Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!bionet!com.qz.se!P2269 From: P2269@com.qz.se ("ENG-LEONG FOO ", MIRCEN-STOCKHOLM) Newsgroups: bionet.technology.conversion Subject: Symposium "The Potentials of Independent Initiatives" Message-ID: <8907041303.AA08092@net.bio.net> Date: 4 Jul 89 12:09:00 GMT Sender: daemon@NET.BIO.NET Reply-To: Bioconversion STOCKHOLM Lines: 72 Afternoon Session (Part 3) From: Eng-leong Foo (Stockholm) The afternoon session was held at the Karolinska Institute with 3 lectures and posters and an exhibit. Sten Joste gave his lecture on "Targeting for Inventions". He is the chairman of the International Federation of Inventors Association (IFIA) and executive director of IDEA (Innovations for Development Association). Mr. Sten Joste also provides management consultations for structural development of communities and companies in the Third World. Dr. Edgar Da Silva is coordinator for UNESCO's ( Division for Scientific Research and Higher Education) Program in Microbiology and Biotechnology. He is also a member of several interagency task forces and organizer of numerous training courses and international conferences. His lecture "International Co-operation in Applied Microbology" summaried, as unique examples, background and history of both the GIAM (Global Impact of Applied Microbiology) Conferences and the MIRCEN program. Both have facilitated the creation and a network of a world-wide infrastructure of specialized research institutes and laboratories over the past 3 decades. The 3rd lecture for the afternoon session was "Towards professional ethics in biotechnology" by Prof. Carl-Goran Heden who is the president of the World Academy of Arts and Science. He was the former director of the Stockholm MIRCEN (1976-1988). His lecture dealt with the significance of professional ethics, the social impacts of biotechnology and codes-of-conduct as well as a summary of his contributions in his 40 years of carreer as a bioengineer in his retirement speech from the Karlinska Institute. He ends his lecture by highlighting the challenge of bioresource management and management of biotechnology by the networking of institutes and corporations to bear with the problems in the Third Worlds. In addition to those mentioned earlier by other speakers, Heden outlined activities of the U.S. based Resource Development Foundation, a British company called Rural Investment Overseas Ltd as well as the Biological Resource Development Foundation (BDRF) and Biological Resource Development Corporation (BDRC). There were 10 posters and one exhibit; 7 were about the medical microbiology activities at the Dept of Bacteriology, Karolinska Inst and the others were : E.L.Foo, Computer Communication - A Tool for international networking and cooperation; Hans Rosling, KONZO - a new nutritional disease in Africa; Bengt Thoren, The crude oil engine; Bengt Thoren, A solar stove; Kent Vedefors, The LNC -combi processing machine for leaf juice extract and pulp production. Because of requests asking me to elaborate my poster presentation, I will send in a separate message about my poster. KONZO is caused by consuming inadequately pretreated cassava. The breakdown of cyanide derivatives which is found in such incompletely processed cassava, after human consumption, is thought to be the cause of the disease which affects the human nervous system. The LNC-combi processing machine is an interesting machine which allows the user to extract juice and pulp from fresh leaves. Such machines have been used in nutritional programs in developing countries for the complete use of fresh leaves in food recipes. During the exhibition a cake recipe using pulped wheat leaves/juice and banana was made for tasting. Extracted juices could be used for the production of various end-products, e.g. pharmaceuticals. (more on evening session follows).