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"The pandemic is a portal." In the words of the novelist scholar Arundhati Roy, the COVID-19 pandemic is not merely an epic calamity. It has opened up a new space, a portal, to rethink everything, for example, in how we live, work, produce scientific knowledge, provide health care, and relate to others, be they humans or nonhuman animals in planetary ecosystems. Meanwhile, as the intensity of the pandemic escalates, digital health tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT), biosensors, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being deployed to address the twin goals of social distancing and health care in a "no touch" emergency state. Permanent integration of digital technologies into every aspect of post-pandemic civic life—health care, disease tracking, education, work, and beyond—is considered by governments and technology actors around the world. Although digital transformation of health care and industry are in the works, we ought to ensure that digital transformation does not degenerate into "digitalism," which we define here as an unchecked and misguided belief on extreme digital connectivity without considering the attendant adverse repercussions on science, human rights, and everyday practices of democracy. Indeed, the current shrinking of the critically informed public policy space amid a devastating pandemic raises principled questions on the broader and long-term impacts that digital technologies will have on democratic governance of planetary health and society. To this end, a wide range of uncertainties—technical, biological, temporal, spatial, and political—is on the COVID-19 pandemic horizon. This calls for astute and anticipatory innovation policies to steer the health sciences and services toward democratic ends. In this article, we describe new and critically informed approaches to democratize COVID-19 digital health innovation policy, especially when the facts are uncertain, the stakes are high, and decisions are urgent, as they often are in the course of a pandemic. In addition, we introduce a potential remedy to democratize pandemic innovation policy, the concept of "epistemic competence," so as to check the frames and framings of the pandemic innovation policy juggernaut and the attendant power asymmetries. We suggest that if epistemic competence, and attention to not only scientific knowledge but also its framing are broadly appreciated, they can help reduce the disparity between the enormous technical progress and investments made in digital health versus our currently inadequate understanding of the societal dimensions of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and extreme digital connectivity on the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Omics technologies are key to research and innovation in human health, food and nutrition, drugs, agriculture, and ecology research. Yet, the actual scope of applications is much broader. One emerging possibility is planetary science driven in part by current debates on and possibilities for travel to Mars. In July 2018, radar evidence has suggested the presence of subglacial liquid water in a 20-km-wide zone, likely a saltwater lake, in the Planum Australe region in the south pole of Mars. If confirmed, this will be a promising place to search for microbial life on the red planet. Meanwhile, existential threats to life on earth such as climate change are bolstering the current interests by spacefaring nations for manned long-term space travel to other planets. A new global space industry is also on the rise; Mars-related technology innovation could potentially allow for rapid Earth-to-Earth transport as well, for example, in times of humanitarian and ecological crisis. Against this overarching context, we coin and define here the new concept of "Mars-omics": the systems level study of how travel to and being on Mars affect human health, and how human presence on Mars impacts the life forms that might already be there, through changes such as space agriculture and other planetary transformations in Mars. Additionally, Mars-omics calls for new ways of thinking about scientific uncertainty and technology futures in such highly novel contexts. For example, how shall we frame scientific uncertainty when extrapolation of scientific unknowns across the planets is vastly difficult, nonlinear, and complex? Is uncertainty an accident or integral part of emerging technologies? These questions are important for achieving new relevance for and future progress in omics system science applications in planetary science and space explorations. In summary, this article suggests that omics has relevance in contexts beyond those on planet Earth. Moreover, past omics applications such as precision medicine may need to be reconceptualized in future novel settings, such as long-term space travel. We conclude the article with the key tenets of next-generation futurists in a context of Mars-omics. Space (still) is the final frontier for humans, medicine, engineering, and omics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food and engineering sciences have tended to neglect the importance of human nutrition sciences and clinical study of new molecules discovered by food engineering community, and vice versa. Yet, the value of systems thinking and use of omics technologies in food engineering are rapidly emerging. Foodomics is a new concept and practice to bring about ''precision nutrition'' and integrative bioengineering studies of food composition, quality, and safety, and applications to improve health of humans, animals, and other living organisms on the planet. Foodomics signals a three-way convergence among (1) food engineering; (2) omics systems science technologies such as proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics; and (3) medical/life sciences. This horizon scanning expert review aims to challenge the current practices in food sciences and bioengineering so as to adopt foodomics and systems thinking in foodstuff analysis, with a focus on possible applications of metabolomics. Among the omics biotechnologies, metabolomics is one of the prominent analytical platforms of interest to both food engineers and medical researchers engaged in nutritional sciences, precision medicine, and systems medicine diagnostics. Medical and omics system scientists, and bioengineering scholars can mutually learn from their respective professional expertise. Moving forward, establishment of ''Foodomics Think Tanks'' is one conceivable strategy to integrate medical and food sciences innovation at a systems scale. With its rich history in food sciences and tradition of interdisciplinary scholarship, the Silk Road countries offer notable potential for synthesis of diverse knowledge strands necessary to realize the prospects of foodomics from Asia and Middle East to Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]