Personalized-Dose COVID-19 Vaccination in a Wave of Virus Variants of Concern: Trading Individual Efficacy for Societal Benefit

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Hunziker
Keyword(s):  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Individual Efficacy

scholarly journals Fungal Melanins and Applications in Healthcare, Bioremediation and Industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 488
Author(s):  
Ellie Rose Mattoon ◽  
Radames J. B. Cordero ◽  
Arturo Casadevall
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Structure ◽  
Industrial Processes ◽  
Metal Chelation ◽  
Biological Functions ◽  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Fungal Melanin ◽  
Human Use ◽  
Fungal Melanins ◽  
Isolated Species

Melanin is a complex multifunctional pigment found in all kingdoms of life, including fungi. The complex chemical structure of fungal melanins, yet to be fully elucidated, lends them multiple unique functions ranging from radioprotection and antioxidant activity to heavy metal chelation and organic compound absorption. Given their many biological functions, fungal melanins present many possibilities as natural compounds that could be exploited for human use. This review summarizes the current discourse and attempts to apply fungal melanin to enhance human health, remove pollutants from ecosystems, and streamline industrial processes. While the potential applications of fungal melanins are often discussed in the scientific community, they are successfully executed less often. Some of the challenges in the applications of fungal melanin to technology include the knowledge gap about their detailed structure, difficulties in isolating melanotic fungi, challenges in extracting melanin from isolated species, and the pathogenicity concerns that accompany working with live melanotic fungi. With proper acknowledgment of these challenges, fungal melanin holds great potential for societal benefit in the coming years.

scholarly journals Superalloy Technology - A Perspective on Critical Innovations for Turbine Engines

2008 ◽  
Vol 380 ◽  
pp. 113-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Schafrik ◽  
Robert Sprague
Keyword(s):  
High Temperature ◽  
Customer Value ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Ceramic Materials ◽  
Nickel Superalloy ◽  
Engineering Practice ◽  
Jet Engines ◽  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Development Paradigm

High temperature structural materials, such as nickel-based superalloys, have contributed immensely to societal benefit. These materials provide the backbone for many applications within key industries that include chemical and metallurgical processing, oil and gas extraction and refining, energy generation, and aerospace propulsion. Within this broad application space, the best known challenges tackled by these materials have arisen from the demand for large, efficient land-based power turbines and light-weight, highly durable aeronautical jet engines. So impressive has the success of these materials been that some have described the last half of the 20th century as the Superalloy Age. Many challenges, technical and otherwise, were overcome to achieve successful applications. This paper highlights some of the key developments in nickel superalloy technology, principally from the perspective of aeronautical applications. In the past, it was not unusual for development programs to stretch out 10 to 20 years as the materials technology was developed, followed by the development of engineering practice, and lengthy production scaleup. And many developments fell by the wayside. Today, there continue to be many demands for improved high temperature materials. New classes of materials, such as intermetallics and ceramic materials, are challenging superalloys for key applications, given the conventional wisdom that superalloys are reaching their natural entitlement level. Therefore, multiple driving forces are converging that motivate improvements in the superalloy development process. This paper concludes with a description of a new development paradigm that emphasizes creativity, development speed, and customer value that can provide superalloys that meet new needs.

Survive, Revive, Thrive: Chapter 10—Anchors Aweigh

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (07) ◽  
pp. 5-6
Author(s):  
Tom Blasingame
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Professional Society ◽  
Global Society ◽  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Conducting Materials ◽  
The World ◽  
Exploration And Production ◽  
Advance Notice ◽  
Control And Eradication

It Is Time To Leave Port Education is not a way to escape poverty; it is a way of fighting it.—Julius Nyerere, Tanzanian president, 1922–1999 As the COVID-19 pandemic subsides in most parts of the world, and as a global society we commit ourselves to its control and eradication everywhere, it is time for our “ship” to leave port. As we pull up our anchor (“anchors aweigh” means the anchor is off bottom and the ship is free to move), we must accept that there are risks out there, but we must get back to the task of exploration and production of oil and gas as never before. As I predicted in this column many months ago, we are definitely leaner (fewer people, with even more work to do) and now we need to be much meaner (better skilled, better motivated, and better focused). All the old adages apply: “life isn’t fair,” “there are no guarantees,” etc.—but a commitment to “duty, honor, and service” (an unofficial motto of my employer, Texas A&M University) stands firm in my mind for our industry. As we leave port, we must have the confidence and purpose that has defined our industry since its inception—improving lives, mitigating poverty, and providing the energy to enable a modern global society. Reasons We Must Change as an Industry Life’s a bit like mountaineering—never look down.— Edmund Hillary, New Zealand explorer, 1919–2008 I was in a panel session a few weeks back and, as SPE President, I am certain they saved the toughest question for me: “What are the reasons we must change as an industry?” I confess that this question was particularly hard because it requires a sketch of our future strategies as an industry and as a professional society, which in many ways remains undefined. Fortunately, I had some advance notice and was able to put some thought into my answer. Paraphrasing Darwin, “we must adapt or die.” It is that simple. Our industry provides enormous societal benefit, and just as the future of renewables lies in metals for batteries, conducting materials, circuitry, etc., the present and future of manufacturing lies in oil and gas. There simply are no viable substitutes.

Mitigating the Environmental Impact of Smartphones with Device Reuse

2012 ◽  
pp. 252-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xun Li ◽  
Pablo Ortiz ◽  
Brandon Kuczenski ◽  
Diana Franklin ◽  
Frederic T. Chong
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Energy Materials ◽  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Life Cycle Stages ◽  
Elementary School Education ◽  
Manufacturing Stage

The rapid growth of information technology has not only brought substantial economic and societal benefit but also led to an unsustainable disposable model in which mobile devices are replaced in a matter of months. The environmental impact of this stream of handsets in terms of manufacturing energy, materials, and disposal costs is alarming. This chapter aims at raising today’s environmental issues of the increasing smartphone market, as well as providing a quantitative analysis on the environmental impact of different life-cycle stages of the smartphones, including the manufacturing stage, using stage, and recycling. To achieve sustainable computing and best utilize the energy consumed during manufacturing the large number of devices, this chapter demonstrates the methodology and techniques towards reusing smartphones by presenting a case study on reusing smartphones for elementary school education.

The Dutch Participation Society Needs Open Data, but What is Meant by Open?

2017 ◽  
pp. 304-322
Author(s):  
Roel During ◽  
Marcel Pleijte ◽  
Rosalie I. van Dam ◽  
Irini E. Salverda
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Data Governance ◽  
Societal Benefit

Open data and citizen-led initiatives can be both friends and foes. Where it is available and ‘open', official data not only encourages increased public participation but can also generate the production and scrutiny of new material, potentially of benefit to the original provider and others, official or otherwise. In this way, official open data can be seen to improve democracy or, more accurately, the so-called ‘participative democracy'. On the other hand, the public is not always eager to share their personal information in the most open ways. Private and sometimes sensitive information however is required to initiate projects of societal benefit in difficult times. Many citizens appear content to channel personal information exchange via social media instead of putting it on public web sites. The perceived benefits from sharing and complete openness do not outweigh any disadvantages or fear of regulation. This is caused by various sources of contingency, such as the different appeals on citizens, construed in discourses on the participation society and the representative democracy, calling for social openness in the first and privacy protection in the latter. Moreover, the discourse on open data is an economic argument fighting the rules of privacy instead of the promotion of open data as one of the prerequisites for social action. Civil servants acknowledge that access to open data via all sorts of apps could contribute to the mushrooming of public initiatives, but are reluctant to release person-related sensitive information. The authors will describe and discuss this dilemma in the context of some recent case studies from the Netherlands concerning governmental programmes on open data and citizens' initiatives, to highlight both the governance constraints and uncertainties as well as citizens' concerns on data access and data sharing. It will be shown that openness has a different meaning and understanding in the participation society and representative democracy: i.e. the tension surrounding the sharing of private social information versus transparency. Looking from both sides at openness reveals double contingency: understanding and intentions on this openness invokes mutual enforcing uncertainties. This double contingency hampers citizens' eagerness to participate. The paper will conclude with a practical recommendation for improving data governance.

Target Evaluation and Correlation Method (TECM) as an Assessment Approach to Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Epelbaum ◽  
Mo Mansouri ◽  
Alex Gorod ◽  
Brian Sauser ◽  
Alexander Fridman
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Correlation Method ◽  
System Of Systems ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Observation System ◽  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Large Scale Network ◽  
Assessment Approach ◽  
Earth Observation System ◽  
Scale Network

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is a ten-year-long Implementation Plan, which commenced in 2005 as a group effort by numerous participating countries and organizations to build a large-scale network to effectively monitor and respond to the increasingly complex web of global environmental and socio-economic issues. This paper proposes the Target Evaluation and Correlation Method (TECM) as an assessment approach to GEOSS with its 241 Targets across the nine “Societal Benefit Areas,” along with a method to identify Target Correlation Levels (TCL). Applying TECM allows concluding whether the chosen targets within the GEOSS fall into the domain of System of Systems (SoS), while using TCLs delineates the extent of inclusion for these targets in the form of a system. Furthermore, this research investigates the possible ways of raising the correlation levels of the targets for the cases in which TCLs are low.

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