Vol. 1, No. 10 | March
18, 2015 | AAI Foresight
Inside Foresight Signals
> Harvesting Energy on Mars
> Deforestation and Species Loss in the Amazon
> Can Customers Be Too Engaged?
> Jumping Technology Categories: Report from Timothy C.
Mack
> News for the Foresight Community
Harvesting Energy on Mars
A major technological hurdle to colonizing Mars is providing
a sustainable source of energy for travelers and inhabitants. Researchers at
Northumbria University are developing an engine that can harvest energy from
carbon dioxide, which is apparently abundant on Mars in the form of dry ice.
The breakthrough also means that a ticket to Mars need not be one way,
according to scientists.
The technique, described in the journal Nature Communications, exploits a phenomenon known as the
Leidenfrost effect, which produces energy when a liquid comes in contact with a
surface much hotter than the liquid’s boiling point. With solid carbon dioxide
(dry ice), the Leidenfrost effect creates a vapor, which the Northumbria team
believes can be captured to power an engine with significantly less friction.
“One thing is certain, our future on other planets depends
on our ability to adapt our knowledge to the constraints imposed by strange
worlds, and to devise creative ways to exploit natural resources that do not
naturally occur here on Earth,” said co-author Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar in a
press statement.
Source:
Northumbria University
Reference: Gary G.
Wells, Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar, Glen McHale, and Khellil Sefiane, “A
sublimation heat engine,” Nature
Communications 6, Article number: 6390, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7390
Signals: energy
harvesting, Mars
Deforestation and Species Loss in the Amazon
A third of the Amazon is approaching a tipping point in
deforestation that will accelerate species loss. By 2030, these endangered
areas could lose 31 percent to 44 percent of species, predicts a team of Cambridge
University researchers.
Historically, just one or two species is lost for every 10
percent loss of forest coverage; however, when an area dips below a threshold
of 43 percent of forest coverage, species loss accelerates to two to eight
species per 10 percent forest loss.
Pressure on land use comes largely from agriculture, as farmers
work to meet the demands of growing (and increasingly affluent) human
populations. In Brazil, individual landowners are required to retain 80% forest
cover, but this is rarely achieved, according to the researchers. A more
successful approach might be to consider entire landscapes rather than
individual farms, and to promote practices that stop deforestation above the
threshold.
The research supports a new approach to environmental
legislation in Brazil and the tropics, said study leader Jose Manuel
Ochoa-Quintero in a press statement. “We need to move from thinking in terms of
compliance at a farm scale to compliance at a landscape scale if we are to save
as many species as we can from extinction,” he concluded.
Source: University
of Cambridge. Image: Jose Manuel
Ochoa-Quintero
Reference: Jose
Manuel Ochoa-Quintero, Toby A. Gardner, Isabel Rosa, Silvio Frosini de Barros
Ferraz, and William J. Sutherland, “Thresholds of species loss in Amazonian
deforestation frontier landscapes,” Conservation
Biology, 2015 (Vol. 29, issue 1). DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12446
Signals: agriculture,
Amazon, biodiversity, deforestation, species loss
Can Customers Be Too Engaged?
Increasing audience engagement has long been a mantra in
brand promotion, but a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that some
audience members may be too engaged for a brand’s good.
Using the popular American reality TV series America’s Next Top Model as a case
study, researchers Marie-Agnès Parmentier (HEC Montréal) and Eileen Fischer
(York University) examined how social media enabled and encouraged fans to
interact with the show and with other fans. Though the show encouraged this engagement,
its consequences were often out of the producers’ control.
Thanks to their engagement, many fans felt encouraged to persistently
and passionately offer their advice regarding things they didn’t like about the
show (change of format, new judges, etc.). The unintended consequence was to
contribute to a negative image of the show among other fans. The researchers
conclude that the most enthusiastic fans may have thus inadvertently
contributed to the show’s declining popularity.
The lesson for brands: Beware of what you wish for. “Ironically,
fans may contribute to the destabilization of a brand even as they are trying
to help prevent this,” write Parmentier and Fischer. “While fans can be
conducive to brand value creation or co-creation, they can equally contribute
to value co-destruction.”
Reference: Marie-Agnès
Parmentier and Eileen Fischer, “Things Fall Apart: The Dynamics of Brand
Audience Dissipation,” Journal of
Consumer Research, February 2015 (Vol. 41, No. 5). DOI: 10.1086/678907
Signals: audience
engagement, brands, marketing, social media
Jumping Technology Categories: Report from Timothy C. Mack
In Silicon Valley, 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.
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, and there is a much higher
standard for drivability and driver safety than is required for software and hardware.
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.
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. Read more
Timothy C. Mack is the managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc.
This report was excerpted from the Foresight
Signals Blog. Image: Google Blog
News for the Foresight Community
• Book: The Great
Transition. Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown’s latest book, The Great Transition: Shifting From Fossil
Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy
(W.W. Norton, 2015), is now available for pre-order. Co-authored with EPI researchers Janet Larsen, J. Matthew Roney, and Emily E. Adams, The Great Transition documents the global movement toward the energy choices that are leading to a new economy. As the costs of solar and wind power fall, their spread will accelerate. Read Chapter 1, Changing Direction. Order the book.
(W.W. Norton, 2015), is now available for pre-order. Co-authored with EPI researchers Janet Larsen, J. Matthew Roney, and Emily E. Adams, The Great Transition documents the global movement toward the energy choices that are leading to a new economy. As the costs of solar and wind power fall, their spread will accelerate. Read Chapter 1, Changing Direction. Order the book.
• Conference: Tackling Wicked Problems. The World Conference of Futures
Research 2015, to be held June 11-12, 2015, in Turku, Finland, will
explore how the study of the future can be used to address today’s most
perplexing problems. Among the featured speakers at “Futures Studies Tackling
Wicked Problems” will be Thomas Lombardo of the Center for
Future Consciousness; Kerstin Cuhls, scientific manager at Fraunhofer
ISI; and Sirkka Heinonen of the Finland Futures Research Centre at the
University of Turku. Details.
• Call for Papers: Innovation
and Degrowth. A special issue of Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation will explore the
concept of sustainable degrowth as an alternative approach to human progress
that decouples innovation and economic growth. Guest editors for the issue are Steffen Roth, ESC Rennes School of
Business, France; Miguel Pérez-Valls,
University of Almeria, Spain; and Jari
Kaivo-oja, University of Turku, Finland. Submission
details.
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