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Category: policy – Page 47
First wave 🌊.
Your questions answered — an update (11−03−2020): Professor Neil Ferguson on the current status of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak, case numbers, intervention measures and challenges countries are currently facing.
Read all reports including estimates of epidemic size, transmissibility, severity, phylogenetics, undetected cases, prevalence and symptom progression here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-gida
Technology Policy Discussion Event for Presidential Candidates: Featuring Adam Kokesh, Ben Zion, John Macafee, Vermin Supreme, Zoltan Istvan and more.
Causes event in Melbourne, VIC, Australia by DEBT NATION on Sunday, March 15 2020.
NASA’s Ames Research Center in California has issued a mandatory policy for employees to work from home after one worker tested positive for the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.
The research center, which is located in Moffett Field in the Silicon Valley, has been placed on restricted access after the employee was confirmed to have the coronavirus on Sunday (March 8).
I am not naive — I’ve worked as an aerospace engineer for 35 years — I realize that PR can differ from reality. However, this indication gives me some hope:
“The draft recommendations emphasized human control of AI systems. “Human beings should exercise appropriate levels of judgment and remain responsible for the development, deployment, use, and outcomes of DoD AI systems,” it reads.”
This is far from a Ban on Killer Robots, however, given how many advances are being overturned in the US federal government (example: the US will now use landmines, after over 30 years of not employing them in war), this is somewhat encouraging.
As always, the devil is in the details.
How close are we to creating a synthetic human genome?
Creating humans is also an ethical minefield. Unsettled questions about who might own a synthetic human genome abound. Boeke warns that ownership could come down to who ends up funding the project development. Rob Carlson, a co-author of the GP-Write proposal, is even more skeptical of the idea of a patented artificial human genome, pointing out via email that “as soon as there is any possibility of a synthetic genome being used to germinate a live human, then ownership is obviously out of the question anyway…because you are now talking about owning a person.”
So far the GP-write project has been more talk than action, with large consultation meetings held between scientists and policy experts. The project has yet to attract significant funding. Perhaps successes in other organisms like yeast will embolden governments and private industry to open up to the idea of a man-made human genome.
Congratulations to Osinakachi Gabriel for his launch of the first publication the TAFFD’s “Magazine of the Future” — Also thanks for the Bioquark (page 37) and Regenerage (page 72) profiles — https://issuu.com/taffds/docs/taffd_s_magazine_2019 #Futurism #Longevity #Transhumanism #Biotechnology #Health #Wellness #Regeneration #LifeExtension #Aging #Immortality #IraPastor #Bioquark #Regenerage #Ideaxme #Singularity #Consciousness #AI #JasonSilva #ArtificiaIIntelligence #SENS
In this first issue by Trandisciplinary Agora For Future Discussions, we approach reality from a transdisciplinary perspective in order to find unity and greater understanding of the world as we enter a new paradigm in technological advancements that will lead us to transcending our own biology while enhancing our mental and physical limitations. We explore all topics that relate to transhumanism, cybernetic singularity, energy, consciousness, international policy, electromagnetic forces, language, AI, digitalization, ethics, philosophy, biotechnology, futurism and more.
The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human–microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.
President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.
More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.
“Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”
by
There’s a short list of weapons that should never be used in war. Landmines are high on that list.
“Mr Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines,” said Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel peace prize for her work campaigning against the weapons.
“Mr Trump’s landmine move would be in line with all of his other moves to undercut arms control and disarmament in a world much in need of them.”
CNN reported that the policy change was the result of a Pentagon policy review ordered by the former defence secretary James Mattis, which found that the prohibition “increased risk to mission success” and increased danger to US armed forces.