Author: Jonny Hankins

Jonathan's Author Bio: Co Editor of the International Handbook on Responsible Innovation, and author of Responsible Innovation, A Narrative Approach, Jonny works for the Bassetti Foundation in Milan publishing articles on innovation and responsibility on their website and in academic and trade journals and also blogging about his interests. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Responsible Innovation and member of the the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation

Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

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This year the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition is taking place online between the 8 – 11 July 2021. 

With a packed programme of inspiring talks, fun science from home activities and exciting digital content, there is something for all ages.

Nineteen research groups from across the UK will be demonstrating their research through innovative digital experiences, from escape rooms and quizzes to virtual tours and digital games. 

This year you can explore all the cutting-edge research through our interactive Summer Science hub, with four exciting zones:

Zone 1: View from above
Blast off to the view from above zone to discover where galaxies come from, how we can track carbon from space, whether there has ever been life on Mars or simply marvel at how the iconic images from Hubble have changed the way we view our Universe forever.

Zone 2: Urban landscape
Explore the urban landscape zone to find out how microbes can turn rubbish into riches, test whether you can tell a landmine from a bottle top, design your own aeroplane based on a birds’ wing, test your eye control with the latest in robot simulations or discover how our air could be fresh again.

Zone 3: Under the skin
Delve under the skin in our zone dedicated to bodily research. Explore how tumours are made of different types of cells, why humans are smelly or how researchers are learning to grow new body parts from stem cells. Try your hand at creating 3D-printed personalised pills or ask yourself if you would connect your brain to the internet.

Zone 4: Forces of nature
Bring the outdoors in and explore the forces of nature zone. Do you know what a bee’s favourite flower is, or what the last day of the dinosaurs looked like? Discover what happens when we have too much water and take a forward look as we see how nature can help us to tackle the climate emergency and help us build a more sustainable future. 

In addition to the zones there will be a programme of short, online lightning lectures every day as well as interactive workshops and family shows at the weekend. The Big Summer Science Quiz will also return with science-themed rounds from well-known faces on Wednesday 7 July at 6.30pm, so get your team together and put the date in your diaries now. 

You can find the programme of events here.

Taking part in Summer Science 2021

This looks like a fantastic opportunity to entertain yourself and your family so why not have a look?

A Look at the Green Labs NL Project

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Last week I raised a few questions about the kind of futures are envisaged for the planet from a rather argumentative standpoint: what will the political implication be if we take the technological fix approach to defending the climate?

Today I want to cast some light on a project that is asking another related question: what are the environmental consequences of actually carrying out scientific research?

This question moves beyond the idea that science and technological development might be able to help in reaching predetermined environmental standards (think about the Paris accord) or aims (UN Sustainable Development Goals) as it questions the research practices that might lead to this.

How can scientists make their research greener?

A small group of scientists in the Netherlands aim to investigate this question. They call themselves Green Labs NL.

From the website:

Green labs NL was started in 2021 by a few members of the Dutch Scientific Community who realized they shared a passion for making their science more sustainable.

The group aim to build a wider community in The Netherlands to help encourage individual scientists, lab groups and whole institutes to go greener when it comes to how we use our lab spaces, and the way we do science. The platform can aid by sharing resources and information, but also by bringing other like-minded scientists together.

It is run by scientists, and is fully non-profit. There is no CEO, CSO, … It is kept alive by the scientific community! 

This small team of scientists (4 people) have launched a really interesting blog and just held their first online Green Labs NL network meeting (in English).  The website also hosts a forum and a useful links section, one of which leads to Harvard University’s Green Labs website, so they are not alone in this movement.

This is an exciting development and I will certainly follow their work, and hope that some of our Technology Bloggers readers might do the same.

Green, Environmentally Friendly Economic Growth

1 Reply Jonny Hankins

Green Growth Through Technology

I have been following the European Biotechnology Seminar series 2021, an online University run series of 20 minute presentations that take in lots of different aspects of technology.

It’s the second series (here for a review of the first) and really interesting.

Yesterday we got into a discussion about the problems of what we might like to think of as intelligent sustainable growth, the use of technology to reduce emissions and help to improve the health of the planet while also producing economic growth.

The talk was about evaluating sustainability. This is not an easy thing to do in reality, as there are lots of factors that we might like to include, an endless number of factors are really possible, depending on your point of view.

CO2 output, water use, pollution of the land, use of space, just to think about environmental issues. But sustainability also involves social sustainability, and economic. If we close all the factories down then half of the problem will be resolved. But is that socially or economically sustainable?

So we find ourselves having to make decisions about what we are going to address, weight the various aspects of interest and then try to compare one approach with another.

This brought in a discussion about framing the future. Any presentation that we see about addressing climate change today makes proposals, the world will be intelligent, connected and electric. If we frame the future as this, we should understand that we are not only making a proposal, but also excluding other paths. Once electric transport is promoted as the future for transport, others fall by the wayside and what we get is a future of electric transport.

The green growth model (technological solutions) also brings other things into play that are not so broadly discussed: the manufacturing of all of this technology requires raw materials, and a large percentage of those that we use today lie in developing nations.

Lithium Mining

Namibia and Zimbabwe are two of the world’s largest lithium producers today. Chile, China and Australia are the biggest by far in terms of production, the USA for deposits, while the largest mining companies are multinationals, with extraction processes spread across the world. And thanks to its use in batteries this is a growth industry, with current production expected to double by 2024!

The largest project in Zimbabwe appears to be Chinese owned and run (Sinomine), While the largest in Namibia is Canadian.

All of which brings back thoughts of my sociology studies and the start of the mining exploitation by the Belgians and French in Africa. They called in colonialism in those days, taking raw materials from a third country to feed the ruling nation’s economy. The reality also includes polluting other people’s back yards, cheap life and labour.

Any Suggestions?

I am not suggesting that the battery/electric transport future should not go ahead, far from it. Regular readers will have seen lots of my posts about environmentally friendly, energy saving and producing technology, but there are more complications to the model that we like to think about.

Sitting in Europe it is easy to take the technological path without fully working through the consequences for other peoples and global politics. Fed the narrative of doing the right thing for the Earth, always trying to do what is best, but without a full picture of the implications, we (I too) fall into line within the narrative, we drive it and make both the positive and the negative sides real.