Human rights organizations are quickly catching up with organizations in the humanitarian and environmental fields in utilizing geospatial technologies like satellite imagery, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). These technologies are especially helpful for overcoming obstacles such as getting access to and information from crisis areas. In combination with Internet-based platforms, they mainly build on the power of visualization to document human rights abuses, prevent conflict, and - most importantly - provoke activism.
Over the last few years, Amnesty International (AI) has cooperated repeatedly with the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to document human rights violations. This cooperation is part of a broader trend toward the innovative use of geospatial technologies for human rights monitoring and advocacy work. And although national security concerns of some governments limit the full utilization of technological progress, for example in the area of remote sensing, a continued increase in the use of geospatial technologies in the fight for human rights is expected.
Russia vs. Georgia
The most recent use of geospatial technologies to support the work of human rights advocates in investigating human rights abuses was in the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Regional experts at AI identified places in the conflict zone and AAAS acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of South Ossetia in order to assess the areas of interest. AAAS conducted a satellite imagery-based damage assessment of 24 villages around the capital of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia. Using commercial satellite imagery providers, AAAS acquired high-resolution satellite imagery (spatial resolution less than 1 meter) from August 10 and August 19, 2008, which allowed a traditional "before and after" comparison of damage. The analysis, still in progress, revealed destruction concentrated on Tshkinvali and damage to surrounding villages on August 19, which confirms analysis done by UNOSAT, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications Program.
(Click here for more background information on the conflict between Russia and Georgia).
Satellite-based damage assessment from Kekhvi to Tskhinvali, South Ossetia (August 19, 2008).
In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed Austrian-born Physicist and Mathematician Karl Hess to the National Science Board (NSB ) for a term that recently ended, on May 10, 2008. The NSB provides oversight for, and establishes the policies of, the National Science Foundation (NSF ), an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense..."
With an annual budget of about $6.06 billion, NSF is the funding source for approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal backing.
Karl Hess' appointment to the NSB in 2006 was made after President Bush announced support for Nanostructure Science and Technology as well as Supercomputing Applications. Hess, who holds a PhD in Physics/Mathematics from the University of Vienna, has been a member of the faculty at the University of Vienna, Austria (Applied Physics) and since 1977 of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics). His research interests encompass solid state physics, solid state electronics, nano-science and technology, supercomputing applications, nano-structure simulation and, most recently, quantum optics, quantum information and quantum computing.
bridges recently had the opportunity to speak with Karl Hess and his viewpoints on US innovation and S&T policy.
bridges: For a long time, the US innovation system has been considered by many as the innovation system of the world. Looking at it today, where do you see its strengths and weaknesses?
Hess: The US innovation system is still the innovation system of the world. It derives its standing from the collective work of government funding (through NSF, NIH, DOD, and other institutions), state support, industrial support, as well as support by private foundations and donors. This mega-support has fostered great collaborations between universities, industry, government laboratories, and private Institutes, as well as a "will" and positive attitude toward innovation that serves the US people. There has been a weakening of the system by the demise of some great industrial research institutions (such as Bell Laboratories), and there also exists a need to strengthen pre-college education in the STEM fields (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics).
If you Google “Charles Wessner” and “Innovation,” you get an impressive 7460 hits in 0.29 seconds. The quantity of information provided by search engines might not always correspond with the quality, but it can provide an indication of how well the two search terms go together. In this case, it is a perfect match.
bridges welcomed the opportunity to interview Charles Wessner about the strengths of the US innovation system, best practice models to support innovation, and his recommendations to the new administration for how to secure US leadership in S&T.
In 2005, several US congressional leaders asked the US National Academies’ National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine to address the following question:
What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policy makers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century? What strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?
mp3 download
Introducing the concept of social innovation
Josef Hochgerner
”Innovation” is considered to be any new product or process, based on superior technology or recombination of technologies, that leads to economic success in existing or new markets. In the wake of pioneering concepts developed by Joseph Schumpeter http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/schump.htm , innovation plays a major role in public debates and policies aiming at economic growth in contemporary society.
The present – and the future even more so – appears to be inundated with technical innovations whose social relevance and consequences are increasingly far-reaching. They affect a growing number of people at work, in business, in everyday life, and in leisure time. As a consequence, the quality of people’s lives, as well as the functioning of social institutions and governments, depends more than ever on technologies – more precisely, on “socio-technical systems.” The faster the progress of technology and its impact on society, the more social development necessitates social innovations, i.e., new concepts and measures to resolve societal challenges, adopted and utilized by social groups and institutions concerned.
The German politician Helmut Schmidt once said, "Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen" (People with visions better consult a medical doctor). This advice is not quite true. Their vision of a peaceful Middle East led two Austrian architects, Siegfried Atteneder and Lorenz Potocnik, straight to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ). Through a project proposal called "HUMMUS: East Mediterranean City Belt 2050" submitted by them to MIT's international Just Jerusalem Competition , they were granted one of the four top awards of the competition - which took them a step closer to their vision.
Map of the East Mediterranean City Belt, 2050 (click here to enlarge)
Atteneder and Potocnik's "HUMMUS - East Mediterranean City Belt 2050" project or "process" (how Atteneder and Potocnik actually prefer to call it) envisions a metropolitan alliance of cities in the East Mediterranean that form a corridor of urbanization along the coast from Turkey to Egypt (see map on the right, click to enlarge).
As a top winner of the Just Jerusalem Competition, Atteneder and Potocnik were awarded a semester-long "Visionary Research Fellowship" at MIT. There, the two Austrians now focus on advancing their ambitious idea to the next level. Until January 2009, they are participating in university seminars and workshops with MIT faculty, engaging in interdisciplinary discussion and working out a plan on how to proceed with the implementation of their project.
About the Jerusalem 2050 Program:
Jerusalem 2050 is a joint initiative of MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for International Studies. It is a visionary and problem-solving program that seeks to understand what it would take to make Jerusalem (or Al Quds in Arabic) a place of difference and diversity in which contending ideas and diverse citizenries can co-exist in benign ways. By working with Palestinian and Israeli scholars, activists, business leaders, youth, etc., the program seeks to find sustainable solutions for the city.
Diane Davis, director of MIT's Jerusalem 2050 Program , in which context the competition was held, explains that the competition sought "to address one of the greatest challenges of our times: the elusive peace between Israelis and Palestinians. To that end, we wanted the winning entries to envision hopeful, creative, and passionate ideas for potentially altering daily life in Jerusalem in small and large-scale ways."
The dramatic splitting of the atom - nuclear fission - was a discovery that changed our world. Yet few know that it was a woman physicist, the Austrian Lise Meitner, who discovered the power of nuclear energy soon after her dramatic escape from Nazi Germany.
Ironically, Meitner's research partner of thirty years, Otto Hahn, was the sole recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of fission - a "discovery" that Meitner had already interpreted in 1938, shortly after her forced emigration from Nazi Germany. Meitner's exclusion from sharing the Nobel Prize was thus integrally related to her 1938 escape from Nazi Germany, and to the consequent social "marginalization" of her physics research and theoretical insights.
Such racial and gender prejudice were, and still are, dramatic backdrops to our modern era. Eleanor Roosevelt aptly stated in an 1945 NBC Radio interview that "we are proud of your contributions as a woman in science" and that helped Meitner heal part of her deep pain in the rejection and escape from Nazi Germany. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, which she and Otto Hahn had administered since World War I, was the backdrop for 35 years of her pioneering research in radio-physics and radioactive processes. Yet many were shocked that at the end of World War II, it was Otto Hahn who was alone awarded the Nobel Prize (in Chemistry) for his "discovery" of nuclear fission, when it was Lise Meitner who, in 1938, interpreted the process of uranium splitting in two - and releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the process.
How these circumstances came about, and how they fit into the evolution of Meitner's social conscience and her abhorrence of war, are some of the subjects discussed in the book by Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Boston: Birkhauser 1999). The following article is an abridged account of Lise Meitner's life and scientific journey based on the book, which can be ordered at www.Birkhauser.com .
