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Indeed: 2011 was the International Year of Chemistry (IYC). But why IUPAC and UNESCO dedicated a year to that basic science? It was for two reasons: one looking at the past and one looking at the future. Looking at the past, 2011 was the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. She was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. And her discovery was very important for both the science in itself and its applications to health. Radium’s radioactivity seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy. The discovery of radium allowed other great names in chemistry and physics like Rutherford to study the atom and radioactivity decay. In medicine, the radioactivity of radium allowed the development of radiation therapies, used to control or kill malignant cells in cancer treatment. ...

I wish you a very happy New Year 2012! Lots of things happened since 6 years (since I started this blog) and lots of things happened in this last year too. I’m sure it is the same in your life. I hope you will have lots of new discoveries in 2012 as well as a healthy and strong life, full of happiness! If I look back, the top 5 posts this year were: ...

There are a few days left to vote for the Internet of Things Awards 2011. Initially I thought it was a very good thing, with lots of nice ideas for the future. But then I felt something was missing, imho of course: practical projects that will help the remaining 5 billion people who are not affected by that internet of things as it currently is. Let me explain … ...

When I wrote my last post, videos of health talks at TEDxBrussels were not out yet. Now they are and you can watch them below … First Andrew Hessel started by talking about synthetic biology, biotechnologies and his participation in the open source biology movement. One day, there will be an org (organism) for the things you want to do. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQtyRzP7SUg] Then Jack Tiszynski followed with the drastic idea of replacing doctors by software for diagnostics and brought the idea that we will have a “virtual double” in our future smartphones. This double will know our predisposition to diseases and suggest prevention methods and cures. ...

TEDxBrussels is a local, self-organized event that brings a TED-like experience to Brussels. I already often mentioned videos and presentations from TED (for instance here, here or here). When I read that it will again be organized in Brussels in 2011 I decided to attend this edition. Here is a short summary of this intense day with my tweets and the just-released videos. It would be very time consuming to write about each and every talk. Here I will just highlight speakers I like the most (you can have a look at TEDxBrussels website for the complete list of speakers). ...

The NPR has produced a nice visualization / video showing how population grew to 7 billion ( original article): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcSX4ytEfcE] If you want to model the improvement in child survival, you just turn the birth tap off (or nearly). Then, with wealth, prevention, healthcare and better food, the population will also grow older (death tap also turned off or nearly) and during a certain time, lots of adults will be economically active (i.e. they will work and consume). This is a demographic dividend. But it comes with a risk: at the next stage, there might be a disproportionately high number of people compared to / depending on a small number of active adults (the next generation). In addition, if you fill it up slowly but you also empty it slowly, the container risk to be full soon, it all depends on the various rates … ...

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its Human Development Report 2011. It " argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together – and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals". In this report, there is a ranking, the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a way to measure the development. It combines indicators in three main dimensions: health, education and living standards. The mathematical way used to combine these indicators is explained in a technical note (PDF). The interest is of course to have a single number to use in comparison for both social and economic development. It’s not the only element to take into account to compare development. It’s merely a starting point giving an overview of development. An in-depth discussion about development and comparison between countries will need to go further and analyze each indicator separately (as well as other indicators if possible). ...

Just a little post to write how I hate those “Read More” sentences in blog post! [caption id=“attachment_1152” align=“aligncenter” width=“497” caption=“Grrr, again a disguised “Read More”! This post has a very low information content as presented.”] [/caption] “Read More” is a way to cut your blog post in two: one part that will be shown in your blog RSS flux, on your front page and another part that will only be read by those who click on the “Read More”. A variant of this is the […] (as shown above). ...

The world reached a population of 7 billion people at the end of October 2011. United Nations symbolically chose Danica May Camacho, a girl born in Philippine, to mark this global population milestone. I recently wrote about the world population getting older, about non communicable diseases becoming the most dangerous threat to health ( here too) or about World Population Day(11th of July 2011). We are now 7 billion and new projections tells us we will be 9.3 billion in 2050. When I heard all the news around this, I couldn’t help but think about Hans Rosling’s presentation on population growth at TED Cannes, in 2010. ...

Happy Diwali 2011 … from my office! :) By the way, I recently found some Maggi Masala Spice noodles in Brussels. I’m feeling like a student now ;)