Energy technology is an interdisciplinary engineering science having to do with the efficient, safe, environmentally friendly and economical extraction, conversion, transportation, storage and use of energy, targeted towards yielding high efficiency whilst skirting side effects on humans, nature and the environment.

For people, energy is an overwhelming need and as a scarce resource it has been an underlying cause of political conflicts and wars. The gathering and use of energy resources can be harmful to local ecosystems and may have global outcomes.

Interdisciplinarity

An interdisciplinary field or multidisciplinary field is a field of study that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged.

Originally the terms interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary were applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies that cut across several established disciplines or traditional fields of study. Subsequently, the terms have earned much wider usage, such as when applied to new professions (e.g., geobiology) and to older fields such as psychiatry where the professional must have advanced credentials in several fields of study.

Interdisciplinarity involves researchers, students, and teachers in the goals of connecting and integrating several academic schools of thought, professions, or technologies — along with their specific perspectives — in the pursuit of a common task. Interdisciplinary approaches typically focus on problems thought to be too complex or vast for adequate understanding with a single disciple. The epidemiology of AIDS, for example, or global warming, require understanding of diverse disciplines. “Interdisciplinary” may be applied where the subject is felt to have been neglected or even misrepresented in the traditional disciplinary structure of research institutions, for example, women’s studies or ethnic area studies.

The adjective interdisciplinary is most often used in educational circles when researchers from two or more disciplines pool their approaches and modify them so that they are better suited to the problem at hand, including the case of the team-taught course where students are required to understand a given subject in terms of multiple traditional disciplines. For example, the subject of land use may appear differently when examined by different disciplines, for instance, biology, chemistry, economics, geography, and politics.

In a sense, interdisciplinary involves attacking a subject from various angles and methods, eventually cutting across disciplines and forming a new method for understanding the subject. A common goal of understanding unites the various methods and acknowledges a common or shared subject or problem, even if it spreads to other disciplines.

Adverse effect

In medicine, an adverse effect is a harmful and undesired effect resulting from a medication or other intervention such as surgery. An adverse effect may be termed a “side effect”, when judged to be secondary to a main or therapeutic effect, and may result from an unsuitable or incorrect dosage or procedure, which could be due to medical error. Adverse effects are sometimes referred to as “iatrogenic” because they are generated by a physician/treatment. Some adverse effects only occur only when starting, increasing or discontinuing a treatment. Using a drug or other medical intervention which is contraindicated may increase the risk of adverse effects. Adverse effects may cause medical complications of a disease or procedure and negatively affect its prognosis. They may also lead to non-compliance with a treatment regimen.

The harmful outcome is usually indicated by some result such as morbidity, mortality, alteration in body weight, levels of enzymes, loss of function, or as a pathological change detected at the microscopic, macroscopic or physiological level. It may also be indicated by symptoms reported by a patient. Adverse effects may cause a reversible or irreversible change, including an increase or decrease in the susceptibility of the individual to other chemicals, foods, or procedures, such as drug interactions.

In clinical trials, a distinction is made between adverse events (AEs) and serious adverse events (SAEs). Generally, any event which causes death, permanent damage, birth defects, or requires hospitalization is considered an SAE. [1] The results of these trials are often included in the labeling of the medication to provide information both for patients and the prescribing physicians.

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