Vol. 1, No. 24 | October
21, 2015 | AAI Foresight
Inside Foresight Signals
> Tobacco’s Threat for Young
Chinese Men
> Bio-Based Building Materials Could Cut Carbon
> Reading the Mind, One Neuron at a Time
> Futures Tools: Compass Methods Anthology
> Blog Report: Back to the Future II
Tobacco’s Threat for Young Chinese Men
Smoking may eventually kill
one in three young men in China, warns a new study published in the medical
journal The Lancet.
Two-thirds of young Chinese
males smoke, often starting before age 20, reports the team of researchers from
Oxford University, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences,
and the Chinese Centre for Disease
Control. Unless they stop smoking, half of these men will eventually die
from tobacco-related diseases, the researchers conclude.
The annual number of tobacco
deaths in China had reached 1 million by 2010, according to studies beginning
in the 1990s; if current trends continue, that number will reach 2 million by
2030, the researchers predict.
The trend overwhelmingly
affects males: Among Chinese women, the researchers note, smoking rates have
plummeted, along with women’s risk of premature death from tobacco.
Reference: “Contrasting male and female trends in
tobacco-attributed mortality in China: Evidence from successive nationwide
prospective cohort studies” by
Zhengming Chen et al., The Lancet (October
10, 2015), Volume 386, No. 10002, p1447–1456.
Image: green_intruder
via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Signals: China,
demographics, gender, health, mortality, tobacco
Bio-Based Building Materials Could Cut Carbon
The construction industry could help Europe meet its 2050
decarbonization goal by building with natural materials. One challenge is the perceived costs of switching back to ancient building
materials such as plant waste, straw, clay, and grass. Another challenge is to
convince builders that these alternatives are reliable.
“Thirty percent of houses in Germany include clay as
building materials. Many of them have stood for more than 100 years,” according
to Manfred Lemke of Claytec, a
Germany-based developer and producer of clay building materials and systems.
Claytec is part of the European ISOBIO project to develop sustainable
materials for building and construction. Such materials as clay could improve
insulation by 20 percent over traditional materials, Lemke says. Biomaterials
could also reduce the energy and CO2 emissions from creating and
transporting construction materials, cutting a building’s total “embodied
energy” in half.
“Clay plaster requires just 10 percent of the energy input
of gypsum plaster,” Lemke said in a press statement. “The unique ability of
clay-based materials is that they can be re-plastified at any time of use.
Using just water, the material can be reactivated for repair. At their end of
their life, clay-based materials can be reused without additional efforts.”
Currently, more than 60 companies in Europe are producing over
230 bio-based insulation products, according to the ISOBIO project.
Signals:
biomaterials, clay, construction, energy, Europe
Reading the Mind, One Neuron at a Time
Researchers at Sweden’s Lund
University are a step closer to developing electrodes that can be implanted
in the brain and capture signals from single neurons over a long period of time
while causing no damage to brain tissue.
These electrodes must be biofriendly and flexible enough to function
in the brain, which floats inside liquid in the skull, the researchers note.
Led by Jens Schouenborg and Lina Pettersson, the researchers
produced tailored electrodes that are extremely soft and flexible in all three
dimensions, enabling stable recordings from the neurons over a long time.
This flexibility “creates entirely new conditions for our
understanding of what happens inside the brain and for the development of more
effective treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's disease and chronic pain
conditions than can be achieved using today’s techniques,” Schouenborg said in
a press statement.
Reference: “An array of highly flexible
electrodes with a tailored configuration locked by gelatin during
implantation—initial evaluation in cortex cerebri of awake rats” by Johan
Agorelius et al., Frontiers in Neuroscience
(September 25, 2015). DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00331.
Signals: brain,
neuroscience, Parkinson’s disease
Futures Tools: Compass Methods Anthology
The Association of
Professional Futurists has compiled the Compass Methods Anthology, a
selection of articles on futures methodologies written by foresight
professionals who have been central to developing these techniques:
- Oliver Markley on a new taxonomy of wild card, revised and
updated for this edition.
- Richard Lum on VERGE.
- Bill Sharpe on Three Horizons.
- Tony Hodgson on the World Game.
- Terry Grim interviewed on the Foresight Maturity Model.
- Stuart Candy on The Thing From The Future, expanded for this
edition.
- Wendy Schultz on the Manoa Scenarios method.
- Dyman Hendricks interviewed on the Systems Methodology
Toolkit.
The anthology will be available on the public-facing side of
APF’s website, according to Andrew
Currey.
Details: Association of Professional Futurists.
Signals: foresight,
futures methodologies, futurists
Blog Report: Back to the Future II
The future finally is “now.” As most science-fiction buffs
are probably aware, October 21, 2015, marks the future to which Marty McFly travels
in Back to the Future II.
As we write in the AAI Foresight Blog, whatever
imagined gadgets and social developments might compose the daily life of
tomorrow, the “futurists” tasked with executing that future on film needed to
make their visions at least somewhat plausible.
So, how did the film do, future-wise? Futurist Jay Herson offers this scorecard:
Correct:
- Chicago Cubs in the World Series. Maybe. The Cubs indeed are in the playoffs as we write, so stay tuned. The film predicts the Cubs would play Miami in the World Series; while there now is a Miami team in major league baseball, it’s in the National League with the Cubs, so they could not face each other in the World Series.
- USA Today still exists.
- Poster for “Surf Vietnam.” The once war-torn country has become a tourist attraction.
- Multiple channels on TV, including the Weather Channel.
- Voice control of TV. Some people likely have this capability now, though it is not mainstream.
- Video telephone (e.g., Skype) exists but does not display vital statistics of the person speaking.
Not correct, at least not yet:
- Flying cars.
- Power shoelaces.
- Lawyers abolished.
- Bionic implants.
- Hoverboard.
- Automatic fitting and drying of clothes.
- Taxi ride from one side of town to another costing $174. Inflation slowed after the 1980s.
- Satellite-controlled dog walker.
- Hydrator in kitchen to make food from small models. Not here yet, but we do have 3D printing of food.
One of the more interesting accomplishments of the film’s
futurists almost goes unnoticed:
“The real futuring work in the film is less flashy than the
holographic billboard for the 19th sequel of Jaws,” consulting editor Cindy
Wagner originally wrote in 2013. “It has to do with the existence not just
of alternative scenarios, but of alternative realities. At any point when Biff
or Marty or Doc could go back to the past to alter the linear path of the
future, it created a new outcome and a new reality. But it did not (as happened
in the original BTTF) erase the previous reality. There’s your solution to the
time travel paradox: Not just multiple, but infinite universes.”
Read “Back to the
Futurist at the Movies” by Cindy Wagner, AAI Foresight Blog (October 17,
2015). Signal courtesy of Jay Herson.
Signals: alternative
scenarios, film, futurism, multiple universes, science fiction, time travel
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