GES Colloquium, 1/15/18 - Qian Xu | This study adopted a quantitative content analysis to examine how source attributes of opinion leaders and their message framing influenced user engagement in the public discourse of genetically modified organisms on Chinese social media.
GES Colloquium, 1/22/19 - Ramon Leon | The rapid evolution of herbicide resistant weeds and the lack of new herbicides has prompted a reevaluation of how HR crops should be considered just a component within a more complex integrated management system and not as the sole tool for ensuring weed control. The excessive optimism that the agricultural and scientific community exhibited during the first years of use of glyphosate resistant crops reduced our ability to identify the limitations of the technology and the negative consequences of not taking corrective actions on time.This is a cautionary tale that should inform the introduction and use of new HR traits.
GES Colloquium, 1/29/19 - Fred Gould | The GES Center is launching our new NSF-funded Research Traineeship, Agricultural Biotechnology and Our Evolving Food, Energy, and Water Systems, or AgBioFEWS. We are in the process of recruiting our first cohort of students and designing details of our courses. We would like to use this colloquium to get feedback from students on faculty on a choices that we will be making.
GES Colloquium, 2/5/18 - Jennifer Kuzma | Crop gene editing emerged just over a decade ago as a promising set of biotechnology techniques designed to more quickly and precisely introduce new or altered genes to change plant characteristics for better growth, product quality, processing, nutrition, or sustainability. Scientists in academia and the ag-biotech industry alike are promoting gene editing, through techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, as the start of a second biotechnology revolution in agriculture.
GES Colloquium, 2/12/18 | Editing nature: Governance hurdles and ethical holes - Dr. Natalie Kofler will describe her and co-authors' vision for a coordinated global governance model that integrates local community decision-making in ways that are both context-dependent and global in scope.
GES Colloquium, 2/19/18 - Jason Delborne | In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine formed a committee of experts to explore the potential for biotechnology to address forest health. The committee focused on threats to forest health from pests and pathogens and considered challenges and opportunities of biotech trees (genetically engineered or gene-edited) as solutions. NASEM released this report in January 2019, and Jason participated in the public release of this report in Washington, DC and a session at the AAAS annual meeting to summarize findings of the report.
GES Colloquium, 2/26/18 - Khara Grieger - Governance Strategies for Emerging Risks of Solar Radiation Management | Decision-makers may soon need to consider other options than mitigation and adaptation to deal with impacts from global climate change.
GES Colloquium, 3/5/18 - Aditi Mankad - Social Science and Synthetic Biology: Maximising Impact | This talk will provide an overview of Australia's investment into synbio via the Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform (SynBio FSP) and how the social science application domain plays an important and integrative role in the future development of synbio technology in Australia.
GES Colloquium, 3/19/18 - Teshanee Williams - Using Cognitive Story Structures to Examine Influence in the Regulatory Review Process | Genetically engineered salmon have been approved for human consumption in the United States (US) and Canada, but it has only been released for sale in Canada. In the US, opposition to the approval caused regulatory agencies to update the voluntary labeling guidance, requiring food manufacturers to label foods disclosing information about bioengineered foods and bioengineered food ingredients. Still, some scholars have emphasized the need for risk management to be inclusive of narratives beyond that of the elitist risk assessment and reduction approach.
GES Colloquium, 3/26/18 - Anna Whitfield | Exploiting the specificity of virus-vector interactions for new disease control strategies
GES Colloquium, 4/2/18 - Danesha Carley, NC State's New Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science in Agriculture | Currently, there is a lack of university programs in regulatory science specifically related to agriculture. There is a need for a new program that can provide undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education opportunities in regulatory science, and also provide a forum for the advancement of regulatory science in agriculture. With the importance of regulatory science for innovation in agriculture, and the leadership position that NC State has established in the arena of agricultural advances and technology, we are forming a Center of Excellence for Regulatory Science in Agriculture (CERSA).
GES Colloquium, 4/9/18 - Emily Pechar, Environmental Policy | Understanding public distrust of science is both theoretically and practically important. While previous research has focused on the association between political ideology and trust in science, it is at best an inconsistent predictor. This study demonstrates that two dimensions of political ideology—attitudes towards governments and corporations—can more precisely predict trust in science across issues.
