By Nora Maccoby
-USA-

Energy equals civilization. Our modern society is managed by computers and an electrical grid system that are extremely vulnerable to outside forces, both natural and man-made. Several causal factors are now in play that could bring life as we know it to a stand-still.

I am a civilian. For the last six years I have worked off and on with the United States military, most recently as a Senior Communications Specialist for The Energy Conversation. The U.S Armed Services are leading the fight to get our nation off of oil and into renewables - mostly because of common sense, but also because they make us more independent and therefore more secure.

by Nora Maccoby
- USA -

"The question for me has always been: How can I help the world?" Mara Haseltine smiles - her large aquatic blue eyes bright and passionate. "Because it's a race against time. We have to engage people into a scientific narrative so that everyone can be part of the solutions."

In her thirties, Haseltine is both a professor of Environmental Studies at The New School in New York City and a ground breaking artist - merging science, functionality and art. She was one of the first people in the world to be exposed to bio-informatics, the 3D representation of molecular and submolecular data that went along with the Human Genome Project, run by her father, Dr. William Haseltine.

"With the discovery of how proteins function, we saw how we could advance medicine from the dark ages to a new renaissance. What I saw with proteins was that function follows form," Haseltine explains. "So I began making sculptures with molecular and submolecular armature/shape. Taking things you couldn't even see and making them giant."