October 2012, Vol. 13. No. 10

• Climate Change and Forests: Good for Canada, Bad For Europe?
• Using Brain Scans to Predict Future Test Performance
• Cities Will Support 5 Billion Humans by 2030
• Event Alerts: The Singularity Summit, GLOBAL +5, and Robert Moran
• What's Hot in THE FUTURIST Magazine

Climate Change and Forests: Good for Canada, Bad for Europe?

Canada’s far northern territory of Nunavut has been a treeless tundra for millennia, but it could be home to flourishing forests by century’s end, due to global warming, according to Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier, University of Montreal geographer. Guertin-Pasquier, who presented his findings September 21 at the Canadian Paleontology Conference in Toronto, explained that tree fossils found in Nunavut indicate that forests of oak, spruce, and hickory did cover much of the territory about 2.6 million years ago, when the Earth was warmer, and that if current projections of warming bear out, those forests will return in full.

Meanwhile, global warming will shrink forests throughout Europe, according to a study led by Marc Hanewinkel from the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. The study findings, which were published in the online journal Nature Climate Change, warn that much of the continent’s forest cover is composed of Norway spruce and other tree species that are accustomed to cooler climates. Sudden warming, combined with lengthier and more frequent droughts, would significantly harm them.

Other tree species that favor warmer temperatures, such as cork oak and Holm oak, might expand their ranges. These species, however, deliver lower economic returns for the timber industry, and they sequester less carbon dioxide. The study projects that climate-change-related damage will reduce the economic value of the continent’s forest land by 14% to 50%—an economic loss of 60 billion to 680 billion euros—unless the European community enacts swift and effective countermeasures to curb CO2.

Source: University of Montreal

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.

Using Brain Scans to Predict Future Test Performance

Will a brain scan reveal how well you’ve studied for a big test? Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory have demonstrated that the brain’s electrical activity, detectable via electroencephalogram (EEG), predicts how well studied material has been incorporated into memory, and, thus, how well subjects performed on memory tests.

The researchers asked 23 people to attempt to memorize a list of words while undergoing brain scanning. The average subject recalled 45% of the words on the list. The EEG data correctly predicted which five of the 23 subjects would beat the competition, remembering 72% of the words on average.

"If you had someone learning new material and you were recording the EEG, you might be able to tell them, ‘You’re going to forget this, you should study this again,’ or tell them, ‘OK, you got it and go on to the next thing,’ " chief researcher Laura Matzen said in a statement.

Matzen presented her findings at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference in Chicago. This second phase of research will determine the effectiveness of various types of research and training methods.

Source: Sandia National Laboratories

Cities Will Support 5 Billion Humans by 2030, but Fewer Other Species

Urban areas around the world are expanding at twice the rate of their populations, reversing historic trends toward increased density within city limits. The result will be more loss of habitat and biodiversity, warns a team of researchers in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More than 1 million square kilometers of land—largely in biodiversity “hotspots”—have a high probability of being converted to urban use by 2030, with nearly half of the expansion occurring in Asia (primarily China and India), according to the authors. However, the fastest land-to-urban conversion will occur in Africa, which will see urban land cover grow 590% above the 2000 level.

This urban expansion will encroach on or destroy habitats for 139 endangered amphibian species, 41 mammalian species, and 25 bird species, the researchers predict.

"Given the long life and near irreversibility of infrastructure investments, it will be critical for current urbanization-related policies to consider their lasting impacts," says lead author Karen Seto, associate professor in the urban environment at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. "The world will experience an unprecedented era of urban expansion and city-building over the next few decades. The associated environmental and social challenges will be enormous, but so are the opportunities"

Source: "Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools" by Karen C. Seto, Burak Güneralp, and Lucy R. Hutyra. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published ahead of print September 17, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.1211658109.

Event Alerts: The Singularity Summit Returns to San Francisco, GLOBAL +5 Takes Place in Geneva, and Robert Moran hits D.C.

The sixth annual Singularity Summit will take place in San Francisco, California, at the Nob Hill Masonic Center, October 13-14, 2012.

Speakers at this year’s summit include inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, neuroscientist Steven Pinker, Google researcher Peter Norvig, and science fiction author Vernor Vinge, among others.

The Singularity Summit 2012 is produced by the Singularity Institute, a nonprofit organization that endeavors to "raise awareness about the promise and peril of advanced artificial intelligence and to develop a mathematical theory of safe artificial intelligence, "according to the organization’s Web site. The Institute’s mission is to "ensure that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence benefits society. "

Learn more and register: http://singularitysummit.com

The GLOBAL +5 conference, a competition of future-focused projects from around the world, will take place at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, October 9-10. The projects approach mobility, democracy, global governance, sustainable competitiveness, energy security, and innovation in a new way. The jury will meet on October 9. Results will be declared and awards will be presented on October 10.

Learn more and register http://global5.theglobaljournal.com/

The Futures of Marketing

Robert, Moran, marketing expert and partner at the Brunswick Group, believes marketing is headed for a significant transformation. While the industry will still exist, he thinks it will reposition, rebrand, and rename itself with a more forward-thinking term such as, consumer insights, business insights, or
business intelligence industry.

Moran will present his insights to the U.S. National Capital Region Chapter
on October 18 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 7301 Waverly Street, Bethesda, MD. Kick-off time is 6:00 PM. Learn more here.

WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon

The Annual Conference of the World Future Society: July 19-21, 2013 at the Hilton Chicago Hotel, Chicago, Illinois.

Register Today and Save $300!

The World Future Society's annual conference, WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon, will give you the opportunity to learn from others in many different fields, and to explore actions affecting our futures in as yet unimagined ways.

The conference will feature nearly 100 leading futurists offering more than 60 sessions, workshops, and special events over the course of two and a half days. And for those who want to take a deeper dive, into key studies of interest, the preconference Master Classes allow for an in-depth look in a small group setting.

New for 2013: 22nd Century Lecture Series

Special hour-long sessions each day will focus on one of the six major themes of the conference, offering expert insights on issues, trends, forecasts, scenarios, and wild cards in Earth, Humanity, Commerce, Governance, Sci/Tech, and Futuring.

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The deadline for session proposals and course proposals is October 31. Submit here.