Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Education for Employment, Economic Independence and Decision-making
Convener: Suhad Jarrar-Browne, Great Britain

With science, creativity & research: Citizens towards the next century
Diana Connie Allisio, Argentina Federation of University Women

For women's role as natural leaders to increase in society they need to be motivated to do scientific, social and analytical research because science and some new technologies are forces of social transformation. Any country that gives up on science becomes a mere market place. It will weaken as fast as those countries that hold a strong scientific field grow stronger. Science is power. Patents represent unlimited added value.

It is a very sad to those of us that have done university research and know the importance of CONSCIOUSNESS in the field of education, to have to deal with extremely low budgets and to see the average population so detached from what a researcher actually is and does. (I'm playing here with the word “ CON-CIENCIA” in Spanish. It reads like “ WITH SCIENCE” but sounds like “CONSCIOUSNESS”).

Research done in London and Pittsburg, based on the ramon y cajal principle, has shown that “intelligence results from the brains processing continuous ideas and messages” (a biological computer) others, nevertheless, believe intelligence results from continuous neurones communication. Thousands of millions of neurones in the brain get together through electric impulses (protoplasmatic contact). These impulses form parallel circuits or a neuronal net. The messages are not transmitted one by one, but rather add each other into a few of simultaneous transmissions. It is this neuronal flow that should be encouraged, promoted and increased in the world´s girls and young women in order to speed up scientific evolution, promoting inventions and incorporating science and technology. Development of human creativity is a transforming possibility that enables a human being to be his own employer and also to be an agent for change against world conflicts, poverty and abuse of human rights.

Diana Connie Allisio, CIR of the Argentine Association of University Women, completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Orthodontic Science at the University of Rosario , Argentina. She has a particular interest in technological inventions and was awarded the Gold Medal at the 1998 Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions. She is active in a number of organizations, including the Association for Art and Science: Research and Social and Sociocultural Interactions, of which she was a co-founder.