With increasing worldwide population and predictions that 75% of the world population will be living in cities by the year 2050, building towards the sky can be unavoidable necessity. That would require more durable constructions and materials with appropriate building and architecture solutions. Future  Cities would require management policies with balanced policies consumption/waste versus protection/conservation of nature in accepted social context. Http://sustain-earth.com

Among the consequences of economy driven policies in ASEAN countries is the increasing economic gaps between countries in the region. For sustainable large-scale and long-term socio-economic developments it is vital to promote less developed countries as well. Shift from commercially driven agriculture to new technologies where the regional natural resources are not only used sufficiently but, also, sustainably managed in a manner that respect traditional systems of the rural areas. 

Commercialization always has some draw-backs as well, e.g. depletion soil fertility, and excessive use of chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides with long-term impacts and threats on ecosystems in different ways. Strategies need to be implemented to create sustainable and profitable farming systems that realize the existence of vital rural societies in tact with the natural functioning and metabolism of natural eco-systems and in harmony with existing biodiversity.
https://www.jircas.affrc.go.jp/english/program/proC_1.html

For humans safety and security are not options in life but they are basic necessities. We love things when they are good, i.e. have add-value, being safe and secure for us. We hate things when they are bad.

However, it is always a dilemma for us and a continuous challenge everyday, everywhere, to know and to judge when things are good or not? In modern times, these issues are being amplified and the threats facing us have been accelerating and expanding enormously. This is not per se because science is unable to provide the best possible answers and solutions. Science is only an instruments that we can shape, reshape, form and reform as well as to refine for our benefits and welfare of humans. Meanwhile, it is a paradox to judge how science is being used by industries, and how it impacts on the complex chain of market interactions and the communication between politicians, entrepreneurs, stakeholders and the users in general.

Without hesitation Information Communication Technology “ICT” is establishing itself more and more as essential and imperative technology of enormous impacts on everyday life everywhere. Uses and applications will continue to increase and even accelerate with further expansion and propagation in all aspects of our everyday life needs. The so-called “wireless appliances” are penetrating more and more deep in our lives. The debate on whether or not wireless technology (http://www.online-edge.co.uk/wireless-security.html) is safe for all of us, including all ages, and under all conditions and circumstances is becoming more and more intensive and contradicting. Are all threats related directly to levels of electromagnetics radiation? or are the threats indirectly related to how wireless tools are being used or the way how we perceive, respond and use ICT in our lives. In this context, there is an increasing mistrust somewhere in the chain of communication science-technology-industry-entrepreneurship-market-politics-users.

Dr. Olle Johansson, M.D., Stockholm Sweden, world famous for being responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in medicine, has studied the effects of mobile phones, Wifi etc on humans since over 20 years. He finds that the brain tumor issue is a minor thing compared to many other harmful effects including genetic damage, sleep disturbances, reduced learning capacity, concentration difficulties and psychological problems. Professor Johansson is also critical about the politicians taking risks with the whole population in spite of repeated earnest warnings from scientists. He points out that the level of eclectromagnetic exposure that humans are exposed to is huge compared with what has been there for very long periods of time. The question for science is why do we do research? Why sometines the research is acceptable by politicians and sometimes not? In this case, if radiation from wireless tools is not dangerous, then a large number of high quality scientific papers reporting harmful effects of the radiation hazards must be wrong, but it is highly unlikely. 

Here are the detail: (http://www.psrast.org/mobileng/mobilstarteng.htm) see also (http://www.takebackyourpower.net/news/2014/10/23/experts-and-doctors-warn-pregnant-women-and-children-wireless/).

Sustainability has been part of the human awareness since the birth of the ancient man on planet Earth. The instinct for survival and wellbeing has never been crystallized in well-structured components for building up webs of instrumental coordinated solutions until the 1980s with the introduction of the most widely quoted and used definition of sustainability. An imperative and collective need put forward by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” 

The Earth is a unique planet in our universe with complex functioning structure of systems that support the evolution of complex webs of metabolic processes for sustaining all living forms on Earth.

 The man has always struggled for his survival on earth and in particular to get access to and to secure affordable food resources not only for himself but for the new comers as well.

After and during the industrial revolutions, the focus of humans was directed mostly on technical issues to free mankind from manual work, to find resources and technology for  basic necessities through mechanical and machinery work. The Man realized the role of science and technology for his wellbeing and since the nineteen and twenty centuries the advances in science and technology emerged more and more to be the only inevitable route for improving the living conditions. This didn’t come for free and price and costs for humans started to be huge with clear finger-print on the accelerating divergence of the three basic drivering wheels of sustainability: economy, environment and social drivers. 

Economic interests resulted in increasing consumption of natural resources with severe impacts on degradation of the environment because of increasing waste and pollution, and piling up of social defects in particular the remarkable failure in erasing global poverty. These along with enormous indicators of the declining natural resources as being defined by the so-called resource “peaks”.
 

The divergence and fragmentation of these drivers and spheres brought considerable, and yet, accelerating threat for the survival of humans.  The net result of what humans achieved in science, technology, policies and politics were in direct conflict with not only the search for wellbeing but also the very basic needs for survival.

The major spheres of the functioning and metabolism of all life forms on earth were  brought out of their natural equilibrium, e.g. the atmosphere with an increasing temperature because of global warming.

Global warming and accelerating production of waste and pollution have caused enormous damage on the hydrophere with irreversible effects on the ecological resources where humans are dependent on, e.g. fish.

The growing human population still induces additional challenges for achieving the goals for global sustainability developments.

The era of sustainable developments has already started but it is still in its infancy and the needs of the necessary knowledge are enormous in particular what regards building the underlying science and technology as well as the associated management policies in all sectors and on all levels.

For more information on sustainability visit: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

Http://sustain-earth.com” is an integrated coherent platform for Applied sustainability. Interests and efforts put by its coordinator and manager of started already through a simple experiment at the age of fourteen. As a young student, at Abo-Tyg/Assiut secondary school, starting to learn chemistry I bought a small amount of hydrochloric acid from my pocket money. I added the acid to a soil sample from the garden, it was a violent reaction in the test tube with evolution of gases. An exciting experiment where drew my attention with the conclusion that there must be geochemical reactions taking place in the environment. This in addition to continuous observations from summer holidays that I spent at the village of my grandfather, Cairo’s Waraa. Some local industries, farmers and poor people of the village, as is the case for many other villages on the Nile, used or you may say “abused” the water of the Nile to do their household needs, e.g. cleaning, washing animal and the removal of waste in general. These events and my experience of the continuous lack of water in the very arid environments prevailing in southern parts of Egypt as it rains one per decade etched an enormous early interest that caused gearing my early geology, chemistry and physics university education towards research on environmental waste, pollution and their impacts on global aquatic systems.

This resulted in an academic career in Environmental Physics a discipline that I created myself with further created further work in Applied Sustainability.

University education around the world is undergoing tectonic shifts by being more and more dependent on the Internet. Data given below illustrate the incredible impacts of the Internet on higher education. Such trends will even continue to expand more and more in the near future especially with consideration that ICT will not only mean communication between individuals and humans but would expand connecting machines to each others and to humans as well. With the expansion of modern ICT technology in terms of solutions, applications, infra-structures and architecture students would not need to be physically available on the campus as much as before. On-line services will continue to expand in terms of content and quality. However, it is not clear how ICT will influence the over-all economic costs of the educational services.
http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2012/07/incredible-impact-internet-higher-education-infographic

There are really amazing things around us that keep us busy wondering about them. To some extent RESEARCH can give some clues!

The world of twins triggers lots of thoughts especially about: Are they really identical? If they were, how? Would they continue to be identical? Would they at stage become different? When and in which way?

If there not indentical, in this way this would be?

Follow the story here:

http://youtu.be/H6oWBZH8ZW8

Water and nutrients are essentials for the evolution and sustainability of life on earth. The magic, secrets and drivers of life on earth are not human inventions. Human innovation is merely restricted to accelerating the natural metabolic processes on earth, e.g. production of food in agriculture, animal husbandry and fisheries, beyond natural rates and limits. The growing global population and the underlying industrial and economic systems continue to fuel the so-called human innovation towards a never ending spiral for more and more unsustainable consumption of the natural resources.

Humans can not servive on earth without clean water, healthy environment and sustainable food production. However, these requirements can only be fulfilled through sustained production and consumption of energy and natural resources for supporting the basic needs for humans, e.g. housing, education, health, transport and communication. What originally started for the benefits of human developments turned out to major threats for human survival because of increasing waste and pollution from use and abuse of the natural resources.
Humans have interfered in the natural functioning and metabolism of all life forms on earth with negative impacts on essential and global biogeochemical cycles. Examples are: global warming as resulted from malfunctioning of the global carbon-cycle. Degradation in O-cycle (oxygen cycle) is also remarkable because of unfit and polluted air in urbanized living areas, in particular cities as result of expansion of traffic and transport systems and random industrial activities; poor access to oxygen in aquatic systems because of eutrophication in aquatic systems and excessive use of fertilizers on land; enhanced photo-reactions in the atmosphere with the associated negative impacts of tropospheric production of ozone.

Declining reserves of natural phosphorous, are among emerging threats, because of increasing production and use of this limited natural resource with irreversible impacts on P-cycle. Agricultural and industrial nitrogen inputs to the environment currently exceed inputs from natural N fixation. The impacts of anthropogenic N-inputs have significantly altered the global N-cycle over the past century. Global atmospheric N₂O have increased from pre-industrial levels where most of which are due to the agricultural sector.

Human activities have major effects on the global S-cycle. The burning of coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels has greatly increased the amounts of sulphur in the atmosphere,?ocean and depleted the sedimentary rock sink, i.e. instead of being burned at steadily rates. Over most polluted areas there has been a 30-fold increase in sulfate deposition. The enhanced sulphur and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere is causing negative impacts through acidification of aquatic systems with global negative feedback effects on aquatic life and vegetation.

All in all quality of global land-water resources are under accelerating threats from pollution  and waste.

http://www.flatheadwatershed.org/natural_history/natcycles.shtml 

The emerging economies are like express trains, if you don’t catch one of these trains you will left behind with an old ticket worth nothing.

All of the so-called emerging economies suffer from increasing poverty. The fast developing economies in these countries and regions do not leave enough time for coordinating all the necessary instruments and tools to provide sustainable social-economic infra-structures.

http://www.poverties.org/urban-poverty-in-india.html#gallery[pageGallery]/2/

One out of every three children never sets foot in a classroom. Two major questions need to answered in this context:

(1) what shall we do with one third of the world population lacking education;

(2) can we naive enough that we will have global SECURITY under such conditions.

With what is happening around the world we can not run away from answering these two strategic questions. As a result of these two questions many other questions are currently facing us with merely no sustainable answers. “Sustain-earth.com” will continue to address the emerging global threats facing the future of our planet.

Education on all levels has been a major focus for attention and recognition around the world especially in the recent decades. It is without hesitation an enormous privilege for anyone of us to get the necessary time and resources required to join education at any level. University, higher education and professional training are becoming key instruments of increasing importance for joining not only the labor market but the global social community in large. Such evolution is a result of four major factors: (1) accelerating motivation and wishes to take part in global social-media and socio-economic debates where safety, security and peace are central components; (2) the emerging global transfer and adaptation to sustainable societies where environment and social issues are becoming major components in shaping and re-shaping world economy; (3) accelerating participation of the population, investors and expertise from the new emerging and growing economies and markets; (4) the growing public awareness of gender issues, the increasing pressures for erasing poverty, integration of marginalized groups and mitigation of increasing social- segregation resulted from religious and ethnic  conflicts. 

Education has enormous power to empower individuals in many aspects. This, also, creates huge pressures on political systems and policy-makers to respond promptly to the non-ending needs of more informed young generations facing a totally new different and demanding future.

However, we should not be naive and ignore the increaing threats, anti-actions and hostile behavior of conservative powers, interests and groups around the world. There are clear demonstrations and evidence for more and more threats from terrorist attacks against education on all levels especially in Africa and the MENA region. Unfortunately, these attacks started to becmore and more organized and coordinated thus making huge pressures for finding collective actions, policies and strategies for productive and sustainable solutions. Kenya, Mali, Nigeria and other countries in the MENA region as well as Pakistan, and even in Europe and the USA are some examples. 

The most recent of these terrorist attacks is what happened at Garissa University College in Kenya on Thursday 2 April 2015 where 147 students were killed and at least 79 people were wounded. The European University Association invites and encourages all European universities to observe one minute’s silence today, Monday 27 April 2015, 12:00 CET, in remembrance of all those killed and affected by such barbaric attack. This is certainly not enough, sustainable and more effective long-term and large-scale solutions need to be found.

http://agenda.unamur.be/upevent.2015-04-23.4513461659 

Preparing yourself for higher studies and for embarking on new “Career-Development-Plans, e.g. at universities, requires careful planning and robust management plans to meet occasional, and probably frequent  constrains of, tight “time and economy” budgets. In advance preparations of housing, local transportation, how to solve unexpected socially, economically and knowledge related obstacles are essential. To have quick strategies and solutions, of how, who and when, are essential for continuity in your studies and “Career-Development-Plans.

One of the major challenges in our lives is always the same for all of us and converges to making proper decisions in critical transitional periods. Some examples are changing schools in connection with ending one stage of education and embarking on a new and different one; changing destination to study in  a new country with a different culture and language; or even moving into a new city and leaving behind your social network of friends and relatives. Major parts of your security and safety will be freely given up in exchange of new challenges and opportunities. This will mean new risks and threats but unlimited opportunities for major breakthroughs as well. In a society we are always surrounded with devils and engels, so the social game dictates to sort out which is which to survive the critical periods and to create new security and safety shelters.

“Student finance” is a major issue that you need to be prepared for and here are some facts about it (https://lnkd.in/bewFByd). It is also good to get a great deal of real advices from experienced international students, e.g. as the case described here at the University of Michigan. In this case, support and guidance from the International Center, and the Rackham Graduate School, were  provided to ease the cultural transition that generally confornt all international students. Specially what regards adjusting to a new culture, expanding the network of friends and connecting with the international community in large (http://youtu.be/bmTawu5anH8).

  

Student’s live is an amazing experience full of continuous surprises every minute and every day. Select whatever you want, and prepared to, so as you can be able to shape the knowledge and experience to make something sustainable out of them. Also, to make the surprises you are about to get in your education to be positive ones associated with pleasure empowering and preparing you for the market in large. Of course, along the way there would be a mixed ups and downs. The day you enter the university heading for a degree you are indeed embarking on a discovery journey. This is, of course, providing that you did a reasonable choice of what you want to study and where. Sometimes, it is not that simple, or straightforward, to do the most appropriate decision about how to prepare yourself for a future which you know a little, or even nothing about. Indeed, it is no more than an intelligent guess and for some of us, if not many, can be based (in a way or another) on others advise or experience. But, be sure about this, whatever you select to study it must be your own decision based on what you like to fuel your mind, enrich your life with and something that can fill your time with joy as well. Study is a journey of pleasure, hard work adventure, filled with compromises, social know-how and talented communication where “YES I CAN” is a MUST. It is one-way direction; short or long; wide or narrow; to the future since you can not get the resources and time you spend back.

http://study-abroad-blog-prague-ces.ciee.org/2012/02/where-is-all-the-weinerschnitzel.html

Apart from the importance of light for visualization and making objectives and images of things to be seen. Light itself is involved in the very production of living organisms, plants and animals, through what is known as “photosynthesis” where water, carbon dioxide and nutrients are fundamental raw materials. This is in addition of being essential for the production of electricity by modern solar panels through what is known as the “photo-electric effect” originally explaied by Einstein.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustration

The Internet and WWW provide enormous inspiration by being inevitable sources and indispensable visual-aided instruments for the transfer of knowledge. Modern ICT has unlimited and far unpredictable benefits not only what regards on-line education but also for more dynamic and effective application of science and technology. H2H “human-to-human” and M2M “machine-to-machine” communication are emerging more and more on their own and in combinations with an ever increasing flora of automation in industry, trade and household applications.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072572/A-little-drop-magic-One-woman-turns-drops-water-mushrooms-aliens–Spider-Man.html

People around the well have insufficient access to clean water because they do not have the energy resources to get it up, to or at home and to have it clean!

Follow “sustain-earth.com” to be informed and inform on the importance of understanding what water-energy nexus means for giving life to humans.