Impact
WE TAKE IT AS A GIVEN THAT SOUND STRATEGY AND TACTICAL SUCCESSES ARE ONLY A MEANS TO AN END. OUR GOAL, OUR “END,” IS SOCIAL CHANGE - THE ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW IDEAS AND RECOMMENDATIONS THAT IMPROVES PEOPLE'S LIVES.
Impact
The fruit fly might just hold the key to life.
If you're a biomedical scientist who studies fruit flies' genetic make-up, this much is clear. You know that the fruit fly genome has implications for human life -- and that continued research might just benefit humankind one day in the future.
But how do you explain this to non-scientists...
Research shows that young people who use drugs or alcohol are much more likely to get into trouble with the law. The U.S. juvenile justice system currently holds more than two million teens – as many as four out of five of them have drug or alcohol problems.
Yet alcohol and substance abuse problems among America's youth frequently go undetected. Many young people end up back on the street, caught in a vicious cycle of drugs, alcohol, and crime that they don't know how to escape.
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Seven years ago, a new organization was formed, driven by the conviction that a series of seemingly unrelated events—like the re-emergence of a crippling wheat fungus in Uganda; the loss of Afghanistan’s valuable seed collection during the country’s civil war; and the steady, silent, and permanent loss of crop diversity due to poor funding and equipment failures—could one day imperil the survival of the human race.
For the Global Crop Diversity Trust, all of these problems were part of a troubling global trend. From Africa to Asia to Europe and the Americas, myriad forces natural and man-made were steadily threatening the diversity of food crops that literally make human civilization possible.
The new County Health Rankings reports rank every county in the nation on a comprehensive set of health factors and outcomes. A project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin, it is the first of its kind and an important tool for local policymakers, advocates and others. This video, featuring Health Rankings researchers and RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, tells the story of how one county used the Rankings to inspire action.
In this video, Dr. Richard Payne discusses with Andy Burness the need for scientists to communicate about their work. Dr. Payne is a professor of medicine and divinity at Duke University, and the Esther Colliflower Director of the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life.
June 24 marked a first for Burness: after 25 years of managing events alongside our nonprofit partners, we tried hosting one of our own. Over lunch at Washington’s Busboys and Poets, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Alex S. Jones took the stage alongside Nicco Mele, who has made his mark as Howard Dean’s internet operations director, a Harvard lecturer and co-Founder of EchoDitto.
The question of the day was simple: “Are we losing the news?”
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