Challenges, Volume 10, Issue 1

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a disc...

I have been involved in studying and working within what is now called the Anthropocene for almost 50 years, and in all that time, not only have we failed to make much progress, but the state of the Earth’s ecosystems has generally worsened. Ye...

Social licence is rooted in perceptions of local rights holders and stakeholders. The disease focus of aquaculture health policy, practices, and research insufficiently reflects societal expectations for aquafarms to protect health of shared resource...

There are works that study personality and task performance but there are no (or very few works) that study the balancing of personalities within teams that work together towards a common goal in computer-based tasks. This study investigates how pers...

Biophysics research tends to focus on utilizing multidisciplinary technologies and interdisciplinary collaborations to study biological phenomena through the lens of chemistry and physics. Although most current biophysics work is focused on studying...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss behaviour change beyond communication to trigger “organic growth”—a marked increase in the competencies, skills and knowledge in communities, societies and local economies. The paper discusses the challenge of...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive tumor type and is usually detected at late stage. Here, mathematical modeling is used to assess the feasibility of two-step early detection with biomarkers, followed by confirmatory imaging. A...

Environmental health research is gaining interest due to the global concern of environmental factors impacting health. This research is often multifaceted and becomes complex when trying to understand the participation of multiple environmental varia...

Focusing on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as a case study, this paper explores the relationship between philanthrocapitalism, economic history, and global and planetary health. The Wellcome Trust is also briefly discussed, chiefly in t...

Modernization has now been linked to poor developmental experience, the onset of immune dysregulation and rising rates of chronic diseases in many parts of the world. Research across the epidemiological, clinical, and basic science domains supports t...

Work that addresses the cumulative impacts of resource extraction on environment, community, and health is necessarily large in scope. This paper presents experiences from initiating research at this intersection and explores implications for the amb...

Intimate partner violence (IPV), as the most common form of violence against women, is recognised as a fundamental violation of women’s human rights and a significant public health concern worldwide. IPV is also a widespread phenomenon in Afric...

Ecology is both blessed and burdened by romanticism, with a legacy that is multi-edged for health. The prefix ‘eco-’ can carry a cultural and political (subversive) baggage, associated with motivating environmental activism. Ecology is al...

Examples of urban restoration and rewilding are critical in promoting grass roots efforts to restore ecosystems diversity in built environments. Honey bees are a vital part of many ecosystems, and urban beekeeping is a growing initiative with multipl...

This paper introduces Energy-Product-Service Systems (EPSS) to overcome the issues in the liberalized energy market. Currently, conventional energy services are highly commoditized, thus eroding their competitiveness in a liberalized energy market. I...

The emerging concept of planetary health—defined as the interdependent vitality of all natural and anthropogenic ecosystems (social, political, and otherwise)—emphasizes that the health of human civilization is intricately connected to th...

Four decades ago, several health movements were sprouting in isolation. In 1980, the environmental group Friends of the Earth expanded the World Health Organization definition of health, reminding citizenry that, “health is a state of complete...

The problems and challenges associated with planetary health are vast and interconnected, and are therefore requiring of research which takes an all-of-society perspective. Following calls for input from behavioural scientists in discussions about pl...

Planetary health is a transdisciplinary approach that aims to advance the understanding of the links between human-driven changes to the planet and their consequences, and to develop appropriate solutions to the challenges identified. This emerging m...

Arctic and subarctic regions are sensitive to climate change and, reversely, provide dramatic feedbacks to the global climate. With a focus on discovering paleoclimate and paleoceanographic evolution in the Arctic and Northwest Pacific Oceans during...

Traditional (bio) ethics relies to a large degree on the analysis of problems to determine the right course of action. In particular, in medicine, a dominant text declares that there is a “Common Morality” that applies to all people. This...

Newborns defined as being of “low birth weight” (LBW) or “small for gestational age” (SGA) are global health issues of concern because they are vulnerable to mortality and morbidity. Prenatal exposures may contribute to LBW/SG...

This concept paper discusses the potential impact of chlorinated public drinking water on the assembly of the intestinal microbiome in infancy. The addition of chlorine or hypochlorite to metropolitan drinking water is routinely used worldwide as a s...

Technologies such as blockchain, big data, and the Internet of Things provide new opportunities for improving and scaling up the collection of life cycle inventory (LCI) data. Unfortunately, not all new technologies are adopted, which means that thei...

There is a growing recognition of the links between the increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases, environmental concerns including biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and socioecological issues such as ecological (in)justice. This h...

The grand challenges of our time—climate change, biodiversity losses, and global non-communicable disease rates—underscore that humanity and the planet are in crisis. Planetary health provides a unifying concept wherein efforts toward rem...

We are living in the Anthropocene period, where human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Addressing the question of how nature and societies will evolve in the Anthropocene is one of the grand challenges of our...

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In rural Africa, income generating activities of many households heavily depend on agricultural activities. In this paper, we present the results of a multi-year intervention whereby dairy farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs were taught to convert...

Recurrent cholera outbreaks in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) attracted a lot of research interest, raising questions about the effectiveness of current prevention and control methods. However, research on cholera and other water-borne diseases in Africa i...

Renewed interest in the nexus between sustainability and food security has led to growing discussions on the use of food sovereignty principles in agricultural practice. As a result of the transfiguration of the urban and socioeconomic landscape in t...