Where is science heading? The main challenges before today's scientists?

Anecdotal and historical accounts of science suggest that in earlier times, researchers pursued science more as a hobby at their own pace with support and encouragement from patrons and communities. This leads to inequality in scientific research, where some fields and researchers may have an easier time obtaining funding and resources, while other fields and researchers may lack this support, making it difficult to conduct meaningful research. Progress of science needs efforts from the researchers with a poly-disciplinary mindset as well as mono-disciplinary strengths.[[5]] The role of science is evident to everyone from the recent example, i.e., protecting eight billion people from the devastating effects of COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of researchers are now pursuing science as opposed to thousands and hundreds of researchers in the earlier periods of science. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Drying Technology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Rethinking the agricultural development model in Post-COVID-19 era based on scientific knowledge: The Moroccan case

The agricultural sector is a strategic economic activity in Morocco, still accounting for around 14% of GDP and employing 40% of the active population. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been literally shaken up, with growing uncertainties about market opportunities and workers' availability, given the drop in consumers' incomes and the requested social distancing. However, citizens have rapidly acknowledged the importance of agriculture, as it ensured a regular food supply during the lockdown at relatively affordable prices. The pandemic, which has emerged in a particularly dry year in Morocco, has provided an opportunity to revise the constraints facing the agricultural sector, particularly water stress and work remuneration. It has also drawn attention to food sovereignty due to consumers' awareness of the significant share of staple food imported. It is true that these imports represent an amount of virtual water which allow over-passing the domestic water shortage;however, the food trade balance is still in deficit despite the role of agriculture in the export of high value commodities as emphasized by public authorities. In addition, recent studies have shown that agricultural exports rely on growing amounts of groundwater, in areas with an arid to semi-arid climate. This has happened despite the significant state subsidies awarded to farmers to convert old furrow irrigation means to drip irrigation systems. On-farm investigations have demonstrated as well that drip irrigation has mainly resulted in an expansion of the area with irrigated cash crops. This situation has been considered as the opposite of the goal sought by the Moroccan agricultural strategy, which stated that irrigated fruits and vegetables would guarantee higher economic water productivity than rain-fed crops. Altogether, these rapid trends have simply ignored the important added value of rainfall. It seems, therefore, crucial to recognize that the post-COVID-19 agriculture should be different from what it has become. Indeed, there is a need for a paradigm shift where rain-fed agriculture has to get at the top of the political agenda, with significant financial allocation. Moreover, this will have to be coupled with a change in farmers and consumers' awareness about the positive effects of short circuits, to decrease fossil energy inputs, as well as to promote a low external inputs' agriculture with an insight on the sustainability of diets. In this chapter, we discuss these issues as it appears that it is not only food production which is at stake while talking about post-COVID-19 farming. This has to encompass wide topics, such as environment preservation, rural development, sustainable food systems, etc. This is a compulsory vision based on scientific knowledge, to ensure social inclusiveness and sustainable use of limited resources, to reduce rural exodus, and to guarantee the attractiveness of farming activities to young generations. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

The role of transnational churches in response to Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis in South Africa

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused unprecedented suffering and death among the people of South Africa. The epidemic is associated with great fear experienced by the infected, affected and the general population. This article focuses on the role played by South African transnational churches in response to the COVID-19 crises and measures taken by the government. The article is anchored on Foucault's theory of biopolitics in which he explains the emergence ofnew political strategies implemented to regulate the lives of the species being. Foucault's account as applied to the context of this article serves as an overture to his depiction of panopticism as a system of governance. In South Africa, the haunting memory of COVID-19 and the chaos associated with it has paved the way for 'biopolitics' as a system of constant surveillance to citizens and transnational churches. Stringent lockdown regulations have been implemented in this regard after COVID-19 was declared a national disaster. A qualitative research method and an interpretivist research paradigm were adopted. Data was collected using telephone interviews with 5 transnational churches located in Durban. Key findings show that transnational churches in Durban have adhered to lockdown regulations in multifarious ways. They have continued with the theology of ministry in an attempt to replace the message of fear with the message of hope. Many have recommended their congregants to stay at home and attend church services via radio and online live streaming. It recommends religion be accommodated and coexistence with scientific knowledge systems in fighting the pandemic. Science, biomedical and clinical approach is not enough to explain the behavior and illness of human beings.

Towards the empowerment of public scientific literacy: Presenter(s): Sara Rubinelli, University of Lucerne and Swiss Paraplegic Research, Switzerland

As demonstrated during the Covid pandemic, evaluating health information and identifying mis/disinformation is very demanding for the general public, making informing the public a key action in pandemic response. Nonetheless, this information is grounded in and contains scientific evidence and concepts. It implicitly assumes some level of scientific knowledge to be understood and used in a correct and actionable manner (e.g., knowledge of how a vaccine is tested for safety and efficacy). Thus, the 'scientific literacy' of the general population becomes prominent. The objective of this presentation is to illustrate a model of public scientific literacy. A conceptual review of existing conceptualisations and operationalisations of scientific literacy found in the literature through comparative evaluation, i.e. the models by Norris and Philis, the Science-Technology Society (STS), OECD Pisa, Ying Zhan and Chiappetta et al. Five main components of public scientific literacy are identified as most prominent. Specifically, the model includes knowledge and evaluation skills on the following topics: the concept of 'scientific evidence' versus an opinion (even of an expert);the different types of quantitative and qualitative evidence;how science works as a process to achieve knowledge based on the principle of falsification;the peer-reviewed process for science publication and the ethical standards for scientific work and its implementation. Scientific literacy is the basis of critical thinking and thus of individual and collective decisions and behaviors that are non-ideological and non-stereotypical. Scientific literacy allows dynamic adaptations of behaviors and modifications of beliefs and knowledge transparently and adaptively, which can integrate knowledge advancements and new information as complex phenomena that are progressively better understood and explained. Findings: from this study can inform the development of measurement instruments and interventions for public scientific literacy. Also they are a basis for strengthening institutional communication of evidence-based recommendations. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Patient Education & Counseling is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Refused-knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobilising Experiential Expertise for Care and Well-being

Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concerned groups of people have produced knowledge refused by institutional science of how to manage public health and individual well-being in everyday pandemic life. Research in science and technology studies seeks to understand the social and cultural conditions under which contestation over scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian case, ‘refused' knowledge claims emerging outside institutionalised science play a performative role in questioning the current models for managing individual and public health. Such refused claims ascribe novel meanings to the COVID-19 pandemic and orient the ways in which people manage their own health and well-being during their everyday life. Two interrelated dimensions are at stake in the production and enactment of refused knowledge: (1) how experiential expertise is mobilised to reframe one's body in a process of self-care, thus validating a corpus of refused knowledge through personal experience, and (2) how narratives demarcate between a body of refused knowledge and the prevalent biomedical paradigms as a way of gaining experiential epistemic autonomy.

Technological semiotic mediators in didactic to approach cosmic rays and improve students' scientific knowledge

This article describes the activities developed in the scientific path of the research project "Mathematical High School” and concerned the analysis of the data detected by the Cosmic Ray Cube (CRC), a muon detector designed in the Gran Sasso (Italy) laboratories. Due to covid-19 the laboratories have been redesigned and calibrated to be developed remotely through e-learning platforms. The didactic impact of the activities will be illustrated in this work. It will describe not only the involvement in the development of fascinating topics not usually carried out in Italian curricula, but also the skills acquired thanks to the development of interdisciplinary themes that highlight how the different fields of the scientific world © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons.

Predictors and effects of scientific knowledge

Purpose>Scientific knowledge has been a topic of interest for scholars for a long time;however, its impact on scientific decision- making and determining trust is severely underresearched. This study is aimed at determining the relationship between cultural and social attitudes and scientific knowledge and the impact of knowledge on trust in scientists in general.Design/methodology/approach>The authors conducted a face-to-face survey, drawing from a nationally representative sample of the adult Serbian population (N = 1,451). The authors tested the following parameters: a. the levels of scientific knowledge within the Serbian population;b. social and cultural values as predictors of scientific knowledge and c. the effects of scientific knowledge on trust in scientists.Findings>The analysis shows a moderate level of scientific knowledge, predominantly positive public attitudes towards scientists. The authors found that scientific knowledge indeed predicts trust in scientists on various issues, and so do cultural and social worldviews, both directly and even more significantly through the mediation of scientific knowledge.Originality/value>This is the first attempt to assess the level of scientific knowledge among the Serbian public and evaluate its, as well as other factors', influence on public attitudes toward scientists in a time when trusting experts is of great relevance.

Understanding, Trusting, and Applying Scientific Insights to Improve Your Health: A Latent Profile Analysis Approach.

Various leading causes of death can be prevented or delayed through informed decision-making and lifestyle changes. Previous work has, to some extent, linked such health-promoting behavior (HPB) with variables capturing individuals' understanding of science, trust in science, and capacity to apply evidence-based information in the health context. However, empirical research on the relationship between scientific knowledge, trust in science, health literacy, and HPB is scarce. Additionally, no study has investigated whether these characteristics interact to form homogeneous, high-risk subgroups of the population. The present online study (N = 705) revealed that trust in science and health literacy were positively related to a wide array of HPBs (e.g., healthy nutrition, physical activity, stress management), while scientific knowledge was only positively associated with COVID-19 vaccination intention. Furthermore, the results of latent profile analyses yielded four subgroups (i.e., low, moderate, and high levels of all three variables and a varied profile exhibiting very low trust in science, low health literacy, and moderate scientific knowledge). The identified subgroups differ significantly in HPB and variables determining profile membership (e.g., political conservatism). Hence, the present study offers some guidance on which groups may be targeted with public health campaigns and how they may be designed.

Is It Time to Restructure the National Institutes of Health or Research Mindsets?

[...]the NIH has major programs in (nonbiomedical) areas such as ethical, legal, and social implications of disease;implementation science;research communication and dissemination;and capacity development and research strengthening. [...]the apparent assumption that the NIH should be funding all types of research is confusing. [...]ifthere are in fact policy community frustrations, we would see declining funding to the NIH, but in fact funding has gone up, even in the most recent allocations.6 The discussion of trust in scientific knowledge, although based on a philosophical approach and theoretically tenable, ignores the current reality of how trust in science has broken down in practice in the contemporary era owing to what can be termed unfettered inclusion of raw opinions, ideology, and racism. The proposal for new institutes along two axes-determinants and processes-is a limited perspective from a multiepistemic view and suffers from some of the issues raised by the authors (e.g., misclassification of behavioral and social determinants, overlap and duplication between research focused on health systems, health services, populations, and communities). [...]it is unclear what a priori criteria (or principles) would be used to evaluate such a system, especially given that no existing research funding system (anywhere in the world) has been suggested as a model.

Use of science in public policy: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic efforts to 'Follow the Science'

The paper asks: 'What can we learn from COVID-19 pandemic about effective use of scientific and technical information (STI) in policymaking and how might the lessons be put to use?' The paper employs the political rhetoric of 'follow the science' as a lens for examining contemporary concerns in the use of STI, including (1) 'Breadth of Science Products', the necessity of a broader concept of STI that includes by-products science, (2) 'Science Dynamism', emphasizing the uncertainty and impeachability of science, (3) 'STI Urgency' suggesting that STI use during widespread calamities differs from more routine applications, and (4) 'Hyper-politicization of Science', arguing that a step-change in the contentiousness of politics affects uses and misuses of STI. The paper concludes with a discussion, STI Curation, as a possible ingredient to improving effective use. With more attention to credibility and trust of STI and to the institutional legitimacy of curators, it should prove possible to improve the effective use of STI in public policy.

Pandemic emergency and juridical-institutional tools

The essay aims to clarify whether the Italian juridical-institutional tools available are adequate to solve the problems raised by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the author, the pandemic has not brought about, and does not require, significant changes in the legal system, essentially more virtuous civil and political behaviour being necessary. The thesis is illustrated by analyzing four profiles: compliance with the Constitution and the constitutional framework of some administrative sources and measures to manage the pandemic emergency caused by Covid-19;the relationship between scientific knowledge and public decision making;the relationship between the State, Regions and local territorial bodies;the delineation of a new boundary between public and private action, which increasingly favors the latter, through the liberalization and/or simplification of administrative powers. © 2021 Societa Editrice il Mulino. All rights reserved.

Evidence-Based Policymaking in Times of Acute Crisis: Comparing the Use of Scientific Knowledge in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

This article studies how different systems of policy advice are suited to provide relevant knowledge in times of acute crisis. The notion of evidence-based policymaking (EBP) originated in the successful 1997 New Labour program in the United Kingdom to formulate policy based not on ideology but on sound empirical evidence. We provide a brief overview of the history of the concept and the current debates around it. We then outline the main characteristics of the policy advisory systems in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy through which scientific knowledge-in the form of either person-bound expertise or evidence generated through standard scientific processes-was fed into policy formulation processes before the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas EBP takes place in the form of institutionalized advisory bodies and draws on expertise rather than on evidence in Germany, the system in Switzerland focuses more on the use of evidence provided through external mandates. Italy has a hybrid politicized expert system. The article then analyzes how this different prioritization of expertise vs. evidence in the three countries affects policymakers' capacity to include scientific knowledge in policy decisions in times of acute crisis. The comparison of the three countries implies that countries with policy advisory systems designed to use expertise are better placed to incorporate scientific knowledge into their decisions in times of acute crisis than are countries with policy advisory systems that relied primarily on evidence before the COVID-19 crisis. Supplementary Information: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11615-022-00382-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Cloaked science: the Yan reports

This paper describes a 2020 disinformation campaign promoting the unsubstantiated claim that the novel coronavirus is the product of a Chinese bioweapons program. Exploiting a vulnerability in open-access scientific publishing, the campaign was based on papers posted to an online preprint repository designed to accelerate the diffusion of scientific knowledge. This provided the campaign with an air of scientific legitimacy, helped it reach millions of Americans, and muddied public discourse over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This case study offers insights into the tactics and practices of media manipulation, the contested nature of modern epistemic systems, the interplay of technical and social systems, and the vulnerability of open systems to manipulation.

Publishing during a pandemic: comparison of scientific knowledge between COVID-19 and Swine Flu

Scientific knowledge has a well-established cycle of generating hypotheses, testing them in experiments with proper discussion, and submitting it to the scientific community analysis through publications. It takes time to establish sample size for biomedical studies, especially concerning the effect of medicines and vaccines. The World Health Organization's protocol estimates that more than 19 months of experiments are necessary to approve a vaccine, for example. As the world has witnessed, a pandemic with immediate impact on human lives urges scientific methods to speed up finding solutions. Here it was assessed the speed and volume of information generated by the Academia to tackle the COVID-19 compared to the Swine Flu pandemic. Were considered papers published in journals indexed in PubMed, the most comprehensive biomedical scientific database available online. The number of publications about COVID-19 was 11 times higher than the number of publications about Swine Flu in a one-year timeframe. Though the expectation were finding more international collaborations and studies focusing on vaccines for COVID-19, papers were mostly concentrated in China and studying symptoms, managing the pandemic, reviewing knowledge, or establishing clinical trials. For sure, science is working faster every day for solutions in biomedical critical situations. However, the fast volume of information might blurry decisions on public health management. This paper's results show it is mandatory before using papers to take actions, waiting for the scientific community to first progress on its scientific knowledge cycle and mature discussions on the generated knowledge.

Editorial N° 04/2021 Water: An Urgent Matter for Brazil

Brazil is one of the most biodiverse countries of the world (UNEP, 2019), but is going through a serious environmental imbalance, motivated by the current institutional crisis of the Ministry of the Environment (MMA, by its acronym in Portuguese), which has resulted in the reduction of Councils and decision-making bodies of the Ministry, discourses of denial of environmental policies relevance, breakdown of tools and environmental policies (CAPELARI et al., 2020).This is an unprecedented movement that jeopardizes natural resources preservation, wild fauna and flora and the planet. The production of scientific knowledge is key in a moment of misinformation, acting as an important foundation for decision-making, as well as for the development of public policies. [...]we present in this session two articles that were awarded in the International Workshop entitled: II Sustentare e V WIPIS - Workshop Internacional sobre Indicadores de Sustentabilidade, which provide an important discussion on water. [...]sustainability is a multifaceted phenomenon and requires an interdisciplinary construction to create systemic actions to face historical and complex problems (CONTI, 2020;DE BENEDICTO et al. 2020). [...]Municipalities, States, and the Federal Government should treat it as a priority, in order to provide living and development conditions for current and future generations.