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.
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
Send us your signals!
News about your work and other tips are welcome. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner,
consulting editor.
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Feel free to share Foresight Signals with your networks and
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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
© 2015 AAI Foresight
Foresight Signals is a publication of AAI
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