Event: 5-7 Aug 2011, Kottayam, Kerala, India; Conf on Recycling & Reuse of Materials (Polymers, Wood, Leather, Glass, Metals, Ceramics, Semi Conductors, Water etc) and their products

03 Environmental Degradation, 03 India, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 12 Water, Waste (materials, food, etc)

This conference will be one of the big International meetings exclusively dedicated to Recycling and Reuse of Materials and their Products. The conference will be extremely useful in the sense that it will be attended by hundreds of Chemists, Physicists, Technologists and Engineers, making it a truly interdisciplinary conference. The goal of the conference emphasizes interdisciplinary research on processing, morphology, structure, properties and applications of recycling and reuse of materials and their products and their applications in automotive, civil, chemical, aerospace, computer and marine engineering.

This symposium will bring together a panel of highly-accomplished experts in the field of Recycling and Reuse of Materials and their Products. Talks will encompass basic studies and applications and will address topics of novel issues. During the three-day conference, we will listen to recognized authorities in the field as they discuss recent advances, difficulties, and breakthroughs in the field of recycling and reuse of materials and their products. The conference will feature keynote addresses, a number of plenary sessions, invited talks and contributed lectures focusing on specific tenets of recycling and reuse of materials and their products additionally, there will be several poster sessions, and four best poster presentations will be selected for the award. The conference is to be held on 5th, 6th and 7th, August 2011.
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2011/01/19

Soil Mapping

01 Agriculture, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, History, info-graphics/data-visualization

A global consortium has been formed that aims to make a new digital soil map of the world using state-of-the-art and emerging technologies for soil mapping and predicting soil properties at fine resolution. This new global soil map will be supplemented by interpretation and functionality options that aim to assist better decisions in a range of global issues like food production and hunger eradication, climate change, and environmental degradation. This is an initiative of the Digital Soil Mapping Working Group of the International Union of Soil Sciences IUSS

In November 2008, an $18 million grant has been obtained from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to map most parts in Sub-Sahara Africa, and make all Sub-Saharan Africa data available. From this grant there are also funds for coordinating global efforts and for the establishment of a global consortium. Several institutions have assumed a leading role in this effort and have made substantial financial and in-kind contributions.

http://globalsoilmap.net

2011/01/152011/01/15

Food Chain Breaking at the Bottom

01 Agriculture, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Key Players

Activists from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) women's wing shout slogans against the Congress-led government during a protest against an increase in milk, vegetables and food prices in New Delhi on April 1, 2010. The BJP activists protested against the price hikes of essential commodities. Food inflation is still at 17 percent according to official figures.

Global food chain stretched to the limit

Soaring prices spark fears of social unrest in developing world

By John W. Schoen Senior producer

msnbc.com msnbc.com

Strained by rising demand and battered by bad weather, the global food supply chain is stretched to the limit, sending prices soaring and sparking concerns about a repeat of food riots last seen three years ago.

Signs of the strain can be found from Australia to Argentina, Canada to Russia

Read full story with links….

Phi Beta Iota: Absent a radical break-through in energy that enables water desalination and purification, the combined collapse of the global financial system and the global food system could mark the beginning of a quarter century of “tribulation.”

2011/01/13

Dollars for Docs database of drug-company spending on doctors and other health professionals

07 Health, Commerce, Corporations

Dollars for Docs Payments Approach $300 Million

by Charles Ornstein , Tracy Weber and Dan Nguyen
ProPublica, Dec. 22, 2010, 1:36 p.m.

Today we’ve added another $13 million in payments to our Dollars for Docs database of drug-company spending on doctors and other health professionals. That brings the total to nearly $295 million.

ProPublica launched Dollars for Docs in October, creating the most accessible accounting yet of pharmaceutical payments to doctors for speaking, consulting and other duties. It includes disclosures from Eli Lilly & Co., AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Pfizer and Cephalon for various periods of 2009 and 2010.

The new payments were made by Glaxo and Ortho-McNeil, a division of Johnson & Johnson, in the third quarter of this year. Other Johnson & Johnson subsidiaries have yet to update spending totals beyond the first quarter.

Interestingly, Glaxo’s spending on speaking and consulting dropped markedly in the third quarter compared to its average in prior quarters. In the past, the company paid large amounts to doctors to promote its diabetes drug Avandia. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration severely restricted the drug’s use in September amid concerns about its heart attack risks.

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2011/01/122011/01/12

Economics of Happiness: Going Local

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Reform

the Economics of Happiness

A film by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick & John Page

‘Going local' is a powerful strategy to help repair our fractured world – our ecosystems, our societies and our selves. Far from the old institutions of power, people are starting to forge a very different future…

FeaturingVandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Michael Shuman, Juliet Schor, Richard Heinberg, Rob Hopkins, Andrew Simms, Zac Goldsmith, Samdhong Rinpoche

Film Trailer & Web Site

2011/01/11

Foresight Engine & Breakthroughs to Cures

07 Health, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Government, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

video intro

Watch the intro video on the idea of imagining that you, as president, have instigated an initiative in 2020 to collect ideas and participation from throughout the world to help cure an incurable disease 100 million Americans are infected with http://foresight.breakthroughstocures.org

Also see: http://blog.breakthroughstocures.org

2011/01/082011/01/08

Journal: Amazing Combat Medical Statistics Portend Unknowable Long Term Costs

07 Health, 11 Society, Military

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

The Pentagon likes to refer to combat euphemistically as “kinetic” activity. This very important report documents the truly impressive advances in battlefield medicine in Afghanistan to cope with the kinetic activity that hurts our troops. The bottom line: the ratio of killed to wounded has decreased at an amazing rate, because many troop suffering from heretofore fatal wounds involving the destruction of multiple limbs, severe groin, traumatic brain injuries, massive losses of blood, and battlefield shock are now surviving, albeit many in a severely handicapped state. The need to provide quality care and rehabilitation to the severely wounded (as well as the lessor wounded–particularly those with the sharply rising cases of the milder forms of brain trauma) is an as yet unaccounted for cost of the Afghan war that will haunt the American medical system and the larger society for generations.

We can only imagine what is happening to the Afghan civilians on the receiving end of our kinetics.

Chuck

January 7, 2011

In Wider War in Afghanistan, Survival Rate of Wounded Rises

By C. J. CHIVERS

KHAKREZ DISTRICT, Afghanistan — Intensified fighting and a larger troop presence in Afghanistan in 2010 led to the highest American combat casualties yet in the war, as the number of troops wounded by bullets, shrapnel and bombs approached that of the bloodiest periods of the war in Iraq.

But the available data points to advances in the treatment of the fallen, as the rate at which wounded soldiers who died reached a wartime low.

More than 430 American service members died from hostile action in Afghanistan last year through Dec. 21, according to official data released by the Pentagon last week at the request of The New York Times.

This was a small fraction of those struck. Nearly 5,500 American troops were wounded in action — more than double the total of 2,415 in 2009, and almost six times the number wounded in 2008.

In all, fewer than 7.9 percent of the Americans wounded in 2010 died, down from more than 11 percent the previous year and 14.3 percent in 2008.

Full Story Online….

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