Century Challenges Research Articles

The multilateral challenge to the American post-Cold War hegemony : the origins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed the United States was the only global Power able to influence the geo-political outlook and aimed at exporting the values of democracy and free market. However, Moscow and Beijing did not accept what they called hegemonism, since both claimed a first-class role in the global scenario; therefore, they started working together for a multilateral world, establishing quite a close relationship within the frame of the so-called Shanghai Five, involving also four former Soviet republics of Central Asia. This area had become pivotal for access to energy sources and saw conflicting interests at stake. While the Russians wanted to safeguard their monopoly market and pipeline facility network, the Chinese pursued diversification of their oil and gas supplies. On the other hand, Washington aimed at keeping the door open to American companies. The scenario closing the millennium was very different from what had occurred ten years previously. Apart from economic contrasts, there was the ideological challenge dominating the international debate. The White House spoke about democracy and human rights, thus making such values one of its foreign policy aims. On the other side of the Pacific, China and Russia promoted stability, territorial integrity and national sovereignty as main pillars of the new XXI century challenges, to which the struggle against separatism and terrorism was added. In a few words, though not described as an alliance oriented against any country, the 2001 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation seemed to portray a world once again divided into two blocs

Depression is a XXI century challenge

Depression is one of the most relevant and discussed problems at the present stage of psychiatry's development, both in numerous scientific studies and in the media. Described for the first time several millennia ago, depressive states have been embodied in numerous cultural monuments dating back to antiquity and ancient Egypt. As early as the fifth century, Byzantine literature described "gratuitous sorrow" (John Cassian the Roman), corresponding to the modern understanding of endogenous depression.

DYSBIOSIS OR HOW IT CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE THROUGH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

Ever since probiotics have become a modern topic to discuss in the last few decades, they came out as the most important and independent regulatory system of our metabolism. ``We are what we eat`` or the way of how food modeling us. And it is not about exactly the food but the probiotics in it. In 2012 our team published an article about the connection of probiotics and glucose metabolism (1). At the same time, the whole scientific world worked on different relationships between the gut microbiome and body functions. For literally few years ago, there is a massive progress of knowing the fine mechanisms and importance on this condition – the symbiosis with ``the good`` bacteria. If we think about the reason why it is so popular today and why so many researchers work on it, we only can point out the modern lifestyle and the bad quality of food accompanied it. The relationship between those two is the busy lifestyle and the necessary to eat the canned meal fulfilled of preservatives and poor of microbiome, combined with often antibiotic uses which destroyed your balance in long-term plan. Those states of continuing do`s eventually can ruin your life through the nervous system. We can conclude that the misdiagnose of dysbiosis is the 21st century challenge.

Knowledge of Health Impact of Climate Change and Practice of Preventive Measures among Students of a Nigerian Tertiary Institution

Background: Every century has its own public health challenge. Climate change is the present century's challenge. There are various health risks arising from climate change which without mitigation actions, will tend to worsen with each passing day.
 Study Aim and Objective: To study the knowledge of health impact of climate change and practice of appropriate preventive measures among students of a Nigerian Tertiary Institution
 Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out using structured questionnaires. These questionnaires were shared randomly among students from five selected departments in the college of health science and data was analyzed using SPSS Version 20.0
 Results: It was found that all the students were aware of climate change and 91.7% knew about the effect of climate change on health. Significantly 78.7% believed that climate change was from man-made causes but surprisingly only 34.3% were taking actions in mitigating the effect of climate change.
 Conclusion: Despite the high knowledge about climate change, majority of actions taken by the students were just for convenience and to save money, not necessarily because they wanted to prevent the effects of climate change on health.
 Recommendation: Government and Non-governmental organizations should form advocacy clubs for young students as a platform to sensitize them on climate change and its effects. There is need to introduce rewards and sponsorships for individuals who successfully learn about climate change and ways to mitigate its effect on health.

Trends, Compliance Theory within the Bakassi Conflict and 21st Century Challenges to Nigeria’s Foreign Policy.

Conflicts between states is not a new thing, just as conflicts between human beings are unavoidable as a result of both state and human interactions on daily basis. Nigeria the “presumed giant of Africa” was caught in a conflict with her neighbour Cameroon baptized as “Africa in miniature”, and had to settle the Bakassi conflict amicably after some standoffs under the ICJ. The Foreign Policies of Nigeria from Independence has swung from one leader to another depending on the circumstances especially with the Bakassi palaver. This paper has a goal to systematically analyze Nigeria’s foreign policy paying attention to the transformational phases that were both inter and intra. This work went forth to look at the changes that occurred within the Foreign Policy of Nigeria after the Bakassi verdict with the Compliance Theory at work and lastly, it dwells on the Foreign policy challenges that Nigeria faces as the big man in Africa. This work espoused that the significant historical developmental trends that shaped the Foreign Policy of Nigeria were its Pan-Africanism and economic diplomacy drive backed by her support for African unity. More so, this work diagnosed that the peaceful settlement of conflicts by Nigeria took centre stage especially after the implementation of Bakassi verdict and a great challenge Nigeria faces now is the fight against Terrorism perpetrated by Boko Haram. This paper settles on the fact that, in order for Nigeria to be seen as the hegemon in Africa, her foreign policy has to be pragmatic and flexible reflecting events within Nigeria, on the continent and internationally especially with the advent of COVID-19, implementation of the Abuja High Court Verdict on the “NERA 10” and deepening Xenophobia against Nigerians in South Africa and among others.

Russian Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy: Meeting 21st Century Challenges

Foreign policy is about setting the policy aims and goals of a given country in the competitive environment of international affairs. When analyzing it, one should pay attention to many factors, namely, economic and energy potential, military-technical means, the presence of trade and economic partners, political weight and state image in the international arena, state membership in various international organizations. You can also highlight a number of tools that also play a large role in the foreign policy of states. As a specific instrument of foreign policy, public diplomacy concerns the regulation and management of international relations with various global publics in order to realise those foreign policy aims and goals. Specifically, public diplomacy intends to create a positive reputation and brand of the country, simultaneously increasing the countrys soft power potential, which is based on external and internal sources. This article intends to track and analyse the challenges and the role played by Russian public diplomacy in terms of meeting the challenges of the countrys foreign policy agenda in the 21st century. These challenges have been in a state of transformation as the nature of the environment of international relations changed. As a result, Russian public diplomacy has needed to evolve along with the changes at the global level and consequently the shifting demands enshrined in the foreign policy concepts. There are several identified distinct political policy periods noted: attempts to integrate into the Western-led global order; cooling relations with the United States dominated global order; and preparing for multi-polar and a post-Western global order.

After all, who has to be studied: The coronavirus, Brazilians, or their administrators?

This article discusses one of the great governmental challenges of the last centuries—universalization of access to potable water and sanitation services (WSS)—in view of the geographical difficulties for the provision of services in certain regions, and differences in ability to pay for water and sanitation services. It is necessary to reinforce the various links between social and environmental conditions. A review of the literature finds that countries work differently on the approach to universal access to water and sanitation services (Marques, 2010), addressing the problem according to their laws with variable results in how these services are defined. In order to achieve the desired universalization of water and sanitation services in Brazil, in addition to the investment of significant amounts of money, coordinated administration is necessary to leverage these investments. In addition to this challenging scenario, the present moment is worrying! At the beginning of the 21st century, a new pandemic is causing deaths at an alarming rate. Most countries around the world are combating the new coronavirus that has disrupted economies, caused panic, and raised hypotheses about political hegemonies. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the disease caused by the new coronavirus (COVID‐19) to be a Public Health Emergency of International Importance—the highest alert level of the Organization, as provided for in the International Health Regulations. This study discusses the alignment of these dual challenges in Brazil and what can be done toward improved water and sanitation in this difficult context.

The Mathematical Mechanism of Biological Aging

Despite aging being a universal and ever-present biological phenomenon, describing this aging mechanism in accurate mathematical terms—in particular, how to model the aging pattern and quantify the aging rate—has been an unsolved challenge for centuries. In this article, we propose a class of Coxian-type Markovian models that can provide a quantitative description of the well-known aging characteristics—the genetically determined, progressive, and essentially irreversible process. Our model has a unique structure, including a constant transition rate for the aging process, and a functional form for the relationship between aging and death with a shape parameter to capture the biologically deteriorating effect due to aging. The force of moving from one state to another in the Markovian process indicates the intrinsic biological aging force. The associated increasing exiting rate captures the external force of stress due to mortality risk on a living organism. The idea of the article is developed from Lin and Liu's paper, “Markov Aging Process and Phase-type Law of Mortality,” that was published in 2007. A big difference is that, in this article, our model uses a functional form for model parameters, which allows a parsimonious yet flexible representation for various aging patterns. Our proposed mathematical framework can be used to classify the aging pattern and the key parameters of the model can be used to measure and compare how human aging evolves over time and across populations.

Planning and Sustainable Development in the Twenty‐first Century

The use of formal planning approaches fell into disrepute in the 1980s and few guidelines exist in economics textbooks on how to plan for the systemic and profound transformations that societies need to achieve. This article questions the utility, form and method of collective planning for sustainable development. While sustainable development planning is close to past planning experiences in some respects, it is unprecedented in others. I elaborate on one particular approach to planning, which focuses on fostering collective deliberations and bargaining about alternative sustainable development strategies. Two applications confront this theoretical and methodological reflexion to concrete twenty-first century challenges: The design of national strategies to address climate change and carbon pricing policies.

Wasteland revisited: defining an agenda for a sociology of education and migration

In 2007, we argued that, when it comes to sociology of education, the lives and education of refugee children were invisible. Sociology of education was ‘a wasteland’ as far as studies of the social effects of migration were concerned. Here, we revisit this argument exploring whether education and migration has been developed into a viable specialism in the discipline, and whether one of the great societal challenges of our age is being addressed. Examining the work published on migration and education since 2005 in BJSE, we see that the majority of studies focus on the global mobility of students and on school experiences of migrant children. While these are valuable foci, what is missing is a more extensive consideration of how ‘the age of migration’ and the characteristics of global migration in the 21st century challenge the values, the policies and practices associated with state education institutions and social order.

Crop, soil and farm systems models – science, engineering or snake oil revisited

This “perspectives” article draws upon close to 50 years of experience in the development and application of crop, soil and farm systems models in pursuit of enhanced productivity and sustainability of agricultural systems. The scientific foundations and practical utility of such models have been questioned by some and this article shares the author's learnings around model development, testing and application in settings of applied agricultural research and development. The article concludes that provided a rigorous scientific approach is retained to model development, parameterisation and application, farm system models will remain essential in supporting effective agricultural research – in particular in addressing the 21st Century challenges of food security and sustainable development in the face of climate change.

Alas Kandung-based science learning tools to optimize students’ critical thinking skills

Critical Thinking Skills (CTS) are the crucial skills required by nowadays generation in dealing with the 21st Century challenges. Yet, the researches focused on higher order thinking skills are still limited. This study aimed to analyze the effect of Alas Kandung-based science learning tools on students’ CTS. The research design was pretest and post-test with non-equivalent control group. The treatment given in experimental class was the implementation of Alas Kandung-based science learning tools, while the control class was taught using common method used by the teachers. The results of this study indicated that the students’ CTS in experimental class was significantly higher than the control class [F(1,47) = 11.672, p = 0.001]. In conclusion, the Alas Kandung-based science learning tools is effective in improving students’ CTS.

Perennial vegetables: A neglected resource for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and nutrition.

Perennial vegetables are a neglected and underutilized class of crops with potential to address 21st century challenges. They represent 33–56% of cultivated vegetable species, and occupy 6% of world vegetable cropland. Despite their distinct relevance to climate change mitigation and nutritional security, perennial vegetables receive little attention in the scientific literature. Compared to widely grown and marketed vegetable crops, many perennial vegetables show higher levels of key nutrients needed to address deficiencies. Trees with edible leaves are the group of vegetables with the highest levels of these key nutrients. Individual “multi-nutrient” species are identified with very high levels of multiple nutrients for addressing deficiencies. This paper reports on the synthesis and meta-analysis of a heretofore fragmented global literature on 613 cultivated perennial vegetables, representing 107 botanical families from every inhabited continent, in order to characterize the extent and potential of this class of crops. Carbon sequestration potential from new adoption of perennial vegetables is estimated at 22.7–280.6 MMT CO2-eq/yr on 4.6–26.4 Mha by 2050.

Constructivist Retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh: Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Storytelling meets a fundamental human need, as narratives bring continuity, identity, and agency to an otherwise meaningless human experience. The retelling of stories not only facilitates connections but also allows new perspectives to emerge. Through a constructivist lens, we illustrate that The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written story known in human history, has a great deal of relevance to present times, where the COVID-19 pandemic presents itself as a once-in-a century challenge to human societies across the globe. Using a narrative framework, we accentuate the necessary elements that facilitate the narrative reconstructions in face of grief and loss stemming from the pandemic, as informed by the heroic story. We discuss the implications pertinent to mental health practitioners as well as at the broader societal level.

Police violence targeting LGBTIQ+ people in Nigeria: Advancing solutions for a 21st century challenge

The Government of Nigeria passed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) in 2014, emboldening the human rights violations of LGBT Nigerians by state and nonstate actors. Nigerian police enforce morality laws that criminalize same-sex relations, but their role as perpetrators of violence has not been well studied. Using six-year (2014 to 2019) administrative data, this article investigates the severity, prevalence, and typology of police violence and abuse of LGBT Nigerians. Since SSMPA, violence against LGBT Nigerians has risen by 214 percent. Survivors frequently report arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention, invasion of privacy, physical assault and battery, and blackmail/extortion. This study is the first to present serial, cross-sectional findings of LGBT Nigerians’ experience with the police. Available administrative reports and data were synthesized to produce a general picture of the situation on the ground. Findings point to actionable social and policy recommendations that can be taken to promote police accountability and improve police-LGBT community relations.

Inequality in the Dynamics of Development: Post-Globalisation Changes and 21st Century Challenges

Following Kuznets’ pioneering works, the growth-inequality nexus was stylised as an inverted U-shaped relation. As per that paradigm, economic inequality initially increases when a nation embarks upon a modern economic development process, but later on, declines as the development process cross a certain threshold. The paradigm roughly bears out the experience of the industrialised countries of Europe and North America from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the mid-1970s. The inevitability of the pattern came under question when data from a broader range of countries became available by the 1970s. Then the post-globalisation experience of countries around the world virtually negated the falling part of Kuznets inverted U. Most countries which profited from globalisation in the form of upward shifts of their growth trajectories also experienced a rise rather than a decline in economic inequality. The present paper is a survey of the large and interesting literature on the changing nature of inequality before and after globalisation. The survey finds that inequality across countries has actually declined as a result of globalisation whereas inequalities within countries have almost invariably increased. Apart from usual factors such as bequest and skewed distributions of wealth, the new factors that have accentuated post-globalisation inequality are widening wage disparities, inequalities of opportunities, the onslaught of automation and rent-seeking activities of a section of the rich. The survey also notes how inequality has been moderated in some counties through effective taxes and transfer programmes. After summarising the arguments why growing economic inequality cannot be left unattended, the survey concludes with an outline of the policy choices which are being currently discussed in the academic and administrative circles.

Blended-problem based learning: critical thinking skills and information literacy in cell learning

Critical thinking skills and information literacy are two competencies that students need to have in the millennial era that is loaded with a wide range of types and sources of information. This research was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of blended-problem based learning through Google Classroom application to increase students’ critical thinking and information literacy in material about cell. This research was a quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest control group design. Two classes were selected randomly from eight Mathematics and Natural Science (MIPA) grade XI classes in state high school of SMA Negeri 1 Majalengka. The experiment group experienced blended-problem based learning and the control group received a conventional-problem based learning (PBL). Critical thinking skills were measured through a test consisting of essay questions with a reliability of 0.73. Information literacy competency was measured through a questionnaire using 26 items that had been tested for validity and reliability, resulting in an alpha coefficient of 0.896. Data were analyzed quantitatively using independent t-test and produced p-value of 0.021 and 0.018 for critical thinking skills and information literacy respectively. This shows that statistically there are significant differences in students’ critical thinking skills and information literacy between blended-PBL and conventional-PBL. This research indicates that the blended-PBL strategy can be implemented as a learning strategy, especially in Biology to prepare students for the 21 st century challenges.

Using the hope-centered career inventory (HCCI)—Italian version with healthcare professionals

To address twenty-first century challenges, Niles, Amundson, and Neault (2011) developed the Hope-Centered Model of Career Development (HCMCD) from which they derived the Hope-Centered Career Inventory (including domains of hope, self-reflection, self-clarity, visioning, goal setting/planning, implementing, and adapting). The current study tests the psychometric properties, structural, convergent, and discriminant validity of the Italian version of the HCCI. Confirmatory factor analyses in a sample of 536 healthcare professionals supported the validity of the measure among healthcare professional, confirmed the model of hope-centered career competencies, and reinforced the importance of hope for an effective career self-management in the current work context.

Products, Patents, Proportionality – How German Patent Law Responds to 21st Century Challenges

Abstract German patent law faces challenges in trying to accommodate a changing technological and economic reality. As a result, recent legislative initiatives have been dominated by discussions about adjusting the German Patent Act, especially with regard to the claim for an injunction. This article gives a brief overview of these new challenges as well as the legal background of injunctions in German patent law and the underlying case law. It also evaluates the proposed amendment of the provision on injunctions in the discussion draft of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) on the modernisation of patent law of 14 January 2020.

Elastic recovery of monocrystalline silicon during ultra-fine rotational grinding

Micromachining of brittle materials like monocrystalline silicon to obtain deterministic surface topography is a 21st Century challenge. As the scale of machining has shrunk down to sub-micrometre dimensions, the undulations in the machined topography start to overlap with the extent of elastic recovery (spring back) of the workpiece, posing challenges in the accurate estimation of the material's elastic recovery effect. The quantification of elastic recovery is rather complex in the grinding operation due to (i) randomness in the engagement of various grit sizes with the workpiece as well as (ii) the high strain rate employed during grinding as opposed to single grit scratch tests employed in the past at low strain rates. Here in this work, a method employing inclination of workpiece surface was proposed to quantify elastic recovery of silicon in ultra-fine rotational grinding. The method uniquely enables experimental extraction of the elastic recovery and tip radius of the grits actively engaged with the workpiece at the end of the ultra-fine grinding operation. The proposed experimental method paves the way to enable a number of experimental and simulation endeavours to develop more accurate material constitutive models and grinding models targeted towards precision processing of materials. It can also be shown that using this method if the tip radius distribution of active grits is measured at different time instances, then this data can be used to assess the state of the grinding wheel to monitor its wear rate which will be a useful testbed to create a digital twin in the general framework of digital manufacturing processes.