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Future Pages: The bookmark collection... frequently updated links to other websites on trends, innovation and the future.
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Signs of the Future: The news archive... past postings of items from world media on emerging trends.
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SCIENCE
Top Stories:
'Interspecies' Rodent Created Using Embryonic Stem Cells - [Science Daily] By injecting embryonic stem cells from a wood mouse into the early embryo of a house mouse, an international team of scientists has produced normal healthy animals made up of a mixture of cells from each of the two distantly related species. This is the first time that stem cells from one mammalian species have been shown to contribute extensively to development when introduced into the embryo of another, very different species.
Key to Mental 'Resilience' Found - [BBC] US scientists have pinpointed a difference in brain chemistry which may explain why some people cope better than others in the face of adversity. They found a key pathway in mice differs in those who cope well with stress, and those who do not.
TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories:
'World's Smallest Radio' Unveiled - [BBC] US scientists have unveiled a detector thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair that can translate radio waves into sound.
Hitachi Foresees Huge Hard Drives in Near Future - [FOXNews] Multimedia stockpilers need not worry about laptops, digital video recorders or portable music players hitting a storage capacity ceiling any time soon. Hitachi Ltd. says its researchers have successfully shrunken a key component in hard drives to a nanoscale that will pave the way for quadrupling today's storage limits to 4 terabytes for desktop computers and 1 terabyte on laptops in 2011.
BUSINESS
Top Stories:
Who Really Owns the Roads? - [TIME]
For states and cities looking to upgrade or replace aging infrastructure, partnering with private players is the biggest idea to come along since the interstate highway system started ribboning the country with asphalt in the 1950s. The appeal: governments can stop worrying about roads, bridges and tunnels, and companies get lucrative leases that allow them to collect money from drivers for generations.
A Shopping Trip, Aisle by Virtual Aisle - [Boston Globe] John Butler is trying to introduce true browsing to the online shopping experience, blending the innovations of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with the old-school merchandising of R.H. Macy. Butler is the founder and chief executive of Kinset Inc., a Marlborough start-up that plans to launch its first online stores this week. Kinset's stores combine e-commerce with the kind of visually rich, three-dimensional environment that has been made popular by the virtual world Second Life and such videogames as World of Warcraft.
SOCIETY
Top Stories:
GPS is Turning Cellphones into Social Mapping Devices - [International Herald Tribune]
Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?
China Plans 'Largest Gene Bank' - [BBC] With China's National Day holidays out of the way, students in Taizhou, Jiangsu, are returning to their voluntary duties of collecting genetic data from the city's willing citizens. Volunteers and sample donors will contribute to what project organisers claim could become the world's largest genetic databank.
GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories:
Bahrain Builds a City in the Most International of Ways - [International Herald Tribune]
You could call it the ultimate globalized product. While Boeing is making news for coordinating suppliers and designers from around the world to build its 787 airplane, developers in Bahrain are using the same kind of global outsourcing to create an entire city -- even its zoning rules -- from scratch.
Shift of Power from West to East Puts ‘Entire UK Workforce at Risk’ - [Herald] Globalisation is no longer just a threat to low-skilled jobs in Britain but could also pose a serious challenge to the skilled workforce as a "profound shift in global economic power from West to East" takes place, MPs warned.
ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories:
Water Shortage Pushes China Toward Aerobic Rice Production - [International Herald Tribune] China, the world's top consumer and producer of rice, is turning to a new kind of rice that can grow on dry soil like wheat as the country faces a serious water shortage due to industrialization and global warming. China, a pioneer in aerobic rice, plans to expand acreage for it to about 30 percent from about 1 percent now as the water shortage limits expansion of traditional water-flooded rice.
Ocean Life Fading: What Can Be Done? - [Science Daily]
Creating “national parks of the sea” may be the only effective way to reverse trends that have left 76 percent of world fish stocks fully- or over-exploited and marine biodiversity at severe risk, according to the new report, Oceans in Peril: Protecting Marine Biodiversity, released by the Worldwatch Institute.
THE FUTURE
Top Stories:
The Future is Not What it Used to Be - [Forbes] Having slipped catastrophes like the 1914-1945 worldwide conflicts (with 100 million dead), or the nuclear threat of the 44 cold years that followed, there are also reasonable grounds to believe we can work out our problems. The daily advances in science and technology lend hope that on balance things can be even better. Except that we do not feel that way.
BT 'Futurologist': AI Entity will Win Nobel by 2020 - [ITWorld] You might not agree with him. You even might not believe what he says. But British Telecom does. Ian Pearson has been BT's futurologist since 1991. His job is to imagine where today's technologies will lead us.
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