Listen to the podcast here. Make sure to follow along with the accompanying slides.

Talk given Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Dr. Richard J. Chalaturnyk, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta.

CO2 emissions from human activities have long been identified as the leading cause of global climate change. Point source capture and geological storage of CO2 has been identified as one of the many options to mitigate climate change and one of Canada’s and Alberta’s primary options. Dr. Chalaturnyk has been actively involved in the storage component of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) locally and globally as a primary researcher and major project reviewer and policy developer. He will address several key issues regarding risk, performance and uncertainty around the geological storage of CO2, and Alberta’s CCS role on the global stage.

Listen to the podcast here. Make sure to follow along with the accompanying slides.

Talk given Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Dr. Mark Joffe, Medical Director for the Infection Prevention and Control Program at the Royal Alexandria Hospital; Dr. Colin Soskolne, Professor of Epidemiology who established and directs the epidemiology program in the School of Public Health at the U of A; and Dr. James Talbot, Senior Provincial Medical Officer of Health for Alberta Health Services.

Nations worldwide are scrambling to develop battle plans to fight the H1N1 pandemic, but as immunization strategies and logistics are developed, are ethical issues being overlooked? Who gets access to vaccines? Who’s first in line? Can immunization be mandated? Should it be? What are the ethics of fighting a global pandemic? Join experts for a thought provoking session.

Podcast available here.

Talk given on Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Eva Bogdan, Just Food Edmonton; Becky Lipton, Becky Lipton Research and Consulting, Ltd.; Angie Dedrick and Susan Roberts, Growing Food Security Alberta.

Food sovereignty is a global movement borne out of grassroots responses to the international food system and food injustices associated with it. Even kitchen table discussions across the country now focus on how to further food sovereignty nationally and personally. Explore food sovereignty from the global to the local and actively delve into the implications of food sovereignty here in Edmonton.

Podcast: Food Sovereignty Movements

In this dance, people move like the Northern Lights in an up and down motion as they dance around the drum. We join hands in a circle and dance clockwise with the drum and singers sitting in the middle. The beat of the drum is like the heartbeat of the community and all members move as one. This is also a time to swap stories, catch up on the latest news, break bannock and share some tea — and even better, to hear both the old and new songs sung by your favorite singers. It’s a time to honor traditions and memories of our ancestors dancing around their starry campfires, flickering against the dark blanket of the night sky.

This Round Dance was held January 29, 2010, in Dinwoodie Lounge on campus. Click on each picture to enlarge.

Talk given by Dr. Toni Samek, School of Library and Information Studies, on Wednesday, February 3.

Library of the Castle Chantilly in France.

Come and learn about library and information workers in many nations who identify as political actors, who offer new possibilities for strategies of resistance, and who challenge censorship and other networks of control. Dr. Samek discusses how their often courageous approach to library and information work is grounded in practical, critical and emancipatory terms. These librarians help shape a growing global information justice movement – from Argentina to Zambia!

-Diana, Communications Coordinator

Talk given on Friday, February 5 at 10:00AM by Dr. Anup Basu, Department of Computing Science; Dr. Lord Mawuko-Yevugah, Department of Political Science; Omolola Olobayo, Gomola Ventures and Global Soap and Detergent Industry, Nigeria; Dr. Wisdom Tettey, Faculty of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary. Moderated by Nancy Hannemann, University of Alberta International, and Dr. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, Vice-Chancellor, Kwara State University, Nigeria.

Three-quarters of the world’s four billion cell phones are located in the developing world. In places where infrastructure such as roads, postal service and landlines is limited, cell phones can substitute for travel and allow quick access to information, in turn contributing to growth in GDP. Find out more about how telecommunication technology is transforming developing countries and the prospect for universal access to cell phones and the internet.

This session links live to Kwara State University in Nigeria to gain perspectives directly from the developing world.

-Diana, Communications Coordinator

Podcast available here. Please note: Due to technical difficulties, the first 10 minutes are missing. However, the podcast portion that we do have is extremely interesting and you should have a listen. It is about 40 minutes.

 Talk given Friday, February 5, 2010 at 2:00PM by Greg Queyranna, of Peace by Piece.

While cell phones and other electronic gadgets have become nearly indispensible in recent years, the rise in the global demand for these consumer electronics has fuelled a brutal war in Central Africa that has killed an estimated six million people since 1998, more than any other conflict since World War II. Vicious militias in the Congo are currently making millions of dollars every year exploiting and selling “conflict minerals” that end up in our electronics, and using their money to buy weapons, launch wars, terrorize civilians and rape tens of thousands of women and girls. Learn more about the international link between this generation’s deadliest war, how we in Canada are connected to it, and what we can do to help end this conflict.

-Diana, Communications Coordinator

Directed by Barry Cohen, Toxic Trespass is an 80-minute documentary that “delves into the chemical soup that surrounds us and that we’ve taken for granted.” In 2008, it won “Best Documentary” by the Writer’s Guild of Canada (WGC). This documentary was shown on Thursday, February 4 during International Week, as a part of the National Film Board of Canada’s movie showcase.

 A Review.

I don’t even know how I should begin. After the film, I was just wondering around the campus and thinking about the film and the ideas I was having. I was touched, inspired and disappointed. I will try to capture my feelings and thoughts in this little blog in the hopes that we can all unite together to solve this problem. After all, united we stand, divided we fall.

This friend of mine is allergic to peanuts; a year ago he told me that almonds and walnuts are no longer edible for him. Just before the Christmas, he found out that he is pretty much allergic to any types of nuts now. We had always suspected if environmental change has any thing to do with this.  After watching the film “Toxic Trespass,” I think we are not so far off the track.

In the film, there are many very convincing and compelling evidences where the toxins in the environment are altering our body system. There are cancer-inducing agents flowing in the air, gene-mutating chemicals running down the water. Those toxins even change sex ratio; a native reserve in Ontario found that under the influence of the chemical substances, females were produced twice as often as males!  Pollution is everywhere, and we seem have no protections against those chemical soups. “You can say no to unprotected sex, you can quit smoking, but you can’t stop breathing;” one of the health care professionals has made a very good point in the film. I think we cannot just simply address this environmental problem as “their problems” and think the effects are “far away.”

We are aware of those issues, yet there are minimum amount of laws and regulations put in place to help stopping those toxics. In the film, government chooses to ignore the problem and major powerful cooperations deny the responsibilities.

I felt that thinking about the problem just made it larger and more complicated! I felt helpless that we would never be able to solve this problem at all. I guess the point is not to solve the problem with a single step and an easy solution; rather is to start now and have more people involved in it. If our generation cannot solve the problem, it shall carry on as a legacy.

-Yvonne, I-Week blogger

In his lecture “Towards a Canadian Arctic Strategy”, Professor Frankyln Griffiths offered valuable insights into how a new-found interest in the Arctic region among various circumpolar states has the potential to translate into conflict. However, given the Professor’s apparent commitment to a liberal theory of international politics, he has a strong faith in the ability of institutional arrangements to dampen bourgeoning inter-state conflict. Griffiths seems confident that an international regime could be developed and, when in effect, help to prevent competition between states for access to resources and Arctic waterways from escalating into inter-state warfare. Griffiths envisions the potential for the creation of a central institution to promote a shared purpose for states in the Arctic.

Do you agree with Griffiths’ assessment? Or do you believe that the competition among states for resources and secure Arctic waterways will serve to undermine any shared agreement? What might drive this competition? A Hobbesian lust for power? Waltz’ considerations of the pressures that international anarchy place on states? Or the need for governments to access resources for powerful corporations whose interests they might represent?

-Matti Robertson

Jillian Buriak, Gerda De Vries, Laura Frost and Elenia Stroulia

Sponsored by WISEST/WinSETT Centre

How will emerging technologies in nanotechnology, biology, and computer science influence our common future? University of Alberta women researchers at the forefont of scientific innovation will talk about the changes their discovers make in our world. Click on the link at the top of this post to access the podcast of this session.

-Diana, Communications Coordinator