Nanotechnology and Global Equality


Book Description

The book places nanotechnology's emergence within a broad historical and contemporary global context while developing and testing an interpretive framework through which to assess nanotechnology's claims. It clarifies the nature of global engagement with nanotechnology research and development, revealing surprising scenarios, unacknowledged by most




Nanotechnology and Global Sustainability


Book Description

The rise of collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer systems, and not-for-profit social enterprise heralds the emergence of a new era of human collectivity. Increasingly, this consolidation stems from an understanding that big-banner issues—such as climate change—are not the root causes of our present global predicament. There is a growing and collective view that issues such as this are actually symptoms of a much more vicious, seemingly insurmountable condition: our addiction to economic, consumption, and population growth in a world of finite resources. Nanotechnology and Global Sustainability uses nanotechnology—the product of applied scientific knowledge to control and utilize matter at atomic and molecular scales—as a lens through which to explore the interrelationship between innovation, politics, economy, and sustainability. This groundbreaking book addresses how stakeholders can actively reshape agendas to create positive and sustainable futures through this latest controversial, cross-sectoral technology. It moves beyond issues of efficiency, productivity, and utility, exploring the insights of 22 contributors from around the world, whose work spans the disciplines of science and the humanities. Their combined knowledge, reinforced with various case studies, introduces an exciting prospect—how we can innovate without economic growth. This new volume in the Perspectives in Nanotechnology series is edited by Dr. Donald Maclurcan and Dr. Natalia Radywyl. Dr. Maclurcan is a social innovator and Honorary Research Fellow with the Institute for Nanoscale Technology at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Dr. Radywyl is a social researcher and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. This book is written for a wide audience and will be of particular interest to activists, scholars, policy makers, scientists, business professionals, and others who seek an understanding of how we might justly transition to sustainable societies.




Nanotechnology and the Challenges of Equity, Equality and Development


Book Description

Nanotechnology is enabling applications in materials, microelectronics, health, and agriculture, which are projected to create the next big shift in production, comparable to the industrial revolution. Such major shifts always co-evolve with social relationships. This book focuses on how nanotechnologies might affect equity/equality in global society. Nanotechnologies are likely to open gaps by gender, ethnicity, race, and ability status, as well as between developed and developing countries, unless steps are taken now to create a different outcome. Organizations need to change their practices, and cultural ideas must be broadened if currently disadvantaged groups are to have a more equal position in nano-society rather than a more disadvantaged one. Economic structures are likely to shift in the nano-revolution, requiring policymakers and participatory processes to invent new institutions for social welfare, better suited to the new economic order than those of the past.




Global Bioethics: The Impact of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee


Book Description

The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee is an international body that sets standards in the field of bioethics. This collection represents the contributions of the IBC to global bioethics. The IBC is a body of 36 independent experts that follows progress in the life sciences and its applications in order to ensure respect for human dignity and freedom. Currently, some of the topics of the IBC contributions have been discussed in the bioethics literature, mostly journal articles. However, this is a unique contribution by the scholars who developed these universal declarations and reports. The contributors have not only provided a scholarly up to date discussion of their research topics, but as members of the IBC they have also discussed specific practical challenges in the development of such international documents. This book will be suited to academics within bioethics, health care policy and international law.







Flat World Navigation


Book Description

Flat World Navigation introduces the new future of work in the 'flattened world' of the new digital attention-based economy, where real connections can be made in seconds across departments, businesses, cultures and countries. Combining the best elements of networking, social media outreach and collaborative techniques, flat world navigation is an essential capability to build and maintain relationships between colleagues, customers and partners. Employees who can transform themselves into flat world navigators, experts in mediating these powerful relationships and bringing the customer into the conversation, will mean the difference between success and failure in business. Flat World Navigation includes exclusive insights and interviews with international business leaders who successfully use flat world navigation skills, such as the Emmy-winning former NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter Kare Anderson, Sandy Carter at IBM, Gordon Feller at CISCO Systems, Aria Finger at DoSomething.org, Louise Guido at ChangeCorp, Jeffrey A. Finkle at the International Economic Development Council and Carolyn Lawrence, CEO of Women of Influence. This book is grounded in real-world experience with insights and advice to build your skills base and empower the next generation of business people. Additionally, it is of great use to business owners and managers looking to effectively leverage the skills of these flat world navigators, whose critical role brings attention to ideas, products and services and, as such, must be part of a successful business strategy.







Safety and Regulatory Issues of Nanoencapsulated Food Ingredients


Book Description

Safety and Regulatory Issues of Nanoencapsulated Food Ingredients, a volume in the Nanoencapsulation in the Food Industry series, discusses the safety and toxicity potential of food-relevant and edible nanostructures, along with legislation issued by different countries and organizations governing their safety. The book's chapters cover safety issues of nanocapsules in food matrices, their possible toxicity effects, and in vitro and in vivo assays which are explored to underline their impact. Authored by a team of global experts in the fields of nano and microencapsulation of food, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical ingredients, this title is of great value to those engaged in fields surrounding nanoencapsulation. - Explores how to analyze the safety of nanoencapsulated bioactive ingredients - Discusses the regulations governing the safety of nanoencapsulated ingredients in different countries - Investigates what agencies and which governmental organizations are responsible for the safety of nanoencapsulated ingredients




Nano Comes to Life


Book Description

"Increasingly, scientists are gaining control over matter at the nanometer scale. Spearheaded by physical scientists operating at the interfaces of physics and biology (such as the author herself), advances in nanoscience and technology are transforming how we think about life and treat human health. This is due to a convergence of size. To do medicine, one must understand and be able to reach the nanoscale environment of healthy cells in tissues and organs, as well as other nano-sized building blocks that constitute a living organism, such as proteins and DNA. The ground-breaking advances being made at the frontiers of nanoscience and -technology, specifically in the areas of biology and medicine, are the subject of this short, popular-level book. Chapter 1 describes how nanotechnology and quantitative methods in biology are progressively being deployed to embrace life in all its multiscale, hierarchical intricacy and multiplicity. Chapters 2 through 4 review how bioinspired and biomimetic nanostructures and nanomachines are being created and integrated into strategies aimed at solving specific medical problems. In particular, Chapter 2 summarizes how scientists are seeking to build artificial nanostructures using both biological molecules and the organizational principles of biology. Chapter 3 gives an account of how nanotechnology is being used to develop drug-delivery strategies that specifically target cancer cells and tumors to improve the efficacy of current cancer chemotherapies. Chapter 4 reviews the science of one of the most potentially transformative scientific fields: tissue engineering. In a concluding chapter (Chapter 5), Contera reviews how nanotechnology, biology, and medicine will continue fusing with other sciences and technologies - incorporating more mathematical and computational modelling, as well as AI and robotics. Nanoscale devices will be used to learn biology; and biology will be used to inspire increasingly sophisticated "transmaterial" devices that mimic some of the characteristics of biology and incorporate new features that are not available in the biological world. The effects on human health and longevity will be profound. In a more personal epilogue, Contera describes the crossroads at which we find ourselves. Accessing our own biology evokes a mixture of possibility and dread. However, Contera maintains that we can create a positive transmaterial world for the benefit of humankind, and she describes ways in which scientists are proactively engaging with the public, politicians, industry, and entrepreneurs, as well as the media and the arts, to communicate the power and risks of new advances and to influence the ways in which new technologies will affect our future"--




The Global Technology Revolution 2020, In-Depth Analyses: Bio/Nano/Materials/Information Trends, Drivers, Barriers, and Social Implications


Book Description

In 2020, areas of particular importance for technology trends will include biotechnology, nanotechnology, materials technology, and information technology. This report, the companion document to The Global Technology Revolution 2020, Executive Summary (Silberglitt et al., MG-475-NIC, 2006), assesses in detail a sample of 29 countries with respect to their ability to acquire and implement 16 key technology applications.