Books in Brief, May-June 2010

Edited by Rick Docksai

Life After Fossil Fuels

Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis by Richard Heinberg. New Society. 2009. 200 pages. Paperback. $18.95.

Momentum is growing to combat climate change, but the use of fossil fuels continues to rise, reports Post Carbon Institute scholar Richard A. Heinberg.

He warns that, in the next few decades, supplies of coal, oil, and natural gas will run low. Societies will have to expend more resources on extracting the remaining supplies, and quality of life will deteriorate. Over time, economic catastrophe and political anarchy may befall much of the industrialized world.

Only with proactive effort now to reduce energy consumption and limit further growth of cities and mass industry can we avert this future. More fundamentally, governments must measure economic growth in terms of human welfare and environmental stability rather than GDP.

These efforts require near-term sacrifices, while their payoff will not bear fruit until later in the future. Implementation thus defies conventional political thinking, which fixates on imminent risks and opportunities. As actual oil shortages and coal price increases become manifest, however, policy makers might rethink strategies they would not consider now.

Designing Isn’t Just For Designers

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown. HarperCollins. 2009. 260 pages. Paperback. $27.99.

Design executive Tim Brown attributes many of the boldest innovations in business today to “design thinking,” a radical product-development strategy that “pulls design out of the studio” and channels the creativity of everyone in a company or organization, from the CEO down to the entry-level employee.

Brown describes the design-thinking process and the principles that underlie it: shifting thinking from “problem” to “project”; working in small teams, rather than large groups; supplementing incremental innovation with evolutionary innovation that extends beyond a company’s traditional base and takes it in new directions; people from different disciplines joining forces; creating stories to share ideas; and empathizing with real people, so as to create products and services that will improve their lives.

The Palm Pilot, the Wii, and Netflix all were born of design thinking, according to Brown. It’s catching on in hospitals, universities, NGOs, and businesses of every industry. He is hopeful that, as design thinking continues to spread, it will help industries and organizations of all kinds to resolve a much wider range of problems than they had ever thought possible.

Change By Design offers inspirational reading for entrepreneurs and designers in many fields of industry.

The Nature of the Cosmos

Cosmic Conversations: Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality by Stephan Martin. New Page Books. 2010. 287 pages. Paperback. $16.99.

We humans have been trying to understand the cosmos since prehistory and will keep inquiring well into the future, according to astronomer Stephan Martin. He presents interviews with 20 thinkers, each of whom speaks about the cosmos, but from a spiritual rather than a scientific or materialistic standpoint.

• Brian Swimme, California Institute of Integral Studies cosmologist, finds deep truths about the cosmos within the languages of the Hopi, Navajo, and other indigenous peoples. English, he says, is embedded with Newtonian perceptions of reality. Researchers now know that the universe does not conform to Newton. English does not have the words to describe it, but many indigenous peoples’ languages do.

• Futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, notes that the universe has been evolving since its inception. She adds that the evolution may be accelerating, and that we are active participants: We can either self-destruct or ascend and become a universal species.

• Media activist Duane Elgin speculates that the universe is regenerating and recreating itself anew at astonishingly rapid speeds. Our purpose, he says, is to keep evolving with it by growing progressively in self-knowledge.

Other interviewees include astronaut Edgar Mitchell; Peter Russell, author of The Global Brain; and the Rev. Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World.

In Cosmic Conversations, scholars of any field might find material relevant to their concerns.

Trading Freedom for Economic Security

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer. Portfolio. 2010. 221 pages. $26.95.

The free-market economic system of Europe and North America could be undone by a new rival, called state capitalism, warns political consultant Ian Bremmer.

State capitalism is the economic system of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and many other politically authoritarian countries. In each, the government owns various companies and uses the markets to create wealth that it can direct as it deems best-suited for maximizing the state’s power and the leadership’s chances of survival.

Bremmer tracks the rise of state capitalism out of the ruins of the Soviet command economy and its present-day potential to unseat free markets and take control of the global financial system. The 2008 recession has emboldened state capitalism’s proponents, since they can claim a degree of stability that the U.S. economy lacks. Free markets might withstand the challenge, but only if they successfully reform themselves to guard against future meltdowns and crises.

Readers will find in The End of the Free Market a thought-provoking critique of the existing economic system and its future.

Low-Cost, Low-Risk Space Flight

Lightcraft Flight Handbook LTI-20 by Leik Myrabo and John S. Lewis. Apogee. 2009. 284 pages. Paperback. $29.95.

Jet airplanes and rocket-propelled spacecraft are profligate fossil-fuel burners and carbon-dioxide emitters, according to aerospace engineer Leik Myrabo and planetary-sciences professor John S. Lewis. They look forward to the debut — possibly by 2025 — of carbon-free “lightcraft.”

These up-and-comers, the authors explain, wouldn’t use rocket boosters or combustion engines. Instead, they would run on electromagnetic waves beamed to them from remote satellite power stations.

The lightcraft will not only be cleaner, but also immensely cheaper. Average consumers might finally be able to afford to travel to space. National and international space programs could ferry personnel and supplies continuously to bases on the Moon or to space stations in near-Earth orbit.

Non-space flight will be easier, too, the authors explain. These lightcraft will be fast enough to fly passengers from one hemisphere to another in under an hour.

Myrabo and Lewis describe the state of lightcraft technology and detail how, with further development, it could evolve into the components of lightcraft spaceplanes.

Engineers and astronomers will enjoy this book, as will many nonscientist readers — provided that they are so excited by the prospect of cheap space flight that they are not daunted by many pages of technical jargon.

Charting the Pathways of Disaster

Mega Disasters: The Science of Predicting the Next Catastrophe by Florin Diacu. Princeton University Press. 2010. 195 pages. $24.95.

It is possible to mathematically predict the directions in which stars, planets, and other objects in space will travel, but can we also predict how things will unfold on Earth? Yes, in many cases, argues mathematician Florin Diacu.

Real-life systems are often unpredictable and hard to calculate, he notes. We can, however, recognize many dangers before they happen and avert them if we watch for the common warning signs. He cites examples of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, stock market crashes, and other particularly consequential phenomena.

Mega Disasters offers a highly readable cross-disciplinary perspective on tsunamis, pandemics, climate change, and financial collapses.

Connecting Wildlife, Habitats, and People

Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by Caroline Fraser. Metropolitan. 2009. 400 pages. $28.50.

In just one century, we could undo hundreds of millions of years of natural evolutionary processes, according to ecologist Caroline Fraser. She warns that the loss of ecosystems to growing human populations and rampant development could wipe out half the world’s animal and plant species by 2100.

Rewilding might stop this massive extinction before it happens, she argues. Rewilding consists of preserving and expanding key habitat areas; linking them with “corridors,” or intersecting patches of land; then mobilizing local people to participate in caring for these ecosystems.

Conservationists now agree that rescuing isolated patches of earth is not enough. It is also necessary to save the greater system of which individual lands are just parcels.

Fraser shares examples of successful rewilding in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. She sees a bright future ahead for it. The establishment and maintenance of corridors and reserves is an engine of job creation. Plus, these projects might mitigate climate change by stabilizing forests and sequestering carbon dioxide.

A Renewable-Energy Vision

Turning Oil into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice by Gal Luft and Anne Korin. Booksurge. 2009. 138 pages. Paperback. $14.99.

Current oil-consumption rates will require four new Saudi Arabias before the century is finished, according to the co-directors of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Potomac, Maryland.

Gal Luft and Anne Korin, in their new book Turning Oil into Salt, rate the odds of finding such bonanzas as virtually nonexistent. Instead, they hope that societies will embrace electric-powered transportation.

Supply issues aside, the switch to electric would advance global democracy, according to the authors. Oil dependence forced the United States to forge alliances with brutal dictatorships and support them while they oppressed their peoples. An oil-free United States could press these dictatorships to reform.

But energy independence will not happen, the authors conclude, until car designers develop electric cars with wide ranges and affordable batteries. The authors offer reasons for hope, such as promising outcomes from tests of several new batteries, potential for methanol and algae-based biofuels to provide cheap power, and the possibility of a scaled transition via plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Turning Oil into Salt provides a balanced overview of where electric car technology stands now and where it might head. This is a worthwhile book for car enthusiasts, environmentalists, policy makers, and anyone who looks forward to a post-fossil-fuel world.

Are Humans Headed for Extinction?

The Vanishing of a Species? A Look at Modern Man’s Predicament by a Geologist by Peter Gretener. Qualitas. 2010. 280 pages. $19.95.

In the 1970s, geologist Peter Gretener believed strongly that the human race would go extinct if it did not dramatically readjust its ways of living. He wrote a manuscript explaining why, but he died before he could publish it.

In 2009, his son, Nick Gretener, discovered the manuscript and found that “much of what had been put down some 30 years ago rings as true today as when it was written, perhaps even more so given the current economic turmoil.”

Nick Gretener had the text published as The Vanishing of a Species. His father’s words — untouched except for obligatory proofreading corrections and occasional editorial notes — implore the human race to reassess its actual needs and scale back its expectations accordingly. The author cautions that permanent economic growth is impossible, that pursuit of happiness via material gain guarantees disappointment, and that the planet will not support our continued trajectory of population expansion. True prosperity necessitates that we flourish within our planet’s ecological limits.

The Vanishing of a Species is a valuable look both backwards and forwards — the challenges the world faced in the twentieth century, and the challenges it still faces today. Historians and futurists both may find much to like.

Connecting the Dots

ReThink: A Twenty-First Century Approach to Preventing Social Catastrophes by Donald Louria. LouWat. 2010. 200 pages. $24.95.

The world’s problems will be much more manageable if we look at them all at once, says health scholar Donald Louria. In systems thinking, every issue and challenge in the world is viewed as part of an integrated whole. Only by observing the whole, he argues, can we adequately judge the individual parts.

Louria’s own brand of systems thinking diagrams a system’s parts and their relationships. He applies this diagram to a range of contemporary problems. Among them are:

• The case for and against public-health recommendations to consumers to eat more omega-3 rich fish.

• The potential for the United States and other countries to deploy military hardware in space.

• The pros and cons of universal screening for health conditions.

Many approaches for systems thinking and complexity science exist, he says, but they tend to require years of study. Louria touts his method as one that anyone can use: With a semester of instruction, high-school students could become regular systems thinkers.

Louria is a scholar who is writing about futurist theory. But like the method itself, ReThink is approachable for a well-educated reader.

China First

By Patrick Tucker

China's Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society by John and Doris Naisbitt. Harper Business. 242 pages. $27.

Oh, to be China in 2010, object of the world’s envy, admiration, and fear. Since the economic reforms of the late premier Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, the country has gone from a relatively isolated authoritarian state into a shining triumph of socialist-market economics. At present rates of growth, it will be the world’s largest economy by the middle of this century, overtaking the United States and achieving a GDP above $14 trillion per year — a significant first.

The question of how China became so successful, and what its leadership might do next, is a source of speculation and consternation, particularly in Washington, D.C. In China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society, John and Doris Naisbitt dissect China’s achievement and provide what they call a “balance” to the “heavily weighted negative commentary” about China in the U.S. media.

Why has China grown so much so quickly? The Naisbitts present an exhaustive list of success stories, but their most novel insight comes from the retelling of a third-century Chinese legend. General Zhuge Liang sat on the banks of the Yangtze River facing the enemy army of Cao Cao on the other side. Rather than attack directly, Zhuge sent over various boats packed with straw. Cao Cao’s archers, perceiving an attack, sent a hail of arrows down onto the boats, whereupon Zhuge retrieved the vessels — and stole his enemy’s ammunition.

Deng employed the same “borrowing arrows” strategy when he invited foreign capital and industry into the country, starting with Volkswagen in 1978. Other large Western firms followed, including Boeing and IBM. The arrangement provided abundant cheap labor for U.S. companies. China secured capital and, more importantly, technological expertise — arrows that the West valued cheaply, it turns out. In 2005 Lenovo, which did subcontracting work for IBM under a different name, became the world’s third-largest computer manufacturer when it acquired IBM’s PC division. The Naisbitts forecast that China will eventually become the world’s largest supplier of electric cars, thanks in part to lessons learned building automobile parts for foreign companies.

In the century ahead, China will be first to reach a number of milestones as it seeks to leverage its growing technological sophistication to meet the needs of its one-billion-plus population. Faced with the challenge of educating an impoverished rural workforce, but free from the influence of teachers’ unions, China may be the first country to succeed in educating most of its population through the Internet. From 2003 to 2007, China spent about $1 billion to implement distance-learning projects in the rural countryside.

China’s leaders have invested heavily in the nation’s technological infrastructure through the establishment of various research and development centers such as the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park or the ZHTP (the park’s researchers received 2,205 patents in 2007 alone). It’s no wonder AI researcher Hugo de Garis, who has lived in China for years, has expressed certainty that China will be the first country to create an artificial general intelligence. The children of the researchers who work at ZHTP can elect to take SAT prep classes at the expense of the government (to secure placement in U.S. universities) or they can go along the Chinese track to continue their education in China. It’s a great education by American standards. It’s hardly typical of what most children in China experience.

How does China reconcile an explosion in private wealth with the tenets of communism? Easily, say the Naisbitts. Prosperity for all remains the Chinese government’s goal. But, in the words of Deng himself, China has “allowed some people and some regions to become prosperous first.” Trickle-down economics is apparently just another arrow to be employed expeditiously. The Chinese people don’t find the apparent contradiction nearly as troubling as do China’s critics.

Western concerns about the state of human rights behind the Great Wall aren’t shared by the Chinese people, according to the Naisbitts, and the authors are dismissive of Tibetan or Taiwanese sympathizers. From the 1970s to today, the human rights condition in China has been steadily, even remarkably, improving, the authors point out. Minority rights, worker rights, distribution of wealth, open elections, freedom of capital, freedom of speech, and rule of law: China is making “progress” in every one of these areas. But the Chinese people are happy to allow the government to determine the pace of that progress, rather than suffer the lectures of the West, they assert.

Too many in the West hold to a single, self-flattering image of China as an oppressed people in need of rescue, say the Naisbitts. This picture, born of that iconic moment in Tiananmen Square where an unarmed protester confronted a tank, isn’t representative of how the Chinese view themselves or their government today. China’s continued growth depends on access to U.S. consumer markets and technological expertise, for now. But the Chinese people do not see themselves as needing liberation by Washington. They perceive their future as bright. According to a China Daily poll that the authors cite, 76% of Chinese believe the world will be better in five years. Is China Daily a credible source? Don’t worry, journalistic independence is “improving,” too.

Unfortunately, in their pursuit of balance, the Naisbitts did not, it seems, include any personal interviews with any Chinese dissidents. If they sought any such interactions but were blocked by Chinese censors, they don’t remark on it. China’s Megatrends will likely strike American readers as adulatory in the tone it takes to the country’s leadership. For all of its merits, the book too often reads like a marketing pitch from the office of the Communist Party of China, intended to extol the country’s success and show the government’s sensitivity to the concerns of the people (note: the level of sensitivity is also improving).

China’s ascent is butting up against major obstacles. But the Naisbitts devote barely a sentence to the lack of transparency in Chinese financial institutions; to wit: “China’s banking system is more or less a monopoly. State-owned banks give loans to large [state-owned enterprises] that are operating at a loss; thus large amounts of nonperforming loans have accumulated.” You may recall, it was large, nonperforming loans sitting on bank balance sheets that nearly plunged the world into a second global depression just two years ago. The Naisbitts don’t explore the size of the Chinese finance bubble and don’t speculate when, if ever, it will pop.

The deteriorating freshwater situation is the larger problem, and the Naisbitts do pay more attention here. China hosts 20% of the world’s population, but the country holds only 7% of its resources. As covered in this magazine, the most water-intensive and highly polluting industries — paper, textiles, processed food production, and agriculture — have migrated to China’s relatively arid north, from which the more economically significant southern portion imports most of its food. The authors forecast that “water shortages in Beijing will become a crisis when its population, as expected, reaches 20 million in 2010, 3 million more than its current resources can support.” The Naisbitts offer examples of China attempting to deal proactively with the water situation. But it remains a daunting problem and an example of the most important first China is likely to achieve: limits to growth.

The obstacles are significant, but China seems poised to handle them dexterously. The country has made a habit of defying expectations. It’s done so for centuries. In 607 CE, the insolent Japanese prince Shotoku referred to the aging empire to Japan’s west as the “land of the setting sun.” China recently eclipsed Germany’s status as the third largest country in terms of GDP and will likely surpass Japan by the end of 2010. It seems the sun also rises.

About the Reviewer

Patrick Tucker is the senior editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications of the World Future Society.

Film’s Immortals: Forever Young and in 3-D

By Cynthia G. Wagner
The technical achievements of filmmakers like James Cameron, director of Avatar, suggest that futurists’ predictions are close to coming true.

More than 20 years ago, THE FUTURIST wrote of the possibility of bringing Humphrey Bogart (and other movie stars) back to cinematic life.

The item, “Bogey’s High-Tech Comeback” (Tomorrow in Brief, March-April 1987), focused on combining computer animation with accelerated image processing. Theoretically, every move that Bogart ever made in the movies, and every syllable he uttered, could be stored and reprocessed into new moves and new dialogue in future movies.

That future is very nearly now.

In a recent Entertainment Weekly story about the technical achievements in Avatar, James Cameron’s blockbuster 3-D movie, columnist Benjamin Svetkey commented that the photorealistic CGI (computer-generated imaging) technology “could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes — like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life.”

So why is that future not now, but only “nearly” now? Ethics, according to Cameron. While the motion-capture and CGI technology that enabled Cameron to transform live actors like Sigourney Weaver into characters far younger (and weirder), his technology would still require a live actor to recreate Bogart’s movements. And since Bogart apparently did not leave permission for the use of his likeness in this way, Cameron suggests that it would be unethical to bring the dead back to life.

The future that Cameron has given us with Avatar is that of the virtual actor (vactor), described in the May-June 1993 FUTURIST in a story about the VActor Animation Creation System developed by SimGraphics Engineering.

And of course there’s that other future we’ve been waiting for — a really awesome 3-D movie. Now that high-definition television networks like ESPN and Discovery are launching dedicated 3-D channels, we can say that the 3-D TV “future,” too, is finally “now.”

About the Author

Cynthia G. Wagner has been an editor for THE FUTURIST since 1981.

Future Scope, May-June 2010

TECHNOLOGY

Electric Cars That Charge Themselves

Materials scientists may have come up with the ultimate solution for keeping cars running: automobile body parts that store and discharge electrical energy.

The prototype material designed by researchers with Imperial College London, Volvo, and other partners is a lightweight composite of carbon fibers and a polymer resin, which could be used to replace metal flooring. Ultimately, the material could make hybrid gasoline/electric vehicles lighter and more energy efficient, allowing motorists to travel longer distances between recharges.

The material could also be used in a number of other applications, such as casings for cell phones and other electronic gadgets used on the go.

Source: Imperial College London, www.imperial.ac.uk.

HEALTH

Children with HIV Are Living Longer

Fewer children are dying of AIDS, thanks to the intensive antiretroviral treatments that have been prescribed since the 1990s, according to the National Institutes of Health. The death rate of children with HIV has been reduced ninefold, although mortality among children with HIV is still 30 times higher than among their noninfected peers.

The “cocktails” of multiple drugs used for highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) help ward off the opportunistic infections and other complications in HIV-infected patients. The death rate among HIV patients under age 21 has fallen from 7.2 per 100 in 1994 to a now-stabilized 0.8 in 2000, and the mean age at death has more than doubled, from 8.9 to 18.2 years old.

Source: National Institutes of Health, www.nih.gov.

ENVIRONMENT

Second-Hand Pollution

Recycling old equipment in developed countries for reuse in the developing world could be bad for the environment in the receiving countries, warns a research team from the University of Luxembourg and the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.

Access to affordable tools and equipment has helped stimulate economic growth in the Third World, but these older technologies tend to be more polluting than newer, more-efficient manufacturing equipment. Thus, the short-term choice of purchasing equipment that is cheaper but dirtier may have long-term costs in increased pollution.

“Pressures put on developing countries in order to reduce their barriers to imports of used goods should thus be balanced against the costs of supplementary pollution that the use of older technology will induce,” the researchers conclude.

Source: “Polluting Technologies and Economic Development” by Luisito Bertinelli et al., International Journal of Global Environmental Issues 2010 (Volume 10, Number 1/2), Inderscience, www.inderscience.com.

GOVERNMENT

Alternatives to Prison

The United States could save $9.7 billion by exploring alternatives to imprisonment for low-level offenses, claims the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

In 2008, about 414,000 Americans were serving time for nonviolent, nonsexual crimes that do not involve significant property loss. Most would be eligible for alternative sanctions that would be less costly than incarceration, such as electronic monitoring or enrollment in drug treatment or work-release programs.

Such programs have proven effective in states where they have been implemented, according to the Council. The United States currently spends about $12.9 billion to incarcerate individuals convicted of these less-dangerous crimes.

Source: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, http://nccd-crc.org.

RESOURCES

Making Food Plants Climate-Proof

Agricultural scientists believe they have isolated the “thermometer” gene in plants that allows them to sense and adapt to temperature changes. The work could one day lead to crops that are impervious to climate change.

Researchers Vinod Kumar and Phil Wigge of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, U.K., discovered a mutant plant that seemed to grow as though it were in hot conditions, despite the temperature being turned down.

The defective gene gives the scientists a clue in plant growth switching mechanisms, which may permit them to create crops that could grow in any climate condition. Such a possibility would be a boon to places like Africa, where food production is predicted to decline dramatically over the next decade.

Source: John Innes Centre, www.jic.ac.uk.

Homosexuality and Family Formation

For the first time in its history, the U.S. Census Bureau will count gay marriages in its 2010 surveys. By collecting and releasing data on same-sex partners, both married and unmarried, and on the numbers of children being raised in these households, the new census will enable researchers and policy makers to do more than extrapolate from existing data.

In previous rounds of census taking, the Bureau has classified married households as only consisting of opposite-sex couples, while unmarried households could consist of either opposite-sex or same-sex couples. Gay or lesbian partners, on the other hand, were either classified as unmarried, even if they declared themselves to be spouses, or erroneously recorded as opposite-sex spouses.

The Bureau has attempted to hypothetically correct its existing data using models such as those that reassigned respondents’ gender based on their first names. The results increased the number of same-sex unmarried partners in the United States in 2000 from 0.6 million to an estimate ranging from 1.1 million to 1.6 million. This model does not correct the data on marital status of same-sex partners, however.

Without official, longitudinal data, it is difficult to track trends in gay/lesbian family formation or to quantify the impacts on children of these household types and of the policies affecting them. As states and voters increasingly weigh the pros and cons of gay marriage and other issues, these data will provide vital (and presumably politically neutral) information.

Heterosexual and homosexual-headed families stand to learn more of both their differences and their similarities in terms of life experiences and challenges in raising children.

Parenting by Homosexuals

Parenting may be as strong an urge in homosexual individuals as it is among heterosexuals, despite what may be counterintuitive from an evolutionary point of view. In a recent study of Samoa’s fa’afafine (a unique gender classification for gay men), Canadian evolutionary psychologists Paul Vasey and Doug VanderLaan found a strong willingness for caretaking and teaching of nieces and nephews, offering the uncles a boost for their family lineage and a way to “earn their evolutionary keep.”

The Western world has not been as supportive of gay males as nurturers as has the more-isolated and communitarian Samoa, but the urge to raise children appears to be especially strong among gay men in the United States. According to a 2007 study of adoption trends by the UCLA School of Law and the Urban Institute, more than 50% of gay men said they desired to be a parent, compared with 41% of lesbians surveyed. Yet, more than a third of lesbians had given birth, while just one in six gay men had fathered or adopted a child.

The study further noted that there may be significant social and economic costs of banning adoption or foster care by lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) parents. Same-sex couples and homosexual singles applying for adoption tend to be older, better educated, and have more economic resources than their heterosexual counterparts. The national cost of excluding this group of motivated and resourceful parents from foster care in the United States was estimated at $87 to $130 million.

Gay men who do become fathers may require more social services, suggests a recent study of fatherhood in the Netherlands. Though same-sex marriage has been approved since 2001 in the Netherlands (the first country to allow it), parenting by LGBT people is less widely accepted. Gay fathers must often share custody with biological mothers, so they typically spend far less time with their children — and have fewer of them — than heterosexual fathers. They also report experiencing more pressure to justify their choice to become fathers, though they are more likely to state that happiness was their motivation than are heterosexual dads.

“Many people can understand a lesbian’s desire to have a baby because they appreciate the idea of maternal instinct,” says University of Iowa anthropologist Ellen Lewin, author of Gay Fatherhood (University of Chicago Press, 2010). “They’re much more suspicious about why gay men would want to be dads, and therefore gay men have to jump through a lot more hoops to be parents.”

As with the Dutch dads, gay fathers in the United States indicate that the desire to have children is part of finding happiness or satisfaction in life, particularly as they mature, Lewin notes. Another motive is to pass on their own values and traditions, just as heterosexual parents do.

“I interviewed several guys who adopted kids with disabilities or other challenges and basically gave their lives up for their children,” says Lewin. “But most weren’t out to be heroes or do something revolutionary by becoming gay fathers. Most were ordinary people who live in suburbs, go to Disney World for their vacations, and just want to have children like anyone else.”

A side effect of parenthood may be the repair or strengthening of relationships with LGBT parents’ own parents, according to Lewin: “I heard stories about gay men who were estranged from their families, but once they had a kid, the grandparents came over all the time. Their relatives may not have understood or supported them in the past, but having kids was something their family got and related to.”

In the United States, gay dads may face another source of criticism — members of the gay community who view parenthood as conformity, according to Lewin. But LGBT parents’ activism may simply have evolved along with their family-oriented lifestyles, as witnessed by such groups as the Family Equality Council and Our Families Count, a campaign partnering with the Census Bureau to ensure that LGBT families are aware of the new Bureau policies and of the importance of being counted.

— Cynthia G. Wagner

Sources: United States Census 2010 Activities Update (December 2009); “Editing Unmarried Couples in Census Bureau Data,” Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division Working Paper (July 2007), Bureau of the Census, www.census.gov.

“An Adaptive Cognitive Dissociation Between Willingness to Help Kin and Nonkin in Samoan Fa’afafine,” Paul Vasey and Doug VanderLaan, Psychological Science (February 4, 2010), www.psychologicalscience.org.

LGBTQ Families, Research Article Summaries, Family Equality Council, www.familyequality.org.

Gay Fatherhood by Ellen Lewin (University of Chicago Press); University of Iowa News Service, www.uiowa.edu.

Nanowires Will Make Computers Smarter

How much more powerful can computers get? Much more than we thought, argue American and British engineers. They cite the recent development of nanowire transistors and transistor-simulation tools.

“As a society, we have come to expect the continuation of Moore’s law,” says Eric Stach, associate professor of materials engineering at Purdue University. Moore’s law is the 1965 assertion by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors that could fit on one integrated circuit would double every two years, and so computers would continue to expand their processing capacity while the price of computer processing would decrease.

Most engineers today doubt that the law can hold true forever, since the silicon-based semiconductors that constitute transistors can only get so small. Stach expects that transistors will reach their limits in the next five to 10 years.

But something else will also take place in five to 10 years, he adds: commercial use of nanowire tranistors.

Stach and other Purdue researchers are working with engineers from IBM and UCLA to develop these new transistors, which are made with silicon and germanium nanowires. The silicon nanowires stand vertically, not horizontally like traditional transistor components, so many more nanowire transistors can fit on one circuit.

The new transistors are also more powerful. The elements that compose them sharply delineate at the atomic level — one solid layer of germanium atop one solid layer of silicon. This is more conducive to effective transistor performance than conventional transistors, whose layers gradually transition from one element to the next. These special features enable them to bypass traditional transistors’ size limitations, Stach explains.

“These structures are being investigated to continue Moore’s law,” he says. Where it might lead is anybody’s guess.

“What will people do with enhanced computation power? Lots!” says Stach.

Existing transistors are already pretty small. Some are no more than a few molecules in size, according to Asen Asenov, University of Glasgow professor of device modeling.

Even smaller ones are possible, he explains, but certain technical problems need to be overcome. One major obstacle to making smaller transistors is that, the smaller they get, the more affected they are by atomic-scale imperfections and variations within the transistor, and thus the more likely the entire microchip will fail to perform as well as it could. To keep shrinking the transistors and improving performance, it is necessary to account for the variability.

Asenov and his Glasgow colleagues have found a way to do so. Working with scientists at Edinburgh, Manchester, Southampton, and York universities, they have devised “simulation tools” that predict how billions of microscopically different transistors will perform if placed together on a computer chip.

These simulation tools will help researchers place nanotransistors in the most optimal arrangements possible. Smaller transistors and more powerful microchips can result.

Moore’s law will reach its end point somewhere, according to Asenov, because no transistor — not even a nanowire one — can be smaller than an atom.

“Because we are hitting the atomic limits, Moore’s law cannot continue forever,” says Asenov. Nevertheless, vast improvements in microchip design and function are still possible. “The end of scaling is not the end of the microchip improvements,” he says.

— Rick Docksai

Sources: Eric Stach, Purdue University, www.purdue.edu.

Asen Asenov, University of Glasgow, www.gla.ac.uk.

Prospects for Truth and Freedom

What would life be like if globalization were to reach its full potential? What about if it fell short or suddenly reversed course?

In his new book, The Future of Truth and Freedom in the Global Village (Praeger, 2010), North Central College religious studies professor Thomas McFaul envisions three different paths that the future might take.

Scenario 1: Fragmentation and Fundamentalism

In the worst-case scenario, globalizing technology produces too much change too quickly, and the frightened masses retreat to the perceived safety, social stability, and unity of their own separate enclaves. People from different religious, ethnic, national, and tribal affiliations voluntarily segregate themselves from each other.

Their cultural traditions, religious worldviews, values, and boundaries bring them respite from encroaching foreign mind-sets. However, the respite is short-lived, due to growing hostility and intolerance between groups with different belief systems. Multiculturalist viewpoints take a backseat to xenophobia. Fundamentalist ideas gain prominence and lead to a rise in terrorist attacks. The first half of the twenty-first century would be characterized by less separation between church and state — and less religious freedom in many countries. If this were to happen, then the democratic growth trend would reverse itself, giving rise to new authoritarian regimes.

Economically, the opposite sides of the spectrum would pose the biggest problems, in McFaul’s view: Greater market deregulation would widen the gap between haves and have-nots and inflict serious structural damage on the middle class (“the foundation for social stability”). On the other hand, excessive regulation, taxation, and nationalization of industry would cause entire economies to stagnate.

All of the above would negatively affect the rate of technological progress.

Outcome for freedom and democracy: “By 2050, the two-centuries-old trend towards democracy also started backing up, as the number of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes expanded around the planet.”

Scenario 2: Diversity and Harmony

Just because different cultures don’t interact doesn’t mean that they can’t all get along. In McFaul’s second scenario, social integration slows to a crawl at every level, from local to global. As different groups work to preserve their unique cultural identities, they nonetheless peacefully coexist, at least for the most part.

In this scenario, terrorism still poses a strong threat, despite a concerted global effort to eradicate it. Worldwide, democratization slowly grinds to a halt.

Centralized governments (such as China) prove as economically successful as decentralized democracies (such as India).

Under this set of circumstances, technological breakthroughs in fields from transportation to health care would continue to be made.

Outcome for freedom and democracy: By mid-century, democratization has stagnated, providing reassurance to those who feared secularization and the loss of their sacred beliefs — and frustration to those who did not.

Scenario 3: Global Cultural Integration

In the best of all possible worlds, terrorism has been almost completely eliminated — along with most worldview differences. A world “melting pot” culture has emerged, so-called universal values have been embraced, and democracy has spread to many countries, notably China.

Economically, nations everywhere have managed to achieve governments that provide “for the social well-being of all citizens without undermining the entrepreneurial motivations necessary to sustain a modern marketplace economy.” Advances in science and technology continue, and breakthroughs in the biosciences eradicate many diseases.

As for global finance, McFaul writes, “While there is no guarantee, the most probable and preferred economic trend of the future to the year 2050 will involve the spread of the regulated marketplace under the direction of democratically derived governments.”

Outcome for freedom and democracy: “Nations with diverse governments that ranged from multiparty to single-party systems found the balance they needed in order to achieve both political stability and economic growth. … The promises of the Modern world were slowly being realized throughout the global village — even if some communities were marching forward faster than others.”

So, what will the future bring? Of these scenarios, McFaul believes that the first — and most dystopian — scenario is the least likely, since it would necessitate a sudden and complete reversal of key long-term trends. The third — and most utopian — scenario is the most likely, given the long-term indicators.

— Aaron M. Cohen

Source: The Future of Truth and Freedom in the Global Village by Thomas R. McFaul. Praeger, www.abc-clio.com. 2010. 190 pages. $44.95.

Teaching Social Skills

Strengthening Kids’ Social and Emotional Skills, an interview with Clark McKown

THE FUTURIST: You recently identified three key factors in a child’s behavior that could cause him or her to suffer social rejection: inability to pick up on nonverbal cues and social cues in social interaction; inability to recognize cues’ meanings and respond appropriately; and inability to reason about social problems. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. But what, exactly, is the third?

Clark McKown: When we talk about reasoning we're talking about problem solving, real world social dilemmas. For example, if two kids want to play with the same toy, they can’t both play with the same toy. That’s a problem. They’ve got to recognize what the problem is that they want to solve, they’ve got to figure out what they want to get out of the situation, and they have to figure out what they’re going to do to resolve the issue, and then. Then they have to do it. It's really a series of problem-solving steps.

The Futurist: How would a greater awareness of these three factors change the discussion on socially rejected youth and how to help them?

Clark McKown: Identifying these factors would help develop screening tests and treatment plans for social-emotional learning difficulties.

The Futurist: Of the three factors identified, two of them—inability to pick up on nonverbal cues and inability to recognize cues’ meanings—are commonly recognized symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. To what extent does recognizing these three cues early help educators also identify learning disabilities early on?

Clark McGowen: I'm glad you asked that because of two things. One, I'm not sure that kids with ADHD do have deficits in the ability to read nonverbal cues and meanings. We’ve been doing tests of kids with ADHD and autism. The evidence is that a lot of kids with ADHD actually read people pretty well and know what they should do. But they act before they think things through, and so they are they're not able to take advantage of the social smarts that they have. They don’t need to be taught social thinking. They need to be taught to slow down. There's another piece that’s important for social success. That’s social regulation, the ability to refrain from impulsive behavior. Kids who are able to regulate their behavior--slow down, not speak up--end up being at a social advantage.

The Futurist: Many schools currently have staff counselors who work with children who exhibit behavioral problems. Roughly how many of these school counselors know about, and look for, the three factors that you identified?

Clark McGowen: Not too many. I think that many clinicians who work with children who have behavioral issues are looking at whether children are reading people well and so on. But I don’t think it’s pretty uniform. The counselors and mental-health staff at the schools would do well to do these assessments and use them to target treatments. It’s within our reach to do universal screening for social functioning, and to both identify kids who struggle socially and to implement prevention-oriented programming in the schools that gives children the emotional tools they need to succeed. In Illinois and a handful of other states there's legislation that requires school districts to have a plan to address kids with social and emotional needs. We go out to meet school personnel all the time who are aware that they need to be focused on social and emotional issues. I give a lot of credit to school administrators for reaching out and trying to learn these new requirements.

The Futurist: Where are these laws in place, or at least under consideration?

Clark McGowen: They exist in Illinois, New York, California, and the city of Anchorage, Alaska. And there are a handful of other states that are in serious discussion about implementing or passing laws that would increase the focus of school personnel on social learning, teaching social skills in the classrooms. A lot of people are skeptical about that because they think it’s not really the schools’ job, that it’s taking time away from academic pursuits. But it turns out the CASEL Group looked at hundreds of studies and found that when the school implements it well, their social skills improve, and also their tests and grades improve. It’s social learning and academics; it's not either/or. They're both intimately tied together.

The Futurist: In the last 15 years, there have been a number of school shootings committed by students who had been socially isolated and not adequately helped. It wouldn’t surprise me if this had raised momentum for a lot of these new initiatives.

Clark McGowen: I do think that is a big motivator behind some of the legislative efforts.

The Futurist: How early would trained counselors be able to spot these three factors? How early do these signs show compared with other signs of antisocial behavior?

Clark McGowen: What I would recommend for schools is that they look not at the three factors to begin with. The thing to do is figure out who in the school is rejected by peers, actively disliked by peers, excluded from activities, bullied, or is a bully. When you figure that out, those are the kids that you want to do some assessments to figure out if they have skills deficits.

The Futurist: To what extent is concern for children who suffer social rejection a growing phenomenon?

Clark McKown: I think there are a number of groups trying to grapple with this issue of screening identification everyone seems to have a different point of view on it. My view is that there's an inexpensive way of identifying kids having problems socially, and that is to ask kids. Take each kid aside, give the kid a photo of the kids in the class, and have the kid indicate whom he or she likes in the class and whom he or she doesn’t like.. That’s called “sociometrics,” the measurement of peer acceptance. From those two simple questions, you can quickly calculate a score for each child, and you can identify kids who are rejected. It wouldn’t take much for schools to learn how to do it, identify the kids on the fringes, and work on how to integrate them more successfully. Some teachers might be uncomfortable with asking kids to single out other kids who they don’t like. But the questions themselves are not harmful. Kids talk about these things anyway. We’d just make sure that each discussion with each kid is private and stays anonymous. There are other ways, too. Teachers can nominate kids they are concerned about socially, for instance, though they actually don’t get you the quality of information you get when you ask the kids themselves. If you really want to know who is rejected by peers, you ask kids.

The Futurist: What’s a good resource for readers to get more information on these topics?

Clark McKown: I think very highly of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. You can find it online at CASEL.org. It’s a repository of information about programs that can be implemented in school to prevent social problems and help kids who have social problems. If you’re in a school and you want to promote kids behavioral and learning schools, CASEL is where to go.

For more information, see: Rush Neurobehavioral Center, www.rnbc.org . Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, www.casel.org .

Tomorrow in Brief, May-June 2010

The “Greening” of Antarctica

A new wind farm on Antarctica’s Ross Island will supply nearly 1,000 kilowatts of power and save about 240,000 gallons of fuel a year, according to the National Science Foundation. The three new turbines offer a “green” source of power for the polar research work conducted at McMurdo Station (U.S.) and Scott Base (New Zealand).

Once powered by a nuclear plant (closed about 40 years ago), Antarctica’s research stations currently rely on diesel generators and boilers for electricity and heat. The wind farm will meet up to 15% of McMurdo’s and nearly all of Scott Base’s electricity demand.

Source: National Science Foundation, www.nsf.gov.

WordBuzz: Transvaluation

The dictionary defines transvaluing as reevaluating something in a way that repudiates accepted standards. In the case of anthropologists studying ways to save the western lowland gorillas of the Central African Republic, transvaluation refers to combining ethnographic and ecological studies to improve understanding of the role of local human cultures in species preservation.

“Conservation isn’t just about protecting wildlife,” says Purdue University anthropology professor Melissa Remis. “You also need to consider the human dimension such as how local hunting technologies or even migration can change how land is used.”

For instance, diminished populations of a local species of antelope, called duikers, has led many hunters to turn to the gorillas for food; the researchers thus suggest that permitting selective logging would result in new vegetation growth that would help sustain the duiker populations and make the gorillas less tempting.

Source: Purdue University, www.purdue.edu.

Hollywood Goes Bilingual

It’s sounding more and more like America on American TV and movie screens. English–Spanish bilingualism is increasing in Hollywood scripts, according to linguistics researcher Nieves Jiménez Carra of Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain.

With the U.S. population comprising a growing proportion of Latinos, who often alternate between Spanish and English, script writers and producers are also incorporating both languages into scripts, rather than simply adding Spanish subtitles or dubbing English-language programs into Spanish.

The advantage over dubbing or subtitling is that the characters sound more authentic, using natural Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban Spanish, for instance, rather than a more formal version of Spanish translated for audiences in Spain.

Source: Plataforma SINC, www.plataformasinc.es.

Second-Hand Effects of Bullying

Witnesses of bullying may be at greater risk for later psychological distress than the victims themselves, suggests a study of public schools in England.

These “second-hand victims” may be experiencing stress from two fronts: fear of becoming targets of the bullies themselves and guilt from not interceding on the victim’s behalf. The researchers encourage school psychologists to pay more attention to witnesses in bullying incidents and to teach them ways that they can intercede rather than remain passive bystanders.

Source: “Observing Bullying at School: The Mental Health Implications of Witness Status” by Ian Rivers et al., School Psychology Quarterly (Volume 24, Number 4), American Psychological Association, www.apa.org.

Electromagnetic Waves May Protect the Brain

Long-term use of cell phones may improve memory and help protect users from Alzheimer’s disease, or even reverse its effects, report researchers at the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

The study of old mice with Alzheimer’s showed that exposure to electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones reversed memory impairment. The waves removed brain deposits of the protein beta--amyloid, the harmful, sticky plaque that is the hallmark of Alzheimer’s.

While the mice weren’t wearing earpieces or holding phones to their heads as humans typically do, the effect of exposure to electromagnetic fields offers a potential avenue for drug-free treatment of Alzheimer’s patients, the researchers believe.

Sources: “Electromagnetic Field Treatment Protects Against and Reverses Cognitive Impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease Mice” by Gary W. Arendash et al., Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (January 2010). Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, www.floridaadrc.org.

Tourism Booms as Arctic Melts

Gas, oil, and shipping boost economy but add to environmental concerns.

Researchers anticipate large increases of Arctic industry and tourism in this century.

The Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, a report compiled by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum, says that the number of cruise ships visiting Greenland alone rose from 14 in 2003 to 39 in 2008.

"All the vistas, all the sights, all the marine animals, polar bears, polar glaciers - people want to go see that stuff," says Lawson Brigham, chair of the assessment. "They want to go to the North Pole and say they stood there."

The Arctic is a promising site for business as well as pleasure. A 2008 study by the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that it contains 30% of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil. Energy companies in Canada, Norway, Russia, and other nations now vie for access.

As tourism and industries increase, so might the emissions from ship smokestacks: ozone, carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides, and black carbon, among others. The emissions poison animal life, deplete the ozone layer, and taint the snow and ice, reducing their ability to mitigate global warming by reflecting sunlight away from the earth.

Arctic animals face additional hazards from human activity, according to Brigham: Fish flee ships' noise, and marine mammals are wounded by collisions with boat hulls or entanglements in fishing gear. Those animal populations have been a staple food source for the region's indigenous peoples for millennia. When animals die off, humans will go hungry.

Industry can benefit indigenous peoples, however, with bigger supplies of food, more amenities, and new jobs.

"The issue is how the indigenous people will share in the wealth of the Arctic," says Brigham. "There are opportunities, but also challenges."

Visiting tourists and developers face the risks of boating accidents, according to Walt Meier, researcher for the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"If someone gets into trouble, there aren't any bases there to operate rescue missions from," he says. "And any kind of oil spill that may need to be cleaned up - there's no infrastructure there to support that."

The Arctic in general is now threatened by global warming, according to Meier.

"If you have a two-degree temperature change, you've completely changed the environment from ice to water," he says.

The ice is already melting rapidly: The Arctic had 13.5 million square kilometers of ice in December 1979, but only 12.5 million square kilometers of it in December 2009. By 2050, or even sooner, according to Snow and Ice Center researchers, the Arctic might be ice-free for part of every summer.

"The ice is now a lot younger and a lot thinner than it used to be," says Meier.

Brigham concurs and hopes that new treaties and laws in the future will enforce responsible use of the region and its resources. - Rick Docksai