Digital Humanitarianism
Technology helps relief agencies tackle the plight of refugees [see “The Science of Doing Good”; SciAm, November 2007]. Among the newest is an online mapping project by Google and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Called the Google Earth Outreach program, it enables humanitarian groups to highlight their work in progressively detailed layers, all the way to the schools, water sources and other infrastructure of a refugee camp. The site (www.unhcr.org/events/47f48dc92.html)
currently features refugee  plights in Colombia, Iraq and the Darfur region of Sudan

This article was originally published with the title Updates.

5 Comments

1. 1. Johnay 01:04 AM 5/24/08

   There is another drawback I have noticed in stain-resistant clothing: they are horrible for cleaning eyeglasses, with a tendency to just smear smudges instead of removing them.

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2. 2. technovelist 03:15 PM 5/25/08

   I think it is quite unlikely that the "first artificial enzyme" is one that "removes a proton from a carbon atom", as stated on page 18 of the June 2008 issue. That would be transmutation, which I'm pretty sure cannot be done by chemical means (at present, anyway).

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3. 3. dashro 12:35 AM 6/1/08

   Actually removing a proton from a Carbon atom would be fission actually. I am sure this is an error.

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4. 4. Donaldo 05:05 PM 6/6/08

   True about smearing your glasses. I don't want microparticles or anti-bactieral agents bonded into normal fibers. I want the living clothes that the '50s futurists said we were all supposed to be wearing by now. The ones that would clean themselves, repair themselves if they got ripped, grow with us so we only needed to ever buy one outfit when we were kids. Maybe even magnify our movements, and photosynthesize more energy then they needed so our own need for food would be less ... when's that coming!

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5. 5. jgrotnes 10:58 PM 6/9/08

   They are not talking about removing a proton from the actual carbon atom nucleus, but pulling a H+ atom off the strong CH bond (Kemp elimination).

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