{"id":1831,"date":"2009-09-17T15:49:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T19:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=1831"},"modified":"2009-09-17T15:49:20","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T19:49:20","slug":"national-academies-report-a-new-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2009\/09\/17\/national-academies-report-a-new-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"National Academies report: A “New Biology”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was contributed by ESA\u2019s Director of Public Affairs, Nadine Lymn.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"ESAs<\/dt>\n
Tony Janetos, a panelist at today\u2019s National Academies briefing.<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

<\/p>\n

Today the National Research Council<\/a>, a division of the National Academies<\/a>, released a report that calls for a new biology initiative to tackle some of the nation\u2019s most pressing challenges, including food and energy production, environmental degradation, and human health.\u00a0 The report, \u201cA New Biology for the 21st<\/sup> Century<\/a>\u201c, calls for the collaboration of biological, physical, and social scientists, mathematicians and engineers, using recent advances in biology to address some of society\u2019s most pressing problems. \u00a0This ambitious national initiative, according to the report, should be on par with America\u2019s quest to put a man on the moon in the 20th<\/sup> Century.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Committee participants Phillip Sharp of MIT, Anthony Janetos\u00a0 of the Joint Global Change Research Institute and Keith Yamamoto of UC-San Francisco gave an overview of the report this morning at the National Academies.\u00a0 Among their messages:\u00a0 we need an increased investment in the life sciences to address some of society\u2019s most pressing problems, and we have a unique opportunity for cross-discipline integration with the physical, computational, and other sciences to address some of our most urgent problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

The thread of ecology weaves through each of the four major challenges identified by the report. \u00a0The food challenge<\/strong> is to achieve sustainable, local food production and understand crops as ecosystems.\u00a0 The environmental challenge<\/strong> is to halt and reverse ecosystem damage from pollution, over-harvesting, habitat fragmentation, and climate change.\u00a0 The energy challenge<\/strong> is to develop a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, and the health challenge<\/strong> is individualized health surveillance and care, including an individual\u2019s environment, history, micro-biome, genotype and physiology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report makes four recommendations:<\/span><\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0 Launch a National New Biology Initiative to achieve solutions to societal challenges in food, energy, environment, and health.<\/span><\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0 Make the Initiative an interagency effort with a 10-year timeline and funding in addition to current agency budgets.<\/span><\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0 Develop information sciences and technologies that are critical to the New Biology.<\/span><\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0 Develop interdisciplinary curricula, graduate and educator training needed to create and support New Biologists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report\u2019s release is exciting to many who for years have been advocating for greater support for collaborative research and tools needed to address major society challenges.\u00a0 The panelists noted that they have already had conversations with White House officials about the report.<\/span><\/p>\n

Biologists have a great opportunity to get engaged and help move the ideas of this report forward with their fellow scientists, Congress, and the Obama Administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy supported the report. Read the full report here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was contributed by ESA\u2019s Director of Public Affairs, Nadine Lymn. Tony Janetos, a panelist at today\u2019s National Academies briefing. Today the National Research Council, a division of the National Academies, released a report that calls for a new biology initiative to tackle some of the nation\u2019s most pressing challenges, including food and energy production, environmental degradation, and human…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,48],"tags":[341,342,343,344,66],"class_list":["post-1831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-ecology-and-society","tag-collaboration","tag-department-of-energy","tag-national-institutes-of-health","tag-national-research-council","tag-national-science-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}