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Stephen Michael Apatow: Arts Integration - Save Our Selves - Live Earth Triggers a Global Frenzy
The arts are an essential part of American culture as a whole. It is very important that all members of society come into direct contact with the arts -- not only as passive observers, but also as active participants. The Humanitarian Resource Institute Arts Integration into Education initiative is promoting the arts as a vehicle for solution oriented strategic planning and development across the globe.
(Billboard Publicity Wire) July 9, 2007 -- Live Earth, the 24-hour, 7-continent concert series on 7/7/07 brought together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global frenzy focused on survival of the planet.
The Humanitarian Resource Institute Arts Integration into Education initiative, directed by artist Stephen Michael Apatow (MySpace Music, Artistopia) is expanding a call for the international community to move this focus to the next level.
Educational resources and discussion topics include:
Harvard Extension School - ENVR - E-130 / Fletcher School, Tufts University - DHPP-347
Global Climate Change: The Science, Social Impact and Diplomacy of a World Environmental Crisis
Open Invitation to Class Members, Course Alumni & All Concerned Global Citizens
This introductory course will give students an integrated overview of the science of climate change and an analysis of the implications of this change for patterns of daily life in their own circumstance and around the world. Humankind is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis of global proportions. Scientists from across the world have issued stark warnings about the potential disruption and destabilization that changes in Earth's climate will most likely cause in the near future for the life systems upon which modern civilization depends. The social and political implications of climate change have begun to become apparent as local communities in widely different parts of the world struggle to adapt to new patterns of excessive rainfall, prolonged droughts and severe weather events. Internationally, nation states have endeavored to forge diplomatic agreements to help humankind cope with both the causes and consequences of global climate change.
In the context of more complicated problems on the table:
Weapons of Mass Destruction, Nonproliferation and International Security
Humanitarian Resource Institute Legal Resource Center: Biodefense Reference Library
Current U.S. Nonproliferation programs in the former Soviet Union include:
- Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) Program (DOE): Improving Security of 603 tons of nuclear weapons material at 53 sites and for 1000's of navel n-weapons.
- Mayak Fissile Material Storage facility (DOD): The construction of a secure facility for 50 tons of weapons plutonium.
- Aktau-BN-350 Breeder Reactor Project: The security of 3 tons of high quality Pu in spent fuel.
- HEU Purchase Agreement - "Megatons to Megawatts" program (U.S. Enrichment Corporation - USEC): Purchase of 500 tons of weapons grade uranium over 20 years, blended down to non-weapons usable nuclear power plant fuel.
- Plutonium (Pu) Disposition (DOE): The elimination of 34 tons of Russian Weapons Pu by irradiating materials as mixed oxide fuel in Russian nuclear power plants.
- Pu Production Reactor Shut Down Agreement (DOE): End annual production of 1.8 tons (total) or weapons plutonium at three remaining Russian production reactors, while providing alternatives.
In January, 2001, Australian scientists developing a contraceptive vaccine for controlling field mice populations sought to enhance the vaccines effectiveness by inserting the gene for the immune regulatory protein interleukin-4 (IL-4) into mousepox, which was being used as a carrier virus. IL-4 is a substance that is normally produced in mice, but insertion of the IL-4 gene into the mousepox genome unexpectedly transformed the normally benign virus into a virulent strain that shut down the immune system and killed all the animals in the experiment. In addition to rendering mousepox lethal in mice genetically resistant to the virus, the inserted gene made the mousepox vaccine ineffective - the recombinant virus killed even those mice that had previously been vaccinated. Since human beings possess the interleukin-4 gene, it is possible that inserting this gene into a poxvirus that infects humans, such as smallpox or monkeypox, could create a lethal strain that would be resistant to the existing smallpox vaccine.
Current threats involving the deliberate reintroduction of smallpox as an epidemic disease would be an international crime of unprecedented proportions, but it is now regarded as a possibility. Without intervention, each person infected with smallpox could infect between 10 and 20 others in a society that had not been immunized. Epidemiologists refer to this number as the "transmission rate" of an epidemic.
A transmission rate of 20 means the first 50 victims could infect 1,000 others, and these "second generation" cases could infect 20,000 more, who would infect 400,000, and so on. The sixth generation of such a mathematical progression would be 160 million and if such a hypothetical epidemic were to occur with smallpox, that number of cases would be reached in approximately 10 weeks after the first case appeared.
The impact of emerging infectious diseases or a bioterrorist incident presents the challenge of mass casualties, the closure of roads, airports and waterways causing interstate and international commerce to potentially grind to a halt as containment and control becomes the priority.
The discussion has just begun, as the youth of today recognize the fact that if all of our energy is not committed to solution oriented strategic planning, we have no future...
Stephen M. Apatow is Founder of the nonprofit organization Humanitarian Resource Institute, Director of Research and Development, Humanitarian University Consortium Graduate Studies Center for Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Law.
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