In this issue:
In the minutes preceding the largest earthquake in the history of Japan, millions of people got a glimpse of the future. Television broadcasts were briefly interrupted by the crisp, telephonic ringing. A bright blue box appeared on the screen showing the eastern coast of Japan and a large red X off shore depicting the epicenter for the massive jolt of seismic activity.
The tragedy in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami would have been far worse if not for the early earthquake warning system, which issued an alert to television stations, radios, trains, and even cell phones in the seconds before the 9.0 quake hit. The system was originally put in place in 2007 and is maintained by Japan’s Meteorological Agency. It uses a network of approximately 100 seismographic sensors to detect the P waves (low level initial tremors) released by seismic activity. The P waves telegraph the size of the secondary S waves, which are much larger and cause far more damage.
“The alert is issued automatically,” Satoshi Harada of Japan’s Meteorological Agency told FUTURIST UPDATE. “Once the seismometer detects the signal, they transfer to headquarters. [The alert] is processed and issued to the public.”
The system also shuts down high-speed rail service along Shinkansen (bullet trains), which can travel in excess of 300 miles per hour. There are—to date—no reports of Shinkansen derailments resulting from the earthquake.
Sources: Personal Interview, The Japan Meteorological Agency http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/how.pdf
Running cars on hydrogen rather than oil has long been the dream of many in the science and environmental communities. But hydrogen remains an impractical fuel alterative, because in gaseous form it’s hard to get enough of it onboard a vehicle to power the car over a significant distance. In liquid form, hydrogen can be very dangerous and can’t be stored for long periods.
Many in the field have focused on developing liquid ammonia compounds that can store hydrogen safely. Scientists at Los Alamos National Lab have claimed that they have made a breakthrough in this area that could make increase the viability of hydrogen as a fuel significantly.
The chemical compound ammonia borane has a relatively high hydrogen storage capacity but is prohibitively expensive. The Los Alamos scientists have found a way to return hydrogen (in sufficient volume) to spent ammonia borane, thus making the fuel usable again, so spent fuel can be repeatedly recycled.
The car of the future may include an ammonia borane tank that can be used and sent back to the factory for recharge at relatively low cost.
Source: Los Alamos National Lab http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/drive_toward_hydrogen_vehicles_just_got_shorter.html
New research from Stanford University shows that planting grasses and other perennial plants in the place of corn, soybeans, and other annual (cash crop) species in California and surrounding states would not only help mitigate man-made climate change, but would also result in lower ground temperatures, at least locally.
“We’ve shown that planting perennial bioenergy crops can lower surface temperatures by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit [1°C] locally, averaged over the entire growing season,” said scientist David Lobel, “That’s a pretty big effect, enough to dominate any effects of carbon savings on the regional climate.”
Perennial plants such as switchgrass release much more water vapor into the air on a yearly basis than do crops like corn. Water vapor helps cool surface temperature. “Locally, the simulated cooling is sufficiently large to partially offset projected warming due to increasing greenhouse gases over the next few decades,” the authors write in their paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a related study, Lobel and other researchers found that corn and maize crops are more susceptible to small increases in climactic temperature than had been previously thought.
Read the full paper, “Direct climate effects of perennial bioenergy crops in the United States” by Matei Georgescu, David B. Lobell, and Christopher B. Field: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23121/PNAS-2011-Georgescu-1008779108.pdf
Events playing out in Japan may seem far removed from the United States, but Japan matters for America more than you might think. In November 2010, the East West Center created a Web site showing the cultural, economic, and scientific exchanges by prefecture and U.S. congressional district. Some of the information you’ll find: Japanese foreign direct investment in the United States and Japanese exports, sister city programs, the number of Americans living in Japan, and foreign student exchanges.
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The WorldFuture 2011 Education Summit, July 7-8, 2011, Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Learn more and register here.
What does the “new normal” of shrunken classroom budgets, greater reliance on information technology and the ongoing science and math skills shortage mean for the future of education? Join fellow futurists this summer in Vancouver to solve these and other questions during our two-day WFS-exclusive Education Summit. This year’s speakers include FUTURIST magazine authors Maria H. Andersen, David Pearce Snyder, and Tom Lombardo among many others.
Sessions include:
WorldFuture 2011 Education Summit: $295 for WFS members/$345 for nonmembers. Learn more and register here.
A list of upcoming events and updates from the international foresight community. Read more
Eliezer Sternberg, a Tufts University School of Medicine doctoral candidate and the author of My Brain Made Me Do It, spoke with Rick Docksai, staff editor for THE FUTURIST, about where brain research might proceed in the decades ahead. Read more
The great reset has not yet finished its resetting process, and colleges are moving quickly into the crosshairs, with government funding, grants, and student loans all harder to get. With a mindset steeped in tradition, college leadership is pushing institutions to be, as the U.S. Marines like to say, “the best they can possibly be.” But being the “best” is meaningless when the rest of the world wants “different.” In this op-ed, futurist Thomas Frey examines what’s next. Read more
A selection of articles, special reports, and other future-focused material on our Web site that you might have missed. Members may sign in to read and comment. Not a member? Join now at http://www.wfs.org/renew.
THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011
As we spend more of our social lives online, the definitions of relationships and families are shifting. A business futurist offers an overview of these trends and what they imply for organizations in the coming years.
Already, many people have information technology agents, but these agents are so simple we do not ordinarily think of them as such.
THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011