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

What makes researchers different than other professionals? Are they as much the same as football, sport players and other professionals. Science, and a researcher, is very much critical about falsification of results as the nature of science itself is to seek and uncover reality and to know what is unknown and changing the unknowns to knowns. Professionals are supposed to provide services to the society and their follow citizens  as well. And, on the long run and in a free democratic society they have to do a good job that they can be proud of. This is also very important of running the society in terms of safety, security and long term stability and social coherency. Many many people hate corruptions, no-one likes to be cheated and societies have long struggles for achieving sustainable socio-economic developments. This is why we have referees, examinators, courts, judges, lawyers, etc. but are these instruments enough? As researchers are trained on checking each other and expected to react strongly on what may go wrong especially in high quality journals, the scientific community still has things to worry about. Falsification of data and misconduct in science is on the rise and we may expect additional instruments and resources to cope with the complex pattern of sophistication (http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/03/the-new-gatekeepers-reducing-research-misconduct.html).

Successful policies for coping with academic misconduct is a measure of the quality of the education and research. It is an important component of the management procedures and policies of academies and institutions (http://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/need-help/advocacy/misconduct/). Several new routines are now in place for making better decisions and appropriate selection of proposals and candidates for funding of strategic research projects, e.g. two-stage or cascade-steps of submission of applications, interviews, public debates, examination and evaluation committees, qualification lectures and oral discussions.

The culture of sport and football with referee teams, modern instrumentation and associated supporting control systems for the selection of the best may have increased our awareness about correct performance and uncovering the misconduct in professionalism (https://www.drblank.com/slaw12.htm).

In the ongoing process of globalization there are organized and coordinated webs and chains of worldwide gangs supported by instrumental legal and illegal interplay of misconduct forming a wide-range of global criminality, forced slavery and severe poverty. It is hard to find words to describe such accelerating trends that keep generating huge number of lost generation and victims. it is, indeed, far beyond what is known as human rights violation (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Pogge/publication/248818301_Severe_Poverty_as_a_Human_Rights_Violation/links/02e7e53435abc5ca8d000000.pdf).

Some examples of everyday products made with slave labor are chocolate, rubber, coffee, tobacco, electronics, diamonds, pornography, shrimps, carpets and palm oil. In the chain of processing these products forced slave labor often involves children (boys and girls) of ages down to four years with inhuman working conditions up to 18 hours a day, and more or less all the year around, with promised money that may never see. Such slave labor, adopted or sold, come from many countries in the so-called developing world, e.g. Ivory Cost, Liberia, Colombia, Dominican republic, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Uganda, Mexico, Thai, Philippine, Nigeria,  Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, the Middle East and many others. Such slave labor, amounts to 250 000 000 individuals, i.e. quarter of a billion, are lost generations and victims associated with the modern globalization process for serving the export markets such as Europe and the USA. They can suffer hard, cruel conditions and treatments as soldiers, prostitutes, domestic services, agriculture, construction, textile or carpet production. They can be exposed to severe physical and mental violence, chronic and painful damages and diseases, and with guarded threat of death. Many sources claim severe unethical practices even by leading and famous companies such as Marlboro, Apple and Foxconn. (http://youtu.be/nNY2Vl8jUjU).

When all solutions of socio-economic developments everywhere, and at all times, are reduced to one word “SUSTAINABILITY” translated to one set of SUB-GOALS to be achieved by all and everyone one, many legitimate questions arise. They need to be addressed and answered.

The evolution, dynamics and complexity of global economy, environments and social structures forced a new era with needs for holistic formulas for putting together economy, environment and social structures in Operational Instruments. The Rio+20 Conference brought about an agreement to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will build upon the Millennium Development Goals and converge with the post 2015 development agenda. 

When “Instruments” and Replaced by “Goals” the whole situation becomes less sustainable as the “Instruments” get adjusted for manageable short-term and local goals which in the long run leads to isolation and fragmantation.

At this stage we already see how the term “Sustainability” is increasingly used among NGOs, governments, public sector and civil society, but unfortunately with growing huge gaps beteen what is being said and what is being done. There are no general recipes about how “Sustainability” can be achieved as the three main components: economic; environmen; and social, are very much different on global and regional scales, and within and between sectors and stakeholders. As it seems now, the goals are rather short-term ones as compared to the most basic meaning of “Sustainability”, i.e. meeting the needs of the present without comprising the needs of future generations. The long-term success of people, companies and countries what regards the conservation of natural resources and environmental protection requires more social changes based on active forward-thinking and full-scale engagement. There is huge needs for the empowerment and active participation of all stakeholder based on not only “Top-Bottom” but also “Botton-Top” full-scale activities. In such operations both public and private sectors should establish stronger and trust-based and regulated total relations in the medium and long term. (http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog.html?tag=Post%202015%20Development%20Agenda).

In the emerging era of Sustainability that will shape the twenty first century there will be continuous needs for learning from past mistakes and preparing ourselves for reshaping our reality through education and puplic awareness as well as coupling science and technology (as well as other key sectors) to society, market and the population needs (http://sustain-earth.com/2015/04/sustain-earth-com-and-unesco-on-line-education-for-sustainable-development/).

For small kids lego, by being a pedagogic educational instrument, means develoging free imagination and creative thinking to innovation in problem solving. Lego provides means to translate abstract ideas to concrete reality, a play for more play with unknowns in brains that can not be translated or described in words to known touchable physical realities (http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-year-of-the-lego).

What is interesting is our process of innovation is how anstract ideas in science being transferred to innovative technological solutions for real daily life applications. In the ICT world innovations have not limit and still expands and brings to us an amazing and an ever expanding magnitude of applications.

The first stage of the ICT “Information and Communication Technology” revolution brought to us infinite capabilities for connecting peaple “human-to-human” communication which involves data-transfer. It has allowed the global community to be interactive on-line and in real-time with enormous new possibilties for education to share classrooms, lectures and to provide professionals with unlimited access to “Career-Development-Plans” opportunities. See for example SANDHAN visions to promote Distant Education and technology by making ICT more acceptable to Academic Fraternity.

The second stage of ICT revolution will allow humans to communicate with their bodies and their surrounding environments (http://youtu.be/b3Baz-F36Ck). The second stage of the ICT revolution is “human-to-life” communication through “Biosensors” where these sensors can tell us the status of our living conditions within us, i.e. In our bodies, and in our environments. In real-time and on-life they even give us unique information on different types of threats. An example of “Biosensors” is the use of DNA to detect toxic in environmental systems, e.g. lead and uranium and bacteria in water, and to give us information on food quality and health status in our bodies, e.g. through analysis of blood and urine (http://youtu.be/8A4Op2HzdQ8).

The global water cycle is an essential machinery for atmospheric cleaning of the air we breath. Planet Earth has, generally, a wide-range of natural processes, e.g. sedimentation and filteration, that continuously scavenging and remove hazardous compounds from surface- and groundwater. Human activities have posed and still posing continuous and increasing threats to air and water qualities through production of waste and pollution both In the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. The water we drink and the air we breath needs to be fresh and free from pollution. Waste and pollution are causing accelerating costs for counteracting the degradation of air and water resources.

Production of acceptable water quality, for example, requires constant implementation of management policies on different scales, i.e. instruments, approaches and regulations for affordable, accessible and continuous supply of drinking water. Yet, under the increasing pressures and competition on water resources.

Nano-technologies have wide-spectra of real-time and on-line solutions with huge range of applications what regards not only monitoring of water resources but also of improving their qualities by various purification solutions and waste/pollution treatments processes. Nano-technology based sensors can be produced for real-time and on-line applications with unique advantages for contiuous remote, effective and economic operation, control and monitoring of many processes. As with all other technologies, there are some unknown side-effects; in this case slow-rates of leakage of nano-particles and compounds (especially with aging) to the environment (air and water).

Click to access 42326650.pdf

 

There is an expanding nano-technology based applications of biosensor for health, medical, food, environmental and other important applications. These biosensor can be used for continuous online and real-time monitoring of changes in life-related processes. 

US scientists have, for example, developed durable biosensors that can be printed directly onto clothing thus allow continuous biomedical monitoring outside hospitals. Read the story!

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/ChemTech/Volume/2010/05/biosensors_in_briefs.asp

The current trends in the international security environments are very dynamic and constantly changing and shifting. Tension in major parts of the world are in best cases persistent, if not growing e.g. Europe. New and serious tensions are to emerge more and more, e.g. the MENA region and Africa. All these tensions either existing or emetging are caused by transnational criminality or by old ethic, religious, territorial or separatist disputes to contest existing borders.

Trends in the international security environment

Water means everything from health, nature, urbanization, industry, energy, food and equality. It is part of our daily life everywhere and at anytime. It is the heart of sustainability and essence of life. Today the 22nd of March, World Water Day, is an occasion for us to celebrate water as ancient Egyptians did (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_of_the_Nile). To promote water and sanitation in Africa there is a dedicated Facebook page for communication and information, visit it at: (https://m.facebook.com/commonwealthafricabuja/posts/1610941099118189).

http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/