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.

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/).

Edible Insects as a Food Source 

Nutrient food is what we need and in the era of sustainability where the global population keeps growing while the natural resources on the planet Earth are declining more and more it becomes IMPERATIVE to have accessible and affordable nutrient food. Edible insects are emerging more and more as a food sources adding more insects to the Menu. 

The idea of eating insects is not new, in China, edible wasp collecting and cooking techniques were documented in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).  Also in Europe, Aristoteles (384-322BC) wrote about the best taste of a Cicada nymph and in early 20th century, the taste of chafer beetle soup (“Maikafersuppe”), was described as comparable to lobster soup, a highly appreciated dish in Germany and France. This culture expanded enormously, today about 1,900 edible insects are being consumed worldwide, mainly in Africa, Mexico and Asia, e.g. silk worm and crickets (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/06/will-eating-insects-ever-be-mainstream).

“Why not eat insects?” asked American pamphleteer Vincent Holt already in 1885, proof that selling the idea is nothing new. Two billion people worldwide routinely eat bugs an already appreciated food. Insects have also invaded foodie moments in the western world being a novelty in the European food scene as subversive garnishes for salads or cocktails, or on the menus of experimental pop-up (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/06/will-eating-insects-ever-be-mainstream).

Scientific American already supports high quality popular science. In this case describing the approach of biologists Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown by being unique to present biological concepts “fun, Informative and Extremely Successful”. They provide informative explanations, on topics people really want and need to know, in clear simple and colorful diagrams with pedagogic presentations (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2012/12/12/asap-science-fun-informative-and-extremely-successful/).

Here is how Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown use the scientific approach to inform on the relevance of insects in the exoanding food market (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iM8s1ch5TRw).

What is Poverty? Why do we have poverty or more importantly why poverty is much abundant in the so-called developing countries? Are the people there different, if yes how, why and since when? If no, why then they became poor and what are the reasons? What instruments do we have to monitor poverty? Since when we realized that we have poverty? Did poverty happen over-night? What are the differences between absolute poverty and relative poverty? Why economic models, including the ones that won the Nobel Prize were successful to solve poverty only in limited parts of the world? So, many questions to be asked and even with proper answers on these questions we will continue to have poverty unless we have sincere and serious sustainable solutions.

Though United Nations was founded 1945 (http://www.un.org/en/about-un/index.html) it was not until recently when UN observed that there is poverty and started to set ambitious goals in 2000 to reduce global poverty and inequality by 2015. Yet much of the poverty is still left and more seriously many impacts and threats from poverty are expanding and deepening on several scales. While the UN claims that it successfully cut extreme poverty in half, the multinational groups are conflicted about how much developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa can improve by 2030 (http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/12/31/un-wants-to-end-poverty-hunger-by-2030). 

GDP, which is used in economic models, by the World Bank and by politicians to monitor the economic growth around the world, fails enormously to bring about sustainable socio-economic developments around the world. It has even brought severe negative impacts in the developing countries and created new threats for the whole planet Earth and on the global scale. What regards the developing countries GDP can very well be used not as “Growth Domestic Product” but as “Growth Domestic Poverty”, as least for some if not for many developing countries. Major solutions need to be taken to switch over to more realistic indicators other than GDP that keeps pushing the developing world down hell the poverty spiral.

http://youtu.be/7M3WJQbnHKc

Many rural areas in the developing countries, in particular Africa and Asia, suffer from lack of clean water and sanitation. Poverty makes the situation extremely severe for large population what regards accessibility but also affordability. There exist simple, economic and Effective systems for water purification, e.g. biosand, that can remove the solid particulates and disease-causing micro-organisms from contaminated water. Slow sand filters contain very fine sand and usually function without pre-treatment and chemical additives such as flocculation and chlorination.

Harmful bacteria, parasites and other micro-organisms are greatly reduced through the so-called “bio-film”, a biologically active layer in top layers of the sand that gets created and destroys most pathogens “disease-causing organisms” as they can not survive there. The pathogens get consumed by micro-organisms in the bio-film as they are trapped in and on the sand surface; other filtration mechanisms support the quality improvement.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/fact-sheets-htm/Household%20WT.htm

Recent research tells that our immune system is mainly located in out digestive system. About 80% of the immune system lives in the gastrointestinal tract and probiotics can help. Probiotics, unlike antibiotics, can replenish the microflora in intestinal tract and promote a number of health-enhancing functions, including digestive function. They are found in unfermented and fermented milk, yogurts, miso, tempeh, soy drinks and some juices (http://instituteofhealthsciences.com/probiotics-help-immune-system-in-your-gi-tract/).

Our digestive systems get astonishing amount of solid foods and liquids from the entire meals of our lifetimes. Making right choices of these individual meals help our digestive systems to extract healthy compounds, process waste and to fend off nasty microbes. These are prerequisites to be healthy, feel well, make stomach lean, soothed, keep diseases away and be cancer-free.

Here are key advices on what you need to eat and why: http://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-eats/digestion/the-foods-to-eat-for-a-healthy-gut#YSkr4oW2RWdxDzIA.97

With growing probabilities that Iran will become the First Nation in the MENA region to join the world Nuclear Club then one can already ask who is next, why and what would be the future? (http://time.com/3751676/iran-talks-nuclear-race-middle-east/).

Going back in history there are logic questions to ask; was it right for the Americans to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to halt the war that killed millions of people and caused enormous damage? What lessons did we learn? Can we recall the disastrous huge damage that resulted from the fall of nuclear bombs? If so, why the members of countries joining the nuclear club is still increasing? Where there any wisdom for the decision that the bombs saved many lives as WW-II was brought to an end? What was the fate of WW-II if it continued? If we were getting wiser, why are we then initiating new wars and seeking more weapons? Would we bring more peace to the world which has already many threats (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml).

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

Is nuclear weapons a guarantee for security? If yes why our world is not secure? If, no why do we need them?

http://www.pressenza.com/2012/10/nuclear-weapons-are-no-guarantee-of-security/ 

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

Honeybee loss can induce global threats for food production as it is estimated that one third of the entire world’s food supply comes from pollination. Pesticides are a key suspect for honeybee loss and there is something that we can all do to counteract their use. 

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a global phenomenon in which worker bees from  European and North American hineybee colonies abruptly disappear. Colony collapse disorder is significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are being pollinated honey bees (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder).

The negative effects of the honeybee shortage were predicted years ago and there are several theorized causes of colony collapse disorder, from disease, to mites, to pesticides. However, in recent studies, e.g. U.C. Davis, where large sample of hives was examined, as much as 150 different chemical residues were found on the bees.

http://www.realfarmacy.com/effects-of-colony-collapse-disorder-now-manifesting-in-california/

For decades the US has been pushing for two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict and there are no other alternatives seem to be avialable for achieving peace in the MENA region. The end of the road will be taking up the issue in the UN as all negotiations, options and details have been fully assessed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-dismisses-netanyahus-softened-stance-on-two-state-solution/2015/03/21/27f0148a-d02e-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html

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/