The National Climate Change Technology Initiative (NCCTI)
On June 11, 2001, in combination with his creation of the U.S Climate Research Initiative, President Bush stated that the United States is a world leader in technology and innovation and new technologies can offer a great advance towards climate change. As a result, Bush created a complement to the Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI), called the National Climate Change Technology Initiative (NCCTI). The goal of NCCTI was to make the U.S a stronger leader of climate change-related technology research and development by improving research and development investments across U.S. agencies and by focusing the Federal R&D portfolio on Bush's climate change goal, both near and long term. NCCTI adds on to an extensive foundation of ongoing activities in R&D of climate change-related technologies. The President said on June 11, 2001: "We're creating the National Climate Change Technology Initiative to strengthen research at universities and national labs, to enhance partnerships in applied research, to develop improved technology for measuring and monitoring gross and net greenhouse gas emissions, and to fund demonstration projects for cutting-edge technologies, such as bioreactors and fuel cells."(5)
Potential impacts of technology on a global scale are relatively long-term, the NCCTI is guided over this by the climate change goals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 (Kyoto Protocol), ratified by the United States and more than 170 other countries (5) (3). The UNFCCC calls for the "... stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth's atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."(5) In order to achieve this long-term goal, net emissions of greenhouse gases on a global scale must ultimately approach levels that are lower than they are today. (1)
Current activities of the NCCTI include a thorough and continuing review of all climate change technology-related research and development programs, with focus on improving the integration of supporting basic research activities. The NCCTI interagency working group is developing criteria to identify high-priority programs that may have the largest potential impact in the long term for reducing, avoiding, or sequestering greenhouse gas emissions.(5)(4) NCCTI also includes a proposal to fund a unique competitive solicitation program, in which technology research ideas will be funded on the basis of their potential to reduce, avoid, or sequester greenhouse gas emissions.
John Scopes, a substitute biology teacher was arrested and charged with violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee law which prohibited teachers from teaching the Darwin Theory of Evolution in a science-related course. The American Civil Liberties Union created a plan to find a teacher willing to teach evolution in order to test the Butler Act, which forbade the essence that anyone teaching any theory that shunned the Biblical story of creationism. Scopes agreed to be arrested and have the case be taken to court. However, Scopes had simply reviewed the textbook chapter on evolution. The traditionalists would see this as a threat to their interests and the issue hit the country stronger than a tornado. Everyone was glued to their radios—it was the first broadcasted radio trial--except the campers and hundreds of reporters near the Dayton, Tennessee courthouse. Traditionalists would be outraged by the appearance of speakeasies, flappers, illegal boozing, popular activities of the Roaring Twenties and especially the Darwinian Theory. Their strong Christian beliefs from the Holy Bible stated how God created the world and man and woman. A traditionalist’s beliefs would not accept the idea of evolution because the Bible said that Man did not evolve but was created by God—the Divine Creation in one day.
Climate change is no doubt one of the greatest threats to this planet today. Coastal cities flooding due to melting ice caps and rising water levels, cities experiencing extreme weather, and ocean life dying because of warmer water temperatures, it is not wonder why so many scientist and country leaders are worried about the safety and future of their country. The U.S. is just one of these countries where climate change endangers 333 million people. That is why the U.S. must take action to assure the future of their residents and safety of their numerous coastal cities. Due to the rising coastal water levels, previous legislative mistakes, and the risk of further climate change consequences, President Trump should acknowledge the need for the
Human gene therapy is a method used in the medical field that treats diseases at a molecular level, by solving the source of the problem; our genes. Today, diseases and disorders are commonly treated by solving the symptoms, the surface of the problem. Many disorders and diseases are caused by defective proteins and within those defective proteins are damaged and defective genes. These defective genes can be treated through gene therapy. Gene therapy is not new and has been developed and improved by researchers for the past couple years. Being an experimental technique, gene therapy also has its pros and cons, but so far is showing positive and rising success rates.
Americans who followed the Scopes Monkey Trial either supported either evolution or the bible. Because Christianity had a great deal of influence over the lives of many Americans, many conflicts arose between these two conflicting ideologies as science progressed. Supporters of the bible were perceived to be the majority group, and evolutionism was not as widely supported at the time. That societal context shows how controversial Scopes truly was when he challenged Christian doctrine. Furthermore, “fossils were being discovered that provided factual evidence for human evolution which threatened the reputation of the fundamentalists. Conservative Christians began to gather in order to defend their beliefs which sparked the fundamentalist movement.”4 Even research in the new social sciences, such as psychology and anthropology, undermined Christianity and the existence of God. Modernists believed that the fundamentalists were desperate, zealously trying to save Christianity from a continuous flow of new scientific discoveries. The Butler Act of 1925 made teaching creation outside of a biblical context in schools illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union, formed in 1920, hoped to challenge the Butler Act, and they found an opportunity by using John Scopes as a candidate to represent them in the Monkey Trial. The trial eventually
In a Public Statement released by Eight Alabama Clergymen, there were a lot of shots taken at Martin Luther King Jr. and his work during the Civil Rights Movement. These claims aim towards his peaceful protests and work as an “outsider”, but each can be proven false with basic knowledge of the Civil Rights Movements. As result of these claims, Dr. King responded with his famous letter “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”.
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill making it unlawful for state-supported schools to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals (Numbers, 1998, p. 77).
The key challenge that US policy must address the reduction of greenhouse gases while growing the economy. Recovery Act spending acted as a stimulus package to revive an economy heavily affected by the GFC(Aldy, 2012 p 3). While the recovery funds were aimed at stimulating the economy, President Obama stressed the importance of the development of renewable energies in his first State of the Union address (Roberts, Lassiter, & Nanda, 2010 p 3).
Does one ever think of the potential catastrophic harm they’re causing by turning on the lights or by using their cars? Don’t we want a world where our grandchildren and great grandchildren can live safety and comfortably? At the rate were going this will not be possible; we’ve added more than 1.4 trillion tones of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in just two hundred years, and its messing up our planet (Siegel 1).
Global warming is one of the most terrifying dangers that determines the future of life on Planet Earth. This gradual warming of planet Earth is due to excessive Carbon Dioxide which makes the Ozone layer thinner. The ozone layer is a thin layer located in the Stratosphere which reduces solar radiation to enter the earth (Owen). Al Gore, the 45th Vice President of the US, won a Nobel Prize on December 1, 2007 for raising awareness for climate change. His winning prize, $1.6 million went towards a new non-profit organization, Climate Reality Project, whose sole purpose is to take action on climate change (Biography.com Editors). He mentions his upcoming strategies for reducing CO2(Carbon Dioxide) emissions in his Global Warming is an Immediate
Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist who wrote the book Nickel and Dimed. She goes undercover to see how it feels to work for $6 to $7 an hour. She leaves her regular life to explore the experiences of a minimum wage worker. Ehrenreich travels to Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, looking for jobs and places to live on a minimum wage salary. At one point in time, she had to work two jobs to makes ends meet. As she worked all these jobs, she discovered many problems in the social world. The things she went through were not the types of situations that she usually experienced. She wasn’t used to living and working environments of the poor. She had to deal with the different personalities and customs of her co-workers, their living arrangement, and the management hierarchy in each job. She worked as a waitress at two different restaurants, as a maid service cleaning houses, and as a dietary aide at a nursing home.
Every year, the rate of mortality increasing because most diseases may lead to death if not treated early. One of the methods that can be used to cure some diseases is by using the treatment known as gene therapy. Based on Pruitt’s (2008) study, numbers of inherited and acquired diseases were reduced since gene therapy has the ability to provide new treatments to cure them. According to Shi and Zou (2008), gene therapy is defined as expression of protein or interrupts the synthesis of protein in cell by transferring the genetic material into a host in order to treat or prevent a disease. Besides that, Kelly (2007) stated that an “abnormal” hereditary disease-causing gene in an individual’s cells and tissues is treated and used gene therapy by to replace them with a “normal” gene. Around 1970’s, idea to use “genes” as “drugs” for human therapy was originally from United States (Giacca, 2010). Moreover, there are some objectives in using the gene therapy as a treatment. First, gene therapy is used to cure or slow the progression of disease by introducing the genetic material into target cells and next objective is to aim at the direct correction of endogenous genetic defects by delivered some additional copies of a gene (Pruitt, 2008; Giacca, 2010). Furthermore, Yadav and Tyagi (2008) found that there are two types of gene therapy which are germline gene therapy and somatic cell therapy. As stated by Shi and Zou (2008), therapy that involved modification of any cells in a patient’s body is called as somatic cell gene therapy while germ line gene therapy is therapy that involved modifying of human eggs or sperms that pass genes on to future generations. Other than that, animal tissue culture is used to test the effective...
Gene therapy is a method used by doctors that ‘uses genes as medicine’. It repairs faulty or damaged gene copies by transferring a therapeutic or working gene into specific parts of faulty gene copy. This means that gene therapy can be used to replace a faulty gene or to introduce a new gene whose function is to modify the clinical course of a condition or to cure a problem in the gene (Refer to image 2). Image 1 shows how gene therapy is completed using an adenovirus vector while image 2 explains the method of gene therapy and shows how cells are removed, altered and injected back into the patient. Gene therapy has potential to treat and cure many medical conditions such as various types of cancer, degenerative diseases and viral infections such as AIDS. Research into gene therapy still needs to be done before this approach to the treatment of certain conditions will realise its full potential. Trials are being conducted in the United States and Europe and a modest number initiated in other countries, including Australia. The majority of these trials are focussing on treating acquired conditions such as cancer (European Society of Gene & Cell therapy, 2011).
This article gives an insight on the current trends on gene therapy because it offers critical analysis of gene therapy both at the beginning to the current state. It also explores the position of patients who underwent gene therapy so as to ascertain whether this therapy has been successful or not. This helps in establishing the reason why this mode of therapy has been gaining slower acceptance than it initially
“An introduction to climate change.” Natural Resource Defense Council. Natural Resources Defense Council 8 November 2015 n. pag. Web. 28 November 2015.
The effects of global warming and climate change can no longer be ignored. Unlike previous species and our ancestors that inhabited the Earth before us, we have the gift of foresight and the scientific, mathematic and engineering knowledge to implement changes to benefit the future and lessen the damage that has already been done. Yet, politics and bureaucracy continuously inject roadblocks when it comes to implementing necessary changes and has historically tried to discredit some of the verifiable evidence regarding global warming and climate change; hindering public knowledge and awareness. We are now coming into a new phase of enlightenment, with society now becoming more aware and acknowledging the dangers humanity faces from global warming and