what is global science for global wellbeing essay

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Global Science for Global wellbeing Essay – Check out the Essays of 100-300 words as well as Long Essays!

Global Science for Global wellbeing Essay: Global science is the practice of conducting scientific research and sharing knowledge on a global scale, with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing of people and the planet. It involves collaboration and communication across borders and disciplines, as well as the use of evidence-based approaches to solve complex problems. The concept of global science for global wellbeing is based on the understanding that many of the world’s biggest challenges, such as climate change, pandemics, and food insecurity, are global in nature and require coordinated efforts to address. By bringing together scientists and experts from different regions and fields, global science can generate new insights and solutions that are tailored to local contexts.

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100-word essay on Global Science for Global wellbeing

Global science for global well-being is the idea that scientific research and collaboration can improve the health and well-being of people worldwide. It involves breaking down barriers between countries and disciplines to generate innovative solutions to global challenges, such as climate change, pandemics, and food insecurity. By promoting equity and inclusivity, global science ensures that research benefits all communities, regardless of their location or socioeconomic status. The goal is to create a more sustainable and resilient world, where everyone has access to the resources they need to thrive. Through global science, we can work together to safeguard the health and wellbeing of present and future generations.

300-word essay on Global Science for Global wellbeing

By creating solutions to the problems facing the globe, science plays a crucial role in enhancing global well-being. Global science, which incorporates international cooperation between scientists and researchers, has the potential to speed up the process of achieving Sustainable Development as set forth by the UN.

Public health is one area where global research can significantly influence world well-being. There is a greater demand than ever for effective and efficient healthcare solutions due to the introduction of new diseases and the spread of current ones.

Global science can contribute by producing vaccinations, new medications, and better knowledge of how illnesses spread. Global science, in addition to healthcare, can assist lessen the effects of climate change.

Sea levels are rising, there are more frequent and severe natural disasters, and biodiversity is disappearing as a result of global warming. By collaborating, scientists can create long-term solutions that can lower greenhouse gas emissions and lessen the effects of climate change, such as new farming practices and technologies for renewable energy sources.

Global science can also be extremely important for ensuring food security, especially in underdeveloped nations where hunger and malnutrition are still major problems. Scientists may contribute to ensuring that everyone has access to healthy food by utilizing cutting-edge technologies to enhance agricultural practices and boost crop yields.

Last but not least, global science can aid in expanding access to employment and educational opportunities. Scientists may assist in removing geographic obstacles that keep individuals from accessing chances for education and employment by developing cutting-edge solutions like online learning platforms and remote work technology.

In conclusion, achieving global well-being depends on global science. Together, scientists can create long-term answers to some of the world’s most urgent problems, such as public health issues, climate change, food security, and business prospects.

We must emphasize the discovery of solutions that can benefit everyone, irrespective of their location or socioeconomic standing, and we must maintain our investment in global science.

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Long essay on Global Science for Global wellbeing

Global science for global well-being refers to the practice of conducting scientific research and sharing knowledge on a global scale to improve the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. The concept of global science recognizes that many of the world’s most pressing challenges, such as climate change, pandemics, and food insecurity, require coordinated efforts to address.

One of the key benefits of global science is the ability to leverage diverse perspectives and expertise from around the world to develop innovative solutions. By breaking down silos between countries and disciplines, global science fosters collaboration and the exchange of ideas, leading to more effective and efficient approaches to complex problems.

Another important aspect of global science is the promotion of equity and inclusivity. By engaging with local communities and stakeholders, global science can ensure that research is conducted in a way that benefits all communities, regardless of their location or socioeconomic status. This involves addressing structural barriers that limit access to research and innovation and ensuring that the benefits of scientific advances are shared equitably.

Global science has the potential to drive progress in a wide range of fields, from public health to renewable energy. For example, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, global science has played a critical role in developing vaccines and treatments, sharing best practices in prevention and control, and monitoring the spread of the virus. Similarly, global science has been instrumental in advancing sustainable development goals, such as clean water and sanitation, renewable energy, and responsible consumption and production.

However, the practice of global science is not without challenges. One major obstacle is the lack of funding and resources dedicated to international collaboration and research. There are also cultural and linguistic barriers that can hinder effective communication and collaboration, as well as political and economic obstacles that can limit access to data and resources.

To overcome these challenges, it is important to build strong partnerships and networks among researchers, institutions, and governments around the world. This can involve establishing collaborative research programs, sharing data and resources, and investing in infrastructure and capacity-building initiatives.

In conclusion, global science for global wellbeing is a powerful tool for promoting progress and improving the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. By fostering collaboration, promoting equity and inclusivity, and driving innovation, global science has the potential to create a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future for all. To realize this potential, it is important to overcome the challenges of funding, resources, and communication and build strong partnerships that enable international collaboration and research.

FAQs on Global Science for Global wellbeing Essay

The phrase “global science for global wellness” describes the process of doing scientific research and disseminating knowledge on a global scale in order to enhance the health and wellbeing of people everywhere. 

Global science is crucial because many of the most urgent problems facing the world are on a global scale and need for coordinated responses. Global science can create original solutions to challenging issues by drawing on a variety of viewpoints and subject matter experts from around the globe.

Initiatives to address pandemics, food insecurity, and climate change are a few examples of global science initiatives. For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gathers scientists from all around the world to evaluate the most recent findings in climate science and assist in the formulation of policy. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) strives to improve low-income nations’ access to life-saving immunizations.

Global science has a number of difficulties, such as a lack of financing and resources for worldwide research and collaboration as well as linguistic and cultural obstacles that may make it difficult to cooperate and communicate effectively. Access to information and resources may also be constrained by political and financial constraints.

Global collaborations and networks between scholars, organisations, and governments are crucial for overcoming these obstacles. In order to do this, joint research programmes may be established, data and resources may be shared, and infrastructure and capacity-building projects may be funded.

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Essay on Global Science for Global Wellbeing

Global Science for Global Wellbeing is a topic of immense importance in today’s world. The theme of National Technology Day 2023 is also ‘Global Science for Global Wellbeing’ so it has become very popular topic of discussion. This essay on Global Science for Global Wellbeing aims to explore the importance of global science for global wellbeing and its impact on society and their potential for improving global wellbeing.

Science is an essential tool for human beings in understanding the world and the universe. It has played a crucial role in shaping our modern world, from medicine to technology. However, science is also a global phenomenon that transcends borders, cultures, and languages. The scientific community worldwide shares knowledge, research, and discoveries, collaborating towards a common goal of global wellbeing. It brings together experts from different fields to discuss their research and offer insights into how science can be harnessed to create a better world for all. Lets explore the importance of global science for global wellbeing and its impact on society.

Global Science for Global Wellbeing

Global Science: Science is a global enterprise that brings together scientists from different parts of the world to collaborate on research and development. Advances in technology and transportation have made it easier for scientists to work together across borders, and the internet has revolutionized the way they communicate and share information. Global science and artificial intelligence allow for the sharing of knowledge and expertise, leading to faster progress and better results. Scientists worldwide can learn from each other, collaborate on research, and work towards common goals that benefit humanity as a whole.

Global wellbeing: Global wellbeing refers to the overall health and well-being of people worldwide. It is a complex concept that encompasses physical, mental, and social health, as well as economic and environmental factors. Global wellbeing is affected by various factors, including climate change, poverty, disease, and conflict. Science plays a crucial role in improving global wellbeing by providing solutions to these problems and improving the quality of life for people worldwide.

Impact of Global Science on Global Wellbeing

Global science has had a significant impact on global wellbeing by improving health, providing solutions to global challenges, and driving economic development. Here are some examples of how global science has contributed to global wellbeing:

Improving Health

Global science has led to significant advances in medicine, helping to improve health outcomes worldwide. Advances in biotechnology and genetic research have led to the development of new treatments for diseases such as cancer and HIV/AIDS. Global science has also helped to improve public health, through the development of vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. The sharing of knowledge and expertise in the scientific community has led to faster progress in medical research, resulting in better health outcomes for people worldwide.

Solving Global Challenges

Global science has also played a critical role in finding solutions to global challenges such as climate change, food security, and energy. Scientists worldwide are working on developing new technologies to reduce carbon emissions, increase food production, and improve access to clean energy. Through collaboration and sharing of information, global science is driving innovation and progress towards a more sustainable future.

Economic Development

Global science has also contributed to economic development by driving innovation and creating new industries. New technologies and inventions have led to the creation of new jobs and industries, stimulating economic growth and development. Global science has also led to increased trade and investment, creating new opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs worldwide.

Challenges in Global Science for Global Wellbeing

Despite its many benefits, global science faces several challenges that impact its ability to contribute to global wellbeing. These challenges include:

Global science requires significant funding, which can be a challenge for many countries, particularly those in the developing world. Lack of funding can limit access to research and development, hindering progress and slowing down the pace of innovation.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property laws can create barriers to the sharing of knowledge and expertise in the scientific community. Patents and other forms of intellectual property protection can limit access to research and development, particularly for developing countries, which may not have the resources to pay for expensive licenses.

Language and Cultural Barriers

Language and cultural barriers can also hinder the sharing of knowledge and expertise in the scientific community. Scientists worldwide may speak different languages, have different cultural backgrounds, and may not have access to the same resources and information. These barriers can make it difficult for scientists to collaborate effectively and share knowledge, hindering progress and innovation.

Promoting Global Science for Global Wellbeing

To address the challenges facing global science, there are several steps that can be taken to promote global science for global wellbeing:

Increased Funding

Governments and organizations can increase funding for global science, particularly in developing countries, to ensure that all countries have access to the resources they need to contribute to scientific progress. This can be achieved through public-private partnerships, international aid programs, and increased investment in scientific research and development.

Open Access Policies

Governments and organizations can implement open access policies to promote the sharing of knowledge and expertise in the scientific community. Open access policies would ensure that research and information are freely available to all scientists worldwide, regardless of their location or financial resources. This would help to promote collaboration and innovation, driving progress towards global wellbeing.

Multilingual Communication

Efforts can be made to improve multilingual communication in the scientific community, making it easier for scientists worldwide to collaborate and share knowledge. This can be achieved through the translation of scientific publications and the use of multilingual platforms for communication.

Collaboration

Efforts can be made to promote collaboration between scientists worldwide, particularly between developed and developing countries. Collaboration can help to bridge the gap between different cultures and languages, promoting knowledge sharing and innovation.

Global science is an essential tool for promoting global wellbeing. It brings together scientists worldwide, promoting collaboration and innovation towards a common goal of improving the quality of life for people worldwide. Despite the challenges facing global science, there are several steps that can be taken to promote its growth and success, including increased funding, open access policies, multilingual communication, and collaboration. By working together, the global scientific community can continue to drive progress towards a more sustainable, equitable, and healthy world.

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Establishing a More Global Understanding of Wellbeing Through Research

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Our community of scholars will create a new set of globally accepted standards and wellbeing metrics, inspiring local action and public policy changes in service of societies, families and workplaces across the globe.

“The vision and scientific approach of the GWI to include globally diverse perspectives has the potential to create a paradigm shift in how the world conceptualizes and measures wellbeing.” Ed Diener, Ph.D., Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology (Emeritus), University of Illinois, and Scientific Advisor, Wellbeing for Planet Earth Foundation

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Declaration of World Science Forum 2019

Declaration of the 9th world science forum science, ethics and responsibility, text adopted on 23 november 2019, budapest.

With the encouragement and support of the partner organisations of the World Science Forum, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Science Council (ISC), the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), and the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC), we the participants of the 9th World Science Forum, held from 20-23 November 2019 in Budapest, adopt the present declaration.

World Science Forum (WSF), an outcome of the 1999 World Conference on Science, is a biennial event that since 2003 has been successfully assembling scientists, policymakers, industry leaders, civil society and the media to discuss the role of science in meeting global challenges.

In line with the recommendations of the 1999 World Conference on Science (WCS) on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge, and taking into account the 2011 Budapest Declaration on the New Era of Global Science, the 2013 Rio de Janeiro Declaration on Science for Global Sustainable Development, the 2015 Budapest Declaration on The Enabling Power of Science, and the 2017 Jordan Declaration on Science for Peace we reaffirm our commitment to the rigorous and ethical conduct of scientific research and the responsible use of scientific knowledge.

Science, Ethics and Responsibility –20 years after the 1999 World Conference on Science

The Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge endorsed by representatives of 155 governments in Budapest at the 1999 UNESCO World Conference of Science was a pioneering document outlining a clear vision for science and society in the 21st century. It defined an expanded role and responsibility for science in a new era of human history in which science and technology are primary drivers of societal change.

Indeed, in the past 20 years, we have seen a revolution in multiple fields of scientific research coupled with deep and ongoing change in our societies. New scientific discoveries in fields such as information and communication technologies, synthetic biology and gene editing, artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning have further increased the pace at which science and technology impact our environment and society, with the potential to entrench rather than reduce inequalities.

Environmental and social challenges including demography, climate change, pollution and water security have raised new expectations for science.

Globally, investment in research and development has greatly increased, and new state and non-state actors have reshaped the established global order and impacted the production of scientific knowledge and the distribution of science investment and funding.

In our societies transformed by the rise of new communication channels and social media, scientific knowledge is increasingly challenged in public discourse by opinions and beliefs based on distrust, insufficient engagement, poor science literacy, and inefficient communication of science to the public and policymakers. At a time of accelerating global change, it is particularly important that young people in all societies have access to scientific education.

We recall the 1999 Declaration on Science and the use of Scientific Knowledge and acknowledge the growing importance of the message of “Science for the 21st Century: A New Commitment” as presented in its recommendations.

We must ensure shared responsibility for ethical considerations to be recognised as intrinsic to defining the objectives of scientific inquiry, making funding allocations, and conducting, disseminating and applying research. This should apply in particular to the education and inclusion of young and emerging scientists and innovators.

We foster a proactive culture of self-regulation by scientists.

We embrace the Principle of Freedom and Responsibility in Science adopted by ISC member organisations, the renewed Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers adopted by UNESCO, and the AAAS Statement on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility as reference documents for further consideration.

We celebrate 20 years of international science dialogue since the 1999 World Conference on Science and 100 years since the establishment of the International Research Council, the first non-governmental organisation to foster scientific collaboration on a global scale. We affirm our commitment to scientific responsibility for the global public good through attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

1.      Science for global well-being

The value of science cannot be measured solely by its contribution to economic prosperity. Science is a global public good with the ability to contribute to sustainable development and global well-being.

We recognise the responsibilities of scientists to conduct and apply science with integrity, in the interest of humanity, for well-being and with respect to human rights.

We call for the reassessment of science and funding policies recognizing the value of science as a tool to push the boundaries of human knowledge, to promote universal well-being, to monitor, analyse and respond to environmental, social and economic challenges, and to address the capacity needs of scientifically lagging countries.

We embrace the freedom of scientists to plan and conduct research that may not be specifically responsive to any immediate socio-economic or environmental expectations. Good science must be free to fly when curiosity is the driving factor.

2.      Strengthen global standards in research integrity

In the world of globalised science there is a growing need for the harmonisation and promotion of research integrity which includes common codes of conduct and their enforcement. This should apply especially for rapidly developing areas of science and research performed by transnational entities.

We call for harmonisation and enforcement of standards of conduct of scientific research across borders and across public and private research.

We acknowledge that worthy research requires more than intellectual merit and impact; it must be ethical, inclusive, and socially responsible.

We call for the establishment of self-regulatory processes by which scientists can report suspected research misconduct and other irresponsible research practices, without fear of reprisal, and the establishment of procedures for responding to such allegations.

We support regional and national efforts to promote global standards of research integrity, and in particular we celebrate the emergence from World Science Forum 2017 of the Charter of Ethics of Science and Technology in the Arab Region.

3.      Fulfilment of academic freedom and the human right to science

While acknowledging that the principle of academic freedom is supported and promoted by science organisations globally, there is little consensus on the conditions that enable its fulfilment. In an evolving era in which science is increasingly dependent on research infrastructure, research funding, and top-down policy agendas, the concept of academic freedom must be revisited.

Academic freedom must operate at every point in the research process. It must encompass the autonomy of researchers and research institutions, access to peer-reviewed scientific knowledge and data without systemic barriers, access to research infrastructure and funding, and the freedom to set bottom-up research agendas in all fields of science, including social sciences, and the freedom to communicate scientific results.

We acknowledge that scientific freedom can only be respected by society if it is based on strict ethical principles.

We call on the international scientific community to develop new standards for the fulfilment of academic freedom, and to create tools to describe, monitor and measure its integral conditions.

We acknowledge the vital nature of curiosity-driven basic sciences. We welcome the UNESCO’s designation of 2022 as the International Year of Basic Sciences for Development.

We reaffirm our support for the rights of refugee and other displaced scientists.

We reinforce our commitment to promote the right to science for all—including those underrepresented and underserved by science, such as women and minorities —as an essential precursor to sustainable and prosperous societies and durable peace.

4.      The responsibility and ethics of communicating science

The pace of scientific discovery has quickened, but barriers to scientific information and the benefits of research remain. The increased complexity and volume of scientific information requires new methods of data validation and research dissemination. While the application of artificial intelligence opens new paths for the management of scientific research and data, it also raises concerns about privacy, control and the use of personal data. Such developments alter the landscape of access to knowledge and present challenges in transitioning to novel publishing models and the application of new communication strategies.

We reinforce our commitment to science as a global public good and support open science and new publishing models that grant access to scientific publications.

We recognize the importance of scientists engaging with the public about science, including the risks associated with its conduct or application and the acknowledgement of other interpretations of research.

We encourage scientists to foster citizen science and to promote the co-creation of actionable knowledge.

We recognize the imperatives for evidence-informed decision-making and a stronger science-policy-practice interface and, therefore, the need for scientists to be trained to communicate their work to decision-makers and the general public.

We recognize the powerful role of media in communicating scientific information and call for rigorous fact checking and analysis in reporting. We call for a reassessment of science’s relationship with media, particularly in view of conflicting or misleading news and information, and the use of false equivalence.

We encourage scientists to produce, apply and communicate science and to raise awareness of both the benefits and ethical considerations.

National Science Day 2023 Theme Is ‘Global Science For Global Wellbeing’. Know What It Means

National science day 2023: this year's theme is perfectly in sync with india assuming the g20 presidency, according to dr jitendra singh, union minister of science and technology..

National Science Day 2023: The theme for National Science Day 2023 is 'Global Science for Global Wellbeing'. The theme indicates India's emerging global role and rising visibility in the international arena, said Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of Science and Technology, according to a statement released by the Department of Science and Technology. 

India assumed the G20 Presidency on December 1, 2022. Singh said the theme for National Science Day is perfectly in sync with India assuming the G20 Presidency, as part of which the country will become the voice of the global south. 

National Science Day is observed annually in India on February 28 to commemorate the discovery of the 'Raman Effect'. 

According to the statement, Singh said India has acquired "global visibility" in the comity of nations, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and that the country is ready for outcome-oriented global collaboration to address the global challenges. 

Singh also said that when concerns, challenges and benchmarks assume global dimensions, the redressal should also be of global nature. 

ALSO READ | National Science Day 2023: Why Is It Observed On February 28? Know Its Significance And This Year’s Theme

He further said that the theme 'Global Science for Global Wellbeing' has been chosen to increase the appreciation of scientific issues globally, in order to ensure "global wellbeing". 

The minister recalled that last year, on the occasion of National Science Day, Modi had called for "Global Good". The Prime Minister had said: "Let us reaffirm our commitment towards fulfilling our collective scientific responsibility and leveraging the power of science for human progress". 

Singh said that in the present day, Indian scientific breakthroughs have reached from the lab to the land. He explained that applications of science are being used by every household to bring "ease of living" to the common man. 

Singh said this heralds a new era to provide opportunities to people and the scientific fraternity in India and abroad to come together, work together and experience the joy of conducting scientific research for the wellbeing of mankind. 

According to the minister, India is progressively marching towards becoming a global leader in industrialisation and technological development. The aim of India's new plan, 'Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2020', is to promote science more effectively and make it expert-driven. 

Explaining the rationale behind this year's theme for National Science Day, Dr Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, said the world, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, has come closer to fight global challenges.

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Global challenges need attention now: educating humanity for wellness and sustainability

• Published: 06 October 2021
• Volume 16 , pages 651–673, ( 2021 )

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• Kenneth Tobin 1 &
• Konstantinos Alexakos 1 , 2  

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This Editorial sets the stage for 18 papers on the theme, Contemplative inquiry, wellbeing and science education . The special issue consists of a diverse set of papers that complement one another while each contributes in unique ways that will stimulate reflexive practices among the science education community as they ponder how they can contribute to the resolution of global challenges that define our lifetimes. In this Editorial we address priorities for improved science literacy for a worldwide community so that moment-to-moment practices can reduce the world's carbon footprint and reverse global warming and related challenges such as species extinction. We posit that to meet particulars of global challenges facing humanity, science educators need to expand their roles and definitions of science education. Accordingly, in an era of COVID-19, there is an imperative to expand and deepen functional literacy in science and in particular wellness for everyone as part of a necessary education on the birth through death continuum. Our advocacy for the use of authentic inquiry affords learning from research and ensuring that all research participants have opportunities to learn from ongoing research and one another. We expect that all participants will benefit equitably from being involved in research. Participants are educated about what is learned from research in which they are involved, and how that improves their practices. We anticipate that much of what is learned from such research will be enacted in everyday life, thereby affording those with whom they interact to learn by being-with them. Because of the complex, chaotic and dynamic nature of today's world and its associated lifestyles, we address contemplative activities we regard as highly appropriate for doing science in a manner that is restorative and nurturing for ourselves and for the world. Specifically, we examine breathing meditation, meditating to increase blood oxygenation, walking meditation, loving kindness meditation, soft touch energy work and mindfulness. Each of these contemplative activities relates to knowing thyself better and promoting and sustaining wellness and wellbeing. We address self-help in relation to wellness because so many people follow one or two pathways when they become sick, i.e., they rest until their health improves and/or they go to the doctor who may diagnose/prescribe pharmaceuticals or changes in aspects of lifestyle (e.g., diet, more sleep). We provide examples of self-help practices that allow individuals to be autonomous and proactive in avoiding sickness, and directly addressing symptoms if and when necessary. Finally, we examine the potential of using a dialectical approach to teaching, learning and future rethinking of science education and science educators. Grand challenges of the moment demand no less than ongoing research with transformations that catalyze improvements now. We do not have a luxury of waiting for the right time, and the right time to enact sustainable lifestyles is now.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Παγκόσμιες Προκλήσεις Χρειάζονται Προσοχή Τώρα

Εκπαιδεύοντας την ανθρωπότητα στην ευεξία και την αειφορία.

Kenneth Tobin και Konstantinos Alexakos

Το άρθρο αυτό προετοιμάζει το έδαφος για 18 επιστημονικές εργασίες πάνω στη θεματική: Στοχαστική έρευνα, ευζωία και διδακτική των θετικών επιστημών. Αυτό το ξεχωριστό τεύχος αποτελείται από μια ποικίλα σειρά εργασιών οι οποίες όχι μόνο συμπληρώνουν η μία την άλλη αλλά παράλληλα η κάθε μία συνεισφέρει με το δικό της μοναδικό τρόπο ο οποίος εν τέλει θα διεγείρει τις αντανακλαστικές πρακτικές ανάμεσα στην κοινότητα των διδασκόντων των θετικών επιστημών, καθώς επεξεργάζονται το πώς μπορούν να συνεισφέρουν στην επίλυση των παγκόσμιων προκλήσεων που καθορίζουν την εποχή μας.

Στο συγκεκριμένο άρθρο γνώμης θέτουμε επί τάπητος τις προτεραιότητες για μια βελτιωμένη γνώση των φυσικών επιστημών για μια παγκόσμια κοινότητα ώστε οι ανά πάσα στιγμή πρακτικές να μπορούν να μειώσουν το παγκόσμιο αποτύπωμα διοξειδίου του άνθρακα και να αναστρέψουν την παγκόσμια αύξηση της θερμοκρασίας καθώς και σχετιζόμενες προκλήσεις όπως η παύση της εξαφάνισης των ειδών. Διατυπώνουμε λοιπόν την αρχή ότι καθηγητές των φυσικών επιστημών, για να ανταποκριθούν στις σύγχρονες παγκόσμιες προκλήσεις που αντιμετωπίζει η ανθρωπότητα, πρέπει να επεκτείνουν το ρόλο τους καθώς και τους ορισμούς τους σχετικά με τη διδακτική των θετικών επιστημών. Συνεπώς, στην εποχή του COVID-19 υπάρχει μια υποχρέωση να επεκτείνουμε και να εντείνουμε τη στοχαστική έρευνα στην επιστήμη και πιο συγκεκριμένα την ευημερία για όλους ως μέρος της υποχρεωτικής εκπαίδευσης στο συνεχές από τη γέννηση έως και το θάνατο.

Η υπεράσπισή μας για τη χρήση της αυθεντικής στοχαστικής υποστηρίζει τη μάθηση μέσω της έρευνας και διασφαλίζει ότι όλοι οι συμμετέχοντες ερευνητές θα έχουν την ευκαιρία να μάθουν από την τρέχουσα έρευνα καθώς και ο ένας από τον άλλον. Οι συμμετέχοντες εκπαιδεύονται για το τι μπορεί να αποκομίσει κανείς από την έρευνα στην οποία συμμετέχει ενώ παράλληλα η νεοαποκτηθείσα γνώση βελτιώνει τις πρακτικές τους. Περιμένουμε πως όλοι οι συμμετέχοντες θα ωφεληθούν ισότιμα από τη συμμετοχή τους στην έρευνα. Αναμένουμε πως το μεγαλύτερο κομμάτι αυτών που θα αποκομισθούν από την έρευνα θα εφαρμοσθούν στην καθημερινή ζωή και κατ’ αυτόν τον τρόπο θα υπάρχει η πολυτέλεια για εκείνους οι οποίοι αλληλεπιδρούν μαζί τους, να έχουν τη δυνατότητα να μαθαίνουν συνάμα με αυτούς.

Λόγω της πολύπλοκης, χαοτικής και δυναμικής φύσης του σημερινού κόσμου και των σχετιζόμενων με αυτών τρόπων ζωής, προτείνουμε στοχαστικές δραστηριότητες τις οποίες θεωρούμε ως τις πλέον κατάλληλες όσον αφορά τον τρόπο με τον οποίον ασκείται η επιστήμη και μάλιστα μέσω μιας οδού η οποία είναι ενδυναμωτική και ενισχυτική για τον εαυτό μας και για τον κόσμο. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, εξετάζουμε τον διαλογισμό μέσω της αναπνοής, το διαλογισμό ως μέσο για την αύξηση της οξυγόνωσης του αίματος, τον περιπατητικό διαλογισμό καθώς και τον διαλογισμό μέσω της αγάπης.

Απευθυνόμαστε στην αυτοβοήθεια σε σχέση με την ευεξία καθώς πολύ άνθρωποι ακολουθούν ένα ή δύο μονοπάτια όταν αρρωσταίνουν κλπ., ξεκουράζονται έως ότου η υγεία τους βελτιωθεί ή/και απευθύνονται στον γιατρό ο οποίος ενδέχεται να διαγνώσει τη νόσο/συνταγογραφήσει φαρμακευτικά σκευάσματα ή να προτείνει αλλαγές στον τρόπο ζωής (π.χ. δίαιτα, περισσότερος ύπνος). Παρέχουμε παραδείγματα πρακτικών αυτοβοήθειας οι οποίες επιτρέπουν σε όλα τα άτομα να είναι αυτόνομα και προορατικά στο να αποφεύγουν τη νόσηση και να καταπολεμούν συμπτώματα εάν και όποτε αυτό κρίνεται αναγκαίο.

Τέλος, εξετάζουμε την προοπτικής της χρήσης της διαλεκτικής προσέγγισης στη διδασκαλία, μάθηση και μελλοντικής επανεξέταση της διδακτικής των θετικών επιστημών και των διδασκόντων αυτής. Οι μεγάλες προκλήσεις του παρόντος δεν απαιτούν τίποτα λιγότερο από συνεχή εμπεριστατωμένη έρευνα με μετασχηματισμούς οι οποίοι θα επιφέρουν βελτιώσεις στο παρόν. Δεν έχουμε πολυτέλεια χρόνου. Η σωστή στιγμή είναι τώρα.

(Our thanks to Myrto Koutra-Iliopoulou for her translation of our abstract to Greek)

Then and now: a new vision for science education, but 16 years later, how can we meet the challenge?

In January, 2006 the founding editors of Cultural Studies of Science Education , Wolff-Michael Roth and Kenneth Tobin, announced the journal in a five-page Editorial. The first paragraph got right to the point (Roth and Tobin 2006 p. 1):

We are pleased to introduce with this volume the inaugural issue of a new journal, Cultural Studies of Science Education (CSSE), which was designed to provide new perspectives and new approaches to science education. In many ways, this new journal departs from the trodden paths in our discipline. CSSE is unique in focusing on the publication of scholarly articles that employ social and cultural perspectives as foundations for research and other scholarly activities in science education and studies of science. The journal encourages empirical and non-empirical research that explores science and science education as forms of culture enacted in a variety of fields that are formally and informally constituted. The editors seek to publish cutting edge scholarship to provide unique perspectives to ongoing problems associated with studies of science and science education and appropriate methodological advances that are salient to scholarly activities in these fields.

Roth and Tobin (p. 5) concluded the Editorial with the following affirmation:

We are introducing this new journal with the hope to contribute to the creation of a community of practice in which exchanges with peers become a major driving force of conceptual, theoretical, and methodological development. Debate, difference, and contradiction are essential elements in and of a community that considers itself as moving, continuously producing and reproducing itself in new forms, rather than steadfastly holding onto its past instantiations and the status quo. But our intentions alone will not bring about change, though it can support and foster it. Both our authors and our readers will be essential to the production of new forms of scholarship as well as new forms of scholarly community, and therefore, new forms of identity for ourselves.

The Editorial makes clear that CSSE did not seek to continue a status quo that already was served by numerous journals, each of which sought to do much the same thing—provide a forum for science educators to publish their work. The editors felt that it was time for a journal that was markedly different, and encouraging of difference and transformation of the field. They did not feel the task would be easy and they expected resistance, and especially concerted efforts to appropriate CSSE as yet another forum for mainstream publications. Importantly, the vision announced in the inaugural Editorial was to be dynamic, changing, initiated and nourished by a community, not by editors' initiatives alone.

The current list of aims and scope of CSSE (Springer, 2021 ) begins with two key characteristics of the journal that:

focuses on science education as a cultural, cross-age, cross-class, and cross-disciplinary phenomenon;

publishes articles that have an explicit and appropriate connection with and immersion in cultural studies.

Contemplative inquiry, wellbeing and science education: a special issue

If you want to worry about things, you're living at a great time.

Bill Nye, 7/23/2021 (MSNBC interview).

The leadoff quote for this section of our Editorial was selected from a TV appearance in which Bill Nye was interviewed about US and world responses to problems associated with the Anthropocene, including climate change, global warming, population size and distribution, fires, flooding, species extinction and possibilities for extinction of human life. Most of these topics are also addressed in this special issue of CSSE. In this Editorial we refer to these topics and others like them as grand challenges (Powietrzynska, Tobin and Alexakos, 2015 ).

Through the pervasive impact of his popular, award winning TV program, Bill Nye the Science Guy , many English-speaking viewers benefited from 100 half-hour programs that Nye hosted. Nye's zany demeanor and use of catchy production resources were entertaining and engaging. Also, the program addressed basic science literacy that connected to contemporary aspects of everyday life. Since the series wrapped up in 1998, Nye has been routinely involved as a spokesperson for science and science education. As is the case with many TV celebrities, he continues to project a larger-than-life image through his clothing, and exaggerated prosody and body movements, such as gestures. Furthermore, Nye is one of just a few science educators who are invited by national media networks in the USA to address the grand challenges and other science-related topics such as UFOs, and establishing human colonies on Mars.

We consider it as an imperative for science educators to step forward in teaching, research and service to address citizens' literacy concerning the grand challenges, lifestyles, and contemporary advances of science. We regard it as self-evident that science educators will not seek to compete with or even mimic Bill Nye in their efforts to educate a segment of a globally dispersed humanity. There is not just one path to be taken. Just as birds in flight create pathways to their destinations, there is no trace of the pathway that can guide those who may wish to get to the same destination. So, it likely will be for science educators with a vision for what they want to accomplish. Each science educator must forge a pathway that is deeply contextual and reflective of the resources that emerge to support their visions, which are necessarily collective, local, and dynamic.

This special issue of CSSE consists of 18 papers written by 48 authors, situated in five countries. The authors are quite diverse in terms of a variety of characteristics with approximately equal numbers of females and males, a relatively large number of ethnic groups, religious affiliations, and career levels (i.e., early, mid, and senior).

Each paper addresses one or more of the themes chosen for the special issue— Contemplative Inquiry, Wellbeing and Science Education . The authors push the boundaries envisioned when CSSE was created, and there is ample evidence that the authors expand conversations about grand challenges in myriad ways. We represent the expanding dialogue as seven interrelated clusters, each based on similarities among keywords provided for each paper that includes:

Vision for science education: nature experience, environmental education, ecology, ecopsychology, contemplative pedagogy, lived experience, Goethean science, and teacher education

Theoretical frameworks: Western worldview, atomistic worldview, humanizing science education, interdisciplinary, environmental ethics, ecological virtue, social justice, agential literacy, processual ontology, animism, Dao field, inner work, social justice, and equity

Human influences: Anthropocene, anthropocentrism, post Anthropocene, and post human(ism)

Research methodologies | methods: authentic inquiry, event-oriented inquiry, place-based, autobiographical narratives, reflective journalism, contemplative inquiry, poetic representation, and arts-based practices

Dynamic collectivism: growing together, lines of becoming, development, transaction, holism, embodiment, relationality, and shared decision making

Contemplative inquiry and practice: meditation, identity, mindfulness, reverence, radical listening, interbeing, and mindful consumption

Wellbeing: sustainability, care, self-care, experienced time, and professional vision

The structure and purposes of this Editorial

In this Editorial we set the stage for what is to follow in this special issue of CSSE. Our approach is grounded in collaborative research, undertaken in the past two decades. Through our own research and teaching, we connect our learning and growth with the seven themes addressed in the papers that comprise the special issue. By so doing, the Editorial is akin to an Op-Ed, providing resources for readers to engage reflexively. Our goal is to invite readers to join ongoing dialogues associated with the clusters that emerged from our reading of the papers.

Here, we do not review the papers that comprise the special issue. Instead in the sections that follow we present our work and standpoints. As clearly as possible, we make our views and understandings clear so that other research groups can consider what we write as points of departure.

In the sections that address contemplative inquiry and wellness respectively, we employ an approach that is fine-grained in its detail. Our purpose in so doing is that, for the most part, these areas are not addressed in other papers to the same extent as the other clusters. Accordingly, in a section on contemplative inquiry we provide details on several approaches to meditation and mindfulness. Similarly, in a section on wellness, we describe how soft touch energy work can be used to sustain good health and treat every day wellness issues like allergies, headaches, sore back, and excesses of emotion.

It is important to mention self-responsibility and having not only agency to believe what we want to believe but also to be educated enough, whether through formal schooling or through our own efforts to have the capacity to sift through the news and information available to us in a systematic, informed and open-minded manner. Teaching inquiry in science should go hand in hand with independent thought and exploration of thorny issues in science that extends beyond what is right or wrong with a focus on the process of learning for self-responsibility for our own health and wellness and in making informed political and scientific decisions globally. Hence, an emphasis in this editorial is on Knowing Thyself.

Teaching and learning inside and outside of the pipeline

The science curricula associated with teaching and learning in the pipeline are hotly contested with politicians, policymakers, and scientists being central stakeholders. It seems difficult for science educators to have a major impact on adapting the curriculum, even though they are often represented on committees at local, state, and national level to transform science curricula. Our experience suggests that little changes, even though there is widespread agreement among science educators on key issues such as de-emphasizing high-stakes testing, and creating science curricula that intersect with everyday life and the grand challenges.

We are struck by our experience that many science education researchers undertake research within a context of a pipeline that begins with pre-k education, and extends through to the teaching and learning of doctoral level students. It seems that relatively less time is dedicated to educating citizens along the birth to death continuum.

Education, sometime and someplace, should prepare humans to live responsible lives and enjoy good health. Accordingly, we advocate an expansion of science educators' roles to plan programs that cater for the life continuum—from babies to aged people who are nearing death and perhaps a transition to an afterlife. Although programs such as those we envision can take place in schools, the expansion we have in mind involves programs offered outside of the academic pipeline, extending from pre-K-12 to graduate level studies. Given the importance of curricula that prepare citizens for appropriate practices in their lifeworlds, the stakes are too high to be distracted from by squabbling about what is in and out of a within-pipeline curriculum.

The range of legitimate roles of science educators should expand, rather than spiral inwards to follow pathways forged by reductive pressures. For the past few years, we have committed to expanding our research and teaching to include out-of-pipeline activities and a broader vision for what science entails. Since the vast majority of our work has focused on teaching and learning in schools and colleges, we have a commitment to continue to offer interventions that are consistent with what we have learned in our ongoing research.

Konstantinos: Ever since reading Heesoon Bai’s paper Peace with the Earth ( 2015 ) and then Jeremy Narby’s book the Cosmic Serpent ( 1998 ), I have been in an on-going philosophical conversation with myself, my science education students and those around me about how we | I may come to understand what is living ... what we label as being alive. We label it as such because it reacts to the world with some level of humanly perceived activity (eating, replicating, etc.). Thus, I think it becomes easy for us in the West to create a definition for what constitutes being alive that very much excludes whole categories that should also be seen as alive, like mountains, seas, planets, etc. …

We ask our students to think outside of the box but our thinking, our teaching in formal classrooms is literally inside a box. We live in a box, we teach and learn in a box, and often we are buried in a box. Topics we regard as priorities are not highly suited to learning in boxes, e.g., what makes us human, our lives, and our interactions with the world around us.

What more is there?

In our multilogical approach to research we like to consider two broad questions such as—what is happening? And why is that happening? We seek answers that reflect different perspectives within a community, and identify patterns of thin coherence together with contradictions (Sewell, 2005 ). Our standpoint is that there is merit in answering broad questions in ways that retain polysemia, i.e., many meaning systems, and polyphonia, i.e., many voices. Our experience is that the approach is non-reductive, or to use a spiral metaphor—expansive in that what we learn about the two questions spirals outward, and is reflective of how participants make sense of social life and the ways they choose to represent what they know.

Based on our understandings of the crisis of representation (Greene, 1994 ), we regard what we learn as an underrepresentation of what can be known. No matter who we approach to answer our questions, and how creative and expansive they are in providing answers, there always will be more. Accordingly, we seek to find additional information by asking ourselves a third broad question (Garfinkel, 1967 ; Roth, 2009 )—what more is there? We realize this is not a direct response to the crisis of representation, however, we provide interventions to "disharmonize the system," akin to casting a stone into a placid lake. As the stone breaches the surface of the lake, it creates waves, and in so doing, hidden forms of culture reveal themselves. Stated differently, we design interventions to create moments of reflexivity, when participants become aware of practices of which previously they had little or no awareness. For example, we may ask participants to respond to the following assertion: when a person comes closer to me than 3 feet, I feel that my personal space is violated.

This assertion may not address an issue that a participant has particularly been concerned about, and the initial response to our invitation to speak might be quite exploratory. Then, in subsequent social interaction, someone might come closer to them, and they notice the intrusion and associated emotions of irritation and discomfort. In our research project, we have designed numerous heuristics to serve as interventions that heighten awareness to specific social phenomena (Tobin and Alexakos, 2021a ). The heightened awareness is potentially transformative, and serves as a vehicle for disseminating what we have learned from our research. That is, use of a heuristic is a mechanism for meeting the goal of catalytic and tactical authenticity (see further discussion of these criteria later in the Editorial).

In regard to what has been accomplished in the papers and associated research featured in this special issue, we ask, what more is there? And how can we contribute more to what we have learned from these papers and myriad others authored by this set of authors and their associated research squads?

To readers of this Editorial, we cast some stones into an impressive reservoir of knowledge:

To what extent can we contest Western imperialist ideology in our research?

How can non-Western knowledge systems provide complementary perspectives on our research that can expand and enhance what we have learned and the potential of our research to be socially transformative?

How do we engage in cogenerative dialogues that include non-Western people and non-Western wellness philosophies and practices focused on making sense of our research?

Below we present several scenarios and questions for conversation, especially given the focus of this special issue and the individual foci of the articles published in this issue. What is your response to each?

The systemic destruction of our world is overwhelmingly caused by international finance capital, multinational agribusiness, the petrochemical industries, imperialistic wars, big pharma, etc. Frequently, contemporary research sets the blame for the plight of the world on individuals and their lack of education. It is as if some poor farmers or coal miners, struggling to keep their families from starving, are just as responsible and to blame for damage to our planet as global corporations.

Whereas COVID-19 is caused by a virus, the pandemic and harrowing death toll and suffering that followed have been exacerbated and magnified by a system where profits matter more than human lives.

How are both good and evil inextricably entwined with the COVID-19 pandemic, and in many other current and historical sites of conflict?

What is the role of self-responsibility in relation to global, grand challenges and personal wellness projects?

A time of crisis

Arguably we write at a time of crisis, especially as it applies to public understanding of and appreciation/respect for science. In the wake of an era of former President Trump in the USA, in which science, and most everything else is hyper-politicized, we face a major contradiction that is contextualized in the rapid spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19. The present international spike in positive cases of COVID-19 is characterized by the emergence of the Delta variant as the predominant cause of infection, with greatest risks for serious health issues being associated with those who are unvaccinated. A paradox in the USA is that there is ample supply of multiple vaccines, which are free of cost to potential recipients. For a variety of reasons, as of this writing, about 50% of the US population is not fully vaccinated. An underlying problem that has emerged is widespread fear and disbelief of science and willingness by many to choose to believe intentional and harmful lies, conspiracy theories, and misleading claims pushed by media personalities and politicians at local, state, and federal levels.

Setting aside the intentions of those responsible for distributing massive streams of misinformation, it is important to note that vaccines and vaccination are not the only targets. Medical science in particular, and science more generally are targets that have shaken public confidence in practices, and necessary to prevent massive surges in hospitalization and death rates, e.g., when and where to wear masks, when and where to quarantine, and whether shutdowns of public gatherings are necessary and can be mandated.

There is a clear need for science educators to have a prominent role at this time. Consider the following exchange between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Republican Senator Rand Paul during a congressional committee hearing in the USA (New York Times July 20, 2021). Fauci is director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the president of the USA. Paul, an ophthalmologist, accused Fauci of lying to Congress about the National Institutes of Health funding the "gain of function" research in Wuhan, China. Fauci responded angrily, "[i]f anybody is lying here Senator, it is you." Prior to this episode in an ongoing public dispute between two well-known figures, Paul has repeatedly opposed all efforts of the current President and White House staff and any legislative efforts to fund vaccines and/or mandates such as wearing masks, requiring social distancing, and shutting down institutions in which social gathering can facilitate transmission of the virus. How can the public be educated now, to address this challenge that is pervasive within the USA and elsewhere in the world?

Our position is that science educators have a responsibility to address emerging aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that can transform social life. On the one hand, there are crises related specifically to the pandemic and then there is a larger picture of population, sustainability of the planet, climate change, and arresting the rate of species extinction, including possibilities of humans becoming extinct. As we have maintained for more than 25 years, science educators should undertake research that produces greater understanding of personal, and others' perspectives on salient issues and substantive changes in social life; changes that transform practices in ways that address grand challenges such as those we discuss here, together with those explored in the articles that comprise the special issue.

Accordingly, we exhort science educators to look beyond what has been commonly seen as standard science curricula. It is the failure of these curricula, the way students are taught science and a pipeline that excludes such a high proportion of our youth, our adults, and our elderly, that is on full display during this COVID-19 epidemic with the multitude of people becoming ill while the means to fight this pandemic are available. It is these failures and the failure of the system as a whole that has left millions desperate and destitute, deprived of proper healthcare and livable income while the few grow ever so wealthy and head for the stars. It speaks volumes that globally many people have had very little real access to the COVID-19 vaccines further exacerbating the health and economic hardships they face.

We take this opportunity to emphasize a high priority for citizen literacy in science education. In a context of science being politicized to an increasing extent, it is becoming customary for claims and assertions that are science-based to be considered as political assertions. Also, there are widespread misunderstandings of the peer review process, and ways in which scientists handle difference. What is needed as far as citizen education is concerned extends beyond what is possible in a 30-s exchange on national TV, or even a 12-min video presentation on YouTube.

There is a need for courses and programs designed to promote literacy in science for everyone, across the age continuum. These curricular development activities, in conjunction with associated research programs to ascertain whether the curricula make a difference, should, address the grand challenges and environmental and personal sustainability, personal hygiene, nutrition and sexuality, health and wellness practices, poverty, and access to quality food and health care. Any such research should itself aim to be transformative in the sense that participants change their ways of being in their day-to-day lives and aim to contribute to the communities researched and beyond.

In the next section we take this exhortation further in a discussion of authentic inquiry and multilogicality.

Using authentic inquiry to address grand challenges now

The changing nature of our research not only reflects the priorities we assign to what we should study, but also the purposes we value for doing research that we consider authentic. As part of our applications of authentic inquiry (Alexakos, 2015 ), we also incorporate contemplative inquiry and wellness and sustainability practices that include compassion, empathy, care, honesty, trust, respect, and inclusivity.

Starting from a base of Egon Guba and Yvonna Lincoln's Fourth Generation Evaluation ( 1989 ), we developed a research approach we call Authentic Inquiry (Tobin and Alexakos, 2021b ). For a study to be considered authentic, we plan for participants to change their ontologies (descriptions of what was happening and why it was happening) and to understand and value others' perspectives, whether or not these align with their own. In addition, what we learn from a study, about ourselves and others, should be used to catalyze improvements for all participants and to ensure that those who are not well-placed to benefit from what we learn receive support to also benefit. Furthermore, in our ongoing efforts for research to improve education (i.e., teaching, learning, and curriculum) for those participants in the study we also would disseminate what we had learned and any tools we created to catalyze improvements and distribute beneficence equitably via ripple effects. We consider authentic inquiry to be a transformative methodology | method, central to a multilogical bricolage that is generative of practices and activities that expand what we value as researchers, and what we count as research.

We advocate for authentic inquiry being an integral part of a multilogical approach to research engaged by science educators and their collaborators (Tobin and Alexakos, 2021b ). As we explained in a recent book (Tobin and Alexakos, 2021c ), we use authentic inquiry along with other frameworks that include hermeneutic phenomenology, emergence and contingence, and event-oriented inquiry. We do not consider participants as subjects, but instead as colleagues and co-researchers.

In summary, the authenticity criteria require that each person heightens awareness about their ontology and others' ontologies. We expect participants to get to know themselves better, and also to understand where others are coming from and why they do what they do. Accordingly, participants become aware of what they understand to be happening in particular contexts and juxtapose their own perspectives with others' perspectives. There is an expectation that all participants will change their ways of witnessing and making sense of their lifeworlds, and also understanding difference as it manifests in how others view what is happening and why it is happening that way. Often, these intentions are covered by the first two authenticity criteria, usually referred to as ontological and educative.

We expect participants to change as a result of being in the research. However, we want them to have freedom to learn what they value and not to be coerced or indoctrinated to our preferred perspectives. Their ways of seeing and making sense of what is happening and why it is happening are expected to change because they learn from being involved in the research, i.e., learn about themselves and others. Also, we anticipate that all participants learn to push on the viability of what they know—putting it to the test and adapting as necessary. Resources for testing viability extend beyond the primary research field to include any and all fields of the lifeworld. What is learned from ongoing research should be put to the test elsewhere, and as necessary, adaptations should be made.

Over the years we have found cogenerative dialogues (hereafter cogens) to be ideal activities for learning about self and others (Tobin and Alexakos 2021a ). Learning from and developing respect for the viability of others' perspectives and practices and adjusting their own different perspectives only when it makes sense to do so.

Learning with and from others is always emergent and contingent, and is also consistent with the idea of "for the greater good." If perspectives lead to stances and practices that are not for the greater good then cogen is a field in which participants can interrogate both advantages and disadvantages of assertions and other warrants used to support practices being considered. In their essence, cogens are educative. The field of cogen is a place where consensus is often the goal—but it also is important to recognize and accept contradictions, understand and respect differences and acknowledge their potential to be transformative for the greater good. Our work with cogen is consistent with William Sewell Jr's idea of culture being experienced as patterns having thin coherence together with ever present contradictions (Sewell, 2005 ).

As we assert, cogens have the potential to foster improvements by discussing what is being learned in our ongoing research and making adaptations when and as necessary (i.e., authentic inquiry is catalytic). In addition, in cogen, awareness about what is learned is heightened, and plans can begin to emerge about how to enact what has been learned in other fields, with other participants. Enacting what has been learned from a study in other fields of the lifeworld raises the potential for others to learn by experiencing these new practices being enacted. That is, if persons enact new practices in a number of fields, there is an increased possibility of others learning from them—simply by being-in-with them as they try out what they have learned. We describe this possibility metaphorically as ripple effects. The enactment of new schema and practices become resources for others' learning.

Tactical authenticity usually necessitates a plan by one or more participants in a study to use what they have learned from the study to educate others who might otherwise not be well-placed to benefit and learn from the research. We regard this criterion as being associated with designing interventions to heighten awareness of schemas and practices that have arisen during the conduct of research. Often, we say that the central idea of tactical authenticity is to design interventions to help those who are not placed ideally in social and cultural space to benefit from what others had learned. Hence, the key purpose of tactical authenticity is to create beneficence—equality that extends beyond opportunities to learn from research. All participants in research are encouraged to go an extra mile and ensure that everyone is provided the resources they need to benefit from being participants in the research.

A clear example of the salience of tactical authenticity involves educating citizens about the desirability of being vaccinated to protect against the spread and further mutation of COVID-19 among African Americans in the USA. There are several related concerns, namely spread of the virus among African Americans and associated chances for mutations to occur and a priority to educate African American citizens to protect against infection by getting vaccinated. There is a real history of science, and medical science not only during the American eugenics’ movement but also in the current era of science and medicine being used to experiment and harm those with the least means (Gould, 2002 ) and just being plain racist (Pilkington, 2021 ). This heightens suspicion among many, not only those of color who may have fear of vaccines and malevolent intent on the part of those who carry authority and power in its many guises. It is surmised by many scholars who have studied vaccine hesitancy (MacDonald, 2015 ) that historically documented abuses, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Alsan and Wanamaker, 2018 ), are never-to-be forgotten atrocities committed as racist acts to promote science to benefit a domineering white capitalistic society. Historically constituted stories, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and those associated with eugenics, are major deterrents to many citizens who are refusing to be vaccinated because they are suspicious of politicians and who may see science and the scientists who produce science as doing the bidding of the big pharmas (Hoffman and Bowditch, 2021 ).

We advocate for authentic inquiry as part of a fresh approach to science education that is potentially transformative, where “learners act upon the new perspectives which they experience through their critical awareness” (Pandey, 2021 , p. 125), and suited to conduct of research that can address grand challenges such as those we describe in this Editorial. Having described the tenets of authentic inquiry, we exhort science education colleagues to include authentic inquiry in a multilogical bricolage of frameworks that they deem appropriate for their research while adopting tools such as cogen, mindfully speaking and learning, as well as respect for others, compassion, empathy, trust, and willingness to take a stance against efforts to marginalize and otherwise oppress and exploit others.

• Contemplative activities

First, know thyself. We encountered this mantra when we were learning a Japanese healing art known as Jin Shin Jyutsu (Tobin, Alexakos and Powietrzynska, 2015 ).

In this section we examine breathing meditation, humming on the out breath as a way to enhance blood oxygenation, walking meditation, and loving kindness meditation.

Breathing meditation

On the basis of our ongoing research we developed a breathing meditation in which participants keep their mouth closed during the in breath and the out breath processes. While breathing, the focus can be wherever a participant wishes it to be. For example, a person might focus on the out breath only. Alternatively, the focus might be more generically on the breath. Because they have not done so previously some people might find it helpful to focus on the lips being closed. Others might focus on the air entering and leaving the nostrils. Personally, we like to focus on the sensation of the air we breathe in or the sensations we feel in different parts of the body at different times during the meditation.

Wherever we decide the focus to be, we recognize that the mind cannot be controlled. Just notice thoughts and emotions as they enter the mind. Notice if the focus skips to parts of the body, such as an itch on the elbow or a pain in the lower back. We like to use the phrase bear witness. If the mind is thinking about what you will eat for dinner this evening, notice the mind thinking about this. If the mind starts to think about the commute to work, notice the mind thinking about the commute to work. If you feel pain in the left lower back, notice the pain as it rises, peaks, and falls. Notice impermanence of what happens during the meditation—nothing is permanent.

We suggest spending at least 10 min, twice a day, doing this meditation. The health benefits of breathing in and out, with the mouth closed, relate to increasing the amount of nitric oxide that flows in the airways. The presence of nitric oxide allows the hemoglobin to carry more oxygen to different parts of the body.

Konstantinos: For readers interested, one of my favorite books with many powerful breathing practices is the Jewel in the Lotus (Saraswati and Avinasha, 2010 ).

Humming on the out breath

An adjustment to breathing meditation is to hum on the out breath. If you adopt this practice you will increase the amount of nitric oxide in the airways substantially. The research suggests that 15 times the amount of nitric oxide can be transferred to the airways by humming on the out breath (Weitzberg and Lundberg, 2002 ). It is certainly worth trying so that you can see whether humming on the out breath makes a noticeable difference to your wellbeing over a period of a month, for example.

Another adaptation to breathing meditation that can make a significant difference to wellbeing is to focus on the out breath—of course while the mouth is closed. As you breathe out, breathe softly. Do not push hard to eliminate all of the air. Simply breathe out, and make sure as much of the air as possible leaves the body. During an out breath your eyes can be closed gently. During the in breath open your eyes, and allow the body to breathe in. Repeat this process for a minimum of five minutes. Breathe in with eyes open and mouth closed, breathe out with eyes shut and mouth closed. During out breaths, try to eliminate as much of the air as possible from the body. As your awareness shifts, bear witness. Notice your nimble mind moving from place to place and topic to topic. Don't try to control it, just notice. Bear witness.

Breathing meditation can be done while you are seated, with your feet flat on the floor, and as you are walking. Details for walking meditation are provided below. Of course, other postures and activities can be enacted while you are practicing breathing meditation. For example, we often do breathing meditation as we lie on our backs on a bed or massage table. In addition, breathing meditation can be augmented by soft touch holds as we explain later in this Editorial.

Walking Meditation

Meditation is a practice that can be done as you go about everyday life. One of the most common forms of meditation is walking meditation during which a participant walks. There is nothing special about the way a person walks, where they walk, how they walk, how fast they walk, etc. To get started, a participant simply walks. As is the case with breathing meditation, keep your mouth closed, and bear witness to your nimble mind.

Luangpor Pramote Pamojjo, a Theravada monk, encourages Vipassana insight meditation to include walking just as everyday activities like eating, washing dishes, sweeping, and commuting to work. In regard to walking meditation, Pamojjo advocates keeping the eyes open and walking in busy streets where a lot is happening (V. Pamojjo, 2013 ). Of course, that does not preclude walking in secluded places such as a forest, a beach, or around a lake.

Ken: A common place to do walking meditation is in the bedroom. I walk for about 12 yards until I arrive at a wall, whereupon I turn around and walk back to the other wall. I continue to walk back and forth between the two walls for a little over an hour. As I walk I bear witness to my thoughts, emotions, and when and where I focus on the body. If something hurts, or if it tickles, or there is some other bodily sensation, I notice what has happened. Then, my intention is for the mind to return to focus on the out breath. If it does so, I notice. If it does not return to focus on the out breath, I notice what it does focus on. During walking meditation allow your awareness to shift—don't try to control it. Just bear witness.

A common question that frequently is asked is: What should I do to control my monkey mind? In response to the question note the following: Do not try to control the mind, just bear witness. Allow the mind to be nimble. Each time the mind focuses or starts to chatter, notice what it does. When the mind switches from one focus or activity to another, just notice. Notice how it rises and falls if any emotion occurs: Again, know that nothing is permanent. If a body part starts to hurt or itch, and the mind moves to the hurt or the itch, notice the switch and the rise and fall of what you feel. As you walk, be aware, but just walk. It is easier to have a home for the mind to return to. For example, the home you select might be the out breath. In that case, notice when the mind returns home to the out breath. Never force, just bear witness.

Loving kindness meditation

Many approaches to meditation are part of our journeys into the infusion of contemplative activities into our lives. Metta meditation is an example that was highly influential throughout our lifeworlds, including our professional lives as science educators. Metta is a Pali word that is often translated as positive energy and kindness. Other definitions of metta include benevolence, friendship, affection, and kindness toward others. These constructs are good places to start, and yet we think of metta mainly in terms of love, opening the heart to give and receive love, where love is considered much as a mother loves her children; rather than romantic love, it is more of platonic pleasure that ascribes value in worldly beings. Although our understandings might extend beyond the original Buddhist meaning of metta, we think of metta as loving kindness meditation, embracing the following qualities: friendliness, appreciation and joy, compassion and equanimity. Yau Yan Wong ( 2021a ) explains that equanimity is a frame of mind that is carefully accepting of difference, and does not discriminate. She notes that when we have an equanimous mind we can live within a community in harmony. Here, Yau Yan extends community to include humans and other animals, plants, and minerals. In accord with Yau Yan, we use ecosystem as a metaphor to include all of the material and non-material resources needed within the community to sustain harmony. Finally, in a recent communication, Yau Yan noted that her views on equanimity are grounded in a dhamma talk by Luangpor Pramote in which he explained "the ideal state of equanimity is when there is no sphere of self, or when there is no boundary between mind and nature." (Wong 2021b , personal communication).

Usually we regard fields as having no boundaries. However, Yau Yan's elaboration of the meaning of equanimity suggests two possibilities, which we explore as a dialectical relationship, boundary | no boundary, self | other. In this way our framework is expanded to see what more we can learn. We use this expanded framework even though the idea of fields having boundaries is incommensurable with the frame of boundary | no boundary, and self | other. Through this window, we see equanimity emerging in conjunction with a transition from an experience of separation between mind and nature to an experience in which there is no boundary between mind and nature, mind and nature being experienced as one. The idea that self does not have a boundary does not exclude self. Self in dialogue with nature where self is in flux, both is and isn’t part of the broader universe, i.e., self | nature | universe.

Our approach to loving kindness meditation is expansive, accepting Yau Yan's assertion that "true happiness is possible when we practice … loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity" (Wong 2021a , p. 85). Accordingly, we opt to include all of these elements in our loving kindness meditation.

Following the tradition of first know thyself, we begin loving kindness meditation by first focusing on offering loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity to our self. That is, we treat ourselves with the elements of the Buddhist concept of true happiness. To begin loving kindness meditation, we connect with the breath, mouth closed, paying attention to the out breath while bearing witness to the shifting mind. When we feel connected with the breathing, we:

consider the intention of cultivating loving kindness to self, love that is unconditional, open, gentle and supportive.

offer compassion to our self in ways that are tender and accepting of self as we are now.

recall times when we were kind and generous.

emphasize a preference for happiness over suffering.

consider how we experience love.

consider ways in which we receive and send love.

experience the way we experience giving and receiving love in our body.

contemplate on how we give and receive smiles.

ask ourselves if we are open to receiving love from all others.

make sure we offer love to all others.

practice offering and receiving unconditional love.

and, learn to express the joy of living.

When it is appropriate to do so, expand the community to include those for whom you offer loving kindness. Think of someone who is dear to you, a person who is always supportive and reflect on their basic goodness. Feel what you most like about this person as you send them the energy associated with loving kindness. Bask in this energy as you feel it in your body. Expand the circle of loved ones and send each one the energy of loving kindness.

The next step is to identify neutral persons, with whom you do not have a particularly close relationship. Send the energy of loving kindness to each person you identified. Remember the love is unconditional and they can stay as they are, they do not have to change to conform to your view of an ideal.

Next, identify a person with whom you have experienced difficulties. This could be a person who doesn't seem to like you, and may even have tried to harm you in some way. Or, think of a person you do not like, and prefer to avoid. Usually, this would be a person for whom you do not like to feel sympathy or compassion. Let go of resentment and dislike by offering each person unconditional forgiveness for any transgressions you associate with them. As is the case with loved ones, and those you regarded as neutral, expand the circle of difficult people to whom you will send loving kindness. They do not have to change their ways: No conditions are attached. Replace feelings and emotions of hatred you might have with love and compassion.

A final step in the meditation is to expand awareness to include the ecosystems of the planet—include all animals, plants, and material and non-material resources needed to create and sustain harmony. Send loving kindness and freedom to all.

A great advantage of loving kindness meditation is that it can occur in any place and at any time. It can be of relatively short duration, or one meditation can take several hours. Loving kindness meditation can be done in its entirety or in its parts. Furthermore, the meditation can be secular and taught as a life skill across an age spectrum that extends from infants to the elderly.

In a context of researching potential benefits of loving kindness meditation, the following could be foci for authentic inquiry. Consider whether the list of benefits is a warrant for the inclusion of loving kindness meditation in science education courses at graduate and undergraduate levels. What about in science courses for elementary and high school students as well?

• Loving kindness meditation can provide benefits that include: appropriate self-criticism (not destructive), more positive emotions, less self-destructive thinking, reduction in pain, higher resilience, and increases in empathy and kindness to strangers. • Kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and love can create spaces for learning, understanding, and welcoming difference as a resource to support learning rather than a nuisance to stamp out.

Wellness in harmony

In our schools the closest thing that comes to knowing thyself often relates to human biology and physiology. Unfortunately, the approach usually relates to the limit of knowing the names and locations of organs, systems, bones, muscles, tissue types, etc. Even though teachers might make serious endeavors to connect to everyday life and to the particulars of an individual, the evidence suggests that the knowledge is not all that useful in handling every day wellness issues. To illustrate this point, we offer examples from our use of contemplative activities in our authentic inquiry, coteaching, and more generally our transactions in the social world. In this section we describe knowing thyself, and how to use soft touch energy work as a complementary approach to self-help when individuals seek to enact self-help, and thereby facilitate their wellness concerns.

From an early age, children can be taught simple wellness techniques that can keep the energy in their bodies flowing in the channels in which energy is supposed to flow, and also to sustain good health. We consider a good place to start is by holding each finger, for example on the left-hand, for a minute or two until all fingers have had their turn of being held. Finally, the person can bring their palms together as if they were saying a prayer. Holding the palms in the prayer position can also be beneficial to a person's good health.

Know thyself: soft touch energy work

Be sure to note that the health information provided in this section, and throughout the Editorial, is not an alternative to seeking and obtaining diagnosis and treatment from a licensed medical practitioner. As the title of this section suggests, the purpose is educating for self-help, where the goal is to use touches and energy work proactively to harmonize energy flows and sustain good health. What we describe below is based on our own understanding and learnings as we personally practice and become more knowledgeable with these other complementary wellness knowledge systems.

Good health is in the fingers and hands

If you hold a thumb on the left hand, lightly wrapping the fingers of the right hand around the left thumb, you may feel the steady beat of pulses in the thumb, and the fingers that are holding the thumb. If the left thumb is held this way for about a minute or two, a person who may have been a little worried about something will no longer be worried. That is, by holding the left thumb, the energy flowing through the thumb is harmonized—which means it is flowing in one of the correct ways into and out of the thumb, without experiencing diversions and blockages. As well as harmonizing the emotion of worry, holding the thumb can also produce good health by harmonizing energy flows that come through the thumb while flowing to other parts of the body as well. If you experience effects like the following, it may be beneficial to hold the thumb: if you feel you may vomit, or perhaps you have been vomiting, abdominal pain, indigestion, stress, skin projects, insomnia, and some headaches (for some headaches hold the base of the thumb, and that can lessen the severity of pain).

Holding the left index finger can harmonize fear, making a person less fearful of whatever is happening in the moment. Just as it makes sense not to spend too much time being worried, it makes sense not to be afraid. Knowing that fear can be harmonized by holding the index finger is a life skill that young children can learn and use throughout their entire lives. Lightly holding the index finger can address projects related to the shoulder, neck, back, and issues with your teeth or gums.

Ken: When I am at the dentist and the technician is working on cleaning the right side of my teeth and gums, I hold the left index finger. When the dental technician moves to the other side I swap to the index finger on the opposite hand to the side she is working on.

The health projects addressed by holding the index finger include nausea, bladder infections, muscle tension, migraines, headache, high blood pressure, sinus infections, muscle tension, self-criticism, and shyness. Holding the index finger can provide relief when a person has been standing a relatively long time.

The middle finger is associated with anger. If the middle finger is held for a minute or two anger can be harmonized. Health projects associated with the middle finger include emotions related to anger, such as frustration, resentment, and impatience. Other health projects include fatigue, flatulence, and eyestrain that may result from heavy reading.

The ring finger is associated with sadness, and can be harmonized by holding it lightly. Holding the ring finger addresses breathing difficulties, a buildup of mucus and phlegm, earaches, tinnitus, coughing, and skin projects.

If there is a problem with the heart organ it may be beneficial to hold the pinky. Similarly, if a person finds their heart is racing for some reason, harmony might be reached by holding the pinky. Just like the other fingers, the pinky is associated with an emotion—in this case pretense or trying to. These emotions need some explanation. “Trying to” applies to situations where a person is putting in effort to accomplish something or other. It might be as simple as trying to tidy the kitchen so that guests who will soon be arriving at your home will experience a very tidy home. Or, it might involve trying to control somebody else, such as a sibling, parent, or schoolmate. If a person is trying to exercise control over someone else, then they might harmonize the energy flows in the finger by holding the pinky. Sometimes, this emotion is called efforting. If a person is putting too much effort into the activity of the moment, it may be advisable to hold the little finger for a minute or two so that harmony is maintained.

As you might imagine, the emotion of pretense can arise when a person is feeling insecure and/or nervous. Hence, holding the little finger can assist a tendency to try to be something we are not. That is, if a person is feeling insecure and/or nervous, that feeling might be harmonized by holding the little finger. In terms of wellness projects, holding the little finger can assist projects associated with bones and the heart. Also, if a person has diarrhea, or feels bloated they can attain some relief by holding the pinky finger. Interestingly, if a person has been doing a lot of walking (e.g., walking meditation, walking for exercise, or just walking in the garden), they can benefit from holding the little finger for several minutes.

When the hands are held in the prayer position for 1–2 min the emotion of despondency can be harmonized. Someone who is feeling down in the dumps might get some relief by holding hands in the prayer position while focusing on their breathing, or focusing on the pulses felt in each hand.

When you are holding any body part, keep in mind that the front, back, top, bottom, and sides usually connect to different universal energy flows in the body. For example, holding the tip of the middle finger can address major health projects that include coma, heatstroke, and cardiac pain. Lesser issues addressed while lightly touching the tip of the middle finger include irritability, stiffness, swelling, and pain in the tongue.

If you make a fist with your hand and note where the middle finger touches the palm, this locates a space that can be lightly touched or held to address wellness projects associated with mouth ulcers, halitosis, vomiting, and fungal infection of the hand. Just like the position on the tip of the middle finger, the position close to palm center also can address coma and cardiac pain.

Rather than going through each of the front, back, and sides of the main body parts (e.g., torso, legs, arms, feet, hands, head), we conclude this section with a know thyself challenge.

Lightly hold the left hand at the wrist crease on the inside of the hand/arm. The right hand can cover both sides of the wrist crease, extending to the base of the thumb to some distance down the wrist. Maintain this hold for a few minutes and bear witness to the physiological changes that arise during that time. Then, turn the left hand over, and use the right hand to hold the back/outside in much the same way you held the front side. Be sure to keep the touch light. Once again notice the physiological changes that occur during the second three minutes. Make a note of the similarities and differences.

Are you ready? Who are your teachers?

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will disappear. Lao Tzu-Tao Te Ching (circa 6 th century BCE)

For more than two decades, we have infused dialectical reasoning into our research and thinking. When we consider learners, we also consider teachers, and when we think about learning, we also think about teaching (Alexakos 2015 ). We represent the dialectical relationship with the vertical bar, i.e., teacher | learner. Similarly, our theorizing of culture also includes numerous dialectical relationships, such as production = reproduction | transformation. Here, our understanding of cultural production has evolved over time to be transformative that links learning with life events/experiences. Accordingly, all learning is both reproductive and transformative. Much can be written about our understandings of this relationship, but in this Editorial, we make just a few points. Production is both aware and unaware, and it is ongoing. Often, we assert that if a person is breathing, they are learning. From this perspective, there is a realization that learning is continuous for a living, breathing person. That being the case, we find it useful to ask—if a person is learning at a given point in time, who are the teachers?

What counts as knowledge? Our acceptance of cultural production as equivalent to learning carries an important implication. Knowledge is more than what can be represented as words since it includes all forms of production. Furthermore, as Greene has noted, knowledge is transcendent in that no matter what forms of representation are used, alone and in combination, there always is more that is known (Greene 1994 ). Accordingly, when a person goes for a walk, production occurs continuously. Many methods can be used to identify what was learned, but they always will fall short of capturing all that was learned. What has been learned during a walking activity?

Before we provide an example that includes walking, we make an additional point about axiology. For the most part, higher value seems to be assigned at least in formal schooling to knowledge that can be expressed verbally (e.g., oral, written). When it comes to wellness it is arguably more important that knowledge represented in practices is of high importance—as are values and emotions.

During a recent successful doctoral defense at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Corie McCallum noted that when there were work-related issues to be resolved (during the COVID-19 pandemic, when work was done at home) Corie took a walk, during which many of the problems were resolved as her wellness was also enhanced (McCallum 2021 ).

What did Corie learn as she meditated?

As Corie walks, she meditates and notes a tendency to engage reflexive practices with heightened awareness about the affordances of working from home—especially for health-related projects such as weight control. Also, by working at home she is able to take walks outside and experience the ambiance of sunlight and fresh air. Importantly, working from home provides Corie with freedom about to whom and when she is accessible.

Corie's research brings our attention to questions that can be raised concerning who are the teachers during walking meditation. In many instances the teachers, we decide, are inanimate, and depending on where the walk occurs, they may be non-human. Inevitably, questions arise about the nature of learning environments. It seems self-evident that there likely will be differences in walking on a sidewalk of an inner-city street, walking in a bedroom, walking in the city park, and walking on an unpaved pathway in the forest. Rather than creating answers to questions that concern the teacher | learner relationships in different places—we provide a set of assertions that may serve as starting points for an expansive dialogue about teaching and learning.

Corie's vignette about the uses of walking meditation harmonizes the mind and body so that she is better able to attend to her health while also performing her professional duties as a conduct counselor; it highlights the importance of autonomy to change her schedule when and as necessary. She does not avoid doing her job, but ensures that she addresses health projects when issues arise and need attention, and plans proactively to minimize the occurrence of serious health projects.

What can we learn from this research that might have implications for teaching and learning in and out of the pipeline? Consider the following scenarios, arrange a cogen, and partake in an expansive set of possibilities.

• Students are provided with timeouts that can be used for contemplative activity when they feel their mind | body is not able to support learning to the maximum extent. • Students can engage in breathing, walking and selected healing meditations when they regard it as beneficial to do so. • Periodically, the classes are scheduled to take place in a contemplative garden that is built and maintained by the students and teachers themselves, and members of the local community who are also invited to use it. The garden may feature a running stream, waterfall, and a variety of trees, large, medium and small shrubs, flowering and herbaceous plants.

Out of the pipeline curricula and associated activities can be planned using the resources of a given location, such as existing parks, riverside and beachside resources, mountain and forest walking trails, and specially created spaces to educate the citizenry for specific purposes, such as dying and death (e.g., death parks). The creation of suitable spaces can be built along with curricula designed by science educators for specific purposes, with the proviso that once they are built; the purposes and uses would be dynamically flexible.

Konstantinos: Recently I visited a museum in Thessaloniki, Greece. I read an inscription of how Aristotle used to tutor Alexander the Great under the shaded trees. How many of our public schools give such an option to their students? As science educators how often do we take our traditional classes outside or allow our students (of any age) to take a nature walk break or to go hug a tree or stick their bare hands or feet into the ground during class when they feel the need?

The following texts can be used in cogens to expand the dialogue and the possibilities for educating the citizenry in regard to the grand challenges and other priority topics such as maintaining wellness.

• When I walk along the banks of a river, my thoughts are mediated by the water, the still, reflective surface, the clear sky and the fresh air. I find myself resolving problems, playing music in my head, and feeling the serenity of solitude that mother nature teaches me. • My walk in the forest is without people. I feel the energy and wisdom of the trees. How best can I learn from the trees?—don't seek the teacher, when the time is right, the teacher will come to you. What and how can I learn from being in a forest with trees? • What counts as nature? Can I experience nature inside my home? Am I experiencing nature when I walk in my garden? What about if I walk on the pavement? Must I go to a place where flora and fauna are pristine and influences of humans are difficult to discern. Are humans constituents of nature? What about selves?

Are we up to the challenges that confront us now?

On August 9, 2021 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a brief report that began as follows:

Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, released today. Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.

We see this as a rallying cry for science educators to step forward and get to work. Whereas the grand challenges extend beyond climate change, it is clear that a strong, unprecedented collaborative effort is needed to jump start pathways toward success. We are confident that our Editorial, and the papers to follow, can inspire readers of CSSE and catalyze forms of action that are proactive and free of the shackles that have bound us to roles that simply reproduce and even exacerbate extremely low levels of science literacy—on display now, not just in the West, but throughout the world. It is time for science educators to rise up and take the lead in educating ourselves and our global citizenry to successfully grapple with these grand challenges for the betterment of ourselves and our planet.

Which pathways will we choose?

This special issue is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of mainstream science education. We honor the authors of these papers for their contributions and courage.

As we consider what to do and where to go, we may ponder whether we are ready to meet the challenges we will encounter, and if so, who are the teachers to afford our learning?

We are not the first to argue that science education should be of use to our citizenry, or that we access our agency to meet responsibilities to ourselves and a global community. At the same time, in the decades the two of us have been involved in teaching science and science education, rather than progress we have experienced regress. For example, the pressure on teachers to teach to the test attributed to the advent of assessments ad nauseum (both for teachers and the students). We are not optimistic of accomplishing the changes in science education that we argue for in this paper, given systemic foundations of current inequities and ideologies that continue to breed ignorance, miseducation and mistrust in what is science, and who and how it can serve the global citizenry. These issues are further confounded by the contested purposes and goals of education, and science—in particular medical science. At the same time though we believe it is important to have and to engage in difficult conversations such as those we broached and those that follow.

Because we have come to believe that current science education curricula and practices are at best inadequate for preparing our citizenry to have the experience and knowledge to engage current and future grand challenges we (and our planet) face, both of us have moved on with our studies and teaching. We feel liberated by studying and teaching wellness and sustainability from a perspective that combines Eastern, Western, and Indigenous wellness practices and ideas. Also, we feel reconnected with ourselves and the world around us, and have been reminded of the criticality of awareness, caring, compassion, kindness, and love in our own personal and professional lives as well as our own impermanence.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge reviews and thoughtful suggestions on earlier versions of this paper from Kashi Raj Pandey (Lead Editor), Mitch Bleier, Joanna Higgins, Mariatere Tapia-Avery, Carolyne Ali-Khan, Luis Zambrano, Yau Yan Wong, and Anna Malyukova. We are grateful to Myrto Koutra-Iliopoulou for her translation of our abstract to Greek.

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Tobin, K., Alexakos, K. Global challenges need attention now: educating humanity for wellness and sustainability. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 16 , 651–673 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-021-10080-6

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Chapter 14 global science and global health.

Science can help to feed the hungry, heal the sick, protect the environment, provide dignity in work and create space for the joy of self-expression. Yet . . . lack of opportunity to master science and the new technologies will accentuate the divide between rich and poor. —ISMAIL SERAGELDIN , director, library at alexandria 1

As a medical student, I developed an interest in what was then called tropical medicine and worked in northern India for a few months. I took a fourth-year elective at the Clara Swain mission hospital in Bareilly, a large town in Uttar Pradesh, about a hundred miles from Delhi. My exposure to medicine in India overturned an earlier conviction that I might enjoy a career working as a physician in a poor country; I was also dismayed by some poor medical practices and occasionally callous behavior. Although the experience persuaded me that I was better suited to other parts of the medical profession, it also ignited a longstanding concern about the discrepancies between rich nations and poor. When I arrived at the NIH as director many years later, my eyes were opened to a much greater potential than I had recognized as a medical student to the possibilities of using science, including science performed in poor countries, to advance what is now more commonly called global health.

Over the past few years, the world has given increasing attention to the problems posed by disease in developing countries. Although still operating far from the standards of medicine and science practiced in the wealthiest countries, even some of the least affluent nations can aspire to build effective health systems, promote wide use of vaccines, import modern drugs or manufacture their own generic pharmaceuticals, and participate in modern research to address regional diseases. We have come a long way from my generation’s first view of the battle against disease in poor countries as sacrificial careers lived by missionaries working in ill-equipped clinics in the jungles of Africa, Asia, or South America.

There are a number of reasons for this change. A prominent one is the active and well-publicized interest in global health taken by philanthropic individuals and organizations, most obviously the foundation established by Bill and Melinda Gates. The endorsement of these efforts by famous figures in the entertainment world, such as Bono from U-2, has also been important. And economists, perhaps most prominently Jeffrey Sachs, the head of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, have established the notion that improvements in health can promote economic development and that better health (and health care) should not be viewed merely as consequences of improved economies.

At more or less the same time, the worldwide epidemic of AIDS, the emergence of other novel infectious diseases (like Ebola and SARS), the recurrence and persistence of historically important diseases (like tuberculosis and malaria), and the threat of pandemics (like a repeat of the influenza epidemic of 1918) have concentrated the world’s attention on the prospects for controlling these diseases as a matter of self-defense as well as altruism. Advances in medical science, offering the possibility of more effective prevention and treatment, have inspired hopes that science can successfully take on both new and old scourges.

Still, the pathways to better health in the developing world have not been carefully drawn. Nor have the responsibilities for achieving better health been clearly assigned to, or assumed by, the various players: the poor countries themselves (which generally devote surprisingly low percentages of their annual budgets to these issues, in the face of other, often staggering demands on limited resources); the advanced economies (which usually say that their primary concerns must be the problems that afflict their own citizens); or the nongovernmental agencies (which are often fully committed to these issues but, with the exception of the Gates Foundation, don’t have government-sized bank accounts). Efforts to promote greater attention to global health inevitably run into these explanations of neglect, reluctance, or limited action.

In this chapter, I discuss some of the efforts I’ve made to promote interest in global health and to expand the role of science in poor parts of the world. These activities are guided by a conviction that we can use the skills developed in wealthy countries and build scientific enterprises abroad to address the problems of the poor. My roles have been modest, sometimes embarrassingly so, in comparison with the monumental efforts devoted to this cause by some very remarkable people. Still, I hope that the perspective I bring to my limited efforts, and the perceptions I’ve taken away, will stimulate greater engagement by others in one of the great challenges of our time.

• Considering Medical Science in Africa

When I arrived on the NIH campus in 1993, I was curious to learn what the agency was doing to improve international health and science. The place where I expected to find engagement with these issues was the Fogarty International Center (FIC), a unit of the NIH named for John E. Fogarty, a congressman devoted to growth of the NIH budget in the 1940s and 1950s. Unfortunately, the FIC’s budget was paltry, in the range of 0.2 percent of the total NIH budget, and its small staff had little immediate responsibility for directing scientific programs. The FIC also had many administrative responsibilities—hosting foreign scientists on sabbatical at the NIH (mostly from advanced nations); procuring visas for thousands of foreign students and fellows at NIH (many of whom now hold prominent positions in a wide range of home countries * ); funding fellowships to bring foreign scientists to our university labs; and fostering collaborations between scientists in the United States and abroad, usually as part of projects paid for by the other, larger institutes.

Thanks to the research support from other parts of the NIH, funding for international programs has generally been about five times greater than the budget for the FIC, although still a very modest portion of the entire NIH allotment. Of course, this simple arithmetic undervalues the contribution NIH makes to health in the developing world, since virtually all disorders studied with NIH funds occur in poor countries as well as in rich ones, and some (e.g., AIDS) may disproportionately affect poor countries. Nevertheless, I am persuaded, more and more with time, that the NIH should devote a greater portion of its resources specifically to global health.

The FIC did have the means to influence research abroad through its convening powers. One day in the summer of 1995, relatively early in my tenure as NIH director, the center sponsored a daylong meeting to discuss ways to promote biomedical science in Africa. This gathering attracted my attention for a number of reasons, especially my continuing concerns about our failure to bring science and health care in developing countries closer to the standards that now exist in the developed world. But I was also acutely conscious of the fact that much of the high-powered, expensive science that is supported by the NIH—work on genomes, protein structure, and signaling pathways—is much more likely to lead to benefits for patients in the world’s advanced nations than for those in places like Africa in the next decade or two. Yet the world’s greatest burden of disease remains in the poorest countries, where more than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day and where even routine care for common infections usually lies beyond reach of any but the affluent few. Furthermore, these countries usually have little or no capacity to perform the kinds of research that might help to combat the diseases most prevalent there—diseases that are often rare in wealthier economies, not major topics for research in scientifically advanced nations, and unattractive targets for drug and vaccine development by the established health industries.

• Focusing on Malaria

I attended most of the talks and discussions at the FIC meeting on science in Africa, and I was pleased and surprised to find that several NIH institutes were already engaged in a diversity of projects in a number of African countries. Of the various research topics discussed (including the genetics of chronic diseases and a multitude of infections), one stood out: malaria. This disease, once prevalent even in the temperate climates of Europe and North America, had been gradually coming under control in tropical zones after the Second World War, thanks to the widespread use of insecticides, such as DDT, and antimalarial drugs. But over the subsequent three decades, as the use of insecticides declined, malaria returned with a vengeance in large parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. The malarial parasite was becoming increasingly resistant to the cheapest, most commonly used drugs, and the insect “vector” that carried the parasite from patient to patient, the Anopheles mosquito, had developed resistance to many insecticides. By the 1990s, one to two million people, mostly young children, were dying of malaria each year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, with over three hundred million people infected worldwide, many chronically ill and unable to work. 2

Because of its complex life cycle, assuming multiple forms and behaviors as it passes through mosquitoes and human beings, the malaria parasite offers many promising opportunities to interfere with its growth and development. By the 1990s, new methods in genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology had become available to attack the disease and its causative organism, but too few people and too few dollars had been engaged. Drug discovery and development of potential new agents had lagged because markets were considered to be too limited and too poor.

I suggested to the participants at the FIC meeting that we make an effort to expand research in Africa by focusing on this one disease—emphasizing its medical importance and the new opportunities for understanding the pathogen and its vector in greater detail, and building on the significant scientific foothold that had already been established. Some European funding agencies, such as Britain’s Wellcome Trust and its Medical Research Council, had made investments to build laboratories performing malaria research in Africa, and they were interested in doing more. Some well-trained Africans had recently returned home after studies abroad to work on malaria in these labs and at a few African universities. The NIH itself had established a surprisingly good malaria research center in Bamako, Mali, staffed with Malian scientists who had trained in France and the United States, funded with NIH grants, and involved collaboratively with excellent American scientists at the NIH, Tulane, the University of Maryland, and elsewhere.

To discuss prospects for a more aggressive approach to malaria, the NIH organized a meeting of the relevant parties, including about fifty African investigators, in collaboration with the Pasteur Institute and several other organizations, in Dakar, Senegal, early in January 1997. This gathering was unusual. We arrived in Dakar with a pragmatic purpose—to propose coordinated actions that would improve the ways laboratories throughout Africa and the world studied malaria and applied their findings to prevention and treatment. Africans, Europeans, and Americans, grant makers and grant recipients, sat around tables together, spoke with similar levels of authority, and reached agreement on many issues. Before the meeting ended, essentially every participant strongly endorsed the formation of a research consortium, to be called the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM), that would coordinate research funded by many contributing agencies and conducted in many countries, especially Africa. 3

Unfortunately, it was easier to define goals for malaria research in Africa than to find new support for any coordinated effort, especially one that would require the science funding agencies to give up some measure of autonomy and decision-making. Only the NIH and a couple of other organizations were willing to pledge funds to this international effort—in the aggregate, a few million dollars, a small fraction of the $50 to 100 million that would be needed for a major initiative. At a follow-up meeting in early July, just outside The Hague, in the Netherlands, most of the prospective European contributors balked at the idea of relinquishing control of even quite small sums to a centralized scientific advisory board. To my surprise, the NIH and I specifically were attacked as naïve interlopers on turf that belonged to European agencies that had more long-term ties to African countries. The NIH delegation was disappointed by the failure of other agencies to recognize the stature of our past efforts (one of the NIH institutes, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was even then the world’s largest funder of malaria research) and by the antagonism toward our ability to make specific spending proposals, without lengthy consultations with ministers at home or at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. 4

Despite the relatively small size of the effort, MIM had enough money to offer some small grants, run workshops, and organize a small bureaucracy to coordinate its efforts. A decade later, MIM continues to survive as a respected convener of meetings and provider of small grants, but it has not commanded enough resources to reach its original ambitions. Nevertheless, it is one of the persistent symbols of the attention brought to the problem of malaria in the 1990s. This attention contributed to malaria’s great prominence in recent years at the World Health Organization (WHO), the Gates Foundation, the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and a few drug companies. In 2008, the activities inspired by such advocacy have begun to show measurable rewards: the incidence and death rates for malaria have declined precipitously. 5 WHO has attributed these improvements mainly to the therapeutic effects of a relatively new and now widely used class of drug, the artemisinins, and to the preventive effects of insecticide-impregnated bed nets.

• The WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health

My experience during the founding of MIM taught me that good intentions and plans drawn up in an egalitarian fashion are not enough to elicit support for research that can improve health in poor countries. To be successful, proposals require a more sophisticated analysis of the costs and benefits and the backing of an international authority. For this reason, in 2000, soon after I left the NIH, I accepted an invitation from Gro Harlem Brundtland, then the head of the WHO, to join the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, chaired by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who was then at the Kennedy School at Harvard.

Sachs had become passionate about both the economic and the humanitarian reasons to improve the health of poor people in developing countries. When I first met him, strategically positioned on the landing of the major staircase at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 1998, I was immediately impressed by his knowledge about poor-world diseases, including malaria; his enthusiasm for doing something about them; and his thoughtful analysis of the impact of illness on the economies of poor countries. A couple of years later, as leader of the commission, he skillfully guided a large research team to produce tally sheets of the major remediable threats to health, the costs of the remedies, and the embarrassingly small contributions to those costs made by donor nations. The United States, for example, comes in last among the twenty-two most advanced economies when foreign aid is ranked as a fraction of gross domestic product. And only one-eighth of our aid is devoted to health.

The commission’s report was based on an argument that, despite its reasonableness, has only quite recently become accepted: better health drives economic productivity, not just the other way around. 6 The report makes concrete recommendations about the levels of funding that would be needed to make significant and rapid improvements in health in poor countries—from the roughly $6 billion of foreign assistance provided in 2001 to about $27 billion in 2007 and $38 billion in 2015, with corresponding new contributions from the recipient countries themselves. For each of the diseases on a relatively short list of major killers (AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, maternal illnesses, tobacco-induced diseases, and common infections), we estimated the funds required to provide the improvements in care that would reduce the number of deaths, enhance work capacity, and improve economies. For example, a threefold increase in investment in health in poor countries was predicted to restore about 330 million years of disability-free life, and the increased capacity for useful work would in turn generate over $360 billion annually by 2015, a five- to tenfold return on the investment. The report also featured recommendations for research on global health, specific proposals for organizing health systems and delivering better care, and effective strategies for distributing additional funds for health.

Because the WHO is respected, the commission’s report has been taken seriously by many countries, both rich and poor, and several, such as India and Malawi, have responded to the report’s directive for countries to establish their own commissions on macroeconomics and health. These commissions tabulate regional health problems and make plans for solving them in ways appropriate to each country. The report is frequently cited by groups considering ways to build stronger systems for improving health in poor countries or to ameliorate the toll taken by one of the major threats to health studied by the commission. By emphasizing health systems rather than simply addressing single diseases like malaria, the report also anticipated a still-growing current interest in making fundamental changes in health care that are likely to have more long-standing effects on health in the developing world.

But the WHO is also strapped for cash. So developing countries committed to improving health conditions according to the plans we formulated must search elsewhere for donors or rearrange their own fiscal priorities. Or they must compete for the scarce dollars available from existing funding agencies or newly created international sources, such as the UN’s Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

• A Proposal for a Global Science Corps

In December 2001, just three months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, I was scheduled to deliver the final talk at a scientific symposium in Stockholm, commemorating the centennial anniversary of the first Nobel Prizes in 1901. With the findings of the WHO commission and the specter of terrorism fresh on my mind, I decided to address the gulf between the sophisticated biomedical science the audience had been listening to and the deplorable health conditions in so much of the world. After all, Alfred Nobel had asked that his prizes be awarded to people whose scientific discoveries had made the greatest contributions to the betterment of mankind. Some Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, including some of the very first, had gone to those who had made major discoveries about malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases common in poor countries. Why haven’t the benefits been greater? Obviously many factors—political, educational, and financial—have contributed to the failures. But what can scientists do now to encourage greater progress?

I recommended several kinds of remedial initiatives—most of them obvious, a few original. One of the novel ideas, the creation of a Global Science Corps, attracted significant attention. The central notion was to encourage scientists in the more advanced countries to spend significant periods of time, say, one to two years, working in selected laboratories in poor countries, both to bring new technologies and perspectives and to learn about local problems, in health and other areas, that are amenable to scientific solutions. I envisioned several categories of scientists who might be willing to make such a commitment: younger people who had just finished their training but were not yet decided about how to use their skills; middle-aged faculty who were eligible for sabbaticals or leaves of absence and wanted to diversify their views of science; or scientists nearing or past retirement age who wished to consider working in a new environment in which their knowledge might have special benefits. A role model for someone in this last category was the famous British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane, who lived and worked at a genetics institute in rural India for several of the last years of his life. 7

Of course, like all proposals to improve science and health, the corps would require administrative oversight and significant financial resources to pay for salaries, travel, living expenses, and research materials. Jim Wolfensohn, then the head of the World Bank, happened to be in Stockholm for the Nobel Prize festivities. While standing next to him in line for one of the events, I mentioned the proposal for the corps; in exchange, he told me about the Millennium Science Initiative (MSI), a not widely known effort to build scientific activity in less developed countries. Supported financially by the World Bank and administratively by a small team in Princeton, at the Institute for Advanced Study, where Wolfensohn was also chairman of the board, the MSI had organized competitions in developing countries, such as Mexico, Chile, and Brazil, to select scientific “centers of excellence” in various fields. 8

It became apparent that MSI centers could serve as hosts for scientists from advanced countries who wished to become members of the Global Science Corps. To pursue this, after my return from Stockholm I met with Phillip Griffiths, then the director of the Institute for Advanced Study and still the leader of the MSI, to discuss our mutual interests in methods to improve science in science-poor countries. As a result, I have joined his team (now called the Science Initiatives Group, or SIG), and SIG has taken up the cause of the Global Science Corps. I have helped to oversee the MSI in Brazil and elsewhere and to initiate new MSI programs in Vietnam and a few African countries. In turn, SIG has launched an effort to make the GSC better known, 9 to identify science centers in poor and lower-middle income countries that would be attractive host institutions, to find scientists interested in serving in the corps, and to raise the significant funds (about $100,000 to $200,000 per year per person) that will be required to launch the first cohort. Finding willing hosts and motivated potential corps members has been easier than securing financial support for the project. So six years after making my proposal in Stockholm, the GSC remains only an attractive idea, with proponents but no performance.

• The Gates Foundation and Its Grand Challenges in Global Health

With most governments responding sluggishly to pleas for altruism and most nongovernmental organizations chronically cash-poor, novel approaches to the medical problems of the poorest countries seem to depend increasingly on the good will of foundations established by a few extraordinarily wealthy people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with an enormous endowment that recently rose to about $60 billion, thanks to a remarkable gift to the foundation by Warren Buffett, is prime among these. Its power to change the direction of science and health care is illustrated by one of its most notable projects, the Grand Challenges in Global Health—a program that has attracted new scientists to the field of global health, stimulated new ideas, and built research collaborations, by providing over $430 million to study some of the scientific and technical obstacles to improved health in the developing world. 10

The Grand Challenges program is said to have been envisioned by Bill Gates himself, in conjunction with Rick Klausner, who was then the head the Global Health program at the Gates Foundation. * As Gates noted when he unveiled the initiative at the World Economics Forum in Davos in 2003, he and Klausner aimed to emulate David Hilbert’s grand challenges to his fellow mathematicians one hundred years earlier. In 1900, Hilbert had defined what he thought were the twenty-three most important unsolved problems remaining in mathematics—and he did so in a way that captured the attention of the best mathematicians and led to the solution of all but a few of the grand challenges over the next several decades. 11

The Gates Foundation’s concept was similar to Hilbert’s, although it ultimately required many more participants and entailed a more complex decision-making process. Rather than depend on one mathematical genius like Hilbert to identify the great problems left in mathematics, the Gates Foundation (in conjunction with the Foundation for the NIH) organized an effort to define the major scientific and technical obstacles that impede progress against diseases that disproportionately affect people living in poor countries. This involved extensive exchanges between the public health and scientific communities and a panel of assembled experts. And then, because biology and medicine are now much more expensive than old-style mathematics, large amounts of money and multiple review panels were needed to select and fund the most imaginative plans for confronting the new grand challenges.

Klausner asked me to chair an international board of senior scientists to solicit and select ideas that might become Grand Challenges and then oversee a process to award grants. The Grand Challenges concept quickly captured the attention of scientists throughout the world, including many who had not, until then, been working on diseases of the developing world. The seriousness of the commitment was represented by the initial announcement that $200 million would be available to fund the program; the number was later doubled by the Gates Foundation and further increased by funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust in the UK. The scientific board received over a thousand proposals of ideas for Grand Challenges, spent an exhausting weekend at the Airlie House conference center in Virginia in the late summer of 2003, trying to find the best ideas and then fashion them into stimulating challenges, which were organized in relation to major health goals. For example, to improve childhood vaccination programs, we challenged the scientific community to create vaccines that can be used in a single dose, administered without needles, or stored without refrigeration. Or to control insects that serve as vectors of infectious diseases, like malaria, we challenged scientists to come up with chemical or genetic strategies to reduce or incapacitate disease-transmitting insects.

In October, in a paper published in Science magazine, 12 we advertised the list of the fourteen Grand Challenges that we had selected, explained the selection process, and described the next steps for those seeking grants to address the challenges. The response was remarkable: about fifteen hundred teams of scientists, including many that were large, from several countries or from several institutions, both nonprofit and commercial, let us know that they were interested in tackling one of the Grand Challenges. We winnowed down these potential applicants to about four hundred, invited full applications from them, assembled about half a dozen review groups to evaluate the proposals, then reconvened the scientific board to make final decisions about funding. When all was settled, about forty-three awards were made, averaging about $10 million each.

In October 2007, the Grand Challenges grantees traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for their third annual meeting. Gratifyingly, progress was evident on a variety of fronts. For instance, several grantees reported on new methods for delivering vaccines without needle injection, and others showed new ways to modify insect behavior with chemical odorants or with genetic manipulation. At this stage, very little was ready to be considered for widespread use, but the prospects for changing the practice of medicine and public health in poor countries seemed encouraging. Furthermore, the international teams formed to work on the Grand Challenges appeared to be doing well, and the multiple teams attacking the same problem had established strong channels of communication, a cooperative effort that counters the common conception of scientists as unduly competitive and secretive.

C. P. Snow’s Predictions about Poverty

In his Rede Lecture on the two cultures, delivered some fifty years ago, C. P. Snow argued that only the culture of science and technology, not the culture of the arts, was equipped to repair what he saw as the greatest threat to the world’s future: the growing disparities between the nations rich and the poor. 13 To fail to do so by the year 2000, he said in his British way, was “just not on.” “Once the trick of getting rich is known, as it now is,” he wrote, “the world can’t survive half rich and half poor.” Clearly, we haven’t met his deadline; if anything, the gap has grown wider over the past fifty years, and it won’t be easy to close it.

My occasional experiences of working to promote global health research during the past decade have convinced me that we can and should do more to support science in lower-income countries, especially science in the service of local problems. These problems affect essential features of life anywhere in the world: health, energy, the environment, and industrial development. Poor countries are sometimes penalized by conditions that inhibit their ability to respond to efforts to improve their science: civil war or other forms of political instability, graft in government, poor educational systems, and a loss of indigenous talent to more advanced nations. But in those several countries that have reduced obstacles to the development of scientific programs, there is often eager receptivity to ideas and people from abroad and a willingness to introduce science into a culture that may initially have a poor understanding of it.

I have seen this work most memorably in the Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC) that the NIH and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) set up in Bamako, the capital of Mali, more than a decade ago. Mali is one of the world’s poorest nations, but strong national and tribal allegiances have brought several well-trained health workers, entomologists, and other scientists back to the country. This has happened, in part, because an excellent laboratory for clinical, insect, and parasite research, with modern instruments, Internet connections, governmental support, and even NIH grants and American collaborators, is available at the MRTC. The MRTC has become a focal point for research and training throughout Africa, holding scientific meetings and teaching courses in laboratory practice. When I visited Bamako after the malaria meeting in Dakar in 1997, I was impressed that Mali’s President A. O. Konaré, himself an anthropologist, and the physician who led the National Assembly were well acquainted with the personnel and accomplishments of the center. They also recognized that the construction of research satellites in rural Mali was bringing better health care and knowledge about malaria to distant places that would otherwise not use the best practices to prevent and treat the disease.

• Globalizing Science as an Arm of Foreign Policy

In the example of the MRTC in Bamako, we can see an important means to enlarge and improve our relations with foreign countries. Science, and especially science related to health and other shared, beneficial goals, can be an effective arm of foreign policy. The methods and findings of science are inherently universal, and the manner of conducting science—in a common language, with common purpose and values, and with shared materials and information often provided through genuine collaborations—is conducive to improved relations.

One day in 1997, because of my recent visit to Mali, I was invited by the State Department to join several other members of the administration for lunch with President Konaré, who was visiting the United States. To my chagrin, the conversation was largely devoted to a discussion of some unfortunate irregularities in his recent election, marring Mali’s record as an African nation that supports the principles of democracy. Wouldn’t it have been more productive, especially with some scientist-administrators on hand, to devote part of the luncheon discussion to the possibilities of building other labs and training centers in Mali to complement the effort that has been made on malaria?

We should be making these efforts in other places as well. In Cuba, for instance, where relations with the United States remain chilly and stalemated, Havana has developed an excellent biotechnology center, staffed largely with people trained in Europe and North America. The center is a significant supplier of traditional vaccines to Central and South America and has even developed a novel vaccine against a form of meningitis. When I gave a series of lectures there, during a weeklong excursion to Cuba with Connie in January of 1993, I was amazed by the resilience of the center’s scientists and by their eagerness to hear about developments in biology that might allow them to be more effective. Shouldn’t we be encouraging connections between our scientists and those in Havana who are working against significant odds to improve health in their region?

Regrettably, in an age dominated by fears of terrorism and by a largely reactionary government led by George W. Bush, we have failed to seize many of the opportunities to use science to improve relations with other nations, including many of those who have traditionally been our allies, as well as those that have flaunted their hostility toward the United States. Our increasingly belligerent attitude towards immigrants, the laborious procedures required to obtain visas, a few high-profile instances in which we have denied visas to eminent scientists, * and the pitifully limited attention we have given to education, science, and technology in poor countries—all of these are undermining our position as a leader of a free world.

There has been one bright line in an otherwise unremitting litany of missed opportunities: the large investments that the Bush administration has made in the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and in the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. 15 But, unless we change our behavior in the near future, this one set of good deeds will be forgotten under the weight of misdeeds.

It has not been easy, even with more enlightened administrations, to provide the kind of financial and political support for health and science that is appropriate to the needs of poor countries. Even with a rapidly rising budget for the NIH in the final years of my time there, it would have been difficult to advocate a major redirection of funds toward the study of diseases that are rare in the United States but common in poor parts of the world. Because the budget of FIC, the one component of the NIH devoted entirely to international health and research, has been traditionally small, it was possible to accelerate its growth in the late 1990s, but that did not have a very significant effect on its resources and activities, in part because it lacked the staff required to build large and complex research programs.

The missed opportunities to make a more concerted effort to promote global health in the Clinton administration were not confined to the NIH. During those years, the USAID, traditionally charged to provide financial aid to many valuable programs in the developing world, had lost prestige and funding. For instance, to my astonishment, the agency had no senior experts on malaria and was unable to contribute intellectually or financially to our efforts to build the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria. And, despite a marked improvement in the U.S. economy in the late 1990s and despite an administration that professed sympathy toward the developing world, no significant scale-up of humanitarian aid programs occurred.

In 1998, when the Clintons were preparing for their multinational trip to Africa in the early spring, the president and Mrs. Clinton invited me and Tony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to brief them informally on the status of health, health care, and health research in Africa. We spoke with them, especially the First Lady, at length about AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious and noninfectious diseases, suggesting ways that the Clintons could use their visit to encourage more attention to these issues, even in very poor countries. When reports of their travels and speeches appeared in the press, many topics were emphasized: tourism and trade, human rights and democracy, environment, economics, and education, but not health or science. The messages delivered and the trip itself were worthy, and beneficial for our relationships with African nations. But I suspect that the former president, now the head of the medically oriented Clinton Foundation, would agree that some important opportunities for promoting health and science were missed.

Attitudes in poor countries toward the leading powers have not been helped by the rigid policies on drug pricing and intellectual property that have been adopted by some (but certainly not all) of the major pharmaceutical companies. Although a few companies have recently devoted efforts to the development of drugs that would be useful mainly in the developing world, such enlightened approaches have been rare, for obvious economic reasons. * In response, many poor nations have viewed the health industries and their wealthy host countries with suspicion when proposals are made to study indigenous plants, animals, or microorganisms, as sources for useful compounds or even as parts of environmental or epidemiological surveys. Building greater trust between the rich and the poor will be required if health sciences are going to achieve the greatest possible benefits in poor countries.

Of course, missed opportunities to put the world’s knowledge to better use have been common in human history. But, despite many failures, the opportunities persist, especially in a world that has been made smaller and more interactive by telecommunications, jet transport, and the Internet. Certainly, the possibilities for globalizing science, including the health sciences, go well beyond the few examples sketched out briefly in this chapter. In many parts of the world where science has been traditionally neglected or had an uneven record of accomplishment, there are signs of growth and interest. Biotechnology and information technology firms are proliferating in India; educational and scientific enterprises are being developed through collaborations between U.S. universities and rulers of some states in the Persian Gulf (Qatar, the Emirates, and Saudi Arabia); and facilities and funds for basic science are growing in parts of Asia (especially Korea, Singapore, and China) and even in some African countries (like South Africa and Rwanda). The traditionally strong scientific programs in Europe have been enhanced by additional funds from centralized sources, such as the European Union, with the result that countries with weaker programs, like Portugal and Greece, are doing better. In Cyprus, a country still torn by conflicts between Turkish and Greek elements, a new research university, the Cyprus Institute, is being created to serve the eastern region of the Mediterranean basin, with programs in energy, environment, economics, archaeology, and health. 16

These are hopeful signs in a world beset with energy shortages, environmental degradation, climate change, persistent diseases, poor educational systems, and stubborn difficulties in supplying water and food to all its inhabitants. There are no easy fixes to these dilemmas. But any solutions are going to require a much broader pursuit and application of science. To achieve this, all parts of the world will need to participate in the adventures of science. In the process of globalizing science, the world is likely to become a better place, in part simply because its scientists are working together.

I saw one of the benefits of the NIH training programs on my first night in Seoul in 1994 when I was greeted enthusiastically by hundreds of members of the Korean NIH Alumni Association who came to pay their respects to the new NIH director.

Klausner is a brilliant scientist and energetic leader who served as director of the National Cancer Institute during most of my time at the NIH.

The denial of a visa to Goverdham Mehta, the eminent Indian chemist in Bangalore, in February 2006, long after 9/11, was especially embarrassing, and incited many angry comments against the United States, even though the Immigration Service had improved some of its post-9/11 practices by then. When the State Department later attempted to issue a visa, the frustrated and humiliated Mehta refused to accept it. 14

I recall making a proposal to encourage more investment in drug development for treatment of diseases prevalent in poor countries at an annual meeting of pharmaceutical leaders at the luxurious Greenbrier resort in West Virginia in 1999. At the end of a speech about NIH policies, I suggested that the industry establish a tithing procedure by which all major companies would devote a small portion of the profits from any blockbuster drugs to the purchase of shares in a new company devoted to finding drugs for the developing world. At worst, a small amount of money would be lost, but good feelings would be generated; at best, some profits from new lifesaving medicines would be gained. The idea was greeted with derision, defensiveness, and silence.

Serageldin I. World poverty and hunger—the challenge for science. Science. 2002 April 5; 296 :54–58.1. [ PubMed : 11935007 ]

Packard RM. The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2007.

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Butler D. Malaria meeting charts rocky path ahead. Nature. 1997 July 17; 338 :219. [ PubMed : 9230422 ]

McNeil DG. Nets and new drug make inroads against malaria. New York Times. Feb 1, 2008.

Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2001. http://whqlibdoc ​.who ​.int/publications/2001/924154550X.pdf .

Clark RW. JBS: The Life and Work of JBS Haldane. New York: Coward-McCann; 1969.

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http://www ​.msi-sig.org/scicorp.html ; Varmus H. Building a global culture of science. Lancet. 2002 Dec. 21 360 suppl:s1–s4. (Medicine and Conflict) [ PubMed : 12504480 ]

http://www ​.gcgh.org/about ​/Pages/Overview.aspx .

Gray JJ. The Hilbert Challenge. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000.

Varmus H, Klausner R, Zerhouni E, Acharya T, Daar AS, Singer PA. Grand Challenges in Global Health. Science. 2003 Oct. 17 302 :398–99. [ PMC free article : PMC243493 ] [ PubMed : 14563993 ]

Snow CP. The Two Cultures. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press; 1998.

Stolberg SG. In global battle on AIDS, Bush creates legacy. New York Times. Jan 5, 2008.

http://www ​.cyi.ac.cy .

Vendantam S. Scientist’s visa denial sparks outrage in India. Washington Post. Feb 23, 2006.

• Cite this Page Varmus H. The Art and Politics of Science. New York: W.W. Norton & Company; 2009. Chapter 14, Global Science and Global Health.
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Global Science for Global Wellbeing

National Science Day in India is celebrated every year on February 28th to commemorate the discovery of the Raman Effect by Indian physicist Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman on that day in 1928. The discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 and since then, National Science Day is celebrated to spread awareness about the significance of scientific advancements and to encourage students to pursue a career in science.

The National Council for Science & Technology requested that India's government declare February 28 as National Science Day in 1986. Since 1987, this day is now celebrated by academic, scientific, technical, medical, and research organizations in all 50 states.

Union minister Dr. Jitendra Singh released the theme of National Science Day 2023 titled "Global Science for Global Wellbeing". The theme highlights India's expanding worldwide influence and rising international prominence. The theme has been chosen to raise public appreciation of scientific issues in a global context which is having a bearing on global well-being.

To mark this occasion, the Department of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, and various other organizations organize various events. These events include science exhibitions, seminars, and workshops aimed at spreading awareness about the latest developments in science and technology and how they impact our daily lives.

The energy transition is one of the key factors to save the planet from climate change. Significant advances in technologies are creating hopes to meet the net zero targets. Science and technology together are helping to reduce harmful GHG emissions through various innovations. Different industrial sectors are taking substantial steps toward decarbonizing production processes. New technologies are being developed to produce energy from renewable sources like biomass.

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Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Winter 2008

Global Science Gaps Need Global Action

By Mohamed H. A. Hassan

The opportunity exists for many developing countries to become active participants in science, technology, and innovation, but to succeed they will need the support of the international scientific community.

When it comes to the global state of science, technology, and innovation (ST&I), there’s more than one divide. Many readers of Issues in Science and Technology are familiar with the North-South divide between developed and developing countries—a divide that continues to persist. But there’s another divide as well—a South-South divide—that is becoming increasingly prevalent within the developing world. The fact is that some developing countries are rapidly gaining strength in ST&I, whereas others continue to languish.

Yet, before considering what is happening in scientifically lagging developing countries, it might be helpful to provide a broad outline of the world of ST&I as it exists today. First, there are countries with strong ST&I capacity. This group of about 25 countries, consisting largely of countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), enjoys across-the-board strengths in all areas of science and technology (S&T) and has the capacity to transfer scientific and technological knowledge into products and services that boost their economies. Rich in ST&I, they are financially well off as well.

Second, there are countries with moderate ST&I capacity. This group of about 90 countries includes some of the largest countries in the developing world, among them China, India, and Brazil. But the list contains others as well: Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey, to name just a few. It is a diverse group with wide-ranging capabilities. The majority have a degree of competence in a select number of fields. But broad pockets of weakness remain, and the scientific infrastructure, including classrooms and laboratories, while improving, still often trails the quality of instruction and equipment found in countries with strong ST&I capacities.

The ability of these countries to bring their scientific and technical know-how to the marketplace is relatively weak, although recent indicators suggest that this transition is becoming less problematic in a few countries. In February 2007, for example, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported that although the United States still leads the world in patent applications, Asia is rapidly narrowing the gap. China filed nearly 4,000 patent applications in 2006, more than double the 2005 total. “New centers of innovation, particularly in northeast Asia, are emerging,” noted a WIPO official, “and this is transforming the geography of both the patent system and of future growth.”

That is the good news. The bad news is that there is a third category of countries marked by weak ST&I capacity. A survey conducted by the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) has identified 79 such countries, the majority of which are in sub-Saharan Africa and the Islamic region. These countries have very limited capacity in every field of S&T. They have poor teaching facilities, substandard laboratories, and scant ability to transfer their knowledge and know-how into products and services, especially products and services that can compete in the international marketplace. Researchers in these countries lack the capacity to participate in cutting-edge scientific endeavors, and many of their most promising young scientists migrate to other nations to pursue their careers. In the majority of these countries, there is minimal government support for ST&I. More generally, there is the absence of a culture of science.

Thus, the first and most significant challenge for international cooperation in ST&I is this: How can international cooperation help reduce the disparities among nations, particularly the disparities that exist between the scientifically stronger nations and the 79 countries that TWAS has identified as weak in ST&I?

Expanding the reach of ST&I to countries that have been largely left behind is one of the most critical problems of our time. But it is by no means the only one. The problems of sustainable well-being are increasingly complex and global in their dimensions. Yet the people who are most vulnerable to the risks posed by global assaults on the environment are often the most impoverished and marginalized people in the developing world.

In our interconnected world, which has become a truly global community thanks largely to the Internet and airline travel, no country can fully escape the acute problems that plague other nations. That is the message encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approved by member states of the United Nations in 2000. These goals set targets to address the world’s most pressing problems—problems that stand in the way of sustainable well-being in the developing world and that threaten peace and harmony everywhere: poverty, hunger, the spread of infectious diseases, poor education, gender inequality, and the lack of access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and energy.

To help make progress on all these fronts, the MDGs’ eighth measure calls for the creation of global partnerships that tap the collective talents of individuals and institutions in the developed and developing worlds. Experts agree that the MDGs have no chance of being met unless special attention is paid to problems of well-being (or should we say ill-being) that exist in Africa. More than 40% of all Africans do not have access to safe drinking water. Seventy percent do not have access to electricity. Twenty-five million Africans are infected with HIV, more than 60% of the world’s total. Ninety percent of the world’s malaria victims, numbering more than one million people each year, reside in Africa. Agriculture is the main source of sustenance and income for 70% of all Africans. Yet in Africa, 30 million children go to bed hungry every night.

Africa may be poor, but it is not small. It includes more than 20% of Earth’s landmass, comprising an area larger than Australia, Brazil, Europe, and the United States combined. And although Africa may be weak, it is home to nearly one billion people. Africa, in short, may be poor and weak, but it cannot be ignored. In many respects, the future of our planet lies with the future of Africa. Africa, simply put, is where global attention must be focused if we are to make progress in meeting the MDGs.

But that still leaves open the question of what tools must be summoned in our efforts to succeed. The fact is that the MDGs cannot be achieved without strong capacity to generate and use ST&I and without vigorous and sustained international partnerships to help build this capacity.

Other global issues, which affect the developed and developing world in equal measure, also carry growing significance. Global warming is at the top of this list. But in addition, there are issues related to energy security, access to adequate supplies of drinking water, and the overexploitation of natural resources such as fisheries and forests.

Consequently, the second major challenge is this: How can international collaboration in ST&I assist in solving urgent global problems facing the world today? Reducing the gap between rich and poor countries and ensuring that the most critical global issues are tackled with tools that only global ST&I can provide are daunting challenges that cannot be met unless a critical mass of well-trained scientists is present in all countries.

Today, experts estimate that more scientists who have been educated and trained in universities in sub-Saharan Africa have migrated to the United States than have remained in Africa. Experience has shown that brain drain cannot be stopped unless the most talented scientists find favorable working conditions in their homelands. Once a scientist has left and established roots in another country, it is difficult to lure him or her back home, although China, South Korea, and Taiwan have been exceptions to this rule. Yet, as Rajiv Gandhi, the eldest son of Indira Gandhi and former prime minister of India, has noted: “Better brain drain than brain in the drain.” Experience has also shown that a nation’s scientific diaspora can be tapped through international scientific exchange in ways that could prove beneficial to both the scientists’ host and adopted countries.

So the third challenge for international cooperation in ST&I is this: How can global cooperation assist in converting the brain drain into brain circulation, providing benefits for both scientists and the scientific community regardless of where a scientist was born and where he or she chooses to live and work?

Science is a global enterprise, and excellence in science has always depended on the ability of scientists to associate freely with their colleagues around the world. Such movement not only benefits international science but also serves to deepen international understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity—a welcome byproduct in today’s troubled world. Yet as we all know, the free circulation of scientists, especially to the United States, has been severely restricted since the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001.

The scientific community fully recognizes that security interests take precedence over scientific exchange. Nevertheless, it also recognizes that scientific exchange is an important instrument in the fight against ignorance, suspicion, hopelessness, and terrorism. The U.S. State Department, urged by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and others, has taken steps to ease the burden of entry into the United States for scientists traveling from abroad. But many of our colleagues, particularly those from Africa and the Islamic region, hope that more can be done. Governments in the developing world are also discussing, and in some cases implementing, strategies to facilitate foreign travel by their scientists. For example, earlier this year the foreign ministers of the African Union (AU) endorsed a proposal to grant diplomatic passports to African scientists to ease their travel across Africa.

Although individual scientists from the developing world would benefit directly from these measures, no country would benefit more than the United States. Despite its inhospitable attitudes of the past few years, the United States remains the destination of choice for the most talented students and scientists from the developing world. As critics of the policy within the United States have noted: Many of the nation’s top graduate programs in science and engineering would be severely handicapped if foreign students stayed home. It is also worth pointing out that nearly half of all U.S. Nobel laureates since 1990 are foreign-born.

Therefore, the fourth major challenge is: How can the global scientific community persuade governments, especially the United States, to ease visa problems faced by scientists from the developing world and particularly those from the most impoverished and troubled regions of the developing world?

“Information wants to be free” is the clarion call of those of us who promote its free exchange. But what we often fail to emphasize is that information—that is, quality information—is expensive to produce. In recent years, the Internet and other forms of electronic communication have revolutionized the way in which scientific information is distributed and, increasingly, reviewed, edited, and published. These trends have had an enormously positive impact on global science. Never before have scientists in the developing world enjoyed access to such an extensive amount of current information. Never before have scientists been able to communicate so easily and directly with their colleagues in other parts of the world. And never before has international scientific collaboration been so easy to plan, organize, and implement.

But critical issues remain. Developing countries, particularly the poorest developing countries, often do not have sufficient resources and expertise to build and maintain up-to-date electronic communications systems. Broadband Internet connections are still rare in much of the developing world, and even online subscription rates are too high for many developing-world scientists to have access to the most current literature.

So the fifth challenge is: How does the global scientific community help ensure that scientists in all nations have electronic access to the new information and communication technologies and to the most current scientific literature?

The challenges for international cooperation in ST&I for sustainable well-being are many. I have just touched on the most significant ones. Now I would like to turn to the bright side of the equation: the opportunities for international cooperation, which are no less numerous and no less significant than the challenges. In some cases, they are one and the same.

There are new fields of science and new cutting-edge technologies that promise to have extraordinary impacts on global well-being.

• Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are not just highly specialized fields in their own right but also enabling forces that help to advance all fields of S&T. ICTs, in fact, have led to a melding of fundamental and experimental research through the facilitation of mathematical modeling.
• Biotechnology is having a strong impact on agriculture, public health, medicine, and environmental science, transforming each in new and unexpected ways.
• Nanotechnology promises to revolutionize materials science; to bring physics, biology, and chemistry closer together; and ultimately to have broad-ranging implications in a variety of critical areas, including water, energy, human health, and the environment.
• Space S&T help us to monitor environmental change (for example, assessing rates of deforestation and desertification) and devise effective responses to a host of ecological problems.

Several developing countries, especially those with growing scientific and technological capabilities, have been eager to embrace and pursue these new technologies. China and Brazil, for example, have partnered on a joint initiative leading to the launch of two satellites designed to chart land and ocean resources. Two more satellites are planned for 2008. Nigeria launched two remote-sensing satellites earlier this decade, and this May it launched its first communications satellite, in collaboration with China.

China is investing substantial sums of money in nanoscience and nanotechnology. That investment is paying off handsomely in terms of publications. In fact, a recent survey found that in 2004 Chinese scientists published the largest number of papers on nanotechnology in international peer-reviewed journals, exceeding the number of papers published by scientists in the United States. Brazil, India, and South Africa are also making substantial investments in nanotechnology.

India’s investment in ICTs is well known. The nation now enjoys world-class status in this field and is home to a number of corporations that rank among the largest and most influential in the world, including Infosys, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services. Pakistan, Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa, and many other developing countries have invested enormous resources in the development and expansion of ICTs. And let us not forget that South Korea, a nation that in 1962 had a gross domestic product (GDP) of just $2.3 billion (comparable to that of Uganda), embraced information technologies as one of the key sectors in its plans for long-term sustainable growth, first with telephony technologies and more recently with the Internet. Today, South Korea’s GDP exceeds $765 billion and ranks 11th in the world.

Developing countries have also taken significant steps in joining the global biotechnology research community. Malaysia, for example, has embarked on a broad-based biotechnology program to increase national wealth and improve the well-being of its citizens. China has made biotechnology a top priority, launching five large biotechnology research centers. In Africa, Nigeria has developed and is now implementing a national biotechnology policy, and Ghana has drafted a biosafety law that is now awaiting legislative approval. Governments across Africa have acknowledged the need to develop capacity in biotechnology and are now trying to match their rhetoric with action.

All of this adds up to new opportunities for international cooperation in ST&I, opportunities that hold the promise of advancing both science and sustainable well-being across the globe.

Science for the sake of science is no longer sufficient justification for doing science in many parts of the world where budgets are limited. Today, increasing attention is being paid to creating organizations and even disciplines that focus on the complex interactions between human and environmental systems. We have seen this effort unfold in the development of a series of conferences held by the United Nations during the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002. And we have seen this in the creation of an international project aimed at linking knowledge to action: the Initiative for Science and Technology for Sustainability (ISTS) at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. TWAS is delighted to be a partner in these efforts, joining the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many other research institutions in the developed and developing world.

ISTS has done an excellent job in articulating the principles of sustainability science and of raising the profile of this concept in the scientific and development communities. It has done an equally impressive job of highlighting examples of sustainability science and creating a broad conceptual framework for understanding why certain institutions devoted to science-based sustainable development succeed, whereas others do not.

In addition to the initiatives in the mid-level nations mentioned above, political leaders in the poorest countries with limited scientific and technological capabilities are also making increasing commitments to R&D and to regional cooperation in S&T. For example, at the AU Summit in January 2007 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, African leaders discussed regional strategies for the promotion of S&T. They announced that 2007 would be the year of “African scientific innovation.” Africa’s leaders have expressed support for S&T in the past, but the meetings were followed by meager results and ultimately disappointment. This time the level of commitment and enthusiasm is different. And this time the results could well be different.

Leaders at the AU Summit strongly recommended that each African country spend at least 1% of its GDP on S&T. Previous pledges to increase S&T spending have not been realized, but prospects are better this time. In fact, several African nations, most notably those that have also embraced democracy and good governance (including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia), have substantially increased their investments in S&T.

The government of Nigeria, for example, has provided $5 million to launch an endowment fund for the African Academy of Sciences. Nigeria has also announced plans to launch its own national science foundation, modeled after the U.S. National Science Foundation. It has pledged $5 billion to the foundation’s endowment fund, money that is to be derived from revenues generated by the nation’s oil and gas industries. Only one nation in sub-Saharan Africa— South Africa—currently has a national science foundation.

At the AU Summit, the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, announced that his country has dramatically boosted expenditures on S&T from less than 0.5% of GDP a few years ago to 1.6% today. He also publicly committed his nation to increase investments in S&T to 3% of GDP within the next five years. That would make Rwanda’s investment in S&T, percentage-wise, comparable to that of South Korea and higher than that of most developed countries. A nation teetering on collapse less than a decade ago and still living in the shadow of genocide has embarked on a path leading to science-based sustainable development. Rwanda remains poor, but it is no longer hopelessly poor.

Last year, Uganda received a $25 million loan from the World Bank to support S&T within the country and the creation of centers of scientific excellence that will serve not only Uganda but also the entire region. The grant was given in part because of Uganda’s successful efforts to build its own scientific and technological capacities, particularly in the fields of public health and agricultural science.

This year, Zambia received a $30 million loan from the African Development Bank to support teaching and research at the University of Zambia and to provide postgraduate fellowships to some 300 students majoring in science and engineering. At the AU Summit, the president of Zambia, Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, proclaimed that building capacity in S&T is the only way to develop his country.

The president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, who heads one of the region’s poorest countries, acknowledged at the AU Summit that building scientific and technological capacity provides the only sure way to break the long-standing cycle of extreme poverty that has gripped the African continent for decades.“We have depended on donor countries for scientific development for so long,” he noted.“It is time we commit more resources in our national budget to advance S&T.” He urged his minister of finance to make S&T a budget priority and to provide additional funds for this effort on a sustained basis. He also pledged to create international centers of excellence in the fields of hydrology and biotechnology.

What makes the prospects for international cooperation in S&T for sustainable well-being so promising, even (or perhaps especially) when it comes to Africa, is that the global scientific community will not be acting alone in this effort. Over the past several years, there have been increasing commitments by governments in the developed world, and particularly in G8 countries, to support ST&I in low-income countries and especially in Africa.

In 2005, the Commission for Africa Report Our Common Interest, solicited by the UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and published during the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, called on G8 countries to provide $5 billion to help rebuild Africa’s universities. The report also called for investing an additional $3 billion to help establish centers of scientific excellence in Africa. The G8 member countries unanimously pledged to support these recommendations, a decision that was greeted with enthusiasm in Africa and throughout much of the world.

Yet to date, G8 member countries have officially authorized only $160 million of support, targeted for the creation of networks of centers of excellence proposed by the AU’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Equally distressing, little of this money has actually been transferred to Africa. The international scientific community has an important stake in the success of this initiative, and it must continue to urge the G8 countries to fulfil the pledges that they made in Gleneagles.

The World Bank, through the Science Institutes Group, headquartered at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, has provided loans for the creation of Millennium Science Institutes in Brazil, Chile, Turkey, and Uganda. The institutes offer scientists from developing countries an opportunity to conduct world-class research and to pursue cooperative projects with colleagues in a broad range of scientific fields. Several foundations have supported projects in science-poor countries that emphasize scientific and technological capacity building. Many of these efforts have focused on education and training for young scientists in the world’s least developed countries.

Rising levels of scientific excellence in developing countries, most notably Brazil, China, India, and South Africa, have opened new opportunities for South-South collaboration in education and research.

• For example, agreements have been signed between TWAS and the governments of Brazil, China, India, and Pakistan providing more than 250 scholarships a year to graduate students and postgraduate researchers in poor developing countries to attend universities in the donor countries. TWAS pays for the plane ticket. The host countries pay for all other expenses, including housing and lodging. This is the largest South-South fellowship program in the world.
• Brazil’s pro-Africa program supports scientific and technological capacity building in sub-Saharan Africa and especially in the Portuguese-speaking countries of Angola and Mozambique. The program includes research collaboration activities with Brazilian institutions.
• China’s Development Fund for Africa, approved in 2006, will provide $5 billion over the next five years to assist African countries to achieve the MDGs through cooperation with China.
• The joint Brazil, India, and Senegal Biofuels project in Senegal will seek to transfer Brazil and India’s expertise in the development of biofuels to one of Africa’s most scientifically proficient nations.
• And the India, Brazil and South Africa tripartite initiative has recently agreed to launch a joint S&T program that will provide funds for joint problem-solving projects focusing on developing products with commercial value.

What does all this rush of activity add up to? Is it just another episode of fleeting interest in countries and people that have been left behind? Or are we entering a new era marked by sustained investments in ST&I, not just in the developed world but increasingly in the developing world as well?

I believe that we have more reason for optimism than cyni cism and that we may indeed be witnessing the beginning of a transformational moment in global science and science-based sustainable development. But for us to seize this moment, we need to develop and implement an action agenda designed to sustain and expand international cooperation in ST&I.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, when issuing its policy summary in February 2007, proclaimed that we had reached a “tipping point” in our understanding of climate change. As Susan Solomon and other scientists who participated in this sterling example of international cooperation in science noted, it was now “unequivocally” true— indeed more than 90% certain—that human activities are responsible for altering our climate and for causing a significant rise in average global temperatures.

We have reached another tipping point as well. It has to do with the growing capabilities in S&T across the globe. These capabilities are rapidly transforming our existing bipolar world of S&T, previously anchored in the United States and Europe, into a multipolar world of science marked by the growing capabilities of Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Turkey, and others.

As the list of developing countries that garner strength in S&T increases in the coming years, the key question is this: Will just a handful of additional countries become scientifically strong, while the rest are left behind? Or will international cooperation in S&T help all countries into the fold, ultimately transforming science-based sustainable wellbeing into a truly global phenomenon?

The answer to this question lies, in part, in how the international scientific community responds to the challenges and opportunities that stand before it. The chances for success have rarely been brighter. The consequences of neglect and indifference have rarely been more troubling. The international science community should seize this moment. If we don’t, it could well fade into history as a lost opportunity that we, as both scientists and citizens, can ill-afford to lose.

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5 ways science is transforming global health and saving lives

Science expands our understanding, makes the impossible possible, and helps us build the future we want for all people. science drives the work of ghtc, so we wanted to take a step back to reflect on five ways science is transforming global health..

Science expands our understanding, makes the impossible possible, and helps us build the future we want for all people. Science drives the work of our Global Health Technologies Coalition, so we wanted to take a step back to reflect on five ways science is transforming global health:

1. Science is generating treatments, cures, and vaccines to tackle the world’s most devastating diseases. 

From a vaccine that has put us at the brink of eradicating polio to antiretroviral treatments that have dramatically extended the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS, science has generated new health technologies that have driven tremendous progress in global health. Thanks to investments in science and research, 82 new vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and other lifesaving global health tools have been developed and introduced since 2000. These tools include a new meningitis A vaccine —which has already saved 378,000 lives and prevented 673,000 new infections since 2010—and new child-friendly malaria drugs that have helped cut childhood malaria deaths by 65 percent since 2000. Science has also fueled a robust pipeline of over 670 global health technologies now in development poised to further build upon these gains.

2. Science is helping us understand the unique needs of users and communities so we can design the right tools for impact.

3. Science is helping us predict, detect, and track emerging health risks so we can be better prepared to confront tomorrow's challenges.

From using weather patterns to forecast the risk of insect-borne disease outbreaks, to employing genomics and evolutionary theory to predict how bacteria will become resistant to antibiotics, to advancing new hybrid systems that combine crowdsourced data with traditional disease surveillance, science is helping us better predict, detect, and track infectious disease outbreaks and other emerging health challenges. Early detection can make the difference between an outbreak becoming an epidemic and is critical to mounting an effective response.

4. Science is helping us understand what works and what doesn't so we can better target interventions and design health programs for maximum impact. 

How often does an insecticide-treated bed net need to be replaced , and how many tears can it sustain before its stops working? In an era of limited resources, can we predict which technologies and interventions are likely to save the most lives in a country if brought to scale? How do we get people to change their handwashing habits to reduce diarrheal disease and childhood deaths? These are the questions big and small that scientists, data analysts, and other health researchers are working to answer in labs, offices, and program sites across the United States and world. The answers they get are helping us better target health solutions and refine health programming to more save lives and more dollars.

5. Science is putting information and data at our fingertips to help us fight global diseases and health challenges in new and unusual ways.

The revolution in mobile technology, digital health, and big data is transforming our approach to fighting global diseases and health challenges. Health care workers are using mobile devices to track immunization coverage door-to-door and monitor vaccine supplies to prevent stockouts, doctors are using SMS to remind patients to take their tuberculosis drugs and treatment adherence, and health ministries are deploying new data visualization toolsto turn a mountain of data into accessible and actionable information to guide decision on to best deploy and target resources.

Science creates a foundation upon which improvements in global health are built. It unlocks discoveries and fuels innovation, informs policies and programs, breaks down barriers, and ultimately advances better, healthier lives for all people. At this moment in time, it is more vital than ever that we build a convincing case of the benefits that flow from science and the importance of strong investment in science and research.

In global health, science matters because #scienceserves and science saves.

About the authors

Jamie bay nishi ghtc.

Jamie served as GHTC Executive Director for seven years until the end of 2023, leading the coalition’s policy and advocacy portfolio, as well as managing its engagement with GHTC members and other stakeholders and partners in government, the private sector, and civil society. She has over 12 years of experience in business development, project management, stakeholder engagement, and strategic partnership building.

Marissa Chmiola GHTC

Marissa manages the development and implementation of the coalition’s communications activities, overseeing GHTC’s digital presence, media outreach, events, publications, and internal communication practices. She also manages GHTC's monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive learning and donor reporting... read more about this author

Other Breakthroughs Blog posts you may like:

Research roundup: progress in fighting ntds and tb, polio eradication setbacks, and the crisis surrounding..., global health r&d gamified.

The Effects of Climate Change

The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

• We already see effects scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves.
• Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify.

Earth Will Continue to Warm and the Effects Will Be Profound

Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.

Effects that scientists had long predicted would result from global climate change are now occurring, such as sea ice loss, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.

The magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some changes (such as droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists previously assessed. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the United Nations body established to assess the science related to climate change — modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global climate, and some of these changes are irreversible over the next hundreds to thousands of years.

Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for many decades, mainly due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report, published in 2021, found that human emissions of heat-trapping gases have already warmed the climate by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since 1850-1900. 1 The global average temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) within the next few decades. These changes will affect all regions of Earth.

The severity of effects caused by climate change will depend on the path of future human activities. More greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more climate extremes and widespread damaging effects across our planet. However, those future effects depend on the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit. So, if we can reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.

The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief, rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.

Here are some of the expected effects of global climate change on the United States, according to the Third and Fourth National Climate Assessment Reports:

Future effects of global climate change in the United States:

U.S. Sea Level Likely to Rise 1 to 6.6 Feet by 2100

Global sea level has risen about 8 inches (0.2 meters) since reliable record-keeping began in 1880. By 2100, scientists project that it will rise at least another foot (0.3 meters), but possibly as high as 6.6 feet (2 meters) in a high-emissions scenario. Sea level is rising because of added water from melting land ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms. Image credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Climate Changes Will Continue Through This Century and Beyond

Global climate is projected to continue warming over this century and beyond. Image credit: Khagani Hasanov, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Hurricanes Will Become Stronger and More Intense

Scientists project that hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates will increase as the climate continues to warm. Image credit: NASA

More Droughts and Heat Waves

Droughts in the Southwest and heat waves (periods of abnormally hot weather lasting days to weeks) are projected to become more intense, and cold waves less intense and less frequent. Image credit: NOAA

Longer Wildfire Season

Warming temperatures have extended and intensified wildfire season in the West, where long-term drought in the region has heightened the risk of fires. Scientists estimate that human-caused climate change has already doubled the area of forest burned in recent decades. By around 2050, the amount of land consumed by wildfires in Western states is projected to further increase by two to six times. Even in traditionally rainy regions like the Southeast, wildfires are projected to increase by about 30%.

Changes in Precipitation Patterns

Climate change is having an uneven effect on precipitation (rain and snow) in the United States, with some locations experiencing increased precipitation and flooding, while others suffer from drought. On average, more winter and spring precipitation is projected for the northern United States, and less for the Southwest, over this century. Image credit: Marvin Nauman/FEMA

Frost-Free Season (and Growing Season) will Lengthen

The length of the frost-free season, and the corresponding growing season, has been increasing since the 1980s, with the largest increases occurring in the western United States. Across the United States, the growing season is projected to continue to lengthen, which will affect ecosystems and agriculture.

Global Temperatures Will Continue to Rise

Summer of 2023 was Earth's hottest summer on record, 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.23 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other summer in NASA’s record and 2.1 degrees F (1.2 C) warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980. Image credit: NASA

Arctic Is Very Likely to Become Ice-Free

Sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue decreasing, and the Arctic Ocean will very likely become essentially ice-free in late summer if current projections hold. This change is expected to occur before mid-century.

U.S. Regional Effects

Climate change is bringing different types of challenges to each region of the country. Some of the current and future impacts are summarized below. These findings are from the Third 3 and Fourth 4 National Climate Assessment Reports, released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program .

• Northeast. Heat waves, heavy downpours, and sea level rise pose increasing challenges to many aspects of life in the Northeast. Infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, and ecosystems will be increasingly compromised. Farmers can explore new crop options, but these adaptations are not cost- or risk-free. Moreover, adaptive capacity , which varies throughout the region, could be overwhelmed by a changing climate. Many states and cities are beginning to incorporate climate change into their planning.
• Northwest. Changes in the timing of peak flows in rivers and streams are reducing water supplies and worsening competing demands for water. Sea level rise, erosion, flooding, risks to infrastructure, and increasing ocean acidity pose major threats. Increasing wildfire incidence and severity, heat waves, insect outbreaks, and tree diseases are causing widespread forest die-off.
• Southeast. Sea level rise poses widespread and continuing threats to the region’s economy and environment. Extreme heat will affect health, energy, agriculture, and more. Decreased water availability will have economic and environmental impacts.
• Midwest. Extreme heat, heavy downpours, and flooding will affect infrastructure, health, agriculture, forestry, transportation, air and water quality, and more. Climate change will also worsen a range of risks to the Great Lakes.
• Southwest. Climate change has caused increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks. In turn, these changes have made wildfires more numerous and severe. The warming climate has also caused a decline in water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, and triggered heat-related health impacts in cities. In coastal areas, flooding and erosion are additional concerns.

1. IPCC 2021, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis , the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

2. IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

3. USGCRP 2014, Third Climate Assessment .

4. USGCRP 2017, Fourth Climate Assessment .

Related Resources

A Degree of Difference

So, the Earth's average temperature has increased about 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century. What's the big deal?

What’s the difference between climate change and global warming?

“Global warming” refers to the long-term warming of the planet. “Climate change” encompasses global warming, but refers to the broader range of changes that are happening to our planet, including rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flower/plant blooming times.

Is it too late to prevent climate change?

Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already, and we have set in motion more changes still. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries.

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This Is the Way the World Ends (According to Novelists)

A new kind of disaster fiction is serving as scenario planning for real global crises. Call it the apocalyptic systems thriller.

Credit... Anuj Shrestha

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By Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru’s next novel, “Blue Ruin,” will be published in May.

• March 29, 2024

In the opening chapters of “2054,” a new thriller co-written by Elliot Ackerman and Adm. James Stavridis, the action shifts every page or two — from a private jet, to the White House, to a Ritz-Carlton hotel, to Capitol Hill and elsewhere. The short sections are titled with locations and time stamps (including time zones) to signify global scope and high stakes. We understand at once that this is a story too big to be told from one perspective.

It’s a familiar technique; in movies, such titles are often given extra technical sheen with a flashing cursor that prints them out across the screen, a skeuomorphic legacy of teletype and early command-line interfaces. The implication is that diverse situations are being monitored in some way, logged and recorded by a technically proficient authority that sees them as part of a coherent whole.

“2054” is a sequel to “2034,” “a novel of the next world war” that meticulously laid out a sequence of events starting with a naval confrontation in the South China Sea and ending in nuclear conflict. Twenty years afterward, Sandy Chowdhury, a character in the first novel, asks the pilot of his Gulfstream to divert so he can view the reconstruction of Galveston, Texas, which was leveled by a Chinese warhead. The physical consequences of the devastation are being repaired, but the social and political divisions remain.

The geopolitical epic is at least as old as “War and Peace,” but there’s a particular kind of novel that came into its own with globalization, taking on new life in recent years. Call it the apocalyptic systems thriller, or, because abbreviations and acronyms are crucial to its aesthetic, the A.S.T.

Multi-stranded, terse, often anchored in character just enough to drive the action forward, these books invite us to take an elevated, panoramic view of events that extend too far in space and time to be grasped by a single narrative consciousness. Conflict, climate change, pandemics and natural disasters offer ways to contemplate our interconnection and interdependence. At its best, this kind of fiction can induce a kind of sublime awe at the complexity of the global networks in which we’re enmeshed: A butterfly flaps its wings in Seoul and the Dow crashes; a hacker steals a password and war breaks out.

The currency of the A.S.T. is plausibility. It can be counterfactual, but never fantastical. It differs from other kinds of thrillers in its willingness to indulge in essayistic digressions about technology or policy. In some cases, the story may even take second place to these ideas, a mere vehicle for the delivery of an info-payload. In this, the A.S.T. is essentially a subgenre of SF, or at least the kind of science fiction that prioritizes world-building over other kinds of narrative pleasure. Indeed, many A.S.T.s, like “2034” and “2054,” are near-future tales, extrapolating from the present to a carefully imagined next five minutes, designed to elicit a little spark of recognition, the feeling of being shown a possible path from “here” to a utopian or dystopian “there.”

“The End of October,” Lawrence Wright’s eerily prescient novel about a global influenza pandemic, was written before Covid and published in the early days of the 2020 lockdown. Like Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 pandemic drama, “Contagion,” which experienced a boom in streaming in early 2020, Wright’s book generated a lot of affect, at least in that moment, from its power of extrapolation. We were in the early days of something; we didn’t know what. Here were narratives that showed what we could be facing if the pandemic intensified to the point of mass death and social breakdown. Naturally, we could not look away.

To succeed, this kind of story has to feel true. Even as the A.S.T. indulges in thriller tropes, the chases and explosions must be anchored by a kind of epistemological authority. We must believe that what we’re reading is something more than a product of the writer’s fevered imagination. Wright, who won a Pulitzer for “The Looming Tower,” his account of 9/11, derives his authority from extensive and rigorous research. In the acknowledgments (always an important part of an A.S.T.) he credits virologists and public health officials, as well as a number of submariners, who helped with an extended sequence that takes place aboard one of the U.S. Navy’s long-range underwater vessels.

Ackerman and Stavridis derive their authority from their military experience. Ackerman served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine. Stavridis retired as a four-star admiral and served as NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe. When they’re describing the buildup to war in “2034,” their procedural knowledge gives their story a verisimilitude that elevates its workmanlike telling. As Navy men, they are not above a little light trolling of the other branches of the armed forces: How else are we to understand a novel about World War III without a single mention (as far as I’m able to tell) of the Army?

The interwoven character arcs of “2034” convey what really seems to interest the authors — a set of warnings and predictions aimed at their peers in what used to be called the military-industrial complex. The ladder of escalation begins with a Chinese demonstration of decisive cyberwar superiority, a capability gap that leads to disaster. The vulnerability of global communications systems is a preoccupation, as is the rise of India as a military power. The important theaters of war are naval ones — the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. So maybe that’s where military spending ought to be directed? Just a thought from the admiral.

The sequel, however, turns its attention to biotechnology and American domestic partisanship. The president dies suddenly from a mysterious growth on his heart, raising fears of a new kind of bioweapon based on “remote gene editing” technology. His death leads to civil unrest, and takes a motley crew of characters, including Chowdhury, a genetics researcher and a seductive diving instructor, through an eccentric riff on “Heart of Darkness.” They head upriver to find a reclusive figure — not Kurtz, but a centenarian Ray Kurzweil, the ebullient (and real) Silicon Valley futurist and promoter of transhumanism. The future of humanity will be decided in the lab, the authors caution, and we are sorely unprepared.

Experts on military matters, Ackerman and Stavridis are much less secure on scientific terrain. Their notion of the world-changing “singularity,” drawn from Kurzweil, is little more than metaphysical hand-waving, and their descriptions of biotechnology lack substance, which drains their tale of the most important quality of any A.S.T.: procedural plausibility.

The most celebrated example of the A.S.T. in recent years — and the book that, in its breadth of speculation, sets the standard for the genre — is Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” which attempts the enormous task of imagining a coordinated global response to another grave threat to humanity, climate change. From its terrifying opening set piece, which portrays a lethal heat event in north India, it expands across the globe and through decades, laying out strategies for alleviating the crisis. Along the way, the story is studded by capsule essays on a range of technical topics, from the Gini Coefficient and tax policy to carbon sequestration and the Jevons Paradox .

This is fiction as simulation, running versions of events, trying to imagine how things might be if the pieces on the board were arranged in a certain way, rather than playing the other games novelists play, imagining what could never be or simply never was. One ancestor of this kind of work is the 19th-century social novel: Think of Zola’s meticulously researched Rougon-Macquart sequence, a 20-book panorama of life under the French Second Empire. A more recent predecessor is the near-future cyberpunk narrative exemplified by Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. Still another would be the kind of techno-thriller pioneered by Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton, particularly the spate of novels published late in the Cold War, including Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” and Gen. Sir John Hackett’s “The Third World War,” which imagined hostilities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. But there’s a different tradition behind the A.S.T., one outside conventional literary history — corporate scenario planning.

During the Cold War, one think tank was central to the business of imagining the American future. The RAND Corporation had been spun out of the Department of War to produce policy proposals for the U.S. government. It used game theory to model nuclear escalation and collected what would now be called “big data” (in retrospect, woefully small) to guide the conduct of the Vietnam War. A RAND futurist called Herman Kahn began to supplement mathematical models with what he termed “scenarios,” war-game narratives illustrating “rungs of the escalation ladder” of nuclear conflict, from “ostensible crisis” through “justifiable counterforce attack” to “spasm or insensate war.” The storytelling element was a daring innovation in an organizational culture that valued quantitative analysis.

In the early 1970s, the oil company Royal Dutch Shell hired the Frenchman Pierre Wack to run its strategic planning department. A disciple of Kahn, Wack was also an early corporate adopter of “mindfulness” and a student of the Caucasian mystic George Gurdjieff. Wack made scenario planning a kind of structured science fiction, producing not a single forecast but several competing images of the future. Participants were encouraged to step away from the “official future” — whatever the orthodoxy might be in their organization.

Wack’s scenario planning was credited with helping Shell weather the oil shocks of the ’70s, and this style of “possible future” storytelling gradually spread beyond the company, finding fertile ground in the emerging Bay Area tech scene. By the 1990s, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, was a partner in a scenario planning consultancy. Wired magazine ran a “scenarios” issue in 1995, detailing possible futures imagined by writers of speculative fiction like Stephenson, Bruce Sterling and Douglas Coupland, completing the fusion of scenario planning with more traditional literary pursuits.

So, while the A.S.T. is a form of entertainment, it’s also meant to enlighten the planners and decision makers who might grab a hardcover off the shelf at an airport bookstore. Bill Gates and Barack Obama have recommended “The Ministry for the Future.” Robinson spoke at the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos. Stavridis and Ackerman have spoken at think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Atlantic Council and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. As fiction for the Davos set, the A.S.T. is a tool for both forecasting and navigating the troubles to come.

This dual purpose is made particularly clear in “AI 2041,” a recent book by Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, and Chen Qiufan, one of China’s most celebrated SF writers. In it, Chen writes 10 short stories, each illustrating a scenario that Lee wants to discuss. Lee introduces the stories and writes an extensive commentary after each one, detailing the technological possibilities and social issues that it raises. Chen’s fictions are rather swamped by Lee’s context, which makes them into something like moral fables, mere illustrations of his points.

Why is the A.S.T. so salient right now? What itch is it scratching? One of the most astute thinkers about the emergent networked future is the design theorist Benjamin Bratton. In “The Revenge of the Real,” a work of nonfiction published in 2021, he proposes a “politics for a post-pandemic world,” suggesting that Covid has trained us to see ourselves in an “epidemiological” way: Like it or not, we are, inescapably, a population as well as individuals. We have undergone a kind of crash course in systems thinking that will, Bratton hopes, force us to approach our problems at global scale. “It is necessary,” he writes, “for a society to be able to sense, model and act back upon itself, and it is necessary for it to plan and provide for the care of its people.”

The aesthetic of the A.S.T., with its flaunting of globalization, its pleasure in technical advances and its refusal of the “single window” into its stories, does have a utopian dimension — the imagination of what Bratton calls “planetary competency.” The message is one of resilience, of human beings acting in concert, muddling through problems in the hope of navigating what Pierre Wack called “the rapids” of the near future, into calmer waters beyond.

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Union Minister DrJitendra Singh unveils the theme for National Science Day 2023, titled " Global Science for Global Wellbeing" at National Media Centre, Delhi The Minister says, as India enters 2023, the theme indicates India's emerging global role and rising visibility in the international arena. National Science Day (NSD) is celebrated every year on 28 February to commemorate the discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’ The Minister expresses his deep gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his meticulous guidance on the theme, subject and events of the National Science Day Theme of “Global Science for Global Wellbeing” is perfectly in sync with India assuming the Presidency of G-20, where she will become the voice of the Global South, comprising of developing countries of Asia, Africa and South America: Dr Jitendra Singh It heralds a new era to provide opportunities to people and scientific fraternity in the country and abroad to come together, work together and experience the joy of doing science for the wellbeing of mankind DST acts as a nodal agency to support, catalyse and coordinate celebration of the National Science Day throughout the country in scientific institutions, research laboratories and autonomous scientific institutions

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today released the theme for the "National Science Day 2023", titled " Global Science for Global Wellbeing " at National Media Centre, here.

The Minister said, as India enters 2023, the theme indicates India's emerging global role and rising visibility in the international arena.

Dr Jitendra Singh expressed his deep gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his meticulous guidance on the theme, subject and events of the National Science Day.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, the theme of “Global Science for Global Wellbeing” is perfectly in sync with India assuming the Presidency of G-20, where she will become the voice of the global south that is the developing countries of Asia, Africa and South America.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, India has acquired Global Visibility in the Comity of Nations under Prime Minister Modi and we are ready for Outcome oriented Global Collaboration to address the Global Challenges. He said, when concerns, challenges and benchmarks have assumed global dimensions, the redressal should also be of the global nature.

The National Science Day (NSD) is celebrated every year on 28 February to commemorate the discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’. Government of India designated 28 February as National Science Day (NSD) in 1986. On this day Sir C.V. Raman announced the discovery of the 'Raman Effect' for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930. On this occasion, theme-based science communication activities are carried out all over the country.

Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that Modi had extended National Science Day greetings to all scientists and science enthusiasts last year and called for Global Good, when he said, “Let us reaffirm our commitment towards fulfilling our collective scientific responsibility and leveraging the power of science for human progress”.

Dr Jitendra Singh informed that the Global Science for Global Wellbeing theme has been chosen for the purpose of raising public appreciation of the scientific issues in global context which is having a bearing upon global wellbeing.

He said, today, Indian scientific breakthroughs have reached from the lab to the land, indeed applications of science are being used by every household to bring “Ease of Living” for the common man. It also heralds a new era to provide opportunities to people and scientific fraternity in the country and abroad to come together, work together and experience the joy of doing science for the wellbeing of mankind, the Minister added.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, Science and Technology ecosystem in the country has made rapid strides in the last 8 and half years by initiating several new landmark reforms with far reaching implications for the country. He also reiterated the Government’s stand that with renewed focus on Science, India is progressively marching towards becoming a global leader in industrialization and technological development. India’s new plan, called Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy 2020, plans to promote Science more effectively and experts-driven, the Minister added.

Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, Dr Ajay Kumar Sood explained the rationale behind the theme OF " Global Science for Global Wellbeing " and said in the wake of COVID-19, the World has become more closer to fight global challenges. Dr Sood also explained in detail that it was on February 28 in 1928 that iconic Indian physicist C.V. Raman made an important discovery, known as the Raman Effect. The discovery was that when a beam of coloured light entered a liquid, a fraction of the light scattered by that liquid was of a different color. Raman showed that the nature of this scattered light was dependent on the type of sample present.

Secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST) Shri S. Chandrasekhar in his welcome address said that celebrations of important Scientific Days with associated events bring scientific awareness in the community. Many institutions organise open houses for their laboratories and appraise students about career opportunities available in a particular research laboratory/institution. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) acts as a nodal agency to support, catalyse and coordinate celebration of the National Science Day throughout the country in scientific institutions, research laboratories and autonomous scientific institutions associated with the Department of Science and Technology. National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC), DST has supported various programmes countrywide through State S&T Councils & Departments for organisation of lectures, quizzes, open houses, etc.

Dr Manoranjan Mohanty, Head, NCSTC, DST and other Senior officials of the Ministry of Science and Technology took part in today’s event.

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March 31, 2024

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The Gambia may allow female genital mutilation again, another sign of a global trend eroding women's rights

by Satang Nabaneh, The Conversation

The Gambia's ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) since 2015 is under threat . Proposed changes before parliament could permit medicalized female genital cutting and allow it for consenting adults.

This potential reversal has thrust the country into the global spotlight as the latest example of the backlash against gender equality.

The Gambia's criminalization of FGM was not the first in west Africa but it came as a surprise. The president at the time, Yahya Jammeh, declared the rampant cultural tradition a non-religious practice that caused harm. There was some dissent within the country but human rights groups welcomed the ban.

Jammeh, who was president from 1994 to 2016, also oversaw the passage of other progressive gender-related laws. The Domestic Violence Act 2013 provided a framework for combating domestic violence in all its forms (physical, sexual, emotional, economic) and protection in particular for women and children. The Sexual Offenses Act 2013 expanded the definition of rape, broadened the circumstances in which individuals could be charged, and reduced the burden of proof in prosecutions.

Jammeh also outlawed child marriages in 2016. This was significant in country where 1 in 5 young people aged 15–19 (19%) are married.

In one of the world's most aid-dependent countries , these reforms were all central to international donor interests. And they helped to improve the country's democratic reputation. But at the same time, they made it easy for the autocratic leader to get away with other excesses. He also mobilized religion to manipulate beliefs and sentiments, particularly affecting girls and women. For example, Jammeh mandated that female government workers wear veils or headscarves when he declared his Muslim majority country an Islamic state in 2016.

President Adama Barrow, Jammeh's successor, has emphasized religious tolerance and has refrained from employing religious symbolism. Unlike the state-sponsored homophobia under the Jammeh regime, Barrow has downplayed homosexuality as a " non-issue ."

I am a legal scholar and human rights practitioner with published research on female genital mutilation , gender equality and women's rights and governance in The Gambia. It's my view that Jammeh's ostensible compliance with gender equality norms was selective and intended for the international gallery rather than a genuine commitment to women's rights and democracy.

His tactical stance highlighted a broader trend. Autocratic African leaders often accommodate global gender norms to maintain domestic power dynamics. The result, for example, is increased women's political participation through quotas along with a conservative approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The Gambia experience also shows that western donors and multilateral institutions need to go beyond just pushing for reforms. Once they have got the reforms they advocated for, they should have a strategy for sustaining them. Forces that were opposed to the reform often regroup to campaign for its removal.

At its core, female genital mutilation constitutes a violation of the human rights of girls and women. These include the right to non-discrimination, to protection from physical and mental violence, and to health and life.

From a feminist perspective, the prevalence of FGM in numerous African nations revolves around upholding gender-specific norms and exerting control over women's sexuality.

Female genital mutilation in The Gambia

Female genital cutting is a deeply ingrained practice . It is driven by cultural beliefs and often performed by traditional healers. According to the most recent national survey , a large majority of Gambian women aged 15–49 years (73%) have undergone female genital cutting. More alarming is an 8% increase in the prevalence of FGM among girls under the age of 14—from 42.4% in 2010 to 50.6% in 2018.

Numerous health risks associated with all types of the practice have been documented by the World Health Organization and systematic reviews . These include severe pain, bleeding, infections and complications during childbirth and elevated rates of anxiety and other mental health disorders. This has led to calls for the practice to be banned in order to protect girls' health and well-being.

The Gambia's current struggle with the FGM ban reflects a complex interplay between cultural norms, religious beliefs, and the fight for gender equality. The potential repeal of the ban poses a threat to human rights of women and girls in The Gambia.

Reversal of hard-won gains

Though The Gambia is constitutionally secular, religion influences nearly every facet of society. Islamic fundamentalists in the country are known for attacks on religious minorities , including hate speech against the Ahmadiyya Muslim community and the Christian community .

The main fundamentalist religious actors draw inspiration from and still support the exiled former dictator Jammeh. They are at the forefront of the recent pushback against the anti-FGM law. They argue that the ban violates their religious and cultural freedoms as guaranteed in the 1997 constitution .

On 4 March 2024 a strong supporter of Jammeh proposed a private member's bill in the National Assembly that seeks to overturn the ban.

The push to reassert traditional gender roles isn't isolated to The Gambia. There is a global trend of rolling back progress on gender equality. This trend is characterized by attempts to limit women's bodily choices , an increase in violence against them, as well as attacks on LGBTQI+ communities. It reflects a broader political climate of backlash against women's rights and gender equality as a weapon in the reversal of democratic achievements.

Attempts have been seen to reverse legal protections against women and girls in Kenya . In Sudan, state-sanctioned violence and societal pressure is aimed at restricting women's public participation. Similarly, Tanzania previously enacted a policy barring teenage mothers from attending public schools, though this policy has been reversed.

This global context highlights how anti-rights movements, undemocratic norms and gendered politics are working together to erode women's rights and exacerbate inequalities.

Provided by The Conversation

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