If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot ignore the warning signs for future catastrophes.
Category: education
Can We Immunize The World Against Future Pandemics? Dr Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine — Global Virome Project.
Dr. Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD, is a Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Founding Executive Director of the UC Davis One Health Institute, and Vice Provost For Grand Challenges At UC Davis.
Additionally, Dr. Mazet in on the Steering Committee of the Global Virome Project, Principal Investigator of the PREDICT project, Chair, National Academies’ One Health Action Collaborative, and Co-Vice Chair, UC Global Health Institute Board of Directors.
Dr. Mazet’s work focuses on global health problem solving for emerging infectious diseases and conservation challenges. She is active in international One Health education, service, and research programs, most notably in relation to pathogen emergence; disease transmission among wildlife, domestic animals, and people; and the ecological drivers of novel disease dynamics.
Currently, Dr. Mazet is the Co-Director of the US Agency for International Development’s One Health Workforce – Next Generation, an $85 million educational strengthening project to empower professionals in Central/East Africa and Southeast Asia to address complex and emerging health threats, including antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic diseases.
Dr. Mazet is the Principal Investigator of, and served as the Global Director of, the PREDICT Project for 10 years, a greater than $200 million viral emergence early warning project under USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats Division, which served as an early-warning system-strengthening effort aimed at finding emerging viruses before they spread to humans.
Dr. Mazet was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2013 in recognition of her successful and innovative approach to emerging environmental and global health threats, and serves on the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Microbial Threats and chairs the Academies’ One Health Action Collaborative. She was appointed to the National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, which was created to assist the federal government with critical science and policy issues related to the COVID-19 crisis and other emerging health threats.
Innovative, Scientific, And Empathic Solutions For Revitalizing Camden, NJ, USA — Jennifer A. Huse, Mayoral Candidate, 2021
Jennifer Huse is a candidate for Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, USA, running in the upcoming 2021 election, as an independent.
Information on Jennifer’s campaign can be found at — https://www.jahformayor.com/
Jennifer has a background and education in Cell and Molecular Biology, Exercise Science, Social Media Management, Communications, Marketing and Business Management, and her diverse background, gives a unique perspective when it comes to her ideas for the future improvement of the city.
A key pillar of Jennifer’s platform is in testing and advancing novel solutions for improving current social systems and introducing new technologies via a model called The Center for Scientific Solutions.
The Center for Scientific Solutions will create an evolving social blueprint upon which feasible and beneficial scientific solutions to the issues the city faces will be tested and worked on, while at the same time developing technologies that can expand outwardly around the globe and generate value.
Her administration will work hand in hand together with the Center for Scientific Solutions to bring the highest quality of life to all residents of Camden, NJ, and to serve as an example of innovation and progress throughout the Nation and the World.
All brains shrink with age, and the dominant view has been that more education slows the rate of shrinking. However, the evidence has been inconclusive because studies have not been able to track the rate of change over time. Until now.
Measured brain shrinkage over time
A team of researchers measured brain aging by measuring the volume of the cortical mantle and hippocampus regions of the brain, in MRI scans from more than 2000 participants in the Lifebrain and UK biobanks. These areas of the brain are prone to shrinkage over time, as a natural part of aging. Participants’ brains were scanned up to three times over an 11 year period, in what is known as a ‘longitudinal’ study.
**Space Renaissance International (SRI) Medici Fund** is happy to announce that, due to the generosity of our Education Sponsors, we are able to award a few **prizes and grants for students** of any age, interested to space settlement, exploration and civilian development. Three programmes are now open to applicants, in the frame of the **2021 Space Renaissance Congress “The Civilian Space Development”**.
The 3° SRI World Congress (SRIC3) will take place in a virtual format and will provide attendees with cutting-edge developments in Space Settlement & Exploration, Human Rights, Ethics, Policies, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Energy, Economics and Education from leaders in their respective fields. Experts in research and industry will present the emerging technologies and future directions in their field. Students at all ages, who are interested in Space Science, Technology, Philosophy, Economy, Policy, Law, Art, are warmly encouraged to participate to the 2021 Space Renaissance Congress. Please visit this link to apply to any of the Student Sponsored Programmes: https://2021.spacerenaissance.space/index.php/students-sponsored-programs/
They require less maintenance, and less pollution. Imagine if you used them as a battery backup during an emergency.
School board seals deal to bring 300 electric school buses to Montgomery County. The buses will recharge at night and run during the day. During the hot summers, the buses and charging stations can help store needed energy for local businesses.
OEC promoting STEM education in Africa.
Remember the project where Bill Gates wanted to cover the sun to cool the Earth? Well, this summer, the tests will begin. According to The Times, a large balloon will soon be launched in Sweden that will spew out of calcium carbonate, which is essentially “chalk dust.”
The Controlled Stratospheric Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) wants to prove that the release of this dust into the stratosphere could eventually divert some of the sun’s energy and lower the temperatures of our planet.
Historical fact
The balloon will be launched near the Arctic city of Kiruna, and it would be the first serious attempt to test whether global warming can be kept under control by dimming the sunlight.
Basically, we live in one giant algorithm.
In fascinating new research, cosmologists explain the history of the universe as one of self-teaching, autodidactic algorithms.
Composite membrane origami has been an efficient and effective method for constructing transformable mechanisms while considerably simplifying their design, fabrication, and assembly; however, its limited load-bearing capability has restricted its application potential. With respect to wheel design, membrane origami offers unique benefits compared with its conventional counterparts, such as simple fabrication, high weight-to-payload ratio, and large shape variation, enabling softness and flexibility in a kinematic mechanism that neutralizes joint distortion and absorbs shocks from the ground. Here, we report a transformable wheel based on membrane origami capable of bearing more than a 10-kilonewton load. To achieve a high payload, we adopt a thick membrane as an essential element and introduce a wireframe design rule for thick membrane accommodation. An increase in the thickness can cause a geometric conflict for the facet and the membrane, but the excessive strain energy accumulation is unique to the thickness increase of the membrane. Thus, the design rules for accommodating membrane thickness aim to address both geometric and physical characteristics, and these rules are applied to basic origami patterns to obtain the desired wheel shapes and transformation. The capability of the resulting wheel applied to a passenger vehicle and validated through a field test. Our study shows that membrane origami can be used for high-payload applications.
Origami has been a rich source of inspiration for art, education, and mathematics, and it has proven to be an efficient and effective method for realizing transformable structures in nature (1–3) and artificial systems (4–8). Composite membrane origami, the design technique based on the laminar composition of flexible membranes with rigid facet constraints, opens a new field for robotics by the transition from component assembly to lamination, which considerably simplifies design, fabrication, and assembly. This transition simplifies and speeds up fabrication and enables reaching size scales that were difficult to access before (9, 10). In addition, membrane origami provides a versatile shape-changing ability that has been exploited in various applications (11–15), and its applicability has been extended by additional design dimensions obtained from material characteristics such as softness and stretchability (16–19).
Beyond the aforementioned benefits, origami has been an effective design tool for constructing a high payload-to-weight structure, such as a honeycomb panel, by markedly increasing the buckling strength using unique geometric configurations (20, 21). Combining this feature with reconfigurability, various stiffness transition mechanisms have also been introduced (22–24). The rigidity of components is another important factor to secure high load capacity and closely related to the thickness. Origami design is, traditionally, a matter of organizing fold lines under fundamental and ideal assumptions—zero facet thickness and zero fold line width (25–27). However, in response to growing interest in origami-inspired applications that require load-bearing capability, various thickness accommodation methods have been introduced (28–30).
O,.o arc reactor.
The Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) seeks to provide research and educational opportunities for expanding the scientific understanding of the physics of plasmas, and to use that knowledge to develop both fusion power and non-fusion applications.