News

BM just unveiled its annual 5 in 5 — five predictions about technology innovations that IBM expects will change the way we work, live and play within the next five years. This year’s IBM 5 in 5 explores the idea that everything will learn … Continued

Our current trajectory suggests that the world system will realise a decline in living standards. There needs to be a shift in the global economy that moves away from wellbeing measures based on GDP, and which embraces new meaningful measures … Continued

he advent of 3-D printing brought on a number of innovations worthy of news coverage. Printers have created prosthetic hands, action figures, food, even blood vessels, simply by depositing layer after layer of different kinds of ink. Now a handful of … Continued

Australia has been listed in the top two countries best prepared to handle an uncertain future in a new report published in Fast Company.  The detailed report can be found here:  https://www.fastcoexist.com/3016024/the-59-countries-that-are-most-prepared-to-handle-an-uncertain-future

NESTA, a charitable foundation in London has collaborated with a number of other partners to explore how those who live in London in 10 years will actually live.  They created 25 “imaginary Londoners” whom they describe in some detail here: … Continued

The 21 September 2013 Economist  contains an article exploring just how serendipitous science research can be.  A group of scientists at Michigan Technological University lead by Lyon King were exploring how to create fuel  for very small rockets (details of … Continued

The World Future Society (with whom the futures foundation will have much closer links from 2014 – watch this space) has just published a list of 20 predictions for trends and breakthroughs likely to impact your work, your investments and … Continued

This week’s Economist magazine has a fascinating article about the increasingly sophisticated ways in which scientists are attempting to both understand how the human brain actually works and to simulate this in a computer. The entire article can be accessed … Continued

— In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day. Because of a birth defect, … Continued

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown layer lurking in the human eye. The newfound body part, dubbed Dua’s layer, is a skinny but tough structure measuring just 15 microns thick, where one micron is one-millionth of a meter and more … Continued

When constructing computer circuits, most folks start with silicon and metal, but not the researchers at Stanford. The boffins in Palo Alto want to build computers out of living tissue, and to that end they’ve created a biological transistor, called … Continued

New techniques in making a sprayable liquid that works like a solar panel will make them both easier to install and cheaper to produce.  The new method is currently in development at a lab at the University of Sheffield in … Continued

British researchers have introduced a future orientation index to quantify the degree to which Internet users worldwide seek more information about years in the future than years in the past. They analyse Google logs and find a striking correlation between the country’s GDP and the predisposition … Continued

For the eighth time the organisers of the World Economic Form have produced a report examining various global risks which human civilization faces.  The 80 page report looks in detail at economic, environmental, geopolitical, techinical, and social risks and how these have changed since … Continued

We may never have our flying cars, but the future is here. From creating fully functioning artificial leaves to hacking the human brain, science made a lot of breakthroughs in 2012. Find a fascinating list of these breakthroughs here:https://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2

In the nine short years since Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, social media has evolved from dorm room toy to boardroom tool. Last year, 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies were active on Twitter, while more than 80 percent of executives believed social media engagement led to increased … Continued

Connecting a human brain to a computer is as much a materials science problem as a biology one. What kind of interface is delicate enough not to damage nerve tissue, but resilient enough to last decades? Researchers have come up … Continued

The Human Brain Project, with its billion-dollar plan to recreate the human mind inside a supercomputer, sounds like a science fiction nightmare. But those involved hope their ambitious goal of simulating the tangle of neurons and synapses that power our … Continued

A team of scientists at the Boston Children’s Hospital have invented what is being considered one the greatest medical breakthroughs in recent years. They have designed a microparticle that can be injected into a person’s bloodstream that can quickly oxygenate … Continued

The impending edition of The Futurist magazine contains some thoughts about how our collective future might evolve, written by Dick Pelletier who is a science and technology columnist and futurist, and editor of the Positive Futurist weekly newsletter and Web site, www.positivefuturist.com/about.html “What … Continued