Questioning networks: May protests in Spain
You may have not heard about it yet, but you´ll probably hear about it soon: there are civil protests going on in Spain, and they’re getting bigger and louder each minute, on and offline.
View ArticleIs democracy catching up with finance? (Spring of protests in Spain and...
To an increasing extent, social movements such as those ongoing in Spain –and elsewhere in Europe and the world- are becoming a conscious opportunity for exploring new paths for democracy. These...
View ArticleScience Policy Failure Costs Lives
A recent issue of Science magazine features a news article about seven scientists in Italy who are facing manslaughter charges for not predicting the danger of an earthquake that killed 308 people....
View ArticleIn search of pro-poor nanotechnology in South Africa: From cell phones to...
We know that nanotechnology can build a golf club that will extend your drive by a few feet, but will it help the poor in South Africa? The CNS Thematic Research Cluster on Equity, Equality, and...
View ArticleOpening the World Bank in the Information Age
The headline reads 'Cracking Open the World Bank.' Above, a graphic shows ethereal streams of 1s and 0s issuing from a vault, its heavy door slightly ajar. The story below tells of a revolution at the...
View ArticleRedesigning Innovation to Benefit the Poor
The CNS Thematic Research Cluster on Equity, Equality, and Responsibility spent the first two weeks of July conducting fieldwork on how nanotechnology research and development in South Africa can...
View ArticleFIFA, the NIH and Nanotechnology in South Africa
Learning about nanotechnology here in South Africa has meant learning a lot of new acronyms. I was surprised the other day when a scientist mentioned two familiar acronyms that, at first, seemed...
View ArticleGetting Paid to Publish
It’s all too common in the USA that scientists must pay hundreds of dollars to have their research published. But imagine getting paid to publish instead of paying to publish. This...
View ArticleNanotechnology, Water, and Rural Poverty in South Africa
Towards the end of our field work, Team H2O (the subset of our delegation focusing on water applications of nanotechnology) got a look at rural poverty in South Africa. I have already blogged on urban...
View ArticleDo Developing Countries Need any New Agricultural Technology?
This summer I presented the results of my study about the potential contributions of nanotechnology to the agricultural sector. One of my classmates from Ghana made a very intriguing comment: he said...
View ArticleNano for its technological promise or nano for meeting national goals in...
My biggest realization on our trip to South Africa was the idealism associated with participating in a cutting edge science like nanoscience. I found that by and large, the scientists, in particular...
View ArticleThe Emerging Technology Cacophony Moratorium Mad-lib
We've all read, and many of us have agreed with, the impassioned pleas for moratoria on, or at least caution towards, emerging technologies such as nanotechnology. But it turns out you can only read...
View ArticleNew Apollo missions or scientist monks? What should the role of science...
What should be the role of science fiction (SF) in informing how we develop and govern science and technology? Some SF is just for fun, some SF explores what it means to be human under different...
View ArticleThe Dangers of Hype and Hope
When I ask my students whether it is okay for them or others to overstate the possible outcomes of their research in order to get funding, a large number of them say they are comfortable with it....
View ArticleSports - Science, Technology, and Society
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday, graduate research assistant Rider Foley discusses the threat of severe brain injury brought upon through impact sports.
View ArticlePresident Obama's Outdated Energy Future
Jen Fuller (PhD student in ASU's environmental social science program) and Sharlissa Moore (research associate at CSPO and student in the HSD program) review President Obama's energy policy outlined...
View ArticleEnergy's Little Secret
In this Soapbox post, CSPO Associate Director Clark Miller discusses the Department of Energy's little secret... that it is not and has never been the nation’s lead agency on energy policy.
View ArticleMoving Power, Production, or Consumption
Elisabeth Rosenthal’s latest article in The New York Times Sunday Review is the latest rehash of one of the oldest debates surrounding energy—the ongoing flap over where to site the technologies...
View ArticleWhen scientists go rogue, is assassinating them ever justified?
After the fourth murder of an Iranian physicist, G. Pascal Zachary looks into the history of government scientists during times of tension. When scientists go rogue, is assassinating them ever...
View ArticleBetter than the chair.
In the midst of the full-frontal politics that now passes for the nominating conventions of the two major political parties in the United States comes a modest opportunity for sober reflection by the...
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