knowledge flows from science to technology are weaker in the EU
* Weaker high-tech performance in the EU
more at source

Virtual Immortality for Virtual Eternity

…Now, the National Science Foundation has awarded a half-million-dollar grant to the universities of Central Florida at Orlando and Illinois at Chicago to explore how researchers might use artificial intelligence, archiving, and computer imaging to create convincing, digital versions of real people, a possible first step toward virtual immortality….
more at source

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) blue sky exercise

The NINDS seeks input on the following questions from academic and industrial neuroscience researchers, clinicians, patient groups, and any other members of the public with significant interest in the future of neuroscience. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and clinical fellows, who represent the future of neuroscience research, are especially encouraged to respond. To participate: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/about_ninds/plans/strategic_plan/blue_sky_vision.htm. The deadline for responding is: August 31, 2007.

________________________________________________

Joseph J. Pancrazio, PhD

Program Director, Repair & Plasticity

National Institutes of Health, NINDS

6001 Executive Blvd, NSC 2205

Rockville, MD 20852

tel: 301-496-1447

fax: 301-480-1080

e-mail: pancrazj@ninds.nih.gov

Towards neuro-memory-chip: Imprinting multiple memories in cultured neural networks

see PDF of source

a variety of links related to the Neurotechnology Industry Organization

NATIONAL NEUROTECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE (NNTI) Overview
The Neurotechnology Industry 2007 Report

DARPA unveils plans for “Luke’s Binoculars” (Connors)

more at source

Food Sovereignty or Green Revolution 2.0?

This time the “silver bullet” has a gun

ETC Group today releases a 16-page review

of five new initiatives intended to launch what ETC dubs “Green Revolution 2.0″ in Africa.

The Brain on the Stand

an article by By JEFFREY ROSEN Published: March 11, 2007
about neurotech and impact on law
more at source

U.N.: Hunger Kills 18,000 Kids Each Day

more at source

Climate reengineering

The new age of climate re-engineering and the $25 million bounty from Richard Branson is discussed at open the future. It is noted that the re-engineering efforts would have the best chance of succeeding if we adjust technology and behavior to stop making the problems worse.

Gregory Benford’s proposal for climate re-engineering is discussed at future pundit The Benford proposal possesses the advantages of being both one of the simplest planet-cooling technologies so far suggested and being initially testable in a local context. He suggests suspension of tiny, harmless particles (sized at one-third of a micron) at about 80,000 feet up in the stratosphere. These particles could be composed of diatomaceous earth.

Benford says treating the Arctic would cost only $100 million per year. You could do the whole planet for a couple of billion.
for links see source

some other books may be of interest

Disease Control Priorities in developing countries

Global Burden of Disease

Priorities in Health

Center for Neurotechnology Studies Launched at Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

more at source

The Millennium Development Goals: Beyond Averages

Read More at Source

Instant Expert: Brilliant Minds Forecast the Next 50 Years

Link to Source

Artificial Hippocampus, the Borg Hive Mind, and Other Neurological Endeavors

new column by me out

World Military Spending Out Does Anything Else

Link to Source

In BRIEF: sex selection; deep freeze

Sex selection 1: undercover reporters from the Sunday Times newspaper have found that a prominent IVF specialist in London is sending patients to Cyprus so that they can choose the sex of their baby, at a cost of up to £12,000. Sex selection for “family balancing” is illegal in Britain — and it turns out that it is illegal in Cyprus as well. Cypriot authorities are investigating whether criminal charges should be laid. The Sunday Times also revealed that Rainsbury’s partner in Cyprus, the well-known Dr Panos Zavos, was also offering sex selection — but he was prepared to undercut him by £3,000. ~ Sunday Times, Nov 5

Sex selection 2: Britain’s best-known IVF expert, Professor Lord Robert Winston, has backed sex selection for “family balancing”. “I think there are a lot of shibboleths to which we have paid lip service, but when you analyse them they certainly don’t threaten the moral fabric of our society,” he told the Sunday Herald. “And one of them is sex selection. I think if sex selection was freely available in Britain it would change the balance of society hardly at all, if at all.” ~ Sunday Herald, Nov 5

Rescued from deep freeze: A Spanish woman has given birth to a baby from a donated embryo which had been frozen for 13 years in a Barcelona IVF clinic. The news is expected to give fresh impetus to researchers who claim that thousands of embryos are being destroyed every year because Britain lacks an embryo adoption program. ~ London Times, Nov 4
Link to source

Nextfest

Nextfest

Brainball: Winning by Relaxing

Brainball is a game where you compete in relaxation. The players’ brainwaves control a ball on a table, and the more relaxed scores a goal over the opponent.

Brainball is a game that goes against the conventional competitive concept, and also reinvents the relationship between man and machine. Instead of activity and adrenalin, it is passivity and calmness that mark the truly successful Brainball player. Brainball is unique amongst machines since it is not controlled by the player’s rational and strategic thoughts and decisions. On the contrary, the participants are dependent on the body’s own intuitive reactions to the game machine.

At first glance, Brainball seems similar to a traditional two player game – two people challenge one and other and take their respective positions at each end of a table that is laid out with two goals and a little ball. The rest of the game’s equipment is more special. Both players wear a strap around their forehead that contains electrodes and is wired up to a biosensor system. This system, that is used to measure the body’s biological signals, is tightly fastened to the frontal lobes and registers the electrical activity in the brain – so called EEG (electro­encephalo­gram). The players brain activity is graphed in a diagram on a computer screen so that the public can easily follow the players mental processes during the match.

The brain waves that move the ball forward, increasing the chance of victory, are called alpha and theta waves. They are generated in the brain when one is calm and relaxed. A considerably stressed player will therefore lose. The matches outcome is rarely obvious since the transition between calm and stress, and vice versa, can occur quickly. Often, the ball will roll backwards and forwards for a few minutes before the game is concluded. In this way, Brainball is an exciting and social game where the audience can follow the match by watching the ball on the table, the graph on the screens and the more or less relaxed expressions of the players.

Link to Soure

see here

TV Watching Tied To Autism, Study Says

A news release from Cornell reported that the autism rate was 1 in 2,500 children 30 years ago, but has increased to as high as 1 in 166 as TV viewing has increased.
Link to Source

My comment: Hmmm