THE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

Presents

A Technology and Innovation Seminar

"The Geopolitics of Energy"

Dr. James Conca
New Mexico State University
Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
5:00 - 6:30pm
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW, Room 602
Washington, DC 20052

Refreshments will be served
Please RSVP to cistp@gwu.edu

For additional information on this or any other CISTP event, visit http://www.gwu.edu/~cistp

Read more!

Must we chose between innovation and sustainability?

For all of you who are itching to get back into the classroom come September so you can get your hands on some good S&T debate, you might want to point your cursor over to the Harvard Business School Online. Specifically, there is an Open Thread posted by Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab.

His post poses to readers the idea that innovation and sustainability are at odds. His hypothesis is thus:
Innovation feeds society's need for consumption, and sustainability is supposed to break us of our consumption habits. The comments posed by readers are quite interesting and insightful.
One post, by a reader names Sean states,
"Innovation is a significant change to a process that adds new value.
Sustainability is the effort to minimize a process's external costs that would otherwise be imposed on society."

A similar but different question could be raised as well. As students and practitioners of policy, how can we make sure that innovation and sustainability are not at odds, but rather working together? Or, if you believe the two are nemeses of each other, what policies are appropriate to make sure they can at least coexist without minimizing the positive effects of both?

Please leave your comments below.
Read more!

Spotlight on: Labmeeting.com

In an age when it feels as though if it isn't online then it doesn't exist, there are an increasing number of programs/solutions/tools to help people connect/manage or simply get their work done. This same mentality is being used in the laboratory via www.labmeeting.com

Check out this post on techcrunch which gives an overview of the motivation for and history of the site.

Though I have not used the site extensively, I've seen a few things:
- In order to join you must have a .edu email address and have a PI or Advisor listed as the person you are working for. This allows teams working in a specific group/lab to link together and share news, reports, articles, papers, protocols, etc.
- You can search for relevant published papers by keyword and add them to your collection. You can also receive updates when papers are made available that match your search criteria. For example, the keywords 'water purification' will land you (in preview mode) papers as diverse as "Sequential and simultaneous determination of bromate and chlorite (DBPs) by flow techniques: kinetic differentiation." AND " Feasibility of water purification technology in rural areas of developing countries." , among others.
- Within the lab you can receive/create events, notes, and notebook entries. This could be very useful for a PI trying to communicate within a large lab group, and also very helpful for teams working from more than one physical location.
- You can also view other members of labmeeting, along with their affiliation and areas of research. This could very well provide an interesting setting for researchers who have questions, are seeking expertise, or simply want to connect with other scientists working on similar issues. In a way, this aspect of the site could act as a social networking tool for laboratories.

As I am not working in a lab, I can not attest to whether or not it is actually being utilized, though the members' page looks is quite extensive. It looks like the site is used only by US institutions. If used internationally, I imagine it could help countries, both developed and developing, tap into new resources. One topic some of us at GW have come across is the idea of the 'new invisible college'. Could labmeeting be used as a tool to bring science to resource poor areas and help them plug into the scientific network?

If you have friends and colleagues in labs, please tell them about this tool. I'd be interested in hearing about what they think. Read more!

Scientists Without Borders

Scientists Without Borders is an idea I had for the past year or so and now its been brought to reality thanks to The New York Academy of Sciences and UN Millennium Project. The mission of SWB is to match needs with resources focusing on capacity-building in developing countries, in areas of public health, environment, energy, and natural resources among others, using science and technology as the primary tools.

I feel this is a great opportunity to showcase what resources SISTP and/or CISTP have to offer and also to get involved in meaningful work beyond the traditional academic role. I have been in contact with SWB's Executive Director, Dr. Evelyn Strauss and would welcome ideas and suggestions from our group that I can bring up with her the next time. Read more!