August 2010, Vol 11, No. 8

In This Issue:
* Entrepreneurship Stalls
* Cloaking with Glass and Ceramics
* Highest Atmospheric Carbon in 800,000 Years
* Songbirds May Carry Avian Flu
* Click of the Month: GoodGuide
* What’s Hot @WFS.ORG: Back from the Future

ENTREPRENEURSHIP STALLS

Business start-up activity plummeted in the first half of 2010 in the United States, reports the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Just 3.7% of job seekers started their own business, compared with an average of 9.6% in the last two quarters of 2009. (The highest start-up rate of job seekers was 21.5%, recorded in the first half of 1989.)

“Would-be entrepreneurs were either scooped up by employers or scared off by fragile economic conditions, a tight lending market, and uncertainty over the sustainability of the recovery,” according to the firm.

The slowdown in entrepreneurship may indicate that economic recovery is particularly weak and the U.S. economy may slip back into recession. “Start-up activity is at its lowest just as a recession hits,” says CEO John A. Challenger. “In the months immediately following the end of the recession, when unemployment is at its highest and hiring is virtually nonexistent, we see a spike in job seekers starting a business.”

SOURCE: Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Challenger, Gray, and Christmas

CLOAKING WITH GLASS AND CERAMICS

Using a type of glass that does not conduct electricity, researchers at Michigan Tech and Penn State report discovering a way to capture and route rays of visible light around objects, rendering the objects invisible.

Previous attempts to build an “invisibility cloak” have used metals and wires. In the research by Michigan Tech engineer Elena Semouchkina and colleagues, tiny glass metamaterials were arranged in a cylinder shape that produced the magnetic resonance required to bend light waves around an object. These resonators are artificial materials with properties that do not exist in nature, born of the marriage between materials science and electrical engineering.

The researchers are experimenting with other materials, such as ceramic resonators, and with other frequencies, such as microwave. The goal is to find applications that work at visible light frequencies, says Semouchkina.

SOURCE: Michigan Technological University
MIT News

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ANNOUNCING 2011 ANNUAL MEETING!

The eyes of the future will turn to Canada in 2011, as the World Future Society assembles an outstanding collection of forward thinkers for its annual meeting, WorldFuture 2011, July 8-10, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Vancouver is an outstanding conference destination, not only for its natural beauty, but also as a setting for innovative thinking. You won’t want to miss side trips to Science World, Pacific Space Center, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Museum of Anthropology, to mention just a few highlights.

World Future Society conferences are known as open marketplaces of ideas, where people from all cultures, disciplines, professions, age groups, and worldviews mix to learn from and stimulate each other with new opportunities--and new tools for meeting the challenges of building our common future.

The program will include a wealth of concurrent sessions covering technology, education, health, business issues, families, communities, work trends, social change, the environment and resources, globalization, education, governance, futures methodologies, and much more. In addition, keynote speakers and special events will focus on significant global issues and breakthrough ideas.

REGISTER BY AUGUST 31 and save $300 on the on-site registration fee: www.wfs.org/content/worldfuture-2011

HIGHEST ATMOSPHERIC CARBON IN 800,000 YEARS

The choice to curb--or not to curb--carbon emissions in the near term will affect populations across the globe for centuries to come, says a new report from the National Research Council. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is currently higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years.

CO₂ doesn't displace easily. The amount could triple by the end of the century depending on the sorts of emissions reductions choices individuals and policy makers enact today. Even if emissions stabilize, CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere would continue to increase as the amount in the air already exceeds what the earth can absorb.

The report details how small changes in temperature would change rainfall patterns and water availability: Rain in the North American southwest and the Mediterranean would decrease by as much as 10%, and crop yields could decrease by 15% for every one degree (Celsius) of warming according to the report.

SOURCE: National Research Council

National Academies

Read the report, “Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia,” online.

SONGBIRDS MAY CARRY AVIAN FLU

The migratory patterns of birds can give scientists data on future avian flu outbreaks. Analyzing more than 225 species of songbirds and perching birds, researchers found that 22 varieties are carriers of low-pathogenicity avian influenza, meaning they carry a strain of the bug that isn't dangerous enough to kill the bird but could mutate into something more lethal. The research supported by the National Science Foundation was recently published in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases.

Avian influenza or bird flu is most commonly associated with poultry and water fowl like chicken and ducks, but perching and songbirds--also called passerines--typically share the same habitats and may be more effective transmitters of the disease.

By mapping such factors as a location’s minimum temperature, date of spring thaw, and particularly the amount of land that's been converted into cropland, researchers hope to predict increases of avian flu cases. "Agricultural activity reduces the amount of natural habitat available to avian migrants," says Trevon Fuller, lead author of the paper and a biologist at the Center for Tropical Research at UCLA. When birds have less habitat, they crowd together more, which helps communicable diseases spread faster.

SOURCE: National Science Foundation,
NSF

CLICK OF THE MONTH: GOODGUIDE

Goodguide.com

Is that shampoo really good for the environment? Are these organic cereals really good for me? What does it really mean when a product says it’s “natural” or “organic” or “environmentally friendly”? Consumers have more choices than ever for conscientious consumption, but with few standards there may be much confusion about the true impacts of our daily purchases.

GoodGuide offers ratings and “best and worst product reviews” of more than 65,000 products based on such factors as whether the item is tested on animals, is fragrance-free, reduces water consumption, or contributes to global warming.

“About 33% of all new food products launched in 2008 claimed to be ‘natural,’ according to Dara O’Rourke, University of California, Berkeley, environmental policy professor and founder of the GoodGuide Web site,” writes business futurist Erica Orange of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., in the September-October 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST. GoodGuide’s goal is to help consumers interpret such vague terms.

To make it even easier for shoppers to compare products on the shelves, GoodGuide also now offers an iPhone application.

WHAT’S HOT @WFS.ORG: BACK FROM THE FUTURE

We’re “back from the future” once again, bidding a fond farewell to Boston, host of the World Future Society’s conference, “WorldFuture 2010: Sustainable Futures, Strategies, and Technologies.” As with any great adventure, we came home with more than we brought with us: more ideas, more contacts, and more energy for building the future.

There were more highlights than we could possibly summarize here, but certainly the opening and closing addresses by Yale University bioethicist Wendell Wallach and journalist Michael Rogers helped frame the dialogues and debates that took place during the conference. Inventor Ray Kurzweil and NASA scientist Dennis Bushnell both spoke to packed audiences, and the luncheon speakers--oceanographer Susan Avery and workplace consultant Karen Moloney--provided overviews of the challenges we face in our physical and organizational landscapes.

Another highlight was the honoring of Theodore J. Gordon during the closing session as recipient of the first Edward Cornish Award: Futurist of the Year. Gordon was nominated for his work in 2009 with the Millennium Project’s Futures Research Methodology Version 3.0 and State of the Future, yet his outstanding career truly merits acclamation as a futures pioneer.

On a personal note, I want to thank all the participants in the first-ever Futurist Writers Workshop, a one-day preconference course led by FUTURIST magazine senior editor Patrick Tucker and myself. Our goal was to help futurists deploy their unique environmental-scanning skills to craft interesting and useful stories for their target audience, be it public policy makers or the blogosphere. We came away from the workshop with a graduating class of outstanding futurist writers, whose work we hope you’ll see a great deal of in the future!

The story of the 2010 conference would not be complete without a mention of the international drama immediately preceding it! Just a week before the opening, we learned a professional member using the name Donald Heathfield--who had been a speaker at previous conferences--was arrested on charges of espionage. Andrei Bezrukov confessed to his role in gathering intelligence while living in the United States and was deported with nine other agents in a “spy swap” with Russia. READ WFS founder Edward Cornish’s account of the history of undercover interest in Society activities, “Welcome Russian Spies.”

Read it here.

Though an enormous success, the conference experience also brought some unexpected sorrow: One of our members--Richard T. Anderson, former president of Waukesha County (Wisconsin) Technical College--suffered a stroke during the welcoming reception. We learned just as the conference closed that Richard passed away. We mourn his loss, yet it is inspiring to know that Richard spent these precious moments with others who shared his belief that a better future is truly a lifetime pursuit. DETAILS: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

AUDIO AND SPEAKER PRESENTATIONS:
Intelliquest

PHOTOS from the conference: Twitpic

ORDER a copy of the WorldFuture 2010 conference volume, STRATEGIES AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE ($29.95, or $24.95 for Society members): www.wfs.org/wfsbooks.htm

Look for more coverage of WorldFuture 2010 in the November-December issue of THE FUTURIST magazine. Join or renew your membership in the World Future Society to ensure that you receive your copy! BENEFITS: http://www.wfs.org/member.htm

REGISTER before August 31 to save $300 for WorldFuture 2011, to be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 8-10: www.wfs.org/content/register-worldfuture-2011