Grand Challenges Explorations -- part of the foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative -- funds bold research ideas that have the potential to create breakthroughs in global health solutions. This week, nine previous grant recipients were awarded next-stage grants of up to $1 million.
I have always been interested in the scientific discoveries underlying health advances in developing countries. The benefits of such breakthroughs are substantial, with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives. And the challenges are great, often involving issues that no one has been able to solve before.
Two years ago, the foundation launched Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE), which is aimed at encouraging researchers with promising and sometimes unconventional ideas for improving health to apply for $100,000 grants. That may not seem like a lot of money for scientific research. But by funding a larger number of smaller grants and encouraging applications from a wider range of individuals -- including those with little or no experience -- Grand Challenges Explorations can fund initial research into potentially innovative concepts that might not otherwise ever be explored.
This week, Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of the foundation's Global Health Program, announced the first round of next-stage grants to nine previous GCE grantees. This funding -- up to $1 million per grantee -- will allow projects that have shown outstanding progress and great promise to move forward.
For example, Dr. Mark Davis, professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, is working on a new technique to measure vaccine efficacy, a tool that could shorten the time required to test new vaccine candidates. Dr. Pradip Rathod, a professor of chemistry at the University of Washington, is trying to develop a mechanism that could help prevent drug resistance from developing during malaria treatment. Dr. Dan Feldheim, professor at the University of Colorado is exploring how gold crystals could be tailored to block many viral and bacterial drug resistance mechanisms. And Dr. Szabolcs Marka, an experimental astrophysicist at Columbia University who specializes in gravitational waves, is applying his expertise to malaria prevention. He's working on a device that will use light fields to create barriers to deter mosquitoes from humans and prevent malaria transmission.
I had a chance to meet these researchers and other GCE grantees this week and I found their passion and creativity inspiring. Some, perhaps many, of these ideas may not pan out. But if even one of these projects is successful, it will have been well worth the investment.
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Experts in the safety of genetically modified (GM) organisms have expressed concern over the release of GM mosquitoes into the wild on the Cayman Islands, which was publicised internationally only last month — a year after their initial release.
http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/news/2010/11/19/gm-mosquito-wild-release-takes-campaigne
Bill Gates Funds Approval of GM Mosquitoes to Combat Dengue ...
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/217447-Bill-Gates-Funds-Approval-of-GM-Mosquitoes-to-Combat-Dengue
So thank you again, Mr. Gates, for listening.
That same great man, my Grandfather, also told me that a man is not truly mature until he acknowledges that the inner child must be allowed to play now and again.
Why not pool the power of the community you are creating Bill? What if difficulties or dead-ends encountered in one field, could be circulated and made known to those working in other fields? Other, as yet fettered minds, might be able to propose alternative avenues of thought. Since even evaluating why a previously unconsidered approach won’t work in the circumstances, can prove advantageous. Since it forces assessment from other, often unappreciated or unexplored, perspectives.
What I'd like to talk to you now concerns the flooding that has become rampant over the past few years.
Floods has caused loss of homes, loss of lives and businesses and hardships. And it has caused the govts to spend millions and millions of dollars. But it doesn't seem to end.
I have a suggestion to avoid too much and heavy flooding. The suggestion is just so simple that I think most probably the govt might ignore, but please do a little experiment and analysis before you ignore this suggestion.
The plan is just this - use a special dredging machine, and a number of qualified experts - go to the best place in the sea/ river possible, and scoop up or suck up, as much sand as possible, which has to be calculated of course. Maybe have to do it every few year once in order to ensure the waters are at the right level regularly. The sand is to be transported to the land from the sea/ river, and can be used as the experts feel fit.
No I have often thought if a person has enough common sense maybe it could be pulled off... I am tired and should shut up and go to bed.
I have admired you and your wife for years. I grew up practically in Africa due to my father being int he foreign service. Never stop what you are doing. I just wish I had your talent as I workw ith the wounded and deployed and their families and can never get enough volunteers or donations. It seems people forget so easily these are our young kids in the war or maybe their pain and loneliness makes them uncomfortable...but they need us and we can't turn our backs.
If anyone has any ideas or even wants to help adopt a soldier...just google Homefront Hugs. They need us now and not after they get home with PTSD...unless that is all we can do...andn then they will need us then...what you have shown us all Bill...is that we are one world...and one humanity.
Thank you.
Equipment. We sold hundreds of them ranging in price from $25 - $60. Everyone on my Christmas List got one that year, each one was unique from the others in size, colors and craftsmanship.
We need to do more to reach out to these kinds of people who by the way, had insisted that they work to provided funds for their needs.
http://www.globalresourcealliance.org/
These dams are stagnating and warming the world's river systems creating perfect malarial mosquito habitat.
The dams now being built by the Chinese in Southeast Asia and Africa are some of the largest ever built on earth.
Brazil is in the midst of a massive dam building push as Amazon Indians who live on these rivers protest.
Mega-dam building is now a worldwide frenzy as power usage surges in every country on earth, especially in the countries of China, Brazil, India and Southeast Asia, where much of the world's manufacturing is now being done.
Much of the electricity being produced by the dams now being built in southeast Asian countries, are selling and shipping the electricity generated by the dams to China, via electrical transmission lines.
Many, if not most, southeast Asian dams have been, or are, being built by the Chinese who are now flushed with cash from all the multinational manufacturing going on in China etc.
Worldwide river and coastal fisheries are also being destroyed as downstream river waters drop, warm and stagnate worldwide, from dams. (most river fish cannot live and breed in warm, stagnant river water).
River water stagnanted by dams can be thousands of miles long.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
"Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision."
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, if we allow it to be recognized. Free discussion and an active and free press along with opportunities for education will allow the voices from this kind of "Revelation" to be active and heard. It's a variation of the "Great Man" theory of history using relatively "smart" monkeys with the typewriters - or an internet..
Although everyone knows Mr. Gates is a genius when it comes to computer software and marketing, but from my perspective he is really on the wrong path when it comes to ameliorating worldwide healthcare problems.
What the sick and dying in Third World countries need is certainly not vaccinations, which only further poisons their already weakened system, but rather what they need is an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies to strengthen their immune system. Not powdered Milk and Vaccines.
This huge financial investment in vaccines will only further enrich the pharmaceutical industry without offering any real long term solutions as to why peoples immune system becomes run down and susceptible to disease?
The Gates Foundation would be better advised to spend their money on Fruit trees and making the soil more arable for vegetable crops and future prosperity and health, not short term inoculations that do nothing to resolve the problem of malnutrition tomorrow.
Gary Null Ph.D., international nutrition and science expert has some very interesting things to say about Bill Gates and the harm, rather good he is doing with the promotion of vaccines.
http://www.garynull.com/home/death-by-vaccination-the-gates-foundation-and-the-new-eugeni-1.html