Identifying the normative challenges posed by technology’s ‘soft’ impacts

Addressing the Geotechnical Challenges Posed by Soft Clays

New HDL Research Challenges posed by Dynamically

Dynamically re-programmable hardware (e.g. Field Programmable Gate Arrays or FPGAs) change many of our basic assumptions of what hardware is. Normal hardware design focuses on the development of a static circuit of xed size, topology and functionality. The static nature of the target design entity is re ected in the design of CAD tools, hardware description languages, net-list representations a...

Public health challenges posed by chemical mixtures.

Approximately 40 million people live within a 4-mile radius of waste sites that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has assessed to date. Human populations living in the vicinity of such sites are often subjected to complex chemical exposures that may contribute to the total body burden of oxogenous chemicals. Apart from the contaminants found at waste sites, exposure m...

Therapeutic challenges posed by bacterial bioterrorism threats.

The events of the autumn of 2001 in the United States made it clear that the spectre of the use of microorganisms to intentionally harm humans is a reality. The current strategy to control disease outbreaks caused by the intentional release of bacteria is to use antimicrobial agents, both therapeutically and prophylactically. However, multidrug-resistant strains of bacterial bioterrorism agents...

Challenges posed to the maternal circulation by pregnancy

In primates, adequate growth of the fetus depends on the development of the uteroplacental unit. On the fetal side, this is achieved by the creation of the vascular network of the placenta. On the maternal side, the transformation of the spiral arteries into saccular nonreactive vessels by the trophoblast provides high blood flow to the intervillous space. Apart from the changes in the uterine ...