Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ These are the science concepts you need to know to understand political life in 2017

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

These concepts don't all relate to education, and their importance most certainly isn't limited to political life, but it's a good list and educators should be aware of all of them. Here's the one-minute version:

  • Scepticism - "a willingness to evenly assess the scientific evidence available."
  • Iatrogenesis - illness "brought forth by the healer," like the opioid epidemic
  • Social cost of carbon - the damage each ton of CO2 emission costs society
  • Clean coal - expensive, but "captures the carbon dioxide and buries it"
  • Gene drives - increase a gene's chance of being inherited
  • CRISPR - being widely used to manipulate DNA with extraordinary precision
  • NgAgo - new tech which might manipulate DNA with even greater precision
  • Confrmation bias - the tendency to select information that supports our existing beliefs
  • IPFS - makes copies of everything instead of relying on links
  • PFOA - unregulated cancer agent turning up in drinking water
  • Neonicotinoids - the pesticide that caused widespread bee colony collapse
  • SETI - search for extra-terrestrial intelligence using powerful new tools

Now you's caught up. :)

 

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Dec 22, 2024 12:16 p.m.

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