Over the next five weeks, EuroScientist is exploring new ways of interacting with the wider community of readers via a partnership with the REIsearch project. The idea is to focus the pan-European debate on themes of key importance in the European policy agenda. This week, we will start exploring the theme of chronic diseases. Click on banners on our site to complete a survey to share your perspective on this issue. We will also offer our readers independent coverage related to the topic and invite you to comment below each article. Read more […]
Actors of the justice system often bestow very high importance to forensic evidence, which is sometimes misguided. In this piece of investigative journalism, EuroScientist looks at the case of speech forensics, in which charlatanism, the lack of regulations and controversies within the scientific community sometimes act together to the detriment of justice. Further validations of the methods used in speech forensics have yet to be established so that they become as reliable as DNA profile or fingerprint testing. Until then, experts warn, caution is in order. Read more […]
The huge public funds made available for scientific research after the second World War, were expected to lead to industrial development, economic growth and a general improvement of living standards. Yet, this model has been questioned for a few year. Everywhere in the world, revisiting the social contract between science and society is becoming urgent; it is time to adapt such contract to the realities of the 21st century. Read more […]
Our democracies have bugs, lack user-friendly features and under-perform. Above all, they are in need of major upgrades. Political and economic systems are failing us because they are structured vertically through top-down hierarchies. Instead we need to adopt a new economic system, driven by principles related to “act local, think global” philosophy. In this stimulating opinion piece, Lorenzo Fioramonti, director of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, in South Africa, shares his vision about creating a highly integrated horizontal economic system. Read more […]
Austrian writer Christian Felber proposes to switch the drivers of the economy. Replacing current money-orientated indicators of of economic success – such as GDP, financial profit or return on investment – by criteria such as quality of life, fulfilment of human needs and fundamental values. In an opinion piece, he shares how he believes this could happen. Read more […]
Common resources are best managed by the people who most benefit from them
In last year’s November sales, the Chinese technology platform Alibaba handled peak traffic of 80,000 orders per second. This is an incredible feat, matched, if not exceeded, Read more […]
”As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning,” stated the 2000 UNESCO Earth Charter. Today, it is our responsibility to start afresh to tackle global challenges, such as extreme poverty, migratory flows and environmental degradation. Former UNESCO director general,Federico Mayor, calls for the scientific, academic, artistic and intellectual communities to mobilise citizens of the world, so that they adopt the required corrective measures, before we reach a point of no return. Read more […]
As the forum of social and solidarity economy leaders, dubbed Rencontres du Mont-Blanc, is about to take place between 26 and 28 November 2015, in Chamonix, France, its president, Thierry Jeantet, calls for more scientists to be involved in the social and solidarity economy sector to try and find a virtuous path for growth, hinging on research and innovation. Read more […]
Noa Haim is a designer and an architect based in The Netherlands. She is the founder of the Collective Paper Aesthetics initiative, to create participatory construction toys. Her idea is to let anybody become a designer, thanks to simple shapes that can be assembled at will. In this opinion piece she reveals her philosophy at the interface between science and art. She shows how anybody can become an designer with no prior training—perhaps one of the best introduction to engineering and architecture the next generation could have. Read more […]
An anti-vivisection citizen initiative has gathered over 1.2 milion signatures. Despite lengthy debates related to the Directive on the use of animal in research, anti-vivisection campaigner still oppose any use of animals in research. The initiators of the petition, who include some scientists, argue that animal studies cannot predict how humans respond to drugs or chemicals. The move has triggered a strong response from the science community. Yet, some anticipate there could be a better way of dealing with such issues involving greater citizen engagement. Read more […]
Surveillance and security technologies do not exist in a vacuum. This is why it matters to study societal impacts and compliance with fundamental rights and values of citizens. Find out the perspective of Johann Čas, an economist from the Institute of Technology Assessment, at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in Vienna. In an opinion piece, he talks about the findings of one of his latest projects, SurPRISE, which consulted 2,000 European citizens on their views of different security technologies and surveillance measures. This lead to interesting finding on what is acceptable to them in terms of security versus privacy trade-off. Read more […]
International women’s day is only a token reminder of the countless social and human science practitioners who have redressed the balance for women’s status in society. Indeed, 21st century Western women enjoy the fruit of centuries of ethnological and anthropological studies. This opinion piece looks at how successive feminist movements have contributed to the emancipation of women. To do so, they have relied on comparison between the individual rights and sexual freedom of women in remote societies and their own. Read more […]
European science conversations by the community, for the community
