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Brian G. Dowling

FrontlineSMS:Medic | Text Messages Save Lives - 0 views

  • How powerful is a light-weight tool in the right hands? During a six month pilot in Malawi, our partner doubled the number of people being treated for Tuberculosis.
  • Driven by local ownership and appropriate technology. In the developing world, lack of infrastructure prevents health workers from delivering efficient healthcare to rural areas. As health workers travel from clinics to reach isolated patients, they are often as disconnected from central clinics as the patients they are trying to serve. The mission of FrontlineSMS:Medic is to advance healthcare networks in the developing world by building and distributing innovative, appropriate mobile technologies. The centerpiece of our system is FrontlineSMS, a free, open-source software platform that enables large-scale, two-way text messaging using only a laptop, a GSM modem, and cell phones. We are also developing several applications for the FrontlineSMS platform that will enable better patient management, electronic medical records via the cell phone, cheap mobile diagnostics, and mapping of health services.
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    Implementing the Millennium Development Goals health objectives in the developing world will require new technologies arising from disruptive innovation. Finding new uses for technologies we take for granted.
Brian G. Dowling

Reaching a Global Agreement on Climate Change: What are the Obstacles? - 0 views

  • Reaching a Global Agreement on Climate Change: What are the Obstacles?
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    Quote from paper: A successor accord to the Kyoto Protocol was supposed to be wrapped up in Copenhagen in December 2009, but negotiations are now expected to extend through the South African UNFCCC conference in 2011 since the Copenhagen talks failed to yield a binding agreement. To reach a comprehensive deal, major gaps between developing and developed countries must be narrowed. The gaps include the character of common but differentiated responsibilities, financial support, technology transfer, and trade subsidies and sanctions. The paper concludes with some options and recommendations.
Benno Hansen

Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People -- Godfray et al. 327 (5967): ... - 2 views

  • more than one in seven people today still do not have access to sufficient protein and energy from their diet, and even more suffer from some form of micronutrient malnourishment
  • Increases in production will have an important part to play, but they will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere
  • a period of rising and more volatile food prices driven primarily by increased demand from rapidly developing countries, as well as by competition for resources from first-generation biofuels production
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  • agricultural land that was formerly productive has been lost to urbanization and other human uses, as well as to desertification, salinization, soil erosion, and other consequences of unsustainable land management
  • the world will need 70 to 100% more food by 2050
  • Low yields occur because of technical constraints that prevent local food producers from increasing productivity or for economic reasons arising from market conditions.
  • In the most extreme cases of failed states and nonfunctioning markets, the solution lies completely outside the food system.
  • Food production in developing countries can be severely affected by market interventions in the developed world, such as subsidies or price supports.
  • the environmental costs of food production might increase with globalization, for example, because of increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with increased production and food transport
  • Food production has important negative "externalities," namely effects on the environment or economy that are not reflected in the cost of food.
  • superior technologies may become available and that future generations may be wealthier
  • The introduction of measures to promote sustainability does not necessarily reduce yields or profits. One study of 286 agricultural sustainability projects in developing countries, involving 12.6 million chiefly small-holder farmers on 37 million hectares, found an average yield increase of 79% across a very wide variety of systems and crop types
  • Unexploited genetic material from land races, rare breeds, and wild relatives will be important in allowing breeders to respond to new challenges
  • Fair returns on investment are essential for the proper functioning of the private sector, but the extension of the protection of intellectual property rights to biotechnology has led to a growing public perception in some countries that biotech research purely benefits commercial interests and offers no long-term public good. Just as seriously, it also led to a virtual monopoly of GM traits in some parts of the world, by a restricted number of companies, which limits innovation and investment in the technology.
  • Roughly 30 to 40% of food in both the developed and developing worlds is lost to waste
  • unwanted food goes to a landfill instead of being used as animal feed or compost because of legislation to control prion diseases
  • retailers discard many edible, yet only slightly blemished products
  • In the developing world, losses are mainly attributable to the absence of food-chain infrastructure
  • About one-third of global cereal production is fed to animals
  • the argument that all meat consumption is bad is overly simplistic
  • There is no simple solution to sustainably feeding 9 billion people
Brian G. Dowling

Development Gateway : About - 1 views

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    Another online resource that can be used in implementing the Millennium Development Goals. Development Gateway provides Web-based platforms that make aid and development efforts more effective around the world. It focuses on three areas where even small investments in information and communications technology can make a major difference:
Brian G. Dowling

From Hardware to Collaborative Philosophy - 0 views

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    This post includes the latest bookmarks and puts them together as an example of moving from hardware technology to collaborative philosophy in social entrepreneurship. All of which will be necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Brian G. Dowling

Values and Vision | - 0 views

  • Values and Vision At CivicActions, we believe in aligning our work with our values. Every member of our team is committed to taking action in the world to make positive change. Here's a sample of the kinds of values we share and rely on to guide our work.
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    Another example of an Online resource addressing the Millennium Development Goals.
Brian G. Dowling

Portfolio | Development Seed - 0 views

  • We work with organizations that have world-changing agenda and realize the potential of online tools to help them reach their goals. Our clients come to us looking to do more than simply build an online presence. They want to build communications tools that push the limits and make a concrete impact on their causes. Browse through our portfolio to see the work we have with our clients and learn about the comprehensive communications solutions we have built.
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    These are the folks providing the online infrastructure for the Stand Up Take Action site and many others. The technical wizards behind the curtain. So much of what we strive to do would not be possible.
MrGhaz .

A Battle That Revolutionized Computer: Traveler's Tale - 1 views

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    Four salvos later, more than half of the Eurisko ships had been sunk but their commander, Douglas B. Lent, was preparing to accept the enemy's offer of surrender. Despite its huge losses, the lumbering Eurisko fleet had destroyed all but one of the opposition's highly vaunted high-tech ships. The battle had ended.
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    Looks like an interesting post but not seeing any connection to the Millennium Development Goals. If you are just trying to get exposure there are more efficient means. Join BlogCatalog and similar organizations or think about starting your own group. The purpose of starting a group on a particular issue is to stay focused as possible.
Benno Hansen

EU Ministers Link Post-2010 Biodiversity and Climate Change - Climate-L.org - 0 views

  • the Council recognizes that climate change is increasingly among the strongest pressures on biodiversity
  • development and transfer of best practices and technologies will be essential to achieve a coordinated response
  • public and private finance, including innovative forms of financing, and finance associated with the Copenhagen Accord, should -based on appropriate criteria- include scope for payments for ecosystem services
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  • the Council stresses the positive contribution of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to food security and climate adaptation and mitigatio
Brian G. Dowling

jopsa.org - Projects and perspectives on global health - 0 views

  • From the start of our projects to the finish, it’s people who determine what FrontlineSMS:Medic does, when we do it, and why. The tech tools we use exist to serve patients, community health workers, and healthcare professionals – not the other way around. This mindset is critical for a number of reasons. I’ll explain. We strongly believe that projects should start when clinics ‘pull’ them to a site, as opposed to having projects ‘pushed’ onto healthcare providers. Ken Banks included the (very important) push/pull differentiation in his “Development best practices for beginners” series. Clinics are not just convenient places to pilot technology innovations. Healthcare providers should demand programs they need, and we should be ready to respond. Local staff should determine how the tech will be used, and we should be flexible and helpful in working through use cases and functionality.
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    The FrontlineSMS in action
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