Signals: Nature's own GMOs ... and more

Vol. 1, No. 13 | May 5, 2015 | AAI Foresight

Inside Foresight Signals

> Sweet Potatoes Genetically Modified by Nature

> Calculating Cost Efficiency of Plug-in Hybrids

> A World on Fire: New Report from AAI Foresight

> News for the Foresight Community

Sweet Potatoes Genetically Modified by Nature

Nature has taken a hand in modifying itself: Sweet potatoes around the world have been found to contain the “foreign” DNA of the bacterium Agrobacterium, according to researchers at Ghent University and the International Potato Institute.

The scientists searching the genome of sweet potato cultivars used several methods to identify the Agrobacterium sequence, concluding that its presence was not the result of contamination. In fact, it may have been there for thousands of years. The sequence is active in the sweet potato genome, meaning that it offered farmers a positive trait for domestication.

The findings demonstrate that genetic modification is a natural process; humans attempting to master the craft “have the advantage that we know exactly which characteristic we add to the plant,” said Lieve Gheysen, professor of applied molecular genetics and one of the researchers involved in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Details: Ghent University.

Reference: Tina Kyndt, Dora Quispe, Hong Zhai, Robert Jarret, Marc Ghislain, Qingchang Liu, Godelieve Gheysen, and Jan F. Kreuze, “The genome of cultivated sweetpotato contains Agrobacterium T-DNAs with expressed genes: an example of a naturally transgenic food crop,” with manuscript tracking number 2014-19685RR in PNAS online Early Edition (EE) in the week of April 20, 2015. The paper will be on the cover of PNAS issue 18.

Signals: agriculture, food, GMO

Calculating Cost Efficiency of Plug-in Hybrids

A question most car buyers would want to know before purchasing a plug-in hybrid vehicle is how much energy (and money) it will save them. The answer is: It’s complicated. How often do you drive, in what kind of conditions, how far, when do you recharge—and just what kind of driver are you, anyway? The answers to these questions create a huge number of parameters for engineers to calculate, often requiring a month of study to resolve.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have now devised a method using a convex optimization algorithm to calculate cost efficiency far more quickly.

“The operating cost of a plug-in hybrid depends on many different variables, such as the way you drive, how you charge the battery, and how far you drive between charges,” says lead researcher Mitra Pourabdollah. Her thesis shows how the algorithm may be used as a tool for researchers to enter in different variables and quickly see their effects. This rapid feedback early in the design stage promises to produce cost savings down the entire production line.

“Dramatic time savings at this stage will allow more opportunities to consider other aspects of the design of the drivetrain and gain a broader perspective,” Pourabdollah says.

Source: Chalmers University of Technology.

Signals: design, hybrid vehicles

A World on Fire: New Report from AAI Foresight

AAI Foresight Inc. is pleased to announce the publication of its second Foresight Report, “A World on Fire” by futurists Robert L. Olson (Institute for Alternative Futures) and David N. Bengston (U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Strategic Foresight and Rapid Response Group).

The report summarizes the findings of a Foresight Panel convened in 2013 to address the growing incidence of wildland fires worldwide and to propose new strategies for managing them. The panel comprised seven foresight professionals—Peter C. Bishop, Jamais Cascio, James Dator, Elizabeth Hand, Michael Marien, Jonathan Peck, and David Rejeski—and two U.S. Forest Service experts on wildfire management—Sarah McCaffrey (Northern Research Station) and John Phipps (Rocky Mountain Research Station).

“The bottom line of the panelists’ thinking is that, as conditions change over time, the existing fire suppression approach will fail across the whole range of plausible future conditions, whereas the emerging fire resilience approach works in all those conditions,” the authors write. They concluded that a new paradigm for wildland fire management is needed that, rather than fighting a war on fire—a war on nature—proceeds from a better relationship with nature. The focus should thus be on resilience rather than combat.

Foresight Reports aim to reveal the methodology of professional futurist analysis and not just predict the future or prescribe actions. “A World on Fire” describes the process that the Foresight Panel undertook and the distinctive characteristics of the scenarios that panelists weighed in their discussions, which took place over a six-month period.

“A World on Fire” is available to Foresight Signals readers as a free PDF download, as is AAI Foresight’s first report, “The Future of Retail Marketing” by Timothy C. Mack. Visit AAI Foresight Reports

Call for papers! If you are working on a foresight analysis project, AAI Foresight would welcome the opportunity to publish your work in the Foresight Reports series. Please contact Cindy Wagner, consulting editor, at CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com.

Signals: fire management, foresight, futurists, resilience

News for the Foresight Community

• Publication: The Future of Foresight Professionals. The journal Futures has now published “The future of foresight professionals: Results from a global Delphi study” by Jay Gary and Heiko A. von der Gracht. The study drew on the insights of 142 experts participating in three rounds of Delphi polling over three years to produce “a framework to weigh the pros and cons of formalizing a foresight profession.” The study was published online in March and in print this month. Access the report: Science Direct, DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2015.03.005

• Book release party: The Great Transition. Retiring Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown and two of his co-authors, Janet Larsen and Matthew Roney, described key trends in investment in renewable energy technologies at a book release party in Washington, D.C., on April 24. The event was also an opportunity to congratulate Brown and the EPI team on their inspiring work over the years; the Institute will close at the end of June, as reported previously in Foresight Signals. Order The Great Transition. Read The Great Transition Celebration on the Earth Policy Institute blog. 

• Textbook: CLA 2.0. An anthology on causal layered analysis is now available in paperback or PDF. Prepared by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević, CLA 2.0: Transformative Research in Theory and Practice shows the latest developments in the layered analysis approach to effecting transformation. Details Metafuture.org

• Expert Interview of the Month: Timothy C. Mack. “The only way you can figure out what's going on is to have a network,” AAI Foresight managing principal Tim Mack tells TechCast Global. “It's not just enough to have a few guys that know enough—you really need more than just a bunch of information; you need a bunch of different perspectives to see where the crossovers are.” Read more TechCast Gobal

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Send us your signals! News about your work and other tips are welcome. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting editor.  

Want more signals from AAI Foresight? Check out the blog! Log in to add comments.

Feel free to share Foresight Signals with your networks and to submit any stories, tips, or “signals” of trends emerging on the horizon that we can share with other stakeholders and the foresight community. And if you’re interested in becoming a blogger for FS, please contact Cindy Wagner, our consulting editor, at CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com

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© 2015 AAI Foresight

Foresight Signals is a publication of AAI Foresight

1619 Main Street, #1172

Freeland, WA 98249

http://www.aaiforesight.com/

Managing Principal: Timothy C. Mack

tcmack333@gmail.com | 202-431-1652

Webmaster and IT Consultant: Tom Warner

tomwarner13@gmail.com

Consulting Editor: Cynthia G. Wagner

CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com | Twitter: @CynWag1

Jumping Technology Categories

By Timothy C. Mack

Over the years, I have written concerning the unexpected consequences for companies of moving into technologies completely new to them, encouraged by their success in other, unrelated arenas. The illusion that success is a quality that travels with its recipient to new endeavors is a form of hubris that seems most endemic to areas like Silicon Valley in California. There, the blessing (or curse) of vast disposable resources appears to be leading a number of companies out of the arena of computer software and hardware development into such terra incognita as Google’s self-driving, electric-powered car.

Vox’s Timothy B. Lee has observed that the data being collected for a number of years by the Google Street View program—which has built the detailed 3-D maps of streets worldwide that could guide such a car—and a corporate “moon shot” culture that encourages broad-based engineering endeavors provide some baseline for such an undertaking. But even breakthrough innovations in batteries and power management would be within the range of possibility.

Google already has five years of R&D invested in this self-driving car project. However, how well would Google find its way in an entirely new marketplace with technology of a distinctly new level? As Mashable writer Lance Ulanoff notes, there are as many as 6,000 parts in an automobile (although battery power does reduce that number a bit), and there is a much higher standard for drivability and driver safety than is required for software and hardware. Finally, this undertaking would require a whole new universe of suppliers and logistics.

The price points involved in such a quantum shift are quite intimidating, considering both the overhead investment per unit and the volume of units that would need to be sold to make the numbers work. While overseas production is an option (perhaps with partners), that choice could become a political football within the United States.

Competitors like Apple are in fact entering the automotive market, but by working from existing strengths, such as the CarPlay dashboard interface, says Lee. While Apple has been hiring from within the auto industry to better understand that marketplace and technology, moving from the Apple Store model to the automobile showroom floor is also tough to imagine. Google does not even have brick and mortar sales structures, meaning sales might have to go entirely digital. Then what happens to the automobile test drive?

New technology and the tight integration of hardware and software is a compelling story, as Apple demonstrates. But self-driving software for conventional cars is also compelling, and this latter approach more closely matches Google’s history of building products that run on other people’s devices.

Note: As I have observed elsewhere, the liability issues for self-driving cars are likely to take years and maybe even decades to sort out. Unintended consequences arise from even small shifts in direction. The outcomes of such an adventure are difficult to estimate, but they are likely to be substantial and messy.

Timothy C. Mack is managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc.

Further reading: Is Apple building a self-driving vehicle or is it not?

“Apple really seems to be building an Apple Car. That's not as crazy as it sounds,”

Timothy B. Lee, Vox (updated February 19, 2015).

“6 reasons why Apple is not building a car,” Lance Ulanoff, Mashable (February 18, 2015).

Images:  Google Blog; Apple.

Signals: Wave Energy... Unequal Inequality... Craft Villages... and more

Vol. 1, No. 9 | March 2, 2015 | AAI Foresight

Inside Foresight Signals

> Wave Energy Gears Up

> Income Inequality Is Unequal in Europe

> “Craft Villages” May Succumb to Globalization

> Battery Challenges in Coming Years: Report from Timothy C. Mack

> Announcements from AAI Foresight

Wave Energy Gears Up

Harvesting the power of the oceans to produce cheap electricity has long been a dream of green engineering. So far, however, wave energy has been hampered by the inconsistencies of waves themselves, which vary in timing and height, making it difficult to create a reliable conversion system.

Now, a Swedish company, CorPower Ocean, reports that its new wave system can anticipate the sizes of incoming waves so that it can capture the entire spectrum of wave energy. As a result, the company claims, it can generate five times more energy than current state-of the-art systems and for a third of the cost.

The CorPower system also benefits from a “cascade” gear, designed at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KHT), which efficiently converts linear motion into rotation. Its numerous small pinions and wheels enable the device to handle heavy loads and high velocities.

The company plans to install a half-scale pilot version of the technology in November 2015 in cooperation with the multinational electric utility company Iberdrola.

Source: KHT Royal Institute of Technology. Images: Courtesy of CorPower Ocean.

Signals: electricity, energy, green engineering

Income Inequality Is Unequal in Europe

The income gap widened in two-thirds of the European Union between 2006 and 2011, but inequality decreased in at least eight EU countries, notably Portugal and Greece, according to a study by the University of Barcelona.

Hardest hit by income inequality were Spain, Cyprus, Hungary, and Slovakia, but the gap was due mostly to increased unemployment rather than to changes in income levels among the employed populations. Further analysis of post-recession data will shed light on the impacts “of precarious forms of work, for instance part-time jobs, on wage inequality,” researcher Raúl Ramos said in a press statement.

In many cases, governments have attempted to combat wage inequality by increasing the minimum wage; however, the real purchasing power of these wages were reduced by the recession. The study also found that policies aimed at improving competition helped reduce inequality in annual wages.

Source: University of Barcelona. Details: Wage and Income Inequality in the European Union

Signals: economics, European Union, inequality

“Craft Villages” May Succumb to Globalization

The twin forces of globalization and urbanization offer both opportunities and challenges for rural villages. In Vietnam, a system of specialized “craft villages” has offered rice farmers off-season employment and security for centuries; while modernized production technologies and newly opened markets gave them a boost in the 1980s, new threats to their existence have recently emerged.

Vietnam has thousands of craft villages—more than 500 surrounding Hanoi alone—each specializing in a particular craft, such as artworks, textiles, woven goods, or religious objects. These ancient village systems self-organize into related clusters to enhance productivity and labor resources. They now provide work for almost 20% of the rural population of working age, with far better incomes than from agricultural work, according to studies led by Sylvie Fanchette of Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD).

The craft village system began to flourish with improved productivity and access to export markets, but new competition quickly entered in the form of foreign manufacturers seeking cheap labor, the IRD researchers note. The influx of heavy industry has also led to competition for the agricultural land that the craft villages rely on.

As the craft villages succumb to globalization and urbanization, the skills developed and handed down by generations of craft workers may disappear, as well.

Source: IRD. Image: Michael Foley Photography, via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Signals: crafts, culture, globalization, industrialization, urbanization, Vietnam

Battery Challenges in Coming Years: Report from Timothy C. Mack

Electric vehicles (EVs) continue to climb in attractiveness, with the Tesla Model S winning acceleration comparisons hands down. Their environmental advantages are clear, but the cost and recharge requirements of automobile batteries continue to stand in the path of broad market acceptance of EVs.

A good deal of battery science is now proceeding on trial and error; when those innovations work, the reason why is still often unclear, as BusinessWeek writer Steve LeVine explains in his new book, The Powerhouse (Viking, 2015). In fact, it may be likely that more progress in battery technology can be achieved incrementally through engineering or manufacturing approaches (or even by lightly tweaking the chemistry of battery materials), rather than through dramatic new breakthroughs—which may include unforeseen pitfalls down the road.

Futurists may often become enamored by the promise of a new technology and its transformative potential while not giving the practical side of technology adoption enough thought, especially potential operational obstacles. This is particularly true in the new materials arenas, where nanotech and composite materials are literally creating new science and the rules of the game are still being discovered.  Read more 

Timothy C. Mack is the managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc. This report was excerpted from the Foresight Signals Blog. Image: Tesla Motors, via Facebook.

Signals: batteries, electric vehicles, materials engineering, transportation

Announcements from AAI Foresight

* New Logo! Thanks go to graphic artist Lisa Mathias for our spiffy new logo for this newsletter! Formerly the art director of the World Future Society, Lisa is also a gifted studio artist. Visit her graphics portfolio at Lisa Mathias Design and her fine art portfolio at LisaMathias.com.

* “Foresight Reports” Publication Project Launched. AAI Foresight has released its first industry forecast white paper, “The Future of Retail Marketing,” to introduce a series of semiannual publications for the firm’s clients. The reports, which will initially be free of charge, will be available to logged-in visitors at the AAI Foresight Web site.

The goal of Foresight Reports is to demonstrate the application of sound foresight techniques to improve the analysis of a key issue affecting our future, be it an economic sector or an ecosystem. The papers will largely be invited by AAI Foresight or written by members of its established consulting partners, but we will also consider submissions. Please contact Tim Mack or Cindy Wagner for details.

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Send us your signals! News about your work and other tips are welcome. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting editor.  

Want more signals from AAI Foresight? Check out the blog! Log in to add comments.

Feel free to share Foresight Signals with your networks and to submit any stories, tips, or “signals” of trends emerging on the horizon that we can share with other stakeholders and the foresight community. And if you’re interested in becoming a blogger for FS, please contact Cindy Wagner, our consulting editor, at CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com

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Foresight Signals is a publication of AAI Foresight

1619 Main Street #1172

Freeland, WA 98249

http://www.aaiforesight.com/

Managing Principal: Timothy C. Mack

tcmack333@gmail.com | 202-431-1652

Webmaster and IT Consultant: Tom Warner

tomwarner13@gmail.com

Consulting Editor: Cynthia G. Wagner

CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com | Twitter: @CynWag1

Battery Challenges in Coming Years

By Timothy C. Mack

Electric vehicles (EVs) continue to climb in attractiveness, with the Tesla Model S winning acceleration comparisons hands down. Their environmental advantages are clear, but the cost and recharge requirements of automobile batteries continue to stand in the path of broad market acceptance of EVs. Breakthroughs in this area are announced regularly; however, any celebrations might be followed by an “Oops!” announcement, or the “breakthrough” may gain no real momentum and just fade away quietly.

While lithium ion battery technology continues to show promise, some of the mechanics of how these batteries actually work remains a mystery, as a small change in configuration can produce large, unexpected, and often negative results. Certain battery materials may start out very promising, but, for reasons not yet understood, diminish in effectiveness over time, as BusinessWeek writer Steve LeVine explains in his new book, The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World (Viking, 2015). The chemical and physical interactions of these new materials have the nature of a just-discovered continent—where the dynamics are not completely clear.

A good deal of battery science is now proceeding on trial and error; when those innovations work, the reason why is still often unclear. In fact, it may be likely that more progress in battery technology can be achieved incrementally through engineering or manufacturing approaches (or even by lightly tweaking the chemistry of battery materials), rather than through dramatic new breakthroughs—which may include unforeseen pitfalls down the road.

The adoption of EVs remains a very small portion of the car market as a whole. This is in part because even the most extravagant industry projections of 200 miles on a single change fall significantly short of the 350-mile average range for a tank of gasoline. And the $35,000 hoped-for price of a bargain Tesla is still $20,000 more than a low-end gasoline car.

However, the spirit of discovery continues to thrive. LeVine reports that work at Argonne National Laboratory is making new advances with previously problematic technology by using lower voltages and new additives in trace amounts. But it is still a tough business for technology startups. As one former executive of an innovative (but now bankrupt) battery company recently said, “Energy storage is a game [best] played by big players, because there are so many things that can go wrong in a battery.”

Note: Futurists may often become enamored by the promise of a new technology and its transformative potential while not giving the practical side of technology adoption enough thought, especially potential operational obstacles. This is particularly true in the new materials arenas, where nanotech and composite materials are literally creating new science and the rules of the game are still being discovered.

While taking a “wait and see” approach sometimes tries the patience, it is preferable to issuing a rather noticeable public retraction for technological promises that can’t be kept.

Timothy C. Mack is managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc.

Images courtesy of Tesla Motors (via Facebook) and Argonne National Laboratory (via Flickr).