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Showing posts with label Berlin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Berlin. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Falling Walls Conference 2014: Scientists heads to Berlin


Over 20 renowned scientists have confirmed participation in the forthcoming Falling Walls Conference 2014, slated for November 9 in Berlin, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Most of the speakers, organisers say already confirmed their participation.

One of the scientists, NaijaAgroNet was told expected to thrill the conference is the bioengineer and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University) who is one of the founders of optogenetics, a method through which genetically modified cells, which could be selectively activated and deactivated using light signals.

“Applied to neuroscientific research, Deisseroth’s process provides a new and highly detailed view of brain activity and a valuable insight into neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and depression,” the organisers said in a press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet by Lucie Menz of Falling Walls Foundation gGmbH.

After promising developments in recent years, immunotherapy is offering new hope in the fight against cancer. Novel approaches successfully stimulate the body’s own immune system in such a way that it can break through a tumour’s local protective barrier, detect cancer cells and finally destroy them. Suzanne Topalian from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is one of the leaders in this field of research and will be speaking at the Falling Walls Conference about her studies, which have substantially contributed to the development of new therapeutic applications.

Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle is world-renowned for researching one of the most controversial problems in neuroscience – the question of the physical basis of human consciousness. Based on information theory – and using new techniques and imaging technologies to track the activity of individual brain cells – Koch is attempting to unveil the mystery of consciousness by scientific explanation and measurement.


The Falling Walls Conference was first held in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and has now developed into a highly acclaimed platform for international research. The conference is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Helmholtz Association, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and numerous other academic institutions, foundations and companies.

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Monday, November 11, 2013

Artificial leaf ignites discuss on food security with molecular plants


The presence of artificial leaves, otherwise known as ‘resurrection plants’ ignited discuss among 800 participants on food security with molecular plants at the 2013 Falling Walls Conference in Berlin.

NaijaAgroNet reports that international top scientists present at the 2013 Falling Walls Conference wondered, why they were given a piece of dry plant by Jill Farrant of Cape Town University. 

The resurrection plants are not known only as the lazy gardener’s best friend, but a real hope for the fight against hunger in the world says some experts, just as these plants could tolerate almost complete water loss from vegetative tissues.

The South African researcher, Jill Farrant expressed determination to find the secrets behind these self-protecting properties in order to improve the resistance of crop in Africa and to solve one of the world’s biggest problems – hunger.

NaijaAgroNet notes that this was of great importance for the African continent, where the impacts of climate change have devastating effects on agriculture and food security. 

However, Benjamin Barber from City University of New York managed to get the audience to think of city instead of nation states, stressing that a new global model of governance, in which cities are the key players.

NaijaAgroNet reports that Barber pointed out that nation states will not govern globally cities can.

“They already are. Half of the human race lives in cities and the influence of places like Mumbai, Nairobi, Sao Paulo or Manila has long transcended regional and national borders,” Barber said.

Emphasising that man cannot solve social problems like diseases, economic crisis or climate change on a national level, because his studies have shown that cities have the capacity to deal with internal and external issues and could easily replace the system of nation states in the future.

For Daniel Nocera, he predicted global demand in energy scaling up to 16 Terawatts in the next 37 years.

“I calculated that we will need 16 Terawatt more energy to meet the demand by 2050,” he said, recollecting that with the poor in mind, develop an artificial leave which, when placed in a glass of tap water and exposed to sunlight, is able to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

“Both gases can then be collected, stored as fuel in private households and later be fed to fuel cells to generate electricity,” he suggested.

NaijaAgroNet reports that additional speakers included the Nobel Laureates Jules Hoffmann and Dan Shechtman, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Robert Kirshner from Harvard University, Onora O’Neill from Cambridge University, Sophia Vinagradov from the University of California and many more. More than 8000 viewers watched this year’s conference via livestream.


The Falling Walls Conference was first held in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and has since developed into a highly acclaimed annual platform for top international research. The conference is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Helmholtz Association, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research, and a number of other leading research institutions, foundations and companies.

Remmy Nweke
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Monday, March 11, 2013

Green Climate Fund Board meets in Berlin, searches for innovative solutions


The 24-member board at a recent meeting.
As the three-day meeting of the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) takes off in Berlin, Germany, today, how to finance innovative solutions tops the agenda at the third session of GCF.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the meeting would last between March Tuesday 12 and Friday 15, 2013. Noting that the Green Climate Fund was established by the United Nations Climate Change Convention to channel support to the developing world to address climate change.

Also gathered by NaijaAgroNet was that the Green Climate Fund is expected to be one of a range of funding channels to deliver on the long-term goal to mobilize US$ 100 billion, about N158,249 billion per annum in climate finance by 2020 from a range of sources, both public and private.

According to a Press Advisory, the Fund’s board, equally composed of representatives of developed and developing countries, is currently in its start-up phase and is focusing its work on establishing the systems and policies to manage financial flows in order to have a global impact on climate change.
 
Co-chair of Green Climate Fund Board, Zaheer Fakir, said they need to put systems in place, robust enough to handle a significant flow of climate funding and flexible enough to ensure that these funds are spent effectively on adaptation and mitigation throughout the developing world.

‘The challenge is to get the Fund up and running as soon as possible with the institutional
structures, policies, and safeguards to target funding based on country owned strategies,” he said.

Equally speaking, the Co-Chair of GCF, Mr. Ewen McDonald, pointed out that the impact of climate change in developing countries could limit or even reverse their growth.

“The Fund needs to be innovative to help developing countries undertake action to move their economies onto climate-resilient and low-emission development pathways. A key part of this will be the Fund’s ability to leverage significant funding from both public and private sources. Discussions in Berlin around the design of the Private Sector Facility will be critical in this regard.” McDonald said.
 

Alongside discussions on a business model framework, the three-day Board meeting is also expected to advance the plans to establish the Fund within its host city of Songdo, Incheon City, Republic of Korea, as well as adopting additional rules of procedure for the Board, and begin discussing how best to mobilize resources for the Fund.



Remmy Nwekke/NaijaAgroNet

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