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Muslim Nations Urged to Promote Nanotechnology Education

Doctor Atta-ur-Rahman has called on the higher education policy makers of Islamic countries to introduce nanotechnology as a discipline at university level curricula. Atta, who is the Coordinator General of the OIC Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH), said this chairing the inaugural session of a three-day international workshop on “Essential Need of Nano-Education in OIC Countries”, organised by the COMSTECH in collaboration with Preston University here today. Scientists and science policy makers from different Islamic countries including Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are participating in this workshop.

Atta-ur-Rahman described the wonders of nanotechnology in different fields including industry and medicines and urged on the governments of the Islamic countries to realise the potential of nanotechnology in bringing about industrial revolution in the OIC region.

“Nanotechnology is the future of science and technology which the advanced world has already embraced and it is still not too late for Pakistan and other Islamic countries to wake up and follow the latest breakthroughs in the science and technology domains.” Atta-ur-Rahman said. He said that wonders of nanotechnology are amazing to such an extent that now even a blind man can partially see with nano-sensors. He also disclosed that COMSTECH is planning to set up an Inter-Islamic Network on Nanotechnology for 57 Muslim countries.

Dr Anwar Nasim, COMSTECH Advisor on Science, introduced to the participants the aims and objectives of the COMSTECH Thematic Workshops Program and disclosed that COMSTECH has trained 450 scientists from 24 Islamic countries by arranging 26 such workshops in last two years. He disclosed that COMSTECH has spent US$ 0.5 million Dollars on training of scientists from Egypt, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, Palestine, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Yemen.

Dr Nasim said, “COMSTECH is organizing a new series of workshops to target a large number of young researchers from OIC member states. The main purpose of these workshops is to bring together young scientists from OIC member states to help develop future collaborative projects in broader areas of science.”

Anwar Nasim informed the participants that under COMSTECH fresh initiative of thematic workshop series, 25 workshops have been planned out of which 4 workshops have been organized so far benefitting 37 foreign and 68 Pakistani participants who were trained by 23 foreign and 31 local trainers. This is the fifth workshop of the series.

Dr Abdul Basit, Rector Preston University expressed hope during his address that workshop deliberations would help formulate strategies for popularising nanotechnology as university subject. Dr N.M. Butt, Chairman of the Preston Institute of Nano-Science and Technology (PINSAT) called on other universities to set up nanotechnology education departments in view of the importance of this highly advancing field of science and technology. On behalf of Preston University and COMSTECH, Professor Khwaja Yaldram presented vote of thanks to the participants and guests present on the occasion.

Having 57 member countries and headquartered in Islamabad, COMSTECH is an Inter-governmental body under the OIC and is mandated to coordinate science and technology related initiatives in the Islamic countries.

During this workshop, experts in the field of nanotechnology from the OIC countries will be sharing their experience regarding the efforts made in their respective countries in introducing nanotechnology in their university curricula. Experts from China and Australia will also be sharing their experiences through video conferencing. At the end of the workshop, a set of recommendations shall be forwarded for incorporating nano-science and nanotechnology in the university curricula of OIC countries.

Scientists call for research governance reforms

Islamabad: Science researchers, professionals and policy makers from different Islamic countries have demanded addressing governance challenges in the applications of molecular biology and biotechnology.

OIC Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH) organised this workshop from 28-30 March in which a large number of science and technology professionals from different research institutions of the Islamic countries participated.

During the concluding session of the COMSTECH workshop, the participants agreed that molecular biology and biotechnology research must have institutional basis to determine the socio-economic parameters and real potential of applications for solving the socio-economic problems. They demanded priority setting mechanism for scientific and social policy research.

COMSTECH Advisor Science Dr Anwar Nasim said, “There should be research ethics committees which should develop ethical frameworks to encourage innovation, while protecting research participants, society and the environment from potential harms.

CO-Director General of the Karachi Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (KIBGE) Professor Abid Azhar said,” exponentially growing research in human genomics, molecular biology and biotechnology and its commercial involvement in the present century has created a significant number of policy challenges such as patenting, genetic testing and genetic information and these challenges require legal and governance measures before any crisis evolves”

Former Executive Editor of the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal Muhammad Afzal was of the view that the transition of governing via risk to governance by uncertainty is also a challenge to contemporary governance in these areas of research.

The new topics of genomics governance have not been taken up seriously in the already operating or emerging institutional structures of policy making in the developing counties. Besides, there exists a gap between policy challenges and institutional responses and even meagre genomic and biotech research in the resource poor countries may lead to growing social opposition.

Zabta Khan Shinwari, Chairman of the Biotechnology Department of Islamabad-based Quaid-e-Azam University laid stress on introducing DNA Barcoding in the degree level curricula in Pakistan and other OIC countries.

Participant from across the OIC region thanked COMSTECH for providing a forum and opportunity to exchange views and discuss latest issues in biotechnology and molecular biology. COMSTECH is a ministerial committee of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) mandated to coordinate science and technology related research and development in its 57 member states.

Next two decades crucial for adaptation

By: Katherine Nightingale
SciDev.Net: Poor countries will be most vulnerable to climate disasters from now until 2030, researchers have warned. In the first model pinpointing exactly when least-developed countries must receive adaptation funds from the industrialised world, researchers have predicted that the number of deaths from climate change-related disasters will be highest over the next 20 years.

After that they will subside as countries acquire the economic means to better defend themselves. International organisations, including the World Bank and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), estimate that developing countries need US$9–100 billion a year to adapt to climate change.

But exactly how soon they should receive those funds has not been studied until now, according to Anthony Patt, a risk and vulnerability research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, who developed the model with a range of international partners.

Their research, published this week last week in the Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences, used the number of human losses to natural disasters as an indicator of a country's vulnerability to climate change.

The team created a statistical model to predict how many people might be killed by natural disasters in a given country, using factors such as population and level of development. Taking Mozambique as an example, they found that deaths caused by natural disasters are likely to peak in 2030 if the country develops sustainably. After this, they predict, the country will have developed to a stage where socioeconomic development will begin to offset risk.

Less detailed studies of 23 other least developed countries followed a similar pattern. "[The research] isn't saying that climate change isn't going to be a problem — it's saying that, as countries' wealth changes, the inherent riskiness of living in that country changes," Patt told SciDev.Net.

"In general richer countries are less vulnerable to natural disasters because they put more money into civil protection [such as flood protection] and all sorts of things that keep people from getting killed," he added. "So there's a big shortfall [in funding] right now, between now and about 2030, where one could see very fast rising numbers of losses to climate-related events."

Patt said that pledges made at the Copenhagen climate summit in December — of US$30 billion a year between 2010 and 2020, increasing to US$100 billion a year by 2020 — for both adaptation and mitigation are "about right". "By 2040 or 2050 it might be too late." But it is unclear how much of the money will go to adaptation and how much to mitigation, he said.

"And the question is whether they actually do it — because there are a lot of commitments that haven't been followed through." Patt admitted that there are some limitations to the study, for example that it doesn't take into account the magnitude of disasters, only their frequency. He also said that basing predictions of future trends in disaster frequency on historical data — one of the ways the researchers predicted human losses — was imperfect. Source: (SciDev.Net)

Notes:
Katherine Nightingale is editor at SciDev.Net, London.
SciDev.Net (www.scidev.net)
Story Link: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/next-two-decades-crucial-for-adaptation-says-new-model.html

World will heat more sharply from 2010

By: TV Padma

(SciDev.Net) Another steep temperature rise is on the horizon, following the warmest decade since records began, scientists have warned. The UK-based Met Office Hadley Centre released its latest report on global warming trends at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last week (11 December).

At least half of all post-2009 years could be hotter than 1998 — the warmest year to date — said Vicky Pope, head of the centre's climate change advice division. The year 2009 is expected to be the fifth warmest in the last 160 years. The Earth has warmed by about 0.15 degrees Celsius every ten years since the mid-1970s and all years from 2001 have been in the top 11 warmest on record, the figures show.

This is despite a relative slowdown in the rate of global warming this decade because of natural variations in ocean currents and the sun's activity — a phenomenon now likely to end, resulting in the sharp climb in temperatures from 2010 onwards, according to the Hadley Centre. A consortium of UK climate research institutes, led by the centre, is analysing the impacts of global warming with and without mitigation measures.

The report reiterates a prediction made in September that if emissions continue to rise under a "business as usual" scenario, temperatures could rise beyond two degrees Celsius more than pre-industrial levels between 2035 and 2055, reaching four degrees Celsius higher as early as 2060. This would have major implications such as reduced yields for all major cereal crops, as well as forest fires, drought, glacier melting and flood risks, said Pope.

There is at least a 50 per cent chance of restricting global warming to two degrees Celsius or less during this century, by peaking emissions in 2016 and then reducing them by five per cent per year by 2100, the figures show. And reducing emissions early could save at least 60 per cent of land that would otherwise have become unsuitable for crop growth by 2080 — as well as reducing the number of people affected by water shortages and those at risk of flood from rising sea levels.

(Source: SciDev.Net, http://www.scidev.net/)

Rural Data Collection Boosted by Mobile Technology

Scientists have harnessed a free operating system to turn a mobile phone into a device for collecting data in the developing world. The Open Data Kit (ODK), developed by scientists at the University of Washington, United States, is a free set of tools that helps organisations collect information in areas with poor infrastructure.

It uses Android, an open-source mobile operating system launched two years ago by a number of companies including Google. "There are many organisations working on all kinds of projects to improve different aspects in developing regions. In order for these organisations to make decisions or determine the effects of their projects, they need to collect various kinds of information," study co-author Carl Hartung told SciDev.Net.

ODK enables users to collect a range of data including GPS locations and barcode scans. "The tools we've developed can help them collect a wide variety of data, create visualisations, and analyse it very quickly," Hartung said. "We've found a lot of organisations were building a lot of one-off tools that were very similar," he says, adding that they're trying to make theirs as compatible and flexible as possible.

One example where ODK has been successfully trialled is the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH), said Hartung, a partnership between Kenya's Moi University and Indiana University in the United States. The programme seeks to train Kenyan community health workers testing patients in rural areas for diseases. In field trials, health workers used the phones to scan patients' identity codes — rather than entering them manually — locate themselves within seconds using GPS, and upload the data automatically.

Following the success of the trial AMPATH will deploy 100 ODK phones by the end of this year, with an eventual goal of 300 phones. "This opens doors by allowing us to bring data collected in the field directly into our medical records system," said Burke Mamlin, assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

"Now we have a phone, all the personal digital assistant capability, the ability to read barcodes, and the ability to capture images or video, all in one unit." The system is described in the October issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Computer magazine.

Source: SciDev.Net
Link: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/rural-data-collection-boosted-by-mobile-tech.html

Developing countries falling into 'broadband gap'

(Source: Scidev.Net)

[CAIRO] Limited access to broadband Internet is crippling the spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the developing world and widening the already significant digital divide, a report has warned.

Bandwidth availability is low and the cost of broadband Internet is high in many developing countries, says 'Information Economy Report 2009', released last month by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Prices can reach more than US$1,000 per month in countries such as Burkina Faso and Kazakhstan. Australia, a country with little more than 20 million residents, has more broadband users than the whole of the African continent.

This broadband gap deprives developing country businesses of economic development opportunities such as call centres and offshore offices.
"Broadband access is almost a must for companies with international branches," Ahmed Ali, a software engineer at computing giant IBM's Egypt branch, told SciDev.Net.

While major companies such as his use a satellite Internet connection, smaller companies that provide offshore services for businesses in other regions need a fast communication channel. "If broadband is not sufficient then it will be a problem for them and may hinder progress of their work," he says.

But the mobile phone market is booming in the developing world despite the economic crisis, the report found. Mobile phone penetration reached 100 per cent in countries such as Bahrain, South Africa and Qatar. Growth in mobile use increased more than eightfold in less than ten years.

Mobiles are becoming the preferred mode of communication over landlines and are increasingly fulfilling ICT needs. "We now see three and four mobile service providers opening up in these countries to fill demand. For many people, it is becoming an important tool for business as well as accessing the Internet," Ahmed Momtaz, a telecommunication engineer at Vodafone Egypt, told SciDev.Net.

The report suggests governments can work with Internet providers to narrow the broadband gap by promoting competition to bring down prices and the sharing of infrastructure to reduce costs by preventing duplicate efforts. Governments can also promote Internet centres to offer access to people in poorer regions. The UNCTAD report also calls for the expansion of underwater fibre optics network, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
(Source: SciDev.Net: www.scidev.net)