Idea Club Topics
There have been some requests for more information on the topics in the new Idea Club Topic Pool. So here are some thumbnail explanations:
New Drugs - New Models - the current approachs for drug development cost a lot of money. Most companies are only interested in producing drugs that will be billion dollar sellers. How can we change the current process to permit important but less profitable drugs to be marketed?
Getting Away From CAFOs - these are concentrated animal feeding operations - factory farms. There are many benefits from this approach but also many detrimental prospects. What are the alternatives?
Trucking of Tomorrow - a substantial amount of fuel is used by the trucking industry but little has really been done to make the vehicles more fuel efficient. What are some possibilities?
Algae for Fuel - photosynthesis is a great way to convert solar power into sources of energy. How can algae be adapted to provide the energy we need?
Fixing the FDA - the FDA was created to deal with problems of the early 20th Century. How can it be changed to meet the problems of the 21st Century?
Green Nanotech? - Is there such a thing? What is it and what can it do?
Resilient Cultures - What was the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island thinking? How can a culture deal with huge social shocks and survive? What are some of the tools?
Energy Wedges - the energy/climate problems can not be solved with a single solution. But modeling indicates that substantial effects can be achieved by a variety of approaches, each occupying a wedge of the pie. What are these approaches and what can we do to make them happen?
Changing Higher Education - Post Secondary education is still based on a model originally developed in the middle of the 19th Century where finding information was difficult and required years of training by experts. Now finding information is easy. How can colleges be altered to take advantage of what we have learned over the last 150 years or so?
Open Science - How does scientific research change when all aspects, including daily lab notes, are placed on the Web for all to see? Is this a viable model? How does Open access to published results alter scientific exploits?
Pandemics and People - Can we prepare effectively for a pandemic? What will it look like? How can we prepare?
What is a Green Job? - Is this just marketing or is there something fundamentally different about a green job than any other? Should it have different incentives or can a purely free market approach work?
A Culture of Innovation - How does innovation happen? Is it simply random or can a formal process to support creativity be constructed? What would such a culture look like?
Sustainable Urban Farms - Growing food in the city on privately owned land is becoming a much more viable possibility. What are some of the options and creative solutions that separate urban farming from traditional methods?
Citizen Science - At the same time many research efforts are requiring multi-millions of dollars to pursue, with large research operations to support, the cost of many procedures has dropped to much that individual people can become involved in research projects. What are some of these projects and how can a distributed approach to research yield successful results?
