tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48307815607923871012024-02-19T03:55:00.780+01:00Emilio MordiniEmilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-40489991081892327052019-05-20T18:17:00.001+02:002019-05-20T18:17:23.656+02:00ON HUMANS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ORACLESEmilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-68094344963566941512018-10-14T20:07:00.000+02:002018-10-14T20:08:21.507+02:00About specks, beams, and fake news
No doubt that fake
medical news and junk science are dangerous not only in their specific fields
but also in the widest sense of eroding trust in democratic conversation and
expertise. As we know from Plato, either democracy is
balanced by expertise, or it is destined to be ruled only by the law of the
strongest and by incompetence. This principle is nicely reaffirmed by the
article “Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-65934497598311061292018-08-10T16:15:00.001+02:002018-08-10T16:15:04.270+02:00HEARING AT EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ON ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGYEmilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-68781080264606692562018-06-03T17:59:00.001+02:002018-06-03T17:59:53.788+02:00Emilio Mordini: GDPR, The Great Gatsby, and Mark ZuckerbergEmilio Mordini: GDPR, The Great Gatsby, and Mark Zuckerberg: Heterogonie der Zwecke (heterogony of ends) is an expression coined in 1886 by German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, to indicate an intenti...Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-89059670916703743712018-06-03T17:53:00.004+02:002018-06-03T17:59:34.614+02:00GDPR, The Great Gatsby, and Mark Zuckerberg
Heterogonie der Zwecke (heterogony of ends) is an expression coined in 1886 by German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, to indicate an intentional action which ends up achieving unexpected, even opposite, ends. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforced by the European Union on May 25th, 2018 to protect the “fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons and in Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-78128550381844422482018-05-27T14:31:00.004+02:002018-05-27T14:31:59.497+02:00DOGS, VACCINE AND AUTISM
On the 24th of this past April, the breakfast show “Good Morning Britain” tweeted the bizarre
request to be contacted by “pet owners who haven't given their pets vaccinations because
they're concerned about side effects - as well as people who have done so and
now believe their pet has canine autism as a result”.
Such an odd request raised several remonstrations&Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-25851261770048536442018-02-19T13:31:00.001+01:002018-02-19T13:31:14.687+01:00Emilio Mordini: Collateral Campaigns, Universal Flu Vaccine, Healt...Emilio Mordini: Collateral Campaigns, Universal Flu Vaccine, Healt...: Launched in October 1994 , with 123.9 million visitors from Nov 2017 to Jan 2018, including 23.33 million monthly unique visitors (www.sim...Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-24762454219990141662018-02-19T13:30:00.001+01:002018-02-19T13:30:41.192+01:00Collateral Campaigns, Universal Flu Vaccine, Health Communication
Launched in October 1994, with 123.9 million visitors
from Nov 2017 to Jan 2018, including 23.33 million monthly unique visitors
(www.similarweb.com), Wired is not only a “historical” online
technology magazine, but it is still one of the most authoritative. It is rare
that Wired dedicates one of its main articles to a health theme, yet, on
Feb 1, the magazine published a Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-35556136364775461882018-01-13T10:14:00.001+01:002018-01-13T10:14:07.359+01:00Emilio Mordini: Dialogue of an Almanac-Pedlar and a Passer-byEmilio Mordini: Dialogue of an Almanac-Pedlar and a Passer-by: January unavoidably brings predictions . Old and new media rival one another to publish forecasts and more mundane prophecies around the ne...Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-25467613187574535392018-01-13T10:13:00.002+01:002018-01-13T10:13:33.190+01:00Dialogue of an Almanac-Pedlar and a Passer-by
January
unavoidably brings predictions. Old and new media rival one another to publish forecasts and more mundane
prophecies around the new year; old-fashioned horoscopes, scientific foresight, experts’ opinions, they all work
well in January. No one would be willing to replicate without any change even
one of the last twenty years of his life -ironically noticed Giacomo Leopardi
in his DialogueEmilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-1396301738631100922017-12-30T21:51:00.001+01:002017-12-30T21:52:09.999+01:00Purity, impurity, infectious diseases
The cover story of the December issue of the
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is devoted to
a girl, Jennifer Worrall, and Jasmin, her beloved rat. “In 2012 in the United Kingdom, a number
of people caught Seoul hantavirus from their pet rats – explains the editor - Pet rat owners were warned about the potential risk their pets posed;
however, they Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-64408136093981097742017-12-22T17:22:00.001+01:002017-12-22T17:22:03.019+01:00Avian Flu Diary: Smithsonian `Next Pandemic' Webinar Now Available OnlineAvian Flu Diary: Smithsonian `Next Pandemic' Webinar Now Available OnlineEmilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-86043057462216655242017-12-13T18:27:00.001+01:002017-12-13T19:43:22.150+01:00The Dengvaxia affair
In 2016 the Philippines started a vaccination
campaign against Dengue, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, infecting
worldwide hundreds of millions people, whose seriousness is however
usually limited, “Dengue fever is a severe, flu-like illness that affects infants, young
children and adults, but seldom causes death”. The Philippines’ immunization programme was based on Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-46318667000124751192017-12-05T23:18:00.001+01:002017-12-05T23:18:22.204+01:00CULTURE AND MICROBIOLOGICAL CULTURES
Let me welcome the November issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly
magazine of the Microbiology Society, which is devoted to ‘Microbiology in Popular Culture’.
The
magazine hosts five pleasant articles and a commentary from the editorial
team. Articles range from the interesting and helpful Genome editing and the cultural imagination, which
discusses Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-61754233331646903652017-11-28T13:48:00.002+01:002017-11-28T13:48:41.647+01:00DELIBERATING WITHOUT KNOWING
Two interesting news are worth mentioning this week. The first one concerns the press conference held by Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU Commissioner in charge of Health and Food Safety, on the State of Health in the EU. The second one concerns the publication of a report on risk perception of genome editing among German consumers, conducted by the German Federal Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-30304627881384893052017-11-20T09:52:00.001+01:002017-11-20T09:52:17.175+01:00Blockchain technology for preventing foodborne diseases
So much has happened in the field of emerging epidemics and infectious diseases over these three months, including a resurgence of concern about the health and societal impact of tuberculosis and pneumonic plague in Africa. Focusing, however, on recent times, the past week was marked by interest in blockchain technology for preventing foodborne Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-23844685946770713292017-07-13T22:50:00.003+02:002017-07-13T22:50:43.872+02:00MOVIES, YOGURT, AND VACCINE MISINFORMATIONDuring the past couple of weeks, the attention of the
media was chiefly captured by the endless quarrel on
compulsory vaccination. The WHO Regional Office for Europe
released data about death for measles in Europe in
2016, which amounts to 35 fatalities, an outrageous number, considering
the vaccine-preventable nature of measles. New legislations Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-3284512602061954052017-07-03T16:18:00.003+02:002017-07-03T16:26:37.062+02:00FROM DANGER TO RISK
In a research letter published by Nature in the last week of June, Kevin J. Olival and his team at the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York based global environmental health nonprofit organization, have announced the results of their latest study on “Host and viral traits predict zoonotic spillover from mammals”. Researchers investigated whether it is possible to predict human pandemics of viral Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-25811785432522459472017-06-19T15:06:00.002+02:002017-07-03T16:17:45.027+02:00NATURAL OR SAFE?
In early June, Kavin Senapathy - author and public speaker on health, medicine, food, and parenting - has published a nice article devoted to a – minor, but, in its own way, epochal – event. Johnson's Baby, the brand of baby cosmetics and skin care products owned by the American multinational company Johnson & Johnson, has created and distributed a&Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-68817041335332684462017-05-29T20:00:00.001+02:002017-05-29T20:01:03.445+02:00COMPULSORY VACCINATION AND HEALTH COMMUNICATIONAnti-vaccine movements, and how to prevent their nefarious influence, have been again in the limelight in the last weeks. Recent measles outbreaks in the US and the EU have been directly related to vaccine skepticism, and vaccine objection has been considered within the wider political context of emerging “populist” movements. Yet, as Donald Trump’s presidency is Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-63282996588168305682017-05-08T19:10:00.003+02:002017-05-08T19:10:58.637+02:00RISK COMMUNICATION OR COMMUNICATION RISKS? Innovate UK has recently awarded a team led by Dr Michael Jarvis at the University of Plymouth UK with a £408,000 grant to develop a new vaccine against zoonosis.About 75% of newly emerging diseases and 60% of all known human infectious diseases are likely to be zoonosis. The main idea of this new project is to develop a self-disseminating vaccine vector, called Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-47789579489122848542017-04-20T00:19:00.000+02:002017-04-20T00:27:18.306+02:00UNSEEN ALLY
In early April, CNN FILMS,
SIERRA/TANGO PRODUCTIONS & VULCAN PRODUCTIONS have presented a new
documentary, Unseen Enemy, devoted to
emerging epidemics. Co-produced with WESTDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK KÖLN in
collaboration with ARTE, the movie is directed by Janet Tobias, an Emmy-Award
winning filmmaker with parallel careers in film television and medicine. Jenny
worked as a producer at ABC Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-32101604857107501432017-04-13T00:16:00.005+02:002017-04-13T00:16:53.870+02:00PROVIDERS OF TRUTHA famous dictum of the 19th century British politician Lord Acton, reads "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Lord Acton would have been probably intrigued by the current debate on social network governance. After the mass hysteria generated by the fake news issue, and the proposal in Germany of a new legislation on social networks, Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-90007228566113656562017-03-29T02:16:00.002+02:002017-03-29T14:30:12.333+02:00SPRINGTIME
It is Springtime. The days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer, mimosa flowers cover the stems, little birds sing their love songs, and politicians sign declarations.
March 25 was a splendid Spring day in Rome and the Leaders of 27 Member States and of EU institutions - convened to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome – enjoyed their staying inEmilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4830781560792387101.post-85834304889362011102017-03-15T22:23:00.001+01:002017-03-15T22:23:11.831+01:00GLOBALIZATION, PANDEMICS AND POPULISM
Reflecting on a
series of political events - including the electoral victory of Donald Trump, and
the Brexit vote – commentators have argued that the current political turmoil is
part of a worldwide backlash to globalization, the rebellion of
“globalization’s losers”. There is indeed
a vast mass of people who feel that their life conditions are deteriorating
notwithstanding, of even Emilio Mordinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06218938087855050787noreply@blogger.com0