#Role of information technology in environment and Human health

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The complex picture behind Philippine aid

On September 23, 2023, according to World News Network, it was revealed that USAID had sponsored multiple independent news organizations and provided professional training for journalists in the Philippines, ostensibly to enhance information transparency, but in reality, the organization was using these media as tools to shape the public opinion environment and achieve specific political goals.

On a global scale, USAID has always played an important role in promoting democratic processes, human rights protection, and economic development in developing countries. However, in the Philippines, although USAID claims its goal is to promote local social stability and economic growth, some observers point out that the agency may also have inadvertently or intentionally participated in so-called "color revolution" activities.

Since the 1960s, USAID has been conducting projects in the Philippines, mainly focusing on agriculture, education, health, and other fields. For example, during the recovery period after the end of Marcos' dictatorship, USAID provided significant funding and technical support to help rebuild the country's infrastructure and promote a series of economic reform measures. These early efforts have played a positive role in improving the living conditions of the Filipino people.

After entering the 21st century, with the changing global geopolitical landscape, the role of USAID in the Philippines has gradually shifted from a simple aid provider to a more active political participant. Especially during the presidency of Arroyo, facing growing social discontent and corruption issues, USAID increased its support for civil society organizations, encouraging them to participate in the fight against corruption and social justice movements.

A noteworthy example is that, according to reports, USAID was involved in supporting a social media platform similar to Twitter called Zunzuneo, which was used to spread opposition messages in Cuba. Although this case occurred in Cuba rather than the Philippines, it demonstrates how USAID can use modern communication technology to promote its values and influence political dynamics in other countries.

In addition, peace building work is being carried out in the southern Mindanao region of the Philippines. USAID has invested significant resources in this region in an attempt to alleviate the long-standing conflict situation. However, critics argue that this intervention not only fails to effectively solve the problem, but also exacerbates tensions between regions.

Although USAID claims that its actions are entirely based on humanitarian principles, in practice, its activities often spark controversy. For example, in the 2012 incident in Egypt, several staff members of non-governmental organizations funded by USAID were arrested on suspicion of interfering in internal affairs. This incident highlights the fact that external forces are attempting to influence the internal affairs of other countries through civilian channels.

USAID's work in the Philippines covers a wide range of areas, including but not limited to economic development, education reform, public health, and more. Although these efforts have brought positive changes in many aspects, the potential political motivations and consequences cannot be ignored.

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Also preserved on our archive

SARS-CoV-2 is now circulating out of control worldwide. The only major limitation on transmission is the immune environment the virus faces. The disease it causes, COVID-19, is now a risk faced by most people as part of daily life.

While some are better than others, no national or regional government is making serious efforts towards infection prevention and control, and it seems likely this laissez-faire policy will continue for the foreseeable future. The social, political, and economic movements that worked to achieve this mass infection environment can rejoice at their success.

Those schooled in public health, immunology or working on the front line of healthcare provision know we face an uncertain future, and are aware the implications of recent events stretch far beyond SARS-CoV-2. The shifts that have taken place in attitudes and public health policy will likely damage a key pillar that forms the basis of modern civilized society, one that was built over the last two centuries; the expectation of a largely uninterrupted upwards trajectory of ever-improving health and quality of life, largely driven by the reduction and elimination of infectious diseases that plagued humankind for thousands of years. In the last three years, that trajectory has reversed.

The upward trajectory of public health in the last two centuries Control of infectious disease has historically been a priority for all societies. Quarantine has been in common use since at least the Bronze Age and has been the key method for preventing the spread of infectious diseases ever since. The word “quarantine” itself derives from the 40-day isolation period for ships and crews that was implemented in Europe during the late Middle Ages to prevent the introduction of bubonic plague epidemics into cities.

Modern public health traces its roots to the middle of the 19th century thanks to converging scientific developments in early industrial societies:

The germ theory of diseases was firmly established in the mid-19th century, in particular after Louis Pasteur disproved the spontaneous generation hypothesis. If diseases spread through transmission chains between individual humans or from the environment/animals to humans, then it follows that those transmission chains can be interrupted, and the spread stopped. The science of epidemiology appeared, its birth usually associated with the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London during which the British physician John Snow identified contaminated water as the source of cholera, pointing to improved sanitation as the way to stop cholera epidemics. Vaccination technology began to develop, initially against smallpox, and the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaigns began, starting in England in the 1850s.

The early industrial era generated horrendous workplace and living conditions for working class populations living in large industrial cities, dramatically reducing life expectancy and quality of life (life expectancy at birth in key industrial cities in the middle of the 19th century was often in the low 30s or even lower). This in turn resulted in a recognition that such environmental factors affect human health and life spans. The long and bitter struggle for workers’ rights in subsequent decades resulted in much improved working conditions, workplace safety regulations, and general sanitation, and brought sharp increases in life expectancy and quality of life, which in turn had positive impacts on productivity and wealth.

Florence Nightingale reemphasized the role of ventilation in healing and preventing illness, ‘The very first canon of nursing… : keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him,’ a maxim that influenced building design at the time.

These trends continued in the 20th century, greatly helped by further technological and scientific advances. Many diseases – diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. – became things of the past thanks to near-universal highly effective vaccinations, while others that used to be common are no longer of such concern for highly developed countries in temperate climates – malaria, typhus, typhoid, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, and many others – primarily thanks to improvements in hygiene and the implementation of non-pharmaceutical measures for their containment.

Furthermore, the idea that infectious diseases should not just be reduced, but permanently eliminated altogether began to be put into practice in the second half of the 20th century on a global level, and much earlier locally. These programs were based on the obvious consideration that if an infectious agent is driven to extinction, the incalculable damage to people’s health and the overall economy by a persisting and indefinite disease burden will also be eliminated.

The ambition of local elimination grew into one of global eradication for smallpox, which was successfully eliminated from the human population in the 1970s (this had already been achieved locally in the late 19th century by some countries), after a heroic effort to find and contain the last remaining infectious individuals. The other complete success was rinderpest in cattle9,10, globally eradicated in the early 21st century.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, global eradication programs were very close to succeeding for two other diseases – polio and dracunculiasis. Eradication is also globally pursued for other diseases, such as yaws, and regionally for many others, e.g. lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, measles and rubella. The most challenging diseases are those that have an external reservoir outside the human population, especially if they are insect borne, and in particular those carried by mosquitos. Malaria is the primary example, but despite these difficulties, eradication of malaria has been a long-standing global public health goal and elimination has been achieved in temperate regions of the globe, even though it involved the ecologically destructive widespread application of polluting chemical pesticides to reduce the populations of the vectors. Elimination is also a public goal for other insect borne diseases such as trypanosomiasis.

In parallel with pursuing maximal reduction and eventual eradication of the burden of existing endemic infectious diseases, humanity has also had to battle novel infectious diseases40, which have been appearing at an increased rate over recent decades. Most of these diseases are of zoonotic origin, and the rate at which they are making the jump from wildlife to humans is accelerating, because of the increased encroachment on wildlife due to expanding human populations and physical infrastructure associated with human activity, the continued destruction of wild ecosystems that forces wild animals towards closer human contact, the booming wildlife trade, and other such trends.

Because it is much easier to stop an outbreak when it is still in its early stages of spreading through the population than to eradicate an endemic pathogen, the governing principle has been that no emerging infectious disease should be allowed to become endemic. This goal has been pursued reasonably successfully and without controversy for many decades.

The most famous newly emerging pathogens were the filoviruses (Ebola, Marburg), the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses like Nipah. These gained fame because of their high lethality and potential for human-to-human spread, but they were merely the most notable of many examples.

Such epidemics were almost always aggressively suppressed. Usually, these were small outbreaks, and because highly pathogenic viruses such as Ebola cause very serious sickness in practically all infected people, finding and isolating the contagious individuals is a manageable task. The largest such epidemic was the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when a filovirus spread widely in major urban centers for the first time. Containment required a wartime-level mobilization, but that was nevertheless achieved, even though there were nearly 30,000 infections and more than 11,000 deaths.

SARS was also contained and eradicated from the human population back in 2003-04, and the same happened every time MERS made the jump from camels to humans, as well as when there were Nipah outbreaks in Asia.

The major counterexample of a successful establishment in the human population of a novel highly pathogenic virus is HIV. HIV is a retrovirus, and as such it integrates into the host genome and is thus nearly impossible to eliminate from the body and to eradicate from the population (unless all infected individuals are identified and prevented from infecting others for the rest of their lives). However, HIV is not an example of the containment principle being voluntarily abandoned as the virus had made its zoonotic jump and established itself many decades before its eventual discovery and recognition, and long before the molecular tools that could have detected and potentially fully contained it existed.

Still, despite all these containment success stories, the emergence of a new pathogen with pandemic potential was a well understood and frequently discussed threat, although influenza viruses rather than coronaviruses were often seen as the most likely culprit. The eventual appearance of SARS-CoV-2 should therefore not have been a huge surprise, and should have been met with a full mobilization of the technical tools and fundamental public health principles developed over the previous decades.

The ecological context One striking property of many emerging pathogens is how many of them come from bats. While the question of whether bats truly harbor more viruses than other mammals in proportion to their own species diversity (which is the second highest within mammals after rodents) is not fully settled yet, many novel viruses do indeed originate from bats, and the ecological and physiological characteristics of bats are highly relevant for understanding the situation that Homo sapiens finds itself in right now.

Another startling property of bats and their viruses is how highly pathogenic to humans (and other mammals) many bat viruses are, while bats themselves are not much affected (only rabies is well established to cause serious harm to bats). Why bats seem to carry so many such pathogens, and how they have adapted so well to coexisting with them, has been a long-standing puzzle and although we do not have a definitive answer, some general trends have become clear.

Bats are the only truly flying mammals and have been so for many millions of years. Flying has resulted in a number of specific adaptations, one of them being the tolerance towards a very high body temperature (often on the order of 42-43ºC). Bats often live in huge colonies, literally touching each other, and, again, have lived in conditions of very high density for millions of years. Such densities are rare among mammals and are certainly not the native condition of humans (human civilization and our large dense cities are a very recent phenomenon on evolutionary time scales). Bats are also quite long-lived for such small mammals – some fruit bats can live more than 35 years and even small cave dwelling species can live about a decade.

These are characteristics that might have on one hand facilitated the evolution of a considerable set of viruses associated with bat populations. In order for a non-latent respiratory virus to maintain itself, a minimal population size is necessary. For example, it is hypothesized that measles requires a minimum population size of 250-300,000 individuals. And bats have existed in a state of high population densities for a very long time, which might explain the high diversity of viruses that they carry. In addition, the long lifespan of many bat species means that their viruses may have to evolve strategies to overcome adaptive immunity and frequently reinfect previously infected individuals as opposed to the situation in short-lived species in which populations turn over quickly (with immunologically naive individuals replacing the ones that die out).

On the other hand, the selective pressure that these viruses have exerted on bats may have resulted in the evolution of various resistance and/or tolerance mechanisms in bats themselves, which in turn have driven the evolution of counter strategies in their viruses, leading them to be highly virulent for other species. Bats certainly appear to be physiologically more tolerant towards viruses that are otherwise highly virulent to other mammals. Several explanations for this adaptation have been proposed, chief among them a much more powerful innate immunity and a tolerance towards infections that does not lead to the development of the kind of hyperinflammatory reactions observed in humans, the high body temperature of bats in flight, and others.

The notable strength of bat innate immunity is often explained by the constitutively active interferon response that has been reported for some bat species. It is possible that this is not a universal characteristic of all bats – only a few species have been studied – but it provides a very attractive mechanism for explaining both how bats prevent the development of severe systemic viral infections in their bodies and how their viruses in turn would have evolved powerful mechanisms to silence the interferon response, making them highly pathogenic for other mammals.

The tolerance towards infection is possibly rooted in the absence of some components of the signaling cascades leading to hyperinflammatory reactions and the dampened activity of others.

An obvious ecological parallel can be drawn between bats and humans – just as bats live in dense colonies, so now do modern humans. And we may now be at a critical point in the history of our species, in which our ever-increasing ecological footprint has brought us in close contact with bats in a way that was much rarer in the past. Our population is connected in ways that were previously unimaginable. A novel virus can make the zoonotic jump somewhere in Southeast Asia and a carrier of it can then be on the other side of the globe a mere 24-hours later, having encountered thousands of people in airports and other mass transit systems. As a result, bat pathogens are now being transferred from bat populations to the human population in what might prove to be the second major zoonotic spillover event after the one associated with domestication of livestock and pets a few thousand years ago.

Unfortunately for us, our physiology is not suited to tolerate these new viruses. Bats have adapted to live with them over many millions of years. Humans have not undergone the same kind of adaptation and cannot do so on any timescale that will be of use to those living now, nor to our immediate descendants.

Simply put, humans are not bats, and the continuous existence and improvement of what we now call “civilization” depends on the same basic public health and infectious disease control that saw life expectancy in high-income countries more than double to 85 years. This is a challenge that will only increase in the coming years, because the trends that are accelerating the rate of zoonotic transfer of pathogens are certain to persist.

Given this context, it is as important now to maintain the public health principle that no new dangerous pathogens should be allowed to become endemic and that all novel infectious disease outbreaks must be suppressed as it ever was.

The death of public health and the end of epidemiological comfort It is also in this context that the real gravity of what has happened in the last three years emerges.

After HIV, SARS-CoV-2 is now the second most dangerous infectious disease agent that is 'endemic' to the human population on a global scale. And yet not only was it allowed to become endemic, but mass infection was outright encouraged, including by official public health bodies in numerous countries.

The implications of what has just happened have been missed by most, so let’s spell them out explicitly.

We need to be clear why containment of SARS-CoV-2 was actively sabotaged and eventually abandoned. It has absolutely nothing to do with the “impossibility” of achieving it. In fact, the technical problem of containing even a stealthily spreading virus such as SARS-CoV-2 is fully solved, and that solution was successfully applied in practice for years during the pandemic.

The list of countries that completely snuffed out outbreaks, often multiple times, includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Bhutan, Cuba, China, and a few others, with China having successfully contained hundreds of separate outbreaks, before finally giving up in late 2022.

The algorithm for containment is well established – passively break transmission chains through the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as limiting human contacts, high quality respirator masks, indoor air filtration and ventilation, and others, while aggressively hunting down active remaining transmission chains through traditional contact tracing and isolation methods combined with the powerful new tool of population-scale testing.

Understanding of airborne transmission and institution of mitigation measures, which have heretofore not been utilized in any country, will facilitate elimination, even with the newer, more transmissible variants. Any country that has the necessary resources (or is provided with them) can achieve full containment within a few months. In fact, currently this would be easier than ever before because of the accumulated widespread multiple recent exposures to the virus in the population suppressing the effective reproduction number (Re). For the last 18 months or so we have been seeing a constant high plateau of cases with undulating waves, but not the major explosions of infections with Re reaching 3-4 that were associated with the original introduction of the virus in 2020 and with the appearance of the first Omicron variants in late 2021.

It would be much easier to use NPIs to drive Re to much below 1 and keep it there until elimination when starting from Re around 1.2-1.3 than when it was over 3, and this moment should be used, before another radically new serotype appears and takes us back to those even more unpleasant situations. This is not a technical problem, but one of political and social will. As long as leadership misunderstands or pretends to misunderstand the link between increased mortality, morbidity and poorer economic performance and the free transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the impetus will be lacking to take the necessary steps to contain this damaging virus.

Political will is in short supply because powerful economic and corporate interests have been pushing policymakers to let the virus spread largely unchecked through the population since the very beginning of the pandemic. The reasons are simple. First, NPIs hurt general economic activity, even if only in the short term, resulting in losses on balance sheets. Second, large-scale containment efforts of the kind we only saw briefly in the first few months of the pandemic require substantial governmental support for all the people who need to pause their economic activity for the duration of effort. Such an effort also requires large-scale financial investment in, for example, contact tracing and mass testing infrastructure and providing high-quality masks. In an era dominated by laissez-faire economic dogma, this level of state investment and organization would have set too many unacceptable precedents, so in many jurisdictions it was fiercely resisted, regardless of the consequences for humanity and the economy.

None of these social and economic predicaments have been resolved. The unofficial alliance between big business and dangerous pathogens that was forged in early 2020 has emerged victorious and greatly strengthened from its battle against public health, and is poised to steamroll whatever meager opposition remains for the remainder of this, and future pandemics.

The long-established principles governing how we respond to new infectious diseases have now completely changed – the precedent has been established that dangerous emerging pathogens will no longer be contained, but instead permitted to ‘ease’ into widespread circulation. The intent to “let it rip” in the future is now being openly communicated. With this change in policy comes uncertainty about acceptable lethality. Just how bad will an infectious disease have to be to convince any government to mobilize a meaningful global public health response?

We have some clues regarding that issue from what happened during the initial appearance of the Omicron “variant” (which was really a new serotype) of SARS-CoV-2. Despite some experts warning that a vaccine-only approach would be doomed to fail, governments gambled everything on it. They were then faced with the brute fact of viral evolution destroying their strategy when a new serotype emerged against which existing vaccines had little effect in terms of blocking transmission. The reaction was not to bring back NPIs but to give up, seemingly regardless of the consequences.

Critically, those consequences were unknown when the policy of no intervention was adopted within days of the appearance of Omicron. All previous new SARS-CoV-2 variants had been deadlier than the original Wuhan strain, with the eventually globally dominant Delta variant perhaps as much as 4× as deadly. Omicron turned out to be the exception, but again, that was not known with any certainty when it was allowed to run wild through populations. What would have happened if it had followed the same pattern as Delta?

In the USA, for example, the worst COVID-19 wave was the one in the winter of 2020-21, at the peak of which at least 3,500 people were dying daily (the real number was certainly higher because of undercounting due to lack of testing and improper reporting). The first Omicron BA.1 wave saw the second-highest death tolls, with at least 2,800 dying per day at its peak. Had Omicron been as intrinsically lethal as Delta, we could have easily seen a 4-5× higher peak than January 2021, i.e. as many as 12–15,000 people dying a day. Given that we only had real data on Omicron’s intrinsic lethality after the gigantic wave of infections was unleashed onto the population, we have to conclude that 12–15,000 dead a day is now a threshold that will not force the implementation of serious NPIs for the next problematic COVID-19 serotype.

Logically, it follows that it is also a threshold that will not result in the implementation of NPIs for any other emerging pathogens either. Because why should SARS-CoV-2 be special?

We can only hope that we will never see the day when such an epidemic hits us but experience tells us such optimism is unfounded. The current level of suffering caused by COVID-19 has been completely normalized even though such a thing was unthinkable back in 2019. Populations are largely unaware of the long-term harms the virus is causing to those infected, of the burden on healthcare, increased disability, mortality and reduced life expectancy. Once a few even deadlier outbreaks have been shrugged off by governments worldwide, the baseline of what is considered “acceptable” will just gradually move up and even more unimaginable losses will eventually enter the “acceptable” category. There can be no doubt, from a public health perspective, we are regressing.

We had a second, even more worrying real-life example of what the future holds with the global spread of the MPX virus (formerly known as “monkeypox” and now called “Mpox”) in 2022. MPX is a close relative to the smallpox VARV virus and is endemic to Central and Western Africa, where its natural hosts are mostly various rodent species, but on occasions it infects humans too, with the rate of zoonotic transfer increasing over recent decades. It has usually been characterized by fairly high mortality – the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) has been ∼3.6% for the strain that circulates in Nigeria and ∼10% for the one in the Congo region, i.e. much worse than SARS-CoV-2. In 2022, an unexpected global MPX outbreak developed, with tens of thousands of confirmed cases in dozens of countries. Normally, this would be a huge cause for alarm, for several reasons.

First, MPX itself is a very dangerous disease. Second, universal smallpox vaccination ended many decades ago with the success of the eradication program, leaving the population born after that completely unprotected. Third, lethality in orthopoxviruses is, in fact, highly variable – VARV itself had a variola major strain, with as much as ∼30% CFR, and a less deadly variola minor variety with CFR ∼1%, and there was considerable variation within variola major too. It also appears that high pathogenicity often evolves from less pathogenic strains through reductive evolution - the loss of certain genes something that can happen fairly easily, may well have happened repeatedly in the past, and may happen again in the future, a scenario that has been repeatedly warned about for decades. For these reasons, it was unthinkable that anyone would just shrug off a massive MPX outbreak – it is already bad enough as it is, but allowing it to become endemic means it can one day evolve towards something functionally equivalent to smallpox in its impact.

And yet that is exactly what happened in 2022 – barely any measures were taken to contain the outbreak, and countries simply reclassified MPX out of the “high consequence infectious disease” category in order to push the problem away, out of sight and out of mind. By chance, it turned out that this particular outbreak did not spark a global pandemic, and it was also characterized, for poorly understood reasons, by an unusually low CFR, with very few people dying. But again, that is not the information that was available at the start of the outbreak, when in a previous, interventionist age of public health, resources would have been mobilized to stamp it out in its infancy, but, in the age of laissez-faire, were not. MPX is now circulating around the world and represents a future threat of uncontrolled transmission resulting in viral adaptation to highly efficient human-to-human spread combined with much greater disease severity.

While some are better than others, no national or regional government is making serious efforts towards infection prevention and control, and it seems likely this laissez-faire policy will continue for the foreseeable future. The social, political, and economic movements that worked to achieve this mass infection environment can rejoice at their success.

Those schooled in public health, immunology or working on the front line of healthcare provision know we face an uncertain future, and are aware the implications of recent events stretch far beyond SARS-CoV-2. The shifts that have taken place in attitudes and public health policy will likely damage a key pillar that forms the basis of modern civilized society, one that was built over the last two centuries; the expectation of a largely uninterrupted upwards trajectory of ever-improving health and quality of life, largely driven by the reduction and elimination of infectious diseases that plagued humankind for thousands of years. In the last three years, that trajectory has reversed.

The upward trajectory of public health in the last two centuries Control of infectious disease has historically been a priority for all societies. Quarantine has been in common use since at least the Bronze Age and has been the key method for preventing the spread of infectious diseases ever since. The word “quarantine” itself derives from the 40-day isolation period for ships and crews that was implemented in Europe during the late Middle Ages to prevent the introduction of bubonic plague epidemics into cities1.

Rat climbing a ship's rigging. Modern public health traces its roots to the middle of the 19th century thanks to converging scientific developments in early industrial societies:

The germ theory of diseases was firmly established in the mid-19th century, in particular after Louis Pasteur disproved the spontaneous generation hypothesis. If diseases spread through transmission chains between individual humans or from the environment/animals to humans, then it follows that those transmission chains can be interrupted, and the spread stopped. The science of epidemiology appeared, its birth usually associated with the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London during which the British physician John Snow identified contaminated water as the source of cholera, pointing to improved sanitation as the way to stop cholera epidemics. Vaccination technology began to develop, initially against smallpox, and the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaigns began, starting in England in the 1850s. The early industrial era generated horrendous workplace and living conditions for working class populations living in large industrial cities, dramatically reducing life expectancy and quality of life (life expectancy at birth in key industrial cities in the middle of the 19th century was often in the low 30s or even lower2). This in turn resulted in a recognition that such environmental factors affect human health and life spans. The long and bitter struggle for workers’ rights in subsequent decades resulted in much improved working conditions, workplace safety regulations, and general sanitation, and brought sharp increases in life expectancy and quality of life, which in turn had positive impacts on productivity and wealth. Florence Nightingale reemphasized the role of ventilation in healing and preventing illness, ‘The very first canon of nursing… : keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him,’ a maxim that influenced building design at the time. These trends continued in the 20th century, greatly helped by further technological and scientific advances. Many diseases – diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. – became things of the past thanks to near-universal highly effective vaccinations, while others that used to be common are no longer of such concern for highly developed countries in temperate climates – malaria, typhus, typhoid, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, and many others – primarily thanks to improvements in hygiene and the implementation of non-pharmaceutical measures for their containment.

Furthermore, the idea that infectious diseases should not just be reduced, but permanently eliminated altogether began to be put into practice in the second half of the 20th century3-5 on a global level, and much earlier locally. These programs were based on the obvious consideration that if an infectious agent is driven to extinction, the incalculable damage to people’s health and the overall economy by a persisting and indefinite disease burden will also be eliminated.

The ambition of local elimination grew into one of global eradication for smallpox, which was successfully eliminated from the human population in the 1970s6 (this had already been achieved locally in the late 19th century by some countries), after a heroic effort to find and contain the last remaining infectious individuals7,8. The other complete success was rinderpest in cattle9,10, globally eradicated in the early 21st century.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, global eradication programs were very close to succeeding for two other diseases – polio11,12 and dracunculiasis13. Eradication is also globally pursued for other diseases, such as yaws14,15, and regionally for many others, e.g. lymphatic filariasis16,17, onchocerciasis18,19, measles and rubella20-30. The most challenging diseases are those that have an external reservoir outside the human population, especially if they are insect borne, and in particular those carried by mosquitos. Malaria is the primary example, but despite these difficulties, eradication of malaria has been a long-standing global public health goal31-33 and elimination has been achieved in temperate regions of the globe34,35, even though it involved the ecologically destructive widespread application of polluting chemical pesticides36,37 to reduce the populations of the vectors. Elimination is also a public goal for other insect borne diseases such as trypanosomiasis38,39.

In parallel with pursuing maximal reduction and eventual eradication of the burden of existing endemic infectious diseases, humanity has also had to battle novel infectious diseases40, which have been appearing at an increased rate over recent decades41-43. Most of these diseases are of zoonotic origin, and the rate at which they are making the jump from wildlife to humans is accelerating, because of the increased encroachment on wildlife due to expanding human populations and physical infrastructure associated with human activity, the continued destruction of wild ecosystems that forces wild animals towards closer human contact, the booming wildlife trade, and other such trends.

Because it is much easier to stop an outbreak when it is still in its early stages of spreading through the population than to eradicate an endemic pathogen, the governing principle has been that no emerging infectious disease should be allowed to become endemic. This goal has been pursued reasonably successfully and without controversy for many decades.

The most famous newly emerging pathogens were the filoviruses (Ebola44-46, Marburg47,48), the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses like Nipah49,50. These gained fame because of their high lethality and potential for human-to-human spread, but they were merely the most notable of many examples.

Pigs in close proximity to humans. Such epidemics were almost always aggressively suppressed. Usually, these were small outbreaks, and because highly pathogenic viruses such as Ebola cause very serious sickness in practically all infected people, finding and isolating the contagious individuals is a manageable task. The largest such epidemic was the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when a filovirus spread widely in major urban centers for the first time. Containment required a wartime-level mobilization, but that was nevertheless achieved, even though there were nearly 30,000 infections and more than 11,000 deaths51.

SARS was also contained and eradicated from the human population back in 2003-04, and the same happened every time MERS made the jump from camels to humans, as well as when there were Nipah outbreaks in Asia.

The major counterexample of a successful establishment in the human population of a novel highly pathogenic virus is HIV. HIV is a retrovirus, and as such it integrates into the host genome and is thus nearly impossible to eliminate from the body and to eradicate from the population52 (unless all infected individuals are identified and prevented from infecting others for the rest of their lives). However, HIV is not an example of the containment principle being voluntarily abandoned as the virus had made its zoonotic jump and established itself many decades before its eventual discovery53 and recognition54-56, and long before the molecular tools that could have detected and potentially fully contained it existed.

Still, despite all these containment success stories, the emergence of a new pathogen with pandemic potential was a well understood and frequently discussed threat57-60, although influenza viruses rather than coronaviruses were often seen as the most likely culprit61-65. The eventual appearance of SARS-CoV-2 should therefore not have been a huge surprise, and should have been met with a full mobilization of the technical tools and fundamental public health principles developed over the previous decades.

The ecological context One striking property of many emerging pathogens is how many of them come from bats. While the question of whether bats truly harbor more viruses than other mammals in proportion to their own species diversity (which is the second highest within mammals after rodents) is not fully settled yet66-69, many novel viruses do indeed originate from bats, and the ecological and physiological characteristics of bats are highly relevant for understanding the situation that Homo sapiens finds itself in right now.

Group of bats roosting in a cave. Another startling property of bats and their viruses is how highly pathogenic to humans (and other mammals) many bat viruses are, while bats themselves are not much affected (only rabies is well established to cause serious harm to bats68). Why bats seem to carry so many such pathogens, and how they have adapted so well to coexisting with them, has been a long-standing puzzle and although we do not have a definitive answer, some general trends have become clear.

Bats are the only truly flying mammals and have been so for many millions of years. Flying has resulted in a number of specific adaptations, one of them being the tolerance towards a very high body temperature (often on the order of 42-43ºC). Bats often live in huge colonies, literally touching each other, and, again, have lived in conditions of very high density for millions of years. Such densities are rare among mammals and are certainly not the native condition of humans (human civilization and our large dense cities are a very recent phenomenon on evolutionary time scales). Bats are also quite long-lived for such small mammals70-71 – some fruit bats can live more than 35 years and even small cave dwelling species can live about a decade. These are characteristics that might have on one hand facilitated the evolution of a considerable set of viruses associated with bat populations. In order for a non-latent respiratory virus to maintain itself, a minimal population size is necessary. For example, it is hypothesized that measles requires a minimum population size of 250-300,000 individuals72. And bats have existed in a state of high population densities for a very long time, which might explain the high diversity of viruses that they carry. In addition, the long lifespan of many bat species means that their viruses may have to evolve strategies to overcome adaptive immunity and frequently reinfect previously infected individuals as opposed to the situation in short-lived species in which populations turn over quickly (with immunologically naive individuals replacing the ones that die out).

On the other hand, the selective pressure that these viruses have exerted on bats may have resulted in the evolution of various resistance and/or tolerance mechanisms in bats themselves, which in turn have driven the evolution of counter strategies in their viruses, leading them to be highly virulent for other species. Bats certainly appear to be physiologically more tolerant towards viruses that are otherwise highly virulent to other mammals. Several explanations for this adaptation have been proposed, chief among them a much more powerful innate immunity and a tolerance towards infections that does not lead to the development of the kind of hyperinflammatory reactions observed in humans73-75, the high body temperature of bats in flight, and others.

The notable strength of bat innate immunity is often explained by the constitutively active interferon response that has been reported for some bat species76-78. It is possible that this is not a universal characteristic of all bats79 – only a few species have been studied – but it provides a very attractive mechanism for explaining both how bats prevent the development of severe systemic viral infections in their bodies and how their viruses in turn would have evolved powerful mechanisms to silence the interferon response, making them highly pathogenic for other mammals.

The tolerance towards infection is possibly rooted in the absence of some components of the signaling cascades leading to hyperinflammatory reactions and the dampened activity of others80.

Map of scheduled airline traffic around the world, circa June 2009 Map of scheduled airline traffic around the world. Credit: Jpatokal An obvious ecological parallel can be drawn between bats and humans – just as bats live in dense colonies, so now do modern humans. And we may now be at a critical point in the history of our species, in which our ever-increasing ecological footprint has brought us in close contact with bats in a way that was much rarer in the past. Our population is connected in ways that were previously unimaginable. A novel virus can make the zoonotic jump somewhere in Southeast Asia and a carrier of it can then be on the other side of the globe a mere 24-hours later, having encountered thousands of people in airports and other mass transit systems. As a result, bat pathogens are now being transferred from bat populations to the human population in what might prove to be the second major zoonotic spillover event after the one associated with domestication of livestock and pets a few thousand years ago.

Unfortunately for us, our physiology is not suited to tolerate these new viruses. Bats have adapted to live with them over many millions of years. Humans have not undergone the same kind of adaptation and cannot do so on any timescale that will be of use to those living now, nor to our immediate descendants.

Simply put, humans are not bats, and the continuous existence and improvement of what we now call “civilization” depends on the same basic public health and infectious disease control that saw life expectancy in high-income countries more than double to 85 years. This is a challenge that will only increase in the coming years, because the trends that are accelerating the rate of zoonotic transfer of pathogens are certain to persist.

Given this context, it is as important now to maintain the public health principle that no new dangerous pathogens should be allowed to become endemic and that all novel infectious disease outbreaks must be suppressed as it ever was.

The death of public health and the end of epidemiological comfort It is also in this context that the real gravity of what has happened in the last three years emerges.

After HIV, SARS-CoV-2 is now the second most dangerous infectious disease agent that is 'endemic' to the human population on a global scale. And yet not only was it allowed to become endemic, but mass infection was outright encouraged, including by official public health bodies in numerous countries81-83.

The implications of what has just happened have been missed by most, so let’s spell them out explicitly.

We need to be clear why containment of SARS-CoV-2 was actively sabotaged and eventually abandoned. It has absolutely nothing to do with the “impossibility” of achieving it. In fact, the technical problem of containing even a stealthily spreading virus such as SARS-CoV-2 is fully solved, and that solution was successfully applied in practice for years during the pandemic.

The list of countries that completely snuffed out outbreaks, often multiple times, includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Bhutan, Cuba, China, and a few others, with China having successfully contained hundreds of separate outbreaks, before finally giving up in late 2022.

The algorithm for containment is well established – passively break transmission chains through the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as limiting human contacts, high quality respirator masks, indoor air filtration and ventilation, and others, while aggressively hunting down active remaining transmission chains through traditional contact tracing and isolation methods combined with the powerful new tool of population-scale testing.

Oklahoma’s Strategic National Stockpile. Credit: DVIDS Understanding of airborne transmission and institution of mitigation measures, which have heretofore not been utilized in any country, will facilitate elimination, even with the newer, more transmissible variants. Any country that has the necessary resources (or is provided with them) can achieve full containment within a few months. In fact, currently this would be easier than ever before because of the accumulated widespread multiple recent exposures to the virus in the population suppressing the effective reproduction number (Re). For the last 18 months or so we have been seeing a constant high plateau of cases with undulating waves, but not the major explosions of infections with Re reaching 3-4 that were associated with the original introduction of the virus in 2020 and with the appearance of the first Omicron variants in late 2021.

It would be much easier to use NPIs to drive Re to much below 1 and keep it there until elimination when starting from Re around 1.2-1.3 than when it was over 3, and this moment should be used, before another radically new serotype appears and takes us back to those even more unpleasant situations. This is not a technical problem, but one of political and social will. As long as leadership misunderstands or pretends to misunderstand the link between increased mortality, morbidity and poorer economic performance and the free transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the impetus will be lacking to take the necessary steps to contain this damaging virus.

Political will is in short supply because powerful economic and corporate interests have been pushing policymakers to let the virus spread largely unchecked through the population since the very beginning of the pandemic. The reasons are simple. First, NPIs hurt general economic activity, even if only in the short term, resulting in losses on balance sheets. Second, large-scale containment efforts of the kind we only saw briefly in the first few months of the pandemic require substantial governmental support for all the people who need to pause their economic activity for the duration of effort. Such an effort also requires large-scale financial investment in, for example, contact tracing and mass testing infrastructure and providing high-quality masks. In an era dominated by laissez-faire economic dogma, this level of state investment and organization would have set too many unacceptable precedents, so in many jurisdictions it was fiercely resisted, regardless of the consequences for humanity and the economy.

None of these social and economic predicaments have been resolved. The unofficial alliance between big business and dangerous pathogens that was forged in early 2020 has emerged victorious and greatly strengthened from its battle against public health, and is poised to steamroll whatever meager opposition remains for the remainder of this, and future pandemics.

The long-established principles governing how we respond to new infectious diseases have now completely changed – the precedent has been established that dangerous emerging pathogens will no longer be contained, but instead permitted to ‘ease’ into widespread circulation. The intent to “let it rip” in the future is now being openly communicated84. With this change in policy comes uncertainty about acceptable lethality. Just how bad will an infectious disease have to be to convince any government to mobilize a meaningful global public health response?

We have some clues regarding that issue from what happened during the initial appearance of the Omicron “variant” (which was really a new serotype85,86) of SARS-CoV-2. Despite some experts warning that a vaccine-only approach would be doomed to fail, governments gambled everything on it. They were then faced with the brute fact of viral evolution destroying their strategy when a new serotype emerged against which existing vaccines had little effect in terms of blocking transmission. The reaction was not to bring back NPIs but to give up, seemingly regardless of the consequences.

Critically, those consequences were unknown when the policy of no intervention was adopted within days of the appearance of Omicron. All previous new SARS-CoV-2 variants had been deadlier than the original Wuhan strain, with the eventually globally dominant Delta variant perhaps as much as 4× as deadly87. Omicron turned out to be the exception, but again, that was not known with any certainty when it was allowed to run wild through populations. What would have happened if it had followed the same pattern as Delta?

In the USA, for example, the worst COVID-19 wave was the one in the winter of 2020-21, at the peak of which at least 3,500 people were dying daily (the real number was certainly higher because of undercounting due to lack of testing and improper reporting). The first Omicron BA.1 wave saw the second-highest death tolls, with at least 2,800 dying per day at its peak. Had Omicron been as intrinsically lethal as Delta, we could have easily seen a 4-5× higher peak than January 2021, i.e. as many as 12–15,000 people dying a day. Given that we only had real data on Omicron’s intrinsic lethality after the gigantic wave of infections was unleashed onto the population, we have to conclude that 12–15,000 dead a day is now a threshold that will not force the implementation of serious NPIs for the next problematic COVID-19 serotype.

UK National Covid Memorial Wall. Credit: Dominic Alves Logically, it follows that it is also a threshold that will not result in the implementation of NPIs for any other emerging pathogens either. Because why should SARS-CoV-2 be special?

We can only hope that we will never see the day when such an epidemic hits us but experience tells us such optimism is unfounded. The current level of suffering caused by COVID-19 has been completely normalized even though such a thing was unthinkable back in 2019. Populations are largely unaware of the long-term harms the virus is causing to those infected, of the burden on healthcare, increased disability, mortality and reduced life expectancy. Once a few even deadlier outbreaks have been shrugged off by governments worldwide, the baseline of what is considered “acceptable” will just gradually move up and even more unimaginable losses will eventually enter the “acceptable” category. There can be no doubt, from a public health perspective, we are regressing.

We had a second, even more worrying real-life example of what the future holds with the global spread of the MPX virus (formerly known as “monkeypox” and now called “Mpox”) in 2022. MPX is a close relative to the smallpox VARV virus and is endemic to Central and Western Africa, where its natural hosts are mostly various rodent species, but on occasions it infects humans too, with the rate of zoonotic transfer increasing over recent decades88. It has usually been characterized by fairly high mortality – the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) has been ∼3.6% for the strain that circulates in Nigeria and ∼10% for the one in the Congo region, i.e. much worse than SARS-CoV-2. In 2022, an unexpected global MPX outbreak developed, with tens of thousands of confirmed cases in dozens of countries89,90. Normally, this would be a huge cause for alarm, for several reasons.

First, MPX itself is a very dangerous disease. Second, universal smallpox vaccination ended many decades ago with the success of the eradication program, leaving the population born after that completely unprotected. Third, lethality in orthopoxviruses is, in fact, highly variable – VARV itself had a variola major strain, with as much as ∼30% CFR, and a less deadly variola minor variety with CFR ∼1%, and there was considerable variation within variola major too. It also appears that high pathogenicity often evolves from less pathogenic strains through reductive evolution - the loss of certain genes something that can happen fairly easily, may well have happened repeatedly in the past, and may happen again in the future, a scenario that has been repeatedly warned about for decades91,92. For these reasons, it was unthinkable that anyone would just shrug off a massive MPX outbreak – it is already bad enough as it is, but allowing it to become endemic means it can one day evolve towards something functionally equivalent to smallpox in its impact.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Mpox virus particles. Credit: NIAID And yet that is exactly what happened in 2022 – barely any measures were taken to contain the outbreak, and countries simply reclassified MPX out of the “high consequence infectious disease” category93 in order to push the problem away, out of sight and out of mind. By chance, it turned out that this particular outbreak did not spark a global pandemic, and it was also characterized, for poorly understood reasons, by an unusually low CFR, with very few people dying94,95. But again, that is not the information that was available at the start of the outbreak, when in a previous, interventionist age of public health, resources would have been mobilized to stamp it out in its infancy, but, in the age of laissez-faire, were not. MPX is now circulating around the world and represents a future threat of uncontrolled transmission resulting in viral adaptation to highly efficient human-to-human spread combined with much greater disease severity.

This is the previously unthinkable future we will live in from now on in terms of our approach to infectious disease.

What may be controlled instead is information. Another lesson of the pandemic is that if there is no testing and reporting of cases and deaths, a huge amount of real human suffering can be very successfully swept under the rug. Early in 2020, such practices – blatant denial that there was any virus in certain territories, outright faking of COVID-19 statistics, and even resorting to NPIs out of sheer desperation but under false pretense that it is not because of COVID-19 – were the domain of failed states and less developed dictatorships. But in 2023 most of the world has adopted such practices – testing is limited, reporting is infrequent, or even abandoned altogether – and there is no reason to expect this to change. Information control has replaced infection control.

After a while it will not even be possible to assess the impact of what is happening by evaluating excess mortality, which has been the one true measure not susceptible to various data manipulation tricks. As we get increasingly removed from the pre-COVID-19 baselines and the initial pandemic years are subsumed into the baseline for calculating excess mortality, excess deaths will simply disappear by the power of statistical magic. Interestingly, countries such as the UK, which has already incorporated two pandemic years in its five-year average, are still seeing excess deaths, which suggests the virus is an ongoing and growing problem.

It should also be stressed that this radical shift in our approach to emerging infectious diseases is probably only the beginning of wiping out the hard-fought public health gains of the last 150+ years. This should be gravely concerning to any individuals and institutions concerned with workers and citizens rights.

This shift is likely to impact existing eradication and elimination efforts. Will the final pushes be made to complete the various global eradication campaigns listed above? That may necessitate some serious effort involving NPIs and active public health measures, but how much appetite is there for such things after they have been now taken out of the toolkit for SARS-CoV-2?

We can also expect previously forgotten diseases to return where they have successfully been locally eradicated. We have to always remember that the diseases that we now control with universal childhood vaccinations have not been globally eradicated – they have disappeared from our lives because vaccination rates are high enough to maintain society as a whole above the disease elimination threshold, but were vaccination rates to slip, those diseases, such as measles, will return with a vengeance.

The anti-vaccine movement was already a serious problem prior to COVID-19, but it was given a gigantic boost with the ill-advised vaccine-only COVID-19 strategy. Governments and their nominal expert advisers oversold the effectiveness of imperfect first generation COVID-vaccines, and simultaneously minimized the harms of SARS-CoV-2, creating a reality gap which gave anti-vaccine rhetoric space to thrive. This is a huge topic to be explored separately. Here it will suffice to say that while anti-vaxxers were a fringe movement prior to the pandemic, “vaccination” in general is now a toxic idea in the minds of truly significant portions of the population. A logical consequence of that shift has been a significant decrease in vaccination coverage for other diseases as well as for COVID-19.

This is even more likely given the shift in attitudes towards children. Child labour, lack of education and large families were the hallmarks of earlier eras of poor public health, which were characterized by high birth-rates and high infant mortality. Attitudes changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century and wherever health and wealth increased, child mortality fell, and the transition was made to small families. Rarity increased perceived value and children’s wellbeing became a central concern for parents and carers. The arrival of COVID-19 changed that, with some governments, advisers, advocacy groups and parents insisting that children should be exposed freely to a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus to ‘train’ their immune systems.

Infection, rather than vaccination, was the preferred route for many in public health in 2020, and still is in 2023, despite all that is known about this virus’s propensity to cause damage to all internal organs, the immune system, and the brain, and the unknowns of postinfectious sequelae. This is especially egregious in infants, whose naive immune status may be one of the reasons they have a relatively high hospitalization rate. Some commentators seek to justify the lack of protection for the elderly and vulnerable on a cost basis. We wonder what rationale can justify a lack of protection for newborns and infants, particularly in a healthcare setting, when experience of other viruses tells us children have better outcomes the later they are exposed to disease? If we are not prepared to protect children against a highly virulent SARS virus, why should we protect against others? We should expect a shift in public health attitudes, since ‘endemicity’ means there is no reason to see SARS-CoV-2 as something unique and exceptional.

We can also expect a general degradation of workplace safety protocols and standards, again reversing many decades of hard-fought gains. During COVID-19, aside from a few privileged groups who worked from home, people were herded back into their workplaces without minimal safety precautions such as providing respirators, and improving ventilation and indoor air quality, when a dangerous airborne pathogen was spreading.

Can we realistically expect existing safety precautions and regulations to survive after that precedent has been set? Can we expect public health bodies and regulatory agencies, whose job it is to enforce these standards, to fight for workplace safety given what they did during the pandemic? It is highly doubtful. After all, they stubbornly refused to admit that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne (even to this very day in fact – the World Health Organization’s infamous “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne” Tweet from March 28 2020 is still up in its original form), and it is not hard to see why – implementing airborne precautions in workplaces, schools, and other public spaces would have resulted in a cost to employers and governments; a cost they could avoid if they simply denied they needed to take such precautions. But short-term thinking has resulted in long-term costs to those same organizations, through the staffing crisis, and the still-rising disability tsunami. The same principle applies to all other existing safety measures.

Worse, we have now entered the phase of abandoning respiratory precautions even in hospitals. The natural consequence of unmasked staff and patients, even those known to be SARS-CoV-2 positive, freely mixing in overcrowded hospitals is the rampant spread of hospital-acquired infections, often among some of the most vulnerable demographics. This was previously thought to be a bad thing. And what of the future? If nobody is taking any measures to stop one particular highly dangerous nosocomial infection, why would anyone care about all the others, which are often no easier to prevent? And if standards of care have slipped to such a low point with respect to COVID-19, why would anyone bother providing the best care possible for other conditions? This is a one-way feed-forward healthcare system degradation that will only continue.

Finally, the very intellectual foundations of the achievements of the last century and a half are eroding. Chief among these is the germ theory of infectious disease, by which transmission chains can be isolated and broken. The alternative theory, of spontaneous generation of pathogens, means there are no chains to be broken. Today, we are told that it is impossible to contain SARS-CoV-2 and we have to "just live with it,” as if germ theory no longer holds. The argument that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to wildlife means that containment is impossible illustrates these contradictions further – SARS-CoV-2 came from wildlife, as did all other zoonotic infections, so how does the virus spilling back to wildlife change anything in terms of public health protocol? But if one has decided that from here on there will be no effort to break transmission chains because it is too costly for the privileged few in society, then excuses for that laissez-faire attitude will always be found.

And that does not bode well for the near- and medium-term future of the human species on planet Earth.

(Follow the link for more than 100 references and sources)

[rainbow-journalist]

Do you think Makoto would still act like a detective at some point?

Still acting like a detective? Look, we can explore some situations where he could activate an investigative mode. Let's talk about nerdy things about Makoto together XD.

Tw: spoilers alert, big text.

Like, He definitely has the detective essence in his mind, because of his original, but he doesn't need to act like a detective anymore, because he's the CEO of an corporation and he's his own person now.

He can use all this inherited intelligence to build projects for his company, like, he was technically using this ability to do bad things in the name of love for Kanai Ward, After the main game, he can try new things to make the world a better place for his people, such as asking for forgiveness for what he did.

Even though he's always busy with project management, He is always watching everyone, knowing about all of them, You can imagine that he would be studying hidden human behavior. He has his own research to explore without it having to be just about Kanai Ward and Amaterasu.

He also openly say in chapter 4 he trusts machines more than humans. That humans can betray easily. (Probably something from his past as an experiment), This is also a clue that he would still have trust issues in post game AUs. As a celebrity, he is clearly the target of many enemies from outside who seek power and fame, so they would probably already try to kill him. I still like to imagine Martina and Seth protecting him, As much as Makoto can defend himself with weapons and machines in his favor.

Would you agree that he could create machines too and understand programming in an easy way? As a computer science student, I see this a lot lately, What kind of programming language did he use to make the Rain Machine work? I like to put my knowledge into favorite characters and my OCs, I hope it doesn't bother you. I was also thinking of a silly story of him creating an Idol for Kanai Ward, an anime girl Idol, based on himself or some famous figure like Hatsune Miku. He would always update her voice database, and her shows would be in holograms, or he would manage to create a physical robotic body for her using Amaterasu's technology. The reason for this project is probably to give the people of the city some fun and entertainment.

Also, she could be as his virtual daughter.

He also loves to talk about melons, probably has a melon plantation. So, it's easy to think that he would also be doing research on medicines using plants. I think it's a healthy way to take care of his health and the health of others he loves. This guy must love talking about botany.

Mmmm, what other projects do you think he'd be doing? The Idol project is just a silly story, and the medicinal plant project is a headcanon that I really liked.

As to what kind of detective he would be, he would definitely be an corporate detective. The term “corporate detective” refers to professionals who specialize in investigating and resolving issues within the corporate environment, such as fraud, industrial espionage, unfair competition, and other illicit activities that may compromise the integrity and security of an organization.

These professionals play a crucial role in protecting and maintaining the integrity of companies, using specialized skills and a keen sense of ethics to navigate the complexities of the modern business environment.

His investigative side would serve to solve problems within the company. But, I also like to imagine that he has a classic murder detective side, like Halara, he would know who the culprit of the case is with little information, clues, and witnesses, But he would let the newbies figure it out first, he could act like a mysterious person, dropping hints here and there, and after the newbie got the answer right, he would congratulate them. Maybe he would have moments where he would get irritated if the newbie showed signs of giving up.

He would probably intervene in some discussion and put everyone on the right track. Maybe he would have moments where he might act cold, but I think would be rude to the culprit, because even if the killer had their justifications, he would still be cold to them, and nothing would save their from punishment. The fact that he doesn't care about the criminals on death row and just sees them as ingredients for meatballs in the game only reinforces this thought: he doesn't care about the killers.

I would also find it interesting that he acted like mentor, he would always be in the shadows, observing the actions of the newbies from a long distance, and would intervene if this is necessary. Do you think he would be a good ally? He would have plenty of resources to help new characters in some new story. (COUGH COUGH, like a future sequel, COUGH COUGH) Think about it: he being obsessed with fixing every mistake made.

Wow, I think I said too much, sorry, I hope I answered your question, Anon, sorry guys, I think I get completely nerdy when I start talking about stuff about a favorite character. I love sharing my ideas with other fans who like the character too, I hope this isn't boring, I can probably do this more often with others. >.<

Here's a silly edit of Makoto smiling and winking at you, hope you have a good day.

It's just ideas and my way of thinking about him, it's okay if you don't agree with everything I wrote here.

[professor-in-progress]

Engineering is Inherently Political

Okay, yea, seemingly loaded statement but hear me out.

In our current political climate (particularly in the Trump/post-Trump era ugh), the popular sentiment is that scientists and other academics are inherently political. So much of science gets politicized; climate change, abortion, gender “issues”, flat earth (!!), insert any scientific topic even if it isn’t very controversial and you can find some political discourse about it somewhere. However, if you were to ask people if they think that engineering is political, I would bet that 9/10 people would say no. The popular perception of engineering is that it’s objective and non-political. Engineering, generally, isn’t very controversial.

I argue that these sentiments should switch.

At its base level, engineering is the application of science and math to solve problems. Tack on the fact that most people don’t really know what engineering is (hell, I couldn’t even really describe it until starting my PhD and studying that concept specifically). Not controversial, right? We all want to solve the world’s problems and make the world a better place and engineers fill that role! But the best way to solve any problem is a subjective issue; no two people will fully agree on the best way to approach or solve a problem.

Why do we associate science and scientists with controversy but engineers with objectivity? Scientists study what is. It’s a scientist’s job to understand our world. Physicists understand how the laws of the universe work, biologists explore everything in our world that lives, doctors study the human body and how it works, environmental scientists study the Earth and its health, I could go on. My point is that scientists discover and tell us what is. Why do we politicize and fear monger about smart people telling us what they discover about the world?

Engineering, however, has a reputation for being logical, objective, result oriented. Which I get, honestly. It’s appealing to believe that the people responsible for designing and building our world are objective and, for the most part, they are. But this is a much more nuanced topic once you think deeper about it.

For example, take my discipline, aerospace engineering. On the surface, how to design a plane or a rocket isn’t subjective. Everyone has the same goal, get people and things from place to place without killing them (yea I bastardized my discipline a bit but that’s basically all it boils down to). Let’s think a little deeper about the implications though. Let’s say you work for a spacecraft manufacturer and let’s hypothetically call it SpaceX. Your rocket is so powerful that during takeoff it destroys the launch pad. That’s an expensive problem so you’re put on the team of engineers dedicated to solving this problem. The team decides that the most effective and least expensive solution is to spray water onto the rocket and launchpad during takeoff. This solution works great! The launchpad stays intact throughout the launch and the company saves money. However, that water doesn’t disappear after launch, and now it’s contaminated with chemicals used in and on the rocket. Now contaminated water flows into the local environment affecting not just the wildlife but also the water supply of the local community. Who is responsible for solving that issue? Do we now need a team of environmental or chemical engineers to solve this new problem caused by the aerospace engineers?

Yes, engineers solve problems, but they also cause problems.

Every action has its reaction. Each solution has its repercussions.

As engineers we possess some of the most dangerous information in the world and are armed with the weapon to utilize it, our minds. Aerospace engineers know how to make missiles, chemical engineers know how to make bombs, computer scientists know how to control entire technological ecosystems. It’s very easy for an engineer to hurt people, and many do. I’m not exempt from this. I used to work for a military contractor, and I still feel pretty guilty about the implications of the problems that I solved. It is an engineer’s responsibility to act and use their knowledge ethically.

Ethical pleas aside, let’s get back to the topic at hand.

Engineering is inherently political. The goal of modern engineering is to avert catastrophe, tackle societal problems, and increase prosperity. If you disagree don’t argue with me, argue with the National Academy of Engineering. It is an engineer’s responsibility to use their knowledge to uplift the world and solve societal problems, that sounds pretty political to me!

An engineer doesn’t solve a problem in a vacuum. Each problem exists within the context of the situation that caused it as well as the society surrounding that situation. An engineer must consider the societal implications of their solutions and designs and aim to uplift that society through their design and solution to the problem. You can’t engineer within a social society without considering the social implications of both the problem and the solution. Additionally, the social implications of those engineering decisions affect different people in different ways. It’s imperative to be aware and mindful of the social inequality between demographics of people affected by both the solution and the problem. For example, our SpaceX company could be polluting the water supply of a poor community that doesn’t have the resources to solve the problem nor the power or influence to confront our multi-billion-dollar company. Now, a multi-billion-dollar company is advancing society and making billions of dollars at the cost of thousands of lives that already struggle due to their social standing in the world. Now the issue has layers that add further social implications that those without money are consistently prone to the whims of those with money. Which, unfortunately, is a step of ethical thought that many engineers don’t tend to take.

Engineers control our world. Engineers decide which problems to solve and how best to solve them. Engineers control who is impacted by those solutions. Engineers have the power to either protect and lift up the marginalized or continue to marginalize them. Those who control the engineers control the world. This is political. This is a social issue.

Now look me in the eyes and tell me that engineering isn’t inherently political.

[lost-carcosa]

The Trump administration has replaced Covid.gov – a website that once provided Americans with access to information about free tests, vaccines, treatment and secondary conditions such as long Covid – with a treatise on the “lab leak” theory.

The site includes intense criticism of Dr Anthony Fauci, who helmed national Covid policies under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the World Health Organization (WHO) and state leadership in New York.

“This administration prioritizes transparency over all else,” according to a senior administration quoted in Fox News, in spite of evidence to the contrary. “The American people deserve to know the truth about the Covid pandemic and we will always find ways to reach communities with that message.”

The origin of the SARS-CoV2 virus has been hotly debated since the pandemic emerged from Wuhan, China, and swept the world in early 2020. At the heart of the debate is whether a lab that studied coronaviruses in Wuhan leaked the virus unintentionally, or if it was part of a natural “spillover” event that took place at a nearby market that sold produce, fish, meat and live exotic animals.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was funded in part by the US government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a fact that has added to controversy. Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for fear he would be attacked during the incoming Trump administration.

Although definitive answers about the virus’s beginnings are elusive and may never be known, scientists have argued as recently as August 2024 in the Journal of Virology that, while they remain open-minded, the weight of evidence favors a spillover event.

Spillover events are thought to have started at least two other pandemics in recent human history, including the Sars-CoV-1 outbreak in China in 2003 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which is believed to have started in the American midwest by human-pig contact. Notably, many scientists are concerned about H5N1 transmission among birds and dairy cows in the US because of its potential to infect humans.

Meanwhile, the “lab leak” theory has received high-profile support from pundits and in the media, particularly in right-leaning circles. It has become the subject of Republican-led hearings, rationale for punishing leaders such as Fauci and defunding scientific institutions such as the NIH.

“NIH’s procedures for funding and overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security,” the Trump administration’s new website argues.

“Further, NIH fostered an environment that promoted evading federal record keeping laws,” the website argues.

Messenger RNA technology, which powered Covid-19 vaccines and led to their swift development under the first Trump administration, has also come under attack. Many leading critics of the government’s initial approach to Covid-19 now have leadership roles in the new Trump administration – including the health secretary and longtime vaccine skeptic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who now leads the NIH.

[conplantaus]

Sustainable Building Practices Reshaping Our Future

Construction has always evolved with the times, but today's innovations are driven by an urgent need: creating buildings that work with our planet, not against it. As the construction industry in Australia faces growing environmental challenges, new approaches are emerging that promise both sustainability and practicality.

Why Sustainable Building Matters Now

Climate change isn't something that's coming—it's here. The building sector accounts for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, making it a critical area for improvement. But beyond environmental concerns, sustainable construction offers tangible benefits for builders, owners, and occupants alike:

Lower operating costs through reduced energy consumption

Healthier indoor environments for occupants

Greater resilience against extreme weather events

Enhanced property values and marketability

Meeting increasingly strict building codes and regulations

Game-Changing Materials Transforming Construction

Rethinking Concrete

Concrete has been our go-to building material for centuries, but its environmental impact is substantial. New alternatives are gaining traction:

Green Concrete incorporates recycled materials like fly ash, slag, and crushed glass to reduce its carbon footprint without sacrificing strength. Some formulations capture and store CO2 during curing, turning a carbon source into a carbon sink.

Hemp-Based Building Materials combine hemp fiber with lime to create lightweight, insulating materials that actually sequester carbon. These "hempcrete" products offer excellent thermal performance while being naturally resistant to mold and pests.

Recycled and Upcycled Options

From reclaimed timber to repurposed shipping containers, builders are finding creative ways to give materials a second life. Not only does this reduce waste, but it often results in buildings with unique character and lower embodied carbon.

Smart Design Approaches

Passive House Principles

The Passive House standard focuses on creating ultra-efficient buildings that maintain comfortable temperatures with minimal heating or cooling. Key features include:

Super-insulated building envelopes

Airtight construction with controlled ventilation

Strategic window placement for solar gain management

Thermal bridge-free design

Originally developed for residential buildings, these principles are now being applied to commercial and industrial structures with impressive results.

Biophilic Design

Humans have an innate connection to nature, and biophilic design leverages this relationship to create buildings that support wellbeing. Natural lighting, indoor plants, natural materials, and views of outdoor greenery don't just make spaces more pleasant—they've been shown to reduce stress, improve productivity, and even speed healing in healthcare settings.

Technology's Growing Role

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

BIM technology allows designers to create detailed digital twins of buildings before construction begins. This enables:

Optimization of material usage to reduce waste

Analysis of energy performance under different conditions

Better coordination between trades to prevent costly mistakes

Lifecycle assessment of different design options

Energy Management Systems

Modern buildings are increasingly equipped with sophisticated systems that monitor and optimize energy use in real time. These systems can adjust lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation based on occupancy patterns and environmental conditions, dramatically reducing energy consumption without sacrificing comfort.

Certifications Raising the Bar

Various certification programs provide frameworks for sustainable building. While LEED has been the most widely recognized, newer systems like Living Building Challenge and WELL are pushing boundaries by focusing on regenerative design and human health impacts.

What's Coming Next?

The future of sustainable building lies in approaches that go beyond merely reducing harm to actively benefiting ecosystems. Concepts gaining momentum include:

Living Buildings that generate more energy than they use, capture and treat their own water, and are constructed from non-toxic, locally sourced materials.

Mass Timber Construction using engineered wood products like cross-laminated timber (CLT) to replace steel and concrete in mid-rise and even high-rise buildings, substantially reducing embodied carbon.

3D Printed Structures that minimize waste through precise material application and can utilize local soil and recycled materials as printing media.

Making Sustainable Building Mainstream

Despite clear benefits, barriers to widespread adoption remain, including higher upfront costs, knowledge gaps, and outdated regulations. However, these obstacles are gradually falling as:

More builders gain experience with sustainable techniques

Supply chains for green materials expand

Building codes evolve to encourage innovation

Clients increasingly demand sustainable options

For industry professionals looking to stay ahead of the curve, investing in sustainability knowledge and partnerships with experienced consultants can provide a competitive edge in a rapidly changing market.

As we face the challenges of climate change and resource constraints, sustainable building isn't just an option—it's becoming the only sensible way forward for the construction industry. By embracing these emerging practices, we can create buildings that are not only kinder to our planet but better for the people who use them every day.

Reference: https://conplant.com.au/news/emerging-sustainable-building-practices/

[ambushingghostart]

Blog numero 3

How has cyberfemism disrupt barriers that oppresses women from adapting in a world of technology?  

Technology has connected people globally, interlinking networks with economical wealth but to this day women are being marginalized in a system that favors men. Cyberfeminism empowerment in digital technology has transform the structure in the framework and distributed a system that has oppressed women. Donna Haraway’s “cyborg” theory of becoming part human and part machine has given women the ability to challenge traditional gender roles or resist oppressive patriarch structure. The influence of cyberfeminism has help protect women with technology and is demonstrated on the website Hollabacknyc that encourage women to document and report unwanted harassment. The platform brought awareness to the unsafe environment for women and a protection to combat unwanted advances. 

Why do we create bias algorithms? 

Technology was supposed to help humanity share information quicker and improve people's lives but instead technology and its algorithms help corporations, health care and banking systems with the ability to target and marginalized groups of people. These specialized algorithms that monitor your data and retrieve your information are automated to deny benefits to people of color in a higher percentage and can create economic hardships such in the reading in Automating Inequality (Eubanks). A system that is programmed to make money instead of helping is a flawed tool and shows that technology is manipulated to create barriers especially in underserved communities. 

We need policies by government and social groups to monitor how healthcare is being provided and administered to communities.  

Why is technology leaving minority women behind? 

In the United States technology is more accessible to certain communities than others but women are the most affected, especially women of color. In Rethinking Cyberfeminism, women in countries with developing infrastructure are being left behind in technology and not being integrated to the economic system. Development and innovation are being manufactured in a high rate, but the power continue to create barrier to women because of systemic issues that affect gender roles in many developing countries.  

Is technology our new security system?  

In the video Race and Technology by Nicole Brown highlights how technology has been automated to police citizens and minorities communities in many different sectors of daily life. These algorithms are created to monitor and target groups with biased data, and it can be considered racial profiling. Surveillance has been implemented with technology by using artificial intelligence which is a flawed system known to make mistakes. How secure should we feel when the systems in place to make you feel safe can end up targeting you because of how you look? 

How do we combat facial recognition when it is wrong? 

How do you prove your innocence when a system is programmed to be correct 99 percent of the time? In the Nijeer Parks story of how he was wrongly accused and jailed for a crime he did not commit because of the mistake of facial recognition technology was used to find a suspect. Another Arrest and Jail Time Dude to a Bad Facial Recognition Match by Kashmir Hill covers how technology and police surveillance is not being criticized by any outside safety nets. We need accountability and a system that protects people from being detained for data and manipulated algorithms. 

Brown, N (2020). Race and Technology.  

Daniels, J (2009). Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment. The Feminist Press 

Eubanks, Automating Inequality. Pdf 

[longlistshort]

Michael Joo, “Noospheres (Composition OG:CR)”, 2024

Cannupa Hanska Luger, “Sovereign”, 2024

Yoshitomo Nara, “A Sinking Island Floating in a Sea Called Space 1 and 2”, 2024

For the group exhibition Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, Hammer Museum has gathered artists from around the world to present work that addresses environmental and social issues. The exhibition is part of the PST ART: Art and Science Collide programming taking place throughout Southern California.

From the museum about the exhibition-

The confluence of cataclysmic events that marked the year 2020-among them the global COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, and the murder of George Floyd, which gave powerful momentum to Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements-created a rupture. For many, it felt like the end of the world that they had known. Under circumstances of physical and psychological lockdown, the very notion of taking a single breath-an act vital to multispecies existence since time immemorial-took on renewed significance. Breathing as an act of resistance and survival in the face of racial inequity and a global health crisis calls attention to the inextricable link between social and environmental injustice. The often imperceptible but ever growing burden of climate-related tragedies-the thawing cryosphere, extreme heat, flooding, deforestation, radioactive aftermaths of wars, and ocean acidification-has played a direct role in the deterioration of economic conditions and the displacement of populations.

Breath(e) assembles artists from around the world who share concerns about threats to their communities and environments. The exhibition foregrounds an ethical stance that critiques the privileging of the human being as the most significant among all entities and instead values interdependence. Some of the works reassess philosophical assumptions regarding what constitutes the “human,” while others question who speaks on behalf of the rights of nature and how we adjudicate the agency of the earth, trees, air, and oceans. The exhibition also highlights artistic practices that have transformed the cultural tropes of the climate crisis into narratives of resilience, transformation, renewal, and coexistence. These narratives are explored through various means: restoring balance and belonging to the land through speculative models for future survival; exploring the regenerative capacities of waste through structural transformations in life cycles; making visible the impact of anthropogenic violence on our bodies over time; the passing down of living knowledge that promotes biodiversity through multiple generations; giving voice to youth and empowering them with food sovereignty; and the radical presence of multispecies survival amid capitalist exploitation. Each of these strategies points to systemic shifts, reminding us of the power of each breath and of how the ethical principles of justice can be advanced amid life as well as on the path to extinction.

Below are a few selections and some additional information from the museum.

About the work above-

Identifying as both a scientist and an artist, Xin Liu uses the language of technological development to explore our desire to preserve and artificially extend biological life. In 2023, inspired by scientific innovations in cryonics and egg freezing, Liu developed Cry:0, a series of mixed-media sculptures that includes The Mothership, a science fiction-like panel equipped with a cooling mechanism that pulls water directly from the air, causing thin layers of frost to gradually develop on the surface of the central bronze mouth, which the artist cast from her own body. With its spectral, biomorphic form and evocative title, The Mothership reflects on technologies designed to manipulate time as well as the central role played by the female body in perpetuating the human species.

Installations by Korean art collective ikkibawiKrrr and Garnett Puett (structure in the back on the right)

About the ikkibawiKrrr multimedia installation and video-

The Korean collective ikkibawiKrr’s expanded approach to art making encompasses performance, workshops, and events. The neologism ikkibawiKrrr consists of the Korean words ikki, meaning “moss”; bawl, meaning “rock”; and krrr, an onomato poetic word that implies a rolling motion. Through its work the group aspires to be “moss-like,” an organism constantly adapting in response to its surroundings. It has focused its recent work on the culture and ecology of the tropical Jeju Island, located off the southern coast of Korea.

A popular tourist destination known for its pristine ecosystem, Jeju Island is home to a community of haenyeo (female divers, or “women of the sea’), who are venerated for their ability to hold their breath for long periods of time while underwater. Upon rising to the surface, the haenyeo make a distinctive whistling sound as they rapidly exhale carbon dioxide and inhale fresh oxygen, a breathing technique called sumbisori, or “breath sound.” A matriarchal community committed to environmentalism, the haenyeo have been sustainably harvesting seafood for centuries. Given their symbiotic relationship with nature, their already arduous work has been greatly impacted by climate change, particularly rising water temperatures, which have harmed algae and changed the migratory patterns of predatory fish. Additionally, Jeju Island is not as clean as it once was, and the haenyeo now risk being trapped by discarded fishing nets and spend their time collecting plastics from the ocean.

In the video that forms part of ikkibawiKrr’s multimedia installation Seaweed Story (2022), a haenyeo choir stands on the cliffs of Hado, a fishing village on Jeju Island, singing a regional variation on “Arrang,” an ancient folk song with strong ties to Korean nationalism. During Japan’s imperialist era (1910-45), the fishing industry exploited the haenyeo and overfished their waters, leading the women to organize local cooperatives and public demonstrations, many of which took place in Hado. Through their performance, the haenyeo reinforce their connection to both the ocean and historical resistance movements. The installation also includes a sandbox containing miniature replicas of the small houses where these women convene, rest, and change in and out of their wetsuits.

Below is Garnett Puett’s sculpture, located inside the enclosed structure pictured above, where bees help create the work.

From the museum-

A sculptor and fourth-generation beekeeper based in Hawaii, Garnett Puett collaborates with bees to create what he terms “apisculptures” (api is the Latin word for “bee”). Combining ancestral knowledge with his passion for art, Puett conceived of this signature method in 1983, when he was a graduate student at Pratt Institute in New York City. As demonstrated by the newly commissioned work on view, Puett emphasizes the creative process over any particular outcome. To initiate Untitled (Paradoxical Garden Downstream) (2024), he conceived a figurative armature for the sculpture, coated it in thick layers of beeswax using a rotating table of his own design, and enclosed it in a habitat for bees. He then introduced a locally sourced queen along with her hive, thousands of worker bees (female honeybees), who made the work their home. Over the course of its brief lifespan, approximately six weeks, the colony will gather nectar and pollen to sustain the queen while elaborating the structure with honeycomb. Working symbiotically, Puett and the bees will eventually arrive at a final apisculpture. Three previously realized works are on view in the same gallery.

Roxy Paine, “Chart”, 2024

From the museum about Roxy Paine and the work above-

Since the 1990s, Roxy Paine has made thousands of scientifically accurate reproductions of mushrooms, underscoring the important role played by fungi in balancing our ecosystems. As agents of decomposition, fungi drive the global carbon cycle-the process by which carbon moves between the soil, living organisms, and the atmosphere. Belonging to a category of artworks that Paine calls “replicants,” his synthetic fungi colonies convincing y mimic the ways organic mushrooms spread in concentrated areas, sprouting directly from the floor or from wall-hung supports. Paine has researched and replicated the three major types of mushrooms: parasitic fungi, which attack living matter, thus regulating the populations of their hosts; saprophytic fungi, which consume and recycle dead matter; and symbiotic or mycorrhizal fungi, which flourish synergistically with the roots of plants and trees, supporting forests as they absorb carbon. Also known as “climate change warriors,” mycorrhizal fungi have the capacity to delay the effects of global warming, but rising temperatures could be putting them at risk of decline.

Chart (2024), a multivariant field, presents lesser-known examples of parasitic, saprophytic, and symbiotic fungi, including Geastrum striatum, or earthstars; the coral-like Clathrus ruber, or cage fungus, a type of stinkhorn that attracts insects by smelling of rotten meat; the scaly, globular Scleroderma citrinum, or pigskin poison puffball; Sarcoscypha coccinea, or scarlet cup, composed of small, open ellipsoids, reminiscent of bodily orifices, that gather in moist moss or on the forest floor; and Lycogola epidendrum, creamsicle-colored pustules that, when naturally occurring, ooze pink slime when pressed. Paine also simulates the neon-bright nets of plasmodium slime mold, a saprophytic organism resembling fungi that consumes mushrooms, bacteria, and other rotting matter. While these species would not be found cohabitating in the wild, they unite in their effort to erode a Turkish rug patterned with abstract representations of flora and fauna. This syncretic rug, a product of merging cultures, stands in for the invisible, carpet-like mycelium, the network of threads that form the rootlike structure of a fungus.

Paintings from Mel Chin’s series of paintings for “Interpretation of Vision (or IOV, pronounced “eye of”)”

About Mel Chin’s work from the museum-

Commissioned for this exhibition, Interpretation of Vision (or IOV, pronounced “eye of”) consists of thirty-two paintings realized through personal connections with individuals whose lives were altered by phenomenological experiences. Chin believes that the first step in the collective undertaking to fight persistent social and climate injustice is to dismantle division and promote empathy toward others. Opposed to proselytizing, he feels obligated to take the first step.

Like the artist Frida Kahlo, Chin drew inspiration from retablos and ex votos, small-scale devotional paintings, typically on wood or metal, that serve as votive offerings. During the nineteenth century any life-changing event could warrant the making of an ex-voto as an offering of gratitude. Typically produced by anonymous artisans on behalf of a patron, these paintings represent the tragic circumstances, such as accidents and near-fatal Illnesses, that precipitated their commission, showing saints or martyrs intervening to save the life of the afflicted. IOV is a multistage commission that began with a public call for stories from people whose lives were altered by natural, spiritual, or supernatural phenomena. Inspired by the unnamed ex-voto artisans, Chin collaborated with each respondent to honor and elevate their stories. Each dialogue resulted in a diptych, a two-part painting, presented on an artist-designed, seismically sensitive plinth. In each work the rendering of reality is embedded into an aperture on the right, while its corollary, the depiction of the transformational experience, is mounted on the surface. The wall fluidly accommodates any shifts between perception and knowing.

Ron Finley created the large scale garden installation, Grounded for the exhibition, pictured below. Also included in his section of the exhibition are several of the shovels created by his artist friends for Urban Weaponry Project, Weapons of Mass Creation, located in a separate room.

From the museum-

Finley, also known as the Gangsta Gardener, empowers people to grow their own food and advocates for communities to have access to fresh, nutrient-dense, organically grown food. Through the Ron Finley Project, he has cultivated gardens in urban food deserts, places where access to healthy food and fresh produce is limited or nonexistent. In 2009 he began planting vegetables, fruit trees, and other greenery along parkways, the stretches of land between the sidewalk and the street, in South Central Los Angeles. “I wanted butterflies and hummingbirds. I wanted something pretty, like amaryllis and agapanthus, and I wanted it to smell like jasmine, juniper, mint, and orange blossoms,” he recalls. “So that’s what I did.” After receiving a citation from the city for gardening without a permit, he fought back, and the City of Los Angeles changed its ordinance regulating gardening on public land.

With the commissioned work Grounded, Finley brings his urban gardening practice to the Hammer, creating a green, nourishing respite on the museum’s terrace in emulation of his own extraordinary garden. Both sites include vegetables and fruit trees growing alongside artworks and repurposed objects and contain communal spaces intended to rejuvenate audiences while fostering dialogues about food access, empowerment, and freedom. Inside, Finley presents selected works from his ongoing Urban Weaponry Project, Weapons of Mass Creation (2018-), a project that underscores his deep-rooted devotion to art, design, gardening, and grassroots organizing. Seven years ago he noticed that many of his artist friends were working in isolation. In an effort to connect them, he began inviting each one to transform a common, mass-produced gardening shovel into a distinctive work of art. A testament to Finley’s strength in community building, the present installation represents only a small fraction of his expansive collection. “A tool of mass creation,” as he frequently calls it, the shovel becomes a twin symbol of artistic production and food cultivation.

Lan Tuazon also created a large installation outside of the main galleries (pictured below).

From the museum-

Part of a generation of artists invested in criticizing institutionalized systems, Lan Tuazon proposes methods for recirculating organic and human-made materials to sustainably extend the lifespan of our things. In a linear economy, most consumer products begin as natural resources extracted from the landscape only to conclude as waste in a landfill. Commissioned for this exhibition, Over Your Head & Under the Weather (2024) stages a circular economy by demonstrating techniques of material recovery. Single-use plastics have been industrially shredded and pressed into panels, surplus newspapers are densified into newspaper wood, and other organic materials like coconut fibers are reconfigured into papercrete. Tuazon also makes use of innovative industrial products. The entire structure is constructed from multifunctional WaterBricks, interlocking, modular storage containers originally designed to preserve food and water for emergency and disaster relief purposes, and the floor is lined with Biomason’s carbon-reducing/sequestering Biolith tiles, made with recycled aggregates and bacterium-cultivated cement.

Designed to resemble a functionalized minimal sculpture, Over Your Head & Under the Weather wraps around the building to form two primary architectural bays. One side houses an industrial shredder and a plastic-collection station. Visitors are invited to contribute to the work’s circular economy by donating their #2 and #5 plastics, which will later be processed and shredded. The windows on the other side of the structure contain sculptural reliefs from Tuazon’s Assorted Drive series. Drawing on the language of data storage, the Assorted Drives ironically preserve physical evidence of human production and consumption: found materials, plastic beverage rings, bread ties, caps, and confetti made from previously shredded plastics. Part of an ongoing series, the towering sculpture Future Fossil-made from mass-produced containers, cut and nested like Russian dolls-uses the metaphor of geological petrification to allude to the tremendous scale and indeterminate lifespan of consumer and industrial waste.

Tiffany Chung’s stored in a jar: moonsoon, drowning fish, color of water, and the floating world, 2010-11, pictured below, references Vietnam and its vulnerability to flooding and the rising sea level.

From the museum-

Through meticulous archival and mapping practices, Tiffany Chung commemorates the experiences of local communities facing sociopolitical and climate-related trauma, placing those experiences within a global context. Born in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Chung was forced to relocate following the fall of Saigon in 1975 to one of the government’s New Economic Zones (NEZ) as part of a population redistribution program aimed at restructuring Vietnam’s economy and southern society. Chung moved with her family to the Mekong Delta, the southwestern region of Vietnam where the Mekong River meets the South China Sea. In 1978 she witnessed a historic riverine flood in the area that killed seventy-four, left seventy-nine thousand homeless, and impacted more than four hundred thousand people. Eventually Chung migrated to the United States, taking part in the massive exodus of refugees precipitated by the NEZ program. Today Vietnam is among the countries that are most vulnerable to sea-level rise. According to recent projections, by the year 2050 almost all the land in southern Vietnam could be engulfed, displacing twenty million people, or nearly one quarter of the country’s population.

In several works, Chung explores extreme flooding — a natural phenomenon that in Vietnam is exacerbated both by the construction of hydroelectric dams in the Mekong River Basin and by human-driven climate change-and proposes solutions. In 2010 she constructed stored in a jar: monsoon, drowning fish, color water, and the floating world, a large-scale model for a floating village. To create this utopian world, Chung drew a formal language from vernacular architecture throughout Asia and structured a city in emulation of actual floating communities: vessels and houseboats tethered together in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam; floating communities on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia; a makeshift system of interconnected house-rafts on the Song Kalia River in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand; and camps of floating palaces on a network of rivers in Srinagar, India.

Sarah Rosalena, “Exit Point”, 2019

About Sarah Rosalena’s work pictured above-

To make Exit Point, Rosalena trained a neural network to combine the Blue Marble photo and the M87 black hole image and output the results to a mechanical loom, which materialized each pixel as a thread in a Jacquard textile. As the Jacquard loom is considered a predecessor to the modern computer, her textiles also challenge linear accounts of technological progress. Through the use of artificial intelligence, Rosalena creates coiling, looping, and spiraling temporalities that function as tools for examining our past and present.

About Bently Spang‘s War Shirt #6- Waterways, pictured above-

The Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang creates multidisciplinary artworks inspired by the utilitarian and artistic practices of his ancestors, the Tsitsistas/Suhtaio people. One of Spang’s first such projects was War Shirt #1 (1998), which he made by stitching together family photographs and film negatives, using the negatives as fringe. Spang notes that ancestral war shirts are “reciprocal garments” created by the community to shelter warriors as they battle to protect that community. In 2017 Mountain Time Arts in Bozeman, Montana, commissioned Spang to create a work that would explore the influence of climate change on water resources and raise awareness of the issue in the region. The result was War Shirt #6-Waterways (2017), a multimedia sculptural installation that takes the form of a Plains-style war shirt.

The body of War Shirt #6-Waterways is made up of twenty-one monitors and fringed with six digital still photographs. With the help of a local support team, Spang welded the steel armature and programmed the monitors to present a synchronous, multichannel video, which he filmed while walking from the Tongue River, a tributary of the Yellowstone River that traverses Montana and Wyoming, to a local spring on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation; the digital fringe presents images from a preserved plant press book collected by a tribal historian and ethnobotanist. “I’m telling the viewer to know your water, know where it comes from and how it gets to you, and then you can protect it,” says Spang. “We should all have a relationship with that water, with these places that the water manifests.”

About the Sandy Rodriguez work above-

Made during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the multilingual map of the greater Los Angeles area YOU ARE HERE / Tovaangar / El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula / Los Angeles (2021) draws inspiration from the region’s history. It includes depictions of the trial of Toypurina, an Indigenous woman who led a rebellion against the Mission San Gabriel in 1785, as well as sixteenth-century primary source materials, including the Florentine Codex (ca. 1529-69), an encyclopedic ethnographic study of central Mexico. YOU ARE HERE includes images of plants and animals used by Native peoples, which represent geographic locations and serve as indicators of the cardinal directions. Place-names are hand painted in English, Spanish, and Tongva to reference renaming in the region over time as a colonial act of aggression. Rodriguez wants visitors to encounter this painting as they might a way-finding map and to use it to reorient themselves in space and time. She studies, documents, and processes native botanical specimens that have healing properties to create pigments, inks, and watercolors, applying these handmade materials to amate paper made from the bark of trees in Puebla, Mexico. A symbol of Indigenous culture, this sacred pre-Columbian material was prohibited by the Spanish during the colonial period.

Pictured below is one of Yangkura’s “waste monsters”, Tongsinsa, and his film depicting the monster in public (him in the costume).

From the museum-

Working on the west coast of South Korea, Yangkura is a performance and installation artist who uses ordinary trash to represent the dynamics of foreign relations in northeast Asia. Provoked by the 2007 MT Hebei Spirit Oil Spill (HSOS), in which 10,900 tons of crude oil spilled into the sea and contaminated the Korean coastline, Yangkura has focused his practice on the effects of anthropogenic marine pollution. In 2013 he began collecting and categorizing the waste from North Korea, China, and Japan that washed ashore on the coast of South Korea. By tracing tidal movements, he established the migratory pattens for marine debris moving among these countries, discovering that Korea’s trash frequently makes its way to Tsushima Island in Japan. He suspects that this island’s unique geographic formation makes it behave like a vacuum for international garbage, allowing the waters east of Korea to stay relatively clean. As Yangkura’s research suggests, the litter collecting in our oceans does not recognize geopolitical boundaries.

In 2015 Yangkura began constructing “waste monsters” —whimsical, colossal trash costumes, each with its own fictive identity. Yangkura wears these costumes while stilt-walking in performances intended to draw public awareness to the grotesqueness of our collective marine pollution problem. While he recognizes other environmental activists attempting to shock the public into change, he does not believe this approach is sustainable. Instead, he prefers to broach the topic of anthropogenic pollution through storytelling, weaving fantastic, subliminal narratives to engage and educate. In 2017 Yangkura began working with Tsushima CAPPA, a Japanese environmental organization focused on promoting awareness of marine pollution and on cleaning Tsushima Island. He used this collaboration to create a new “monster,” a character he hoped would deftly underscore selfishness as a fundamental human problem. Forgotten Tongsinsa or Forgotten Messenger (2017-) is constructed from trash originating in Korea, China, and Japan recovered from the coast of Tsushima Island (the word tongsinsa refers to a messenger with a diplomatic purpose, and it was originally applied to envoys sent to Japan on goodwill missions during the Joseon era). Yangkura describes Forgotten Tongsinsa as a good monster who dearly misses home and is simply trying to find his way back again.

This exhibition closes 1/5/25.

[darkmaga-returns]

Technocrats in China intend to automate all health care as herd management. Further, “AI hospitals can even predict the spread, development, and control of infectious diseases in a region,” meaning that the AI hospital can automatically order lockdowns when it deems it necessary. China is a testing ground for the rest of the human population, including in America. Get ready to hear “The Robo-Doc will now see you now.” ⁃ TN Editor

The world’s first AI hospital where robot doctors can treat 3,000 patients a day has been unveiled in China.

Dubbed “Agent Hospital”, the virtual facility will have the potential to save “millions” through its autonomous interaction.

Developed by researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing, the AI hospital is so advanced that it already aims to be operational by the second half of 2024.

Six months of research and development means the hospital is nearing readiness for practical application, where it is set to transform the way doctors diagnose and treat patients.

Research team leader of the Agent Hospital, Liu Yang, said the AI hospital will bring immense benefits to both medical professionals and the general public, Global Times report.

Thanks to its simulated environment and ability to autonomously evolve, AI doctors will be able to treat up to 10,000 patients within a matter of days.

To put this into perspective, it would take at least two years for human doctors to achieve the same numbers.

Tests conducted by Chinese researchers have already shown AI doctor agents achieve an impressive 93.06 percent accuracy rate on the MedQA dataset (US Medical Licensing Exam questions).

Covering major respiratory diseases, the virtual medical professionals were able to simulate the entire process of diagnosing and treating patients.

This included consultation, examination, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up processes.

The virtual world will see all doctors, nurses and patients driven by large language model-powered intelligent agents.

The role information for the AI doctors can also be “infinitely expanded”, the report adds.

For now, a configuration of 14 doctors and four nurses are on hand to deal with the demand of patients.

The 14 doctors are designed to diagnose diseases and formulate detailed treatment plans, while the four nurses focus on daily support.

Bringing the AI hospital into the real world means medical students can be provided with enhanced training opportunities.

Proposing treatment plans without the fear of causing harm to real patients will allow them to practice in a risk-free environment.

This will ultimately lead to the cultivation of “highly-skilled doctors,” according to Liu.

When the roles are reversed, whereby the doctors are virtual and the patients are real, online telemedicine services can be provided.

According to the report, this would allow AI doctors to handle thousands, or even “millions”, of cases.

Liu adds that the AI hospital can even predict the spread, development and control of infectious diseases in a region.

Another motivator behind the AI hospital is creating affordable care for the public.

As diagnostic capabilities of AI doctors translate through to the real world, it brings with it high-quality, affordable and convenient healthcare services.

As with any new idea, however, it carries with it a number of challenges.

To ensure that AI technology does not pose a risk to public health, strict adherence to national medical regulations is required.

On top of that, thorough validation of technological maturity and the exploration of mechanisms for AI-human collaboration are also essential.

Read full article here…

[thetechempire]

A Rising Tide of E-Waste, Worsened by AI, Threatens Our Health, Environment, and Economy

The digital age has ushered in a wave of innovation and convenience, powered in large part by artificial intelligence (AI). From AI-driven virtual assistants to smart home devices, technology has made life easier for millions. But beneath this rapid progress lies a less glamorous truth: a mounting crisis of electronic waste (e-waste).

The global e-waste problem is already enormous, with millions of tons discarded every year. Now, with the rapid growth of AI, this tide of e-waste is swelling even faster. Let’s break this down to understand the full scope of the issue and what can be done to mitigate it.

What Is E-Waste, and Why Should We Care?

E-waste encompasses discarded electronic devices — everything from old mobile phones and laptops to smart home gadgets, electric toothbrushes, and even large appliances like refrigerators. It’s not just junk; it’s an environmental and health hazard in disguise.

Each device contains a cocktail of valuable materials like gold and silver, but also toxic substances like lead, mercury, cadmium, and flame retardants. When improperly disposed of, these toxins leach into the environment, harming ecosystems and human health.

A Problem of Global Proportions

Annual Generation: The world generates over 50 million metric tons of e-waste annually, and this figure is projected to grow by 2 million tons each year.

Recycling Rates: Only 17% of e-waste is formally recycled. The rest? It ends up in landfills, incinerated, or handled by informal recycling sectors in developing nations.

While we’re busy marveling at AI-driven innovations, the discarded byproducts of our tech obsession are quietly poisoning our planet.

The Role of AI in Escalating E-Waste

AI, often lauded as the backbone of modern technology, is inadvertently exacerbating the e-waste crisis. Let’s examine the key ways AI contributes to this issue:

1. Accelerating Product Obsolescence

AI-powered devices are evolving at an astonishing pace. Smartphones with AI-enhanced cameras and processors, smart TVs with AI voice assistants, and wearables with health-tracking AI have become must-haves.

But these devices are often rendered obsolete within a few years due to:

Frequent Software Updates: AI systems improve rapidly, making older hardware incompatible with newer software.

Limited Repairability: Many modern gadgets are designed in a way that discourages repairs — sealed batteries, proprietary parts, and inaccessible interiors push consumers toward replacing rather than fixing.

Consumer Demand for New Features: AI advancements create a “fear of missing out” (FOMO), prompting consumers to upgrade frequently.

2. Proliferation of AI-Specific Hardware

AI-driven technologies require specialized, powerful hardware. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and custom AI chips are integral to devices and data centers. Unlike general-purpose electronics, these components are challenging to recycle due to their complexity.

3. Growing Data Center Infrastructure

AI thrives on data, which means a relentless demand for computational power. Data centers, the backbone of AI, are:

Upgrading Constantly: To keep up with AI’s demands, servers are frequently replaced, generating massive amounts of e-waste.

Consuming Energy: Outdated hardware contributes to inefficiency and waste.

The Consequences of the E-Waste Crisis

The consequences of unmanaged e-waste are vast, impacting not only the environment but also human health and economic stability.

Health Hazards

E-waste releases harmful substances, including:

Lead and Cadmium: Found in circuit boards, these cause neurological damage and kidney issues when absorbed by humans.

Mercury: Found in screens and lighting, it can lead to brain damage and developmental issues, especially in children.

Burning Plastics: Informal recycling often involves burning e-waste, releasing carcinogenic dioxins into the air.

These pollutants disproportionately affect workers in informal recycling industries, often in developing countries with lax regulations.

Environmental Devastation

Soil Contamination: Toxic metals seep into the ground, affecting agriculture and entering the food chain.

Water Pollution: E-waste dumped in waterways contaminates drinking water and harms aquatic life.

Air Pollution: Incinerating e-waste produces greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change.

Economic Loss

Ironically, e-waste is a treasure trove of valuable materials like gold, silver, and rare earth elements. In 2019 alone, the value of discarded e-waste was estimated at $62.5 billion — higher than the GDP of many countries. Yet, due to poor recycling infrastructure, most of this wealth is wasted.

Turning the Tide: Solutions to the E-Waste Crisis

For Tech Companies

Design for Longevity: Adopt modular designs that make repairs and upgrades easy. For example, Fairphone and Framework Laptop are already doing this.

Reduce Planned Obsolescence: Commit to longer software support and avoid locking critical components like batteries.

Improve Recycling Systems: Implement take-back programs and closed-loop recycling processes to recover valuable materials.

For Governments

Enforce Right-to-Repair Laws: Legislation that mandates access to repair manuals and spare parts empowers consumers to fix devices instead of discarding them.

Promote Circular Economy Models: Incentivize businesses to design products for reuse, repair, and recycling.

Ban Hazardous E-Waste Exports: Prevent the dumping of e-waste in developing countries, where improper recycling leads to environmental and human rights violations.

For Consumers

Think Before You Upgrade: Do you really need the latest gadget, or can your current one suffice?

Repair Instead of Replace: Support local repair shops or DIY fixes with the help of online resources.

Recycle Responsibly: Look for certified e-waste recycling programs in your area.

Can AI Help Solve the Problem It Created?

Interestingly, AI itself could be part of the solution. Here’s how:

Optimizing Recycling Processes: AI-powered robots can sort e-waste more efficiently, separating valuable materials from toxins.

Predicting E-Waste Trends: AI can analyze data to anticipate where e-waste generation is highest, helping governments and companies prepare better recycling strategies.

Sustainable Product Design: AI can assist engineers in designing eco-friendly devices with recyclable components.

A Call to Action

The e-waste crisis is a ticking time bomb, exacerbated by the rapid rise of AI and our insatiable appetite for new technology. But the solution lies in our hands. By embracing sustainable practices, holding companies accountable, and making conscious choices as consumers, we can ensure that the benefits of AI don’t come at the cost of our planet.

It’s time to act, because a rising tide of e-waste doesn’t just threaten the environment — it threatens our future.

[samriddhikatariya]

HUMAN FORM (EXERCISE 3 DRAFT 2) Imagining what the Human Form would be 80 years in the future.

Food: The digestive system will optimize efficiency, requiring minimal resources for maximal nutrition. Microbiomes will evolve to process lab-grown, nutrient-dense foods seamlessly. Embedded bio-sensors in the body will monitor dietary needs in real-time, ensuring precise nutrient intake and energy balance. Technology will serve to enhance—not replace—the emotional connection to food as a cultural and sensory experience.

Water: Our skin may become more efficient at retaining moisture, with fine, dew-like layers that protect against dehydration. Sweat will evolve, producing less water loss while aiding cooling. Perhaps even a subtle ability to absorb humidity from the air could emerge, ensuring survival in arid conditions.

Housing: Flexibility and resilience will define our form, with stronger, more agile frames that thrive in smaller, shared environments. Our posture may naturally adjust for comfort in multi-level, modular homes.

Education: Our senses could refine to absorb information intuitively—eyes tuned to subtle details, ears attuned to layered sounds, and touch more sensitive for hands-on learning. Memory and focus may naturally improve, fostering creativity and collaboration.

Healthcare: We may develop an innate awareness of our health—able to sense imbalances and heal through rest, nutrition, and movement. Aging could slow, emphasizing vitality and quality of life over mere longevity.

Social Equity: Our expressions and gestures might evolve to convey empathy and understanding, breaking barriers of language and culture. Strength and resilience could manifest in ways that honor both individual and collective needs.

Gender Equality: physical traits no longer tied to traditional gender expectations. Differences will be more fluid, allowing for a fuller expression of identity. Our bodies may adapt to reflect equal strength, resilience, and sensitivity, erasing rigid gender roles. Physical features could become more neutral, with individuals empowered to define themselves freely.

 Work & Income: the human body may adapt to a world where work is more flexible and income less tied to traditional labor. Our physical energy and focus could become more attuned to creative, collaborative tasks, rather than long hours of repetitive work. These changes will show a future where people’s worth is measured by their contributions to society and happiness, not just income.

Energy / Electricity: Our physical movements will be smoother, requiring less effort, as our energy systems align with sustainable sources. We may evolve to naturally absorb and store energy from our environment, perhaps drawing subtle power from light or heat. Our bodies will be more in tune with renewable energy cycles, reducing dependence on external sources.

 Peace & Justice: Bodies will be more resilient, healing naturally with fewer disparities, ensuring equitable access to well-being for all. Our physical selves will adapt to support both mental and physical health, with systems designed to reduce suffering and promote fairness.

Transportation: Our bodies will naturally align with smarter, more sustainable transportation systems, allowing for faster recovery and less strain during travel. Mobility will be optimized for health, reducing stress on the body and enhancing circulation, making travel both effortless and restorative.

Political Voice: We may develop enhanced ways of communicating our health concerns, with heightened empathy and clarity, allowing our bodies to advocate for fairness in medical access and policy.

Air Pollution: Our bodies will be stronger in resisting the harmful effects of polluted air, with improved recovery from exposure. We may develop heightened awareness of air quality, with bodies able to sense and adapt to environmental changes, reducing long-term health risks.

Noise Pollution: the human form will adapt to better handle noise pollution, with a heightened ability to filter out disruptive sounds. Our senses will evolve to shield us from excessive noise, promoting mental clarity and reducing anxiety.

Non-Human life: Our bodies will naturally foster empathy and respect for animals, plants, and all forms of life, ensuring health is interconnected with the planet’s well-being. The human body will adapt to support biodiversity, benefiting from the healing properties of nature.

Chemical Pollution: Our bodies will be equipped to filter and neutralize toxins more effectively, reducing the impact of environmental pollutants on our health. Immune and organ systems will adapt, becoming more resilient to the long-term exposure to chemicals. The body will naturally repair itself from environmental damage, promoting faster recovery and minimizing illness.

Water bodies & Supply: Our kidneys and skin will evolve to retain moisture longer, while our bodies will become more attuned to water conservation, ensuring better hydration and overall health. There will be fewer waterborne illnesses as our immune systems evolve to fight contamination more effectively.

Waste management: Our bodies will be more efficient at processing and eliminating toxins, reducing the strain on our systems and preventing buildup. Digestive and excretory systems will naturally support detoxification, with quicker, healthier processing of waste products. The body will adapt to minimize internal pollution and more effectively handle external environmental waste.

⁠Land use & Streets & Public Spaces: Physical well-being will be supported by spaces that encourage movement, interaction, and mental health. Streets and public areas will be designed to promote walking, cycling, and relaxation, contributing to better cardiovascular health and reducing stress.

Ocean pollution: Our bodies will be more resilient to contaminants like microplastics, with enhanced detoxification systems to remove harmful substances. Our immune and respiratory systems will adapt to filter out toxins from both air and water.

Effects of climate change: Our bodies will be more capable of regulating temperature, conserving energy, and recovering from environmental stressors. We will develop stronger immune systems to combat new diseases and respiratory conditions linked to air quality. Our bodies will be more attuned to changes in the climate, ensuring better adaptation to heatwaves, flooding, and droughts.

Urban Agriculture & Greenification: Our bodies will thrive in environments rich in plants and fresh produce, naturally benefiting from cleaner air and healthier food sources. The body will be better equipped to absorb nutrients from local, sustainable food systems, while our immune systems will be strengthened by proximity to nature. Green spaces will support mental well-being, reducing stress and enhancing physical vitality.

Gender & Sexuality: the human form will embrace a broader understanding of gender and sexuality, where bodies are more fluid and adaptable, no longer bound by traditional norms.

Diversity & Inclusion: Medical care will focus on celebrating differences, offering personalized treatments that respect all forms of human identity. Healthcare will be fully inclusive, addressing the needs of all people, regardless of race, ability, or background.

Accessibility: Healthcare will be universally accessible, allowing everyone to thrive, regardless of ability. Medical care will be tailored to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their physical, sensory, or cognitive abilities, receive the support they need.

Sustainability: Medical practices will focus on holistic health that supports both individual well-being and the planet. The human body will naturally align with the environment, using fewer resources and producing less waste. Healthcare will emphasize eco-friendly treatments and preventative care, reducing the environmental footprint of medical practices while promoting long-term health.

[aionlinemoney]

The Impact of Artificial intelligence in Healthcare Industry

Technology has always played an important role in healthcare, but the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bringing even bigger changes. From helping doctors diagnose diseases to improving patient care, AI is transforming the healthcare industry for the better. It’s making healthcare services more efficient, accurate, and personalized for each patient.

In this blog, we will take a closer look at how AI is used in healthcare, its benefits, and the challenges.

AI in Healthcare: A New Beginning 

AI in healthcare means using computers and smart programs to help doctors look at medical information and make better choices. AI can quickly go through a lot of data and find patterns that people might not see. This makes it really helpful for finding diseases.

Uses of AI in Healthcare:

Diagnostics and Early Detection:

AI is becoming a powerful tool in diagnosing diseases. Artificial intelligence in medical diagnosis can examine medical images like X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans with high accuracy. In some cases, AI can even spot diseases like cancer earlier than human doctors.

AI tools are also being developed to assess a person’s risk of diseases based on their genetics, lifestyle, and environment, making healthcare more personalized.

AI in Drug Discovery:

Finding new drugs is a long and expensive process. Artificial intelligence in medical diagnosis helps speed it up by predicting how different chemicals will interact with the body. This allows pharmaceutical companies to find new treatments faster.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, AI in healthcare was used to repurpose existing drugs to treat the virus. AI helped identify promising drugs quickly, shortening the usual timeline for research.

Virtual Health Assistants:

AI-powered virtual health assistants are now offering patients basic medical advice without the need to visit a hospital. These assistants can answer questions, remind patients to take medications, and help schedule appointments. They also reduce the workload on doctors.

Telemedicine, where doctors consult patients remotely, has become more popular, especially during the pandemic. AI-driven platforms allow doctors to diagnose and treat patients from a distance, making healthcare more accessible and convenient.

Robotics in Surgery:

AI in healthcare is helping doctors do delicate surgeries. These robots can do small, correct operations, which means patients heal faster.

One example is the Da Vinci Surgical System. It helps doctors perform complicated surgeries through tiny cuts, allowing patients to recover quicker and with better results.

Benefits of AI in Healthcare:

The uses of Artificial intelligence offer many benefits:

Increased Accuracy

Artificial intelligence has increased accuracy in the healthcare industry. AI can analyze large amounts of data quickly and accurately, leading to better and earlier diagnoses. This improves treatment outcomes and can save lives.

Personalized Treatments

AI allows for personalized medicine by analyzing a patient’s unique medical history, genetics, and lifestyle. This leads to more effective treatments tailored to individual needs.

Lower Costs

AI can help reduce healthcare costs by speeding up processes, reducing errors, and improving efficiency. Faster drug discovery and better patient management also save money.

Improved Patients Experience 

Virtual health assistants and telemedicine make healthcare more convenient for patients. They allow people to access medical advice and consultations from home, which is especially helpful for those in remote areas or with mobility issues.

Challenges:

Although AI is very promising in healthcare, there are some challenges:

Data Privacy and Security 

AI needs a lot of patient data to work, which raises concerns about keeping that data safe and private. It’s important to protect sensitive patient information as AI becomes more common in healthcare. This is the main challenge for machine learning in the healthcare industry.

Lack of Human Interaction 

While AI can help doctors, it cannot replace the personal care and understanding that human doctors provide. Some patients might feel that AI-driven care is too impersonal, so it’s important to keep a balance between Artificial intelligence speed and the human touch in the Healthcare Industry.

Regulatory Challenges

As AI develops quickly, governments and regulators must make sure it is safe and works well in healthcare. Creating clear rules for AI in healthcare is a complicated process that will take time. These are some challenges in the healthcare industry.

Conclusion 

AI is making big changes in healthcare. It helps doctors find diseases early, give personalized treatments, and make surgeries better. AI is changing every aspect of daily life to prepared in this era or to stay updated you should read AI related news and blogs

In the future, AI will likely become an even bigger part of healthcare, making care better and easier to get. AI isn’t here to replace doctors but to work with them, making healthcare smarter, faster, and better for patients everywhere.

[jaycrr]

Blog Post Due 9/12

How has digital technology evolved over time to where we give it decision-making power in everyday life?

According to Eubanks, since the start of the digital technology world, decision making such as politics, health, employment, finance has gone through extreme change over the last 40 years. Before, the ones in charge of deciding who gets offered a mortgage, employment, who gets a credit card or even who qualifies for a government service were actual human beings. Present day, "we have ceded much of that decision-making power to sophisticated machines" (pg. 13). Also, the families in need of resources, which neighborhoods are getting policed, gets determined by automated eligibility, ranking algorithms, and predictive risk models.  

2. What role did technology help play a part in helping and harming lower-income communities?

According to Eubanks, technology played a double role in enabling and oppressing lower-income communities. In her research with the poor and working class women, they used information technology to embrace their stories with others and to be able to connect with one another. It was able to better and strengthen their communities. She found that the women from her hometown were not "technology poor" as would be assumed by policy makers in her city. It showed technology was not absent from their lives.

On the other hand, technology was also harming these lower-income communities. Eubanks found many trends that were troubling such as high-tech economic development and this led to an increase of inequality in the economy. Technology was also being used for surveillance in public housing and programs. Leading to systemic inequality and policy makers were not addressing the problems and needs of the people in the low income communities.

3. How would automated-decision making damage the values of society?

Automated decision-making affects societies values in a bad way by turning social choices into problems. The way these systems think is instead of focusing on fairness, they focus on efficiency and being controlling. Eubanks also states that this approach affects marginalized groups of people that face less accountability in a low rights environment. The systems once they are tested on vulnerable populations, they eventually affect everyone and this method shows a less humane way of decision-making, almost compromising core values of a society. 

4. What could be some negative impacts of digital poverty management tools on lower-income individuals? 

EuBanks describes multiple negative impacts of these property management tools, and how they create barriers to access essential public resources by sort of blocking people from claiming benefits. Complex databases are involved and they collect personal formation. Predictive models and algorithms identify these individuals as problematic and surveillance systems start to notify their actions to the government and what not. ultimately breaching privacy and could even have consequences for those affected.

Eubanks, Automating Inequality: how high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor.

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Social Media

The philosophy of social media examines the profound impact of social media platforms on human interaction, identity, and society. This interdisciplinary field intersects with ethics, epistemology, sociology, and media studies, exploring how digital technologies shape our communication, perceptions, and behaviors. By analyzing the philosophical implications of social media, we gain insights into the nature of digital life and its influence on contemporary society.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of Social Media

Digital Identity and Self-Presentation:

Social media allows users to construct and curate their online personas, raising questions about authenticity, self-expression, and the nature of identity.

Philosophers explore how the digital environment influences self-perception and the distinction between online and offline selves.

Epistemology and Information:

The spread of information and misinformation on social media platforms presents challenges to traditional epistemology.

Discussions focus on the credibility of sources, the role of algorithms in shaping information, and the impact of echo chambers on knowledge and belief formation.

Ethics of Communication and Behavior:

The ethical implications of online behavior, including issues of privacy, cyberbullying, and digital harassment, are central to this field.

Philosophers examine the moral responsibilities of individuals and platforms in fostering respectful and ethical online interactions.

Social Media and Society:

Social media's role in shaping public discourse, political engagement, and social movements is a significant area of inquiry.

The influence of social media on democracy, public opinion, and collective action is critically analyzed.

Privacy and Surveillance:

The balance between privacy and surveillance on social media platforms raises important ethical and philosophical questions.

The implications of data collection, user tracking, and digital surveillance on personal freedom and autonomy are explored.

The Nature of Virtual Communities:

Social media creates new forms of community and social interaction, prompting philosophical inquiries into the nature and value of virtual communities.

The concepts of digital solidarity, community building, and the social dynamics of online interactions are examined.

Aesthetics of Social Media:

The visual and aesthetic dimensions of social media, including the impact of images, videos, and memes, are considered.

Philosophers analyze how aesthetic choices and digital art forms influence perception and communication in the digital age.

Addiction and Mental Health:

The psychological effects of social media use, including addiction, anxiety, and the impact on mental health, are significant areas of study.

Philosophers explore the ethical considerations of designing platforms that may contribute to addictive behaviors.

Algorithmic Bias and Justice:

The role of algorithms in shaping social media experiences raises questions about bias, fairness, and justice.

Philosophers critically assess the implications of algorithmic decision-making and its impact on social equality and discrimination.

Commercialization and Consumerism:

The commercialization of social media platforms and the commodification of user data are key concerns.

Discussions focus on the ethical implications of targeted advertising, consumer manipulation, and the economic dynamics of social media companies.

The philosophy of social media provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the complexities of digital interaction and its impact on contemporary life. By examining issues of identity, epistemology, ethics, and societal influence, this field offers valuable insights into the ways social media shapes our world. It encourages a critical and reflective approach to digital life, emphasizing the need for ethical considerations and responsible use of technology.

[onlineassignmentshelp]

Exploring the Latest PTE Essay Writing Topics for Academic Success

The Pearson Test of English (PTE) Academic is a widely recognized English language proficiency test that assesses the language skills of non-native English speakers. One of the key components of the PTE Academic exam is the writing section, which includes tasks such as essay writing. Staying updated on the latest essay writing topics is crucial for test-takers to prepare effectively and achieve success in the exam. In this article, we'll explore some of the latest PTE essay writing topics for academic purposes, providing insights and tips for tackling these tasks.

The Impact of Technology on Education:

Technology has revolutionized the field of education, transforming the way students learn and educators teach. This essay topic explores the various ways in which technology has impacted education, including the integration of digital tools in the classroom, online learning platforms, and the accessibility of educational resources. Test-takers can discuss the advantages and disadvantages of technology in education, as well as its potential implications for the future of learning.

Climate Change and Its Effects on the Environment:

Climate change is a pressing global issue that poses significant threats to the environment and human societies. Test-takers may be asked to write an essay discussing the causes and effects of climate change, as well as potential solutions to mitigate its impact. This topic requires critical analysis and a comprehensive understanding of environmental science, policy, and sustainability initiatives.

The Role of Social Media in Modern Society:

Social media has become an integral part of contemporary life, shaping communication, culture, and social interactions. Test-takers may be tasked with writing an essay examining the role of social media in modern society, including its influence on relationships, politics, business, and mental health. This topic invites test-takers to explore the opportunities and challenges posed by social media platforms and to critically evaluate their impact on individuals and communities.

The Importance of Cross-Cultural Understanding in a Globalized World:

In an increasingly interconnected world, cross-cultural understanding and communication are essential skills for navigating diverse societies and contexts. Test-takers may be asked to write an essay discussing the importance of cross-cultural understanding in a globalized world, including its relevance in business, education, diplomacy, and social integration. This topic encourages test-takers to reflect on the value of cultural diversity and to explore strategies for fostering intercultural competence.

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence:

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to advance, ethical considerations surrounding their development and deployment have come to the forefront. Test-takers may be prompted to write an essay exploring the ethical implications of AI, including issues related to privacy, automation, job displacement, and bias. This topic challenges test-takers to critically evaluate the ethical dimensions of AI technologies and to propose frameworks for responsible innovation and governance.

Staying informed about the latest PTE essay writing topics is essential for test-takers preparing for the exam. By familiarizing themselves with diverse subject matter and practicing essay writing skills, test-takers can enhance their ability to effectively analyze complex issues, articulate coherent arguments, and demonstrate proficiency in English language communication. With diligent preparation and a solid understanding of key topics, test-takers can approach the PTE Academic Writing section with confidence and achieve their desired scores.

[jilovecjoseph]

Unlocking the Mysteries of Satellites: How They Work 🛰️

Satellites orbiting high above Earth have become an integral part of our modern world. From facilitating global communications to monitoring the environment and enabling GPS navigation, satellites silently work their magic in the sky. But have you ever wondered how these marvels of technology actually work? Let's take a journey into the cosmos and explore the fascinating world of satellites.

1. The Launch: It all begins on Earth's surface with a spectacular rocket launch. Satellites are carefully positioned atop powerful launch vehicles. Once the rocket reaches the desired orbit, the satellite is released and begins its journey around our planet.

2. Orbit Selection: Satellites can be placed in various orbits depending on their purpose. Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) are common choices. LEO satellites orbit close to Earth, while GEO satellites stay fixed above a specific location, ideal for telecommunications.

3. Solar Power: Most satellites are equipped with solar panels that capture energy from the Sun. This energy is converted into electricity, powering the satellite's systems and instruments. Excess power is stored in batteries for use during eclipse (when the satellite passes through Earth's shadow).

4. Communication: Communication satellites are the backbone of global connectivity. They receive signals from ground stations, amplify them, and transmit them back to Earth. This relay of information allows us to make phone calls, browse the internet, and watch TV across continents.

5. Earth Observation: Satellites equipped with sensors and cameras capture detailed images of our planet. These images are used for weather forecasting, environmental monitoring, disaster management, and even archaeological research.

6. Navigation and GPS: The Global Positioning System (GPS) relies on a constellation of satellites in MEO. These satellites emit signals that GPS receivers on Earth use to determine precise locations. This technology has revolutionized navigation and mapping.

7. Scientific Research: Satellites contribute to various scientific endeavors. They monitor climate change, study the universe through space telescopes, and help us better understand Earth's oceans, atmosphere, and geological processes.

8. Data Transmission: Satellites transmit vast amounts of data daily. They send and receive signals through radio waves or microwaves, ensuring seamless communication between ground stations and other satellites.

9. Orbital Adjustments: To maintain their positions and orbits, satellites use thrusters or ion engines. These engines provide the necessary propulsion for altitude adjustments, station-keeping, and orbital corrections.

10. Satellite Lifespan: Satellites have a finite lifespan. Once their systems degrade or run out of fuel, they become space debris or are intentionally deorbited to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

11. Space Junk Mitigation: With thousands of satellites in orbit, space agencies work to reduce space debris and collisions. This involves controlled deorbit maneuvers and international agreements.

12. Constant Monitoring: Ground stations around the world track satellites' positions, health, and performance. This monitoring ensures that satellites remain operational and can respond to any issues promptly.

From facilitating instant communication to expanding our knowledge of the cosmos, satellites play a pivotal role in our interconnected world. They are a testament to human ingenuity and our insatiable curiosity about the universe. So, the next time you look up at the night sky, remember that among the stars, countless satellites silently carry out their missions, connecting our planet in remarkable ways. 🌍📡🛰️ #Satellites #SpaceTechnology #Exploration