Volume 9, Number 8
5/31/2006
Edited by John L. Petersen
johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org

See past issues in the Archives

In This Issue:

Future Facts - from Think Links
Think Links - The Future in the News…Today
A Final Quote

At The Arlington Institute, we believe that to understand the future, you need to have an open mind and cast a very wide net. To that end, FUTUREdition explores a cross-disciplinary palette of issues, from the frontiers of science and technology to major developments in mass media, geopolitics, the environment, and social perspectives.

FUTURE FACTS - FROM THINK LINKS
DID YOU KNOW THAT...

• Researchers can freeze water at room temperature in response to atomic-scale friction.
• The prospect of invisibility - or cloaking - has been a mainstay of science fiction. But now physicists say they have finally figured out how to make objects invisible.
• A car that can anticipate a side-on impact and subtly alter its body shape to absorb the force of the crash is being developed by researchers in Germany.
• Scientists have found ways to make light go both faster and slower than its usual speed limit, but now researchers have gone one step further: pushing light into reverse.

THINK LINKS – THE FUTURE IN THE NEWS...TODAY

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

Patent Office Will Ask the Public to "Peer Review" Inventions -- (Boing Boing -- May 8, 2006)
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/08/patent_office_will_a.html
The US Patent and Trademark Office has launched "Peer to Patent," a community patent peer review project. The USPTO is overloaded with patent filings, so it does little or no investigation into patents before rubber-stamping them, expecting that the courts will sort out who invented what.

NEW REALITIES

Universe "Child of Previous One"
Dolphins Have Their Own Names
Shape-Shifting Car Will Brace for Impact
So Fast it Goes ... Backwards?
Cloaking Breakthrough
Freezing Water at Room Temperature
Biggest Map of Universe Reveals Colossal Structures

Universe "Child of Previous One" -- (BBC -- May 5, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4974134.stm
A joint UK-US team has put forward an alternative theory of cosmic evolution. It proposes that the Universe undergoes cycles of "Big Bangs" and "Big Crunches", meaning our Universe is merely a "child of the previous one". It challenges the conventional view of the cosmos, which observations show to be 12-14 billion years old.

Dolphins Have Their Own Names -- (BBC -- May 8, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/4750471.stm
Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by "name", scientists in Fife have found. The mammals are able to recognize themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities, using whistles. St Andrews University researchers studying in Florida discovered bottlenose dolphins used names rather than sound to identify each other.

Shape-Shifting Car Will Brace for Impact -- (New Scientist -- May 10, 2006)
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9143
A car that can anticipate a side-on impact and subtly alter its body shape to absorb the force of the crash is being developed by researchers in Germany. The car will use hood-mounted cameras and radar to spot a vehicle on course for a side-on collision. Once it realizes an impact is imminent it will activate a shape-shifting metal in the door.

So Fast it Goes ... Backwards? -- (PhysOrg -- May 11, 2006)
http://www.physorg.com/news66582110.html
In the past few years, scientists have found ways to make light go both faster and slower than its usual speed limit, but now researchers at the University of Rochester have published a paper today in Science on how they've gone one step further: pushing light into reverse. As if to defy common sense, the backward-moving pulse of light travels faster than light. Confused? You're not alone.

Cloaking Breakthrough -- (Technology Review -- May 26, 2006)
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16930&ch=infotech
The prospect of invisibility - or cloaking - has been a mainstay of science fiction. But now physicists say they have finally figured out how to make objects invisible, and what's more, they are just months away from putting this theory into practice. The trick is to find a way to guide light and other types of electromagnetic radiation around an object so that it casts no shadow and produces no reflection.

Freezing Water at Room Temperature -- (New Scientist -- May 8, 2006)
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2006/05/freezing-water-at-room-temperature.html
It turns out that water can freeze at room temperature in response to atomic-scale friction. Researchers used an instrument called a friction force microscope to create nano-friction by dragging a tungsten wire over a graphite surface. They wanted to test the theory that water vapor in the air might condense and become ice. And it did.

Biggest Map of Universe Reveals Colossal Structures -- (New Scientist -- May 15, 2006)
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9164-biggest-map-of-universe-reveals-colossal-structures.html
Giant structures stretching more than a billion light years across have been revealed by two new maps of the distribution of galaxies in the universe. The updated atlases lend more support to the idea that the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy. Both studies used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to gather the color and position in the sky of more than a million galaxies.

GENTICS/HEALTH TECHNOLOGY

Human-Chimp Split Was Messy
Two Cloned Mules to Race in Nevada Showdown
Blueprinting the Human Brain
Researchers Say They Can Cure Cancer In Mice
Rice with Human Gene Causes Furor
Genome Project: Final Chapter is Published
Work Aids Understanding of Life's Beginning
Family DNA Helps Cops Catch Criminals

Human-Chimp Split Was Messy -- (CNN -- May 17, 2006)
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/17/human.chimp.split.ap/index.html
Humans and chimps diverged from a single ancestral population through a complex process that took 4 million years, according to a new study comparing DNA from the two species. By analyzing about 800 times more DNA than previous studies of the human-chimp split, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard were able to learn not just when, but a little bit about how the sister species arose.

Two Cloned Mules to Race in Nevada Showdown -- (Yahoo -- May 24, 2006)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060525/ap_on_sc/cloned_mule_races
In a low-stakes mule race in a remote corner of the West, nature versus nurture will be put to the test as two of the horse family's earliest clones challenge naturally bred runners next month in Nevada. Though the jokes about the two clones finishing in a dead heat are legion, no one is expecting a tie. And just because they carry the DNA of a past champion, there's no guarantee the clones will be successful.

Blueprinting the Human Brain -- (CNet -- May 10, 2006)
http://news.com.com/Blueprinting+the+human+brain/2100-11393_3-6071061.html?tag=nefd.top
A 3D computer simulation of 10,000 neurons firing in the human brain produces a terabyte of data--a fraction of what it would take to map the brain's billions of neurons in algorithms. That's according to Henry Markram, a scientist working on the Blue Brain project. The project is an attempt to create a blueprint of the human brain to advance cognition research.

Researchers Say They Can Cure Cancer In Mice -- (WESH -- May 8, 2006)
http://www.wesh.com/health/9178673/detail.html
Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine said they have found a cure for cancer -- in mice, that is. However, they are hoping that what they have learned will someday be applied to human treatments. Three years ago, Wake Forest researchers discovered a mouse that could not get cancer no matter how hard they tried to give it the disease. Now, they said white blood cells from that mouse's descendants were injected into ordinary mice with cancer and their disease was completely wiped out.

Rice with Human Gene Causes Furor -- (Live Science -- May 15, 2006)
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_060515_rice_gene.html
A tiny biosciences company is developing a promising drug to fight diarrhea, a scourge among babies in the developing world, but it has made an astonishing number of powerful enemies because it grows the experimental drug in rice genetically engineered with a human gene.

Genome Project: Final Chapter is Published -- (PhysOrg -- May 17, 2006)
http://www.physorg.com/news67095713.html
Scientists published the finished sequence of Chromosome 1, the longest and final chapter in the so-called Book of Life that makes up the human genetic code. The sequencing identifies 3,141 genes, flaws in which have been linked to more than 350 diseases, including cancer development, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, high cholesterol, mental retardation and the nervous system disorder known as porphyria.

Work Aids Understanding of Life's Beginning -- (MIT -- May 30, 2006)
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/amon.html
MIT researchers have a new understanding of the process cells use to ensure that sperm and eggs begin life with exactly one copy of each chromosome -- a process that must be exquisitely regulated to prevent problems such as miscarriages and mental retardation.

Family DNA Helps Cops Catch Criminals -- (Live Science -- May 11, 2006)
http://www.livescience.com/technology/060511_kinship_analysis.html
In 1988, 20-year-old Lynette White was fatally stabbed in South Wales. The murder went unsolved for 15 years, until a fresh DNA sweep of her apartment in 2000 turned up spots of blood on a skirting board that had been missed the first time around. British police ran the results through a national DNA database of known criminals but didn't turn up anyone with an exact match. They did, however, notice someone whose DNA profile was close: a 14-year-old boy who was not even alive when White was murdered but who had gotten into trouble with the cops.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Scientists Used Nanotubes to Send Signals to Nerve Cells
Nanotech and Space Exploration Catch FiRE
Groups Want Nanotech Sunscreens Pulled

Scientists Used Nanotubes to Send Signals to Nerve Cells -- (PhysOrg -- May 8, 2006)
http://www.physorg.com/news66308334.html
Nanotubes, tiny hollow carbon filaments about one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, are already famed as one of the most versatile materials ever discovered. A hundred times as strong as steel and one-sixth as dense, able to conduct electricity better than copper or to substitute for silicon in semiconductor chips, carbon nanotubes have been proposed as the basis for everything from elevator cables that could lift payloads into Earth orbit to computers smaller than human cells.

Nanotech and Space Exploration Catch FiRE -- (ABC -- May 18, 2006)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=1976344
The Future in Review conference in San Diego offers an unprecedented amalgamation of experts in a wide variety of fields. Here's a look at two of the more interesting topics, nanotech and space exploration. It delves into issues such as the practicality of nanotech and whether to colonize the moon first or Mars.

Groups Want Nanotech Sunscreens Pulled -- (CBS -- May 17, 2006)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/17/ap/health/mainD8HL6MT04.shtml
Sunscreens made with submicroscopic particles pose a health hazard and should be recalled, environmental groups said, asking the government to increase regulation of growing uses of the science of nanotechnology. The petition asked the Food and Drug Administration to strengthen its regulation of sunscreens that contain nano-sized titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, saying particles of those minute dimensions pose health and environmental risks.

GLOBAL EPIDEMIC

India 'Has Most People With HIV'
Wild Bird Role in Flu Unclear
From Hand to Mouth
Climate Change Drives Disease To New Territory

India 'Has Most People With HIV' -- (BBC -- May 30, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5030184.stm
India now has more people living with HIV than any other country, a UNAIDS report has revealed. The report shows that India now accounts for two-thirds of HIV cases in the whole of Asia. An estimated 5.7 million Indians were infected by the end of 2005, overtaking the 5.5 million cases estimated in South Africa.

Wild Bird Role in Flu Unclear -- (BBC -- May 31, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5032904.stm
The role of swans and other wild birds in spreading bird flu is still unclear and uncertain, according to scientists. Many of the assumptions being made about the part played in the spread of the disease by wild birds simply do not stand up to analysis, they say.

From Hand to Mouth -- (The Economist -- May 25, 2006)
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6971098
Although methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is more famous, Clostridium difficile is a superbug to be reckoned with. Like many other infections caught in hospital, it is increasingly becoming resistant to treatment with antibiotics. Rates of the disease among patients in, or recently discharged from, American short-stay hospitals seem to have doubled between 2000 and 2003 and risen another 25% in 2004, the most recent year for which estimates are available. That translates into at least 225,000 new cases a year.

Climate Change Drives Disease To New Territory -- (Washington Post -- May 5, 2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401931.html
Global warming - with an accompanying rise in floods and droughts - is fueling the spread of epidemics in areas unprepared for the diseases, say many health experts worldwide. Mosquitoes, ticks, mice and other carriers are surviving warmer winters and expanding their range, bringing health threats with them.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Googlearchy or Googlocracy?
Magnetic Tape Prototype Makes Data Leap

Googlearchy or Googlocracy? -- (Spectrum -- February 1, 2006)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/feb06/2787
Search engines are our key to access information on the Web. Without search engines, we would easily become lost in cyberspace (as in the early days of the Web), so it is not surprising to see how heavily we rely on search engines as our information gateways. Conventional wisdom says that search engines make big websites even more prominent. New research, though, says "not so fast" on jumping to that conclusion.

Magnetic Tape Prototype Makes Data Leap -- (CNet -- May 15, 2006)
http://news.com.com/2100-1015_3-6072590.html?part=rss&tag=6072590&subj=news
Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center and at Fuji Photo have devised a prototype storage system utilizing a dual-layer magnetic tape that can hold 6.67 billion bits of data per square inch. That's 15 times greater than most popular types of magnetic tape on the market today. The achievement helps bolster the argument that tape will continue to remain an economical means of archival storage for years to come.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Largest Living Creature Discovered in Ibiz
Monkeys Use Sentences
Global Warming Weakens Trade Winds
Warming Set to Devastate Coral
Satellite Could Open Door on Extra Dimension

Largest Living Creature Discovered in Ibiz -- (News Not Wanted -- May 30, 2006)
http://newsnotwanted.blogspot.com/2006/05/worlds-largest-living-creature.html
Scientists have discovered a "monster" of the deep off the southern coast of Ibiza. It is in fact a plant, Posidonia Oceanica, which covers the seabed all round the island. The boffins have found a strand of Posidonia which measures an incredible 8 kilometers and has been growing for at least 100,000 years. This makes it the biggest and oldest living organism in the world today.

Monkeys Use Sentences -- (National Geographic -- May 17, 2006)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/monkey-sentence.html
Putty-nosed monkeys put two different alarm calls together to create urgent warnings, according to observations recently made of the West African primates. These monkey "sentences" appear to be evidence of what is widely considered to be a uniquely human ability: stringing words together to convey a message, or syntax.

Global Warming Weakens Trade Winds -- (Live Science -- May 3, 2006)
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060503_walker_circ.html
The trade winds in the Pacific Ocean are weakening as a result of global warming, according to a new study that indicates changes to the region's biology are possible. Using a combination of real-world observations and computer modeling, researchers conclude that a vast loop of circulating wind over the Pacific Ocean, known as the Walker circulation, has weakened by about 3.5 percent since the mid-1800s. The trade winds are the portion of the Walker circulation that blow across the ocean surface. The researchers predict another 10 percent decrease by the end of the 21st century.

Warming Set to Devastate Coral -- (BBC -- May 15, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4772715.stm
Rising ocean temperatures look set to cause lasting devastation to coral reef systems, a study suggests. An international team of researchers looked at reefs in the Seychelles, where an ocean warming event in 1998 killed much of the live coral. The group found the oceanic reef had experienced fish extinctions, algal growth, and only limited recovery.

Satellite Could Open Door on Extra Dimension -- (New Scientist -- May 30, 2006)
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9240-satellite-could-open-door-on-extra-dimension.html
An exotic theory, which attempts to unify the laws of physics by proposing the existence of an extra fourth spatial dimension, could be tested using a satellite to be launched in 2007. Such theories are notoriously difficult to test. But a new study suggests that such hidden dimensions could give rise to thousands of mini-black holes within our own solar system - and the theory could be tested within Pluto's orbit in just a few years

TERRORISM AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE

Pentagon Endorses Space Missile Plan
Smokeless Rockets Launching Soon?

Pentagon Endorses Space Missile Plan -- (MSNBC -- May 10, 2006)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12728362/
The Pentagon's top weapons buyer has endorsed a plan that could lead to a multibillion-dollar U.S. missile defense component in space and strain ties with China, Russia and other countries. At issue is what the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency calls a space-based "test bed." It would initially involve as few as one or two interceptor missiles designed to shoot down ballistic missiles possibly tipped with nuclear, chemical or germ warheads.

Smokeless Rockets Launching Soon? -- (CNet -- May 17, 2006)
http://news.com.com/Smokeless+rockets+launching+soon/2100-11397_3-6073392.html?tag=nefd.top
Only time and money separate the current state of rocket propulsion science from the engine rooms of Star Trek's Starfleet, according to a university professor. Mach-Lorentz thrusters (MLTs), assuming they can be scaled up from lab tests, could provide a new source of propulsion that "puts out thrust without blowing stuff out the tailpipe." he said.

ENERGY REVOLUTION

A Zero Energy Home in Oklahoma
House Backs $10 Million 'H Prize'

A Zero Energy Home in Oklahoma -- (ZDNet -- May 15, 2006)
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=239
According to Professional Builder, the first zero energy home costing less than $200,000 has been built in Oklahoma. This house produces as much energy as it consumes in a year and combines "renewable energy technologies with advanced energy-efficient construction." This environmentally friendly house is just a prototype and not available for sale.

House Backs $10 Million 'H Prize' -- (Wired -- May 10, 2006)
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,70873-0.html?tw=wn_index_18
Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes reaching millions of dollars, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Legislation creating the "H-Prize," modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House on a 416-6 vote.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Humans May Have Limiting Effect on the Origin of (New) Species
Is Internet Addiction a Real Problem?
Cell Phone Users Make Polling More Difficult

Humans May Have Limiting Effect on the Origin of (New) Species -- (New York Times -- May 23, 2006)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/science/23evol.html?ei=5090&en=3e85a7278996c9b3&ex=13060368
00&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1148821250-2xEErTAP1rZq7x8hLvu6cA
Humans can threaten species with extinction in many ways, including overfishing, pollution and deforestation. Now a pair of studies points to a new danger to the world's biodiversity: humans may be blocking new species from evolving.

Is Internet Addiction a Real Problem? -- (Ars Technica -- May 10, 2006)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060510-6795.html
Studies pointing out the dangers of our technology-enabled lifestyles are nothing new. Topics such the possibility of getting brain tumors from our cell phones and the danger of video game violence translating into real-world violence frequently pop up on the front pages. A new study says that Internet addiction is a serious problem, manifesting itself in between 5 percent and 10 percent of all surfers.

Cell Phone Users Make Polling More Difficult -- (Live Science -- May 28, 2006)
http://www.livescience.com/technology/060528_cell_polls.html
Telephone polling has long been a staple of political prognosticating and otherwise sampling the tastes and opinions of Americans on everything from evolution to hybrid vehicles to cell phone use. But there is a growing potential problem pollsters must confront: More than 7 percent of U.S. residents rely entirely on cell phones and do not use landlines.

A FINAL QUOTE...

"The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them." --Sir William Bragg

A special thanks to Bernard Calil, Neil Freer, Humera Khan, KurzweilAI, Sher Patterson-Black, Diane Petersen, John C. Petersen, the Schwartzreport, Joel Snell, Ken Dabkowski, Hanna Adeyema, Jin Zhu, and Richard May, our contributors to this issue. If you see something we should know about, do send it along - thanks.
johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org