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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:
Even the Platypus's DNA is Unusual - [Mercury News] a team of scientists has determined the platypus's entire genetic code. Right down to its DNA, it turns out, the platypus continues to strain credulity, bearing genetic modules that are in turn mammalian, reptilian and avian.
Is This the Rice Super-Gene? - [PhysOrg] The productivity of a rice plant is determined by several traits -- the number and size of its grains; the height of the plant; and its flowering time, which reflects its response to the prevailing climate. Years of previous work in rice research have helped scientists close in on the plant's Chromosome 7 for a gene that appears to affect all three characteristics -- and this appears to be the magic sequence.
TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories:
Sending Robots to Surgery Pays Off - [International Herald Tribune] A generation ago, the debate in medicine was whether robotics would ever play a role. Today, robots are a fast-growing, diversifying $1 billion segment of the medical device industry. And Wall Street has just two questions for the industry: How far is this going, and how fast?
Bringing Down the Language Barrier... Automatically - [PhysOrg] Progress being made by European researchers on automatic speech-to-speech translation technology could help the EU tackle one of the biggest remaining boundaries to internal trade, mobility and the free exchange of information – language.
BUSINESS
Top Stories:
Red Flags for the Decade Ahead - [Business Week] On the list: family businesses under stress, a dearth of managers, and corruption.
India Extends Ban on Futures Trading to Cool Prices - [International Herald Tribune] India, the world's second-largest buyer of vegetable oils, on implemented a ban on futures trading in soybean oil, rubber, chickpeas and potatoes as the government seeks to rein in the fastest inflation since 2005. The Forward Markets Commission will halt trading for at least four months, according to Anupam Mishra, a director at the market regulator.
SOCIETY
Top Stories:
Big Increase in Single Households - [BBC] Almost half of Scottish households will have only one adult living in them within 25 years, new research has predicted.
Aging Baby Boomers Stoke Growth in Industry for 'Brain Exercise' - [International Herald Tribune] Boomers are seizing on a mounting body of evidence that suggests that brains contain more plasticity than previously thought, and many people are taking matters into their own hands, doing brain fitness exercises with the same intensity with which they attack a treadmill.
GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories:
Chinese Playing Big Role in Russian Power Expansion - [International Herald Tribune] Russia plans to install about 280 turbines by 2011. Only Chinese engineers have proven capable of commissioning one per week, the pace that Russia will require if it is to stave off a power crunch.
The Future of Chinese Business, Seen through its Billionaires - [International Herald Tribune] You hear that China is a country of young people -- the average age is 33 -- but you really see it in business. People over the age of 50 really had no chance: the risk-taking impulse, and much else, was crushed under Mao.
ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories:
Airline Emissions: Even Worse Than You Think - [Wired] Forget everything you've heard about airlines and CO2 emissions. The news is much worse than anyone thought. A recently disclosed report finds that airlines are spewing 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the environment than previously estimated and the amount could hit 1.5 billion tons a year by 2025.
Supermarket Trials Carbon Labels - [BBC] Supermarket chain Tesco has announced that a range of its own-brand products will carry labels showing the size of the goods' carbon footprints. Tesco said it would label 20 items, including light bulbs and potatoes, during a two-year trial of the scheme, which is operated by the Carbon Trust.
THE FUTURE
Imagining the Tech World in 2050 - [CNET] At a kickoff event for collaboration between IBM and the University of Southern California to explore the intersection of creative arts and science and technology, five IBM scientists offered their best guesses on how life would be different in 2050.
Tropics Insects 'Face Extinction' - [BBC] Many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted, US scientists have said. Researchers led by the University of Washington said insects in the tropics were much more sensitive to temperature changes than those elsewhere.
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