January 2013, Vol. 14, No. 1

In this issue:

• Nature Preserves May Be Too Diverse
  
• Brain Pacemakers to Stop Memory Loss?
  
• Arts Organizations Learn to Juggle Digital Technology’s Pros and Cons
  
• What's Hot in THE FUTURIST Magazine

Nature Preserves May Be Too Diverse

Increasing the diversity of habitats within environments has been thought to lead to healthier, more sustainable populations—more species of plants and animals thriving together. However, new research calls into question the idea that "more is better" in terms of heterogeneity, particularly in areas of limited size set aside as nature preserves.

In excessively heterogeneous environments, there may be too few resources available for individual species, according to research conducted by Hebrew University of Jerusalem life sciences students Omri Allouche and Michael Kalyuzhny. They hypothesize that such conditions, which predominate in nature preserves, could actually lead to more local extinctions of vulnerable species.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the current practice of maximizing the diversity in preserves may thus be counterproductive to preserving species.

Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Access the study (subscription required): "Area–heterogeneity tradeoff and the diversity of ecological communities" by Omri Allouche, Michael Kalyuzhny, Gregorio Moreno-Rueda, Manuel Pizarro, and Ronen Kadmon, PNAS 2012 109 (43) 17495-17500; published ahead of print October 8, 2012

Brain Pacemakers To Stop Memory Loss?

Can a cybernetic brain implant help the elderly keep their memories? In December, a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University implanted a pacemaker-like device in a patient in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The device sends electrical pulses to areas inside the brain, a treatment that’s referred to as deep brain stimulation.

Deep brain stimulation has proven effective in treating types of Parkinson’s disease, as well as severe depression. Early results from a previous Toronto study suggest that the technique could be useful in slowing or even reversing the effects of Alzheimer’s, as well. Early-stage sufferers who received the device saw an increase in their levels of glucose metabolism over the course of 13 months--a positive sign, since glucose metabolism is a good indicator of increased neuronal activity. Without such stimulation, most Alzheimer’s patients show decreased glucose metabolism in that time.

The United States spends more than $172 billion a year treating the more than 5.3 million Americans who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Within the next 40 years, the number of people diagnosed with the disease is expected to triple as the U.S. baby-boomer population ages. Despite decades of expensive research, scientists have never discovered a drug to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

"This is a very different approach, whereby we are trying to enhance the function of the brain mechanically. It's a whole new avenue for potential treatment for a disease becoming all the more common with the aging of the population,"  said Johns Hopkins researcher Paul B. Rosenberg.

Some 40 people are expected to receive the implant in 2013 at Johns Hopkins and four other institutions in the United States and Canada.

Source: Johns Hopkins University. Additional coverage of brain pacemakers from THE FUTURIST magazine, here.

Arts Organizations Learn to Juggle Digital Technology’s Pros and Cons

While maintaining a vibrant and productive presence on social media can be time consuming, nine out of 10 arts organizations agree that it’s worth it, according to "Arts Organizations and Digital Technologies," a new Pew Research Center survey on Web and digital technology’s impacts on the arts.

Researchers Kristin Thompson, Kristen Purcell, and Lee Rainie of Pew’s Internet & American Life Project interviewed leaders at 3,644 art museums, performing groups, art schools, and other arts organizations from across the United States. They found that 97% of the organizations have active profiles on social-media sites, and 91% of those surveyed agreed that "social media is worth the time our organization spends on it." Benefits mentioned include helping the organizations to more successfully engage with the public, boost fundraising, increase ticket sales, draw more attendees to events, and elevate interest in their works

The technologies have their downsides, however: 40% said that digital technology is reducing event attendees’ attention spans, and 71% complained that cell-phone ringing and other "digital distractions" significantly disrupt live performances. Also, 22% agreed that online content is causing in-person attendance at events to drop, and 74% agreed that digital media fosters expectations among audiences that all digital content should be free. A few respondents likewise noted that the public uses arts organizations’ Facebook and Twitter platforms to air grievances about them. The organizations are learning to cope and to use negative feedback as opportunities to learn, engage, and improve their offerings.

Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

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.

Don't miss your chance to meet Nicholas Negroponte.

Nicholas Negroponte is the founder of the MIT Media Lab, author of the bestselling book Being Digital
and  a seminal voice in education reform. His One Laptop Per Child program has distributed more than 2.5 million computers to children around the globe.

At WorldFuture 2013, he'll discuss his most recent and bold experiment in education, ever. Here's how he described it recently:

"We have delivered fully loaded tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, one per child, with no instruction or instructional material whatsoever... Within minutes of arrival, the tablets were unboxed and turned on by the kids themselves. After the first week, on average, 47 apps were used per day. After week two, the kids were playing games to race each other in saying the ABCs."

You'll want to hear about how kids in the poorest parts of the world are using new technologies to learn for themselves.

Register Today and Save $200!

THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases Video Top 10 Forecasts for 2013 and Beyond

A new video version of THE FUTURIST Top 10 Forecasts is now available. Each year, THE FUTURIST editors select the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, the 2008 financial crisis and the end of the Cold War. But these forecasts are meant as conversation starters, not absolute predictions about the future. We hope that this report--covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology--inspires you to tackle the challenges, and seize the opportunities, of the coming decade.

Source: Read the forecasts or view the video

What's In The January-February issue of THE FUTURIST magazine?

Food, Fuel, and the Global Land Grab

By Lester R. Brown

Growing demand for food and fuel has put pressure on the world’s agricultural lands to produce more. Now, a trend in “land grabbing” has emerged, as wealthy countries lease or buy farms and agribusiness in poorer countries to ensure their own future supplies. The result may be further economic disparities and even food wars.
Read more.

Building the Global Innovation Economy

By Robert D. Atkinson and Stephen J. Ezell

By kickstarting innovation around the world, we could solve pressing economic challenges in ways that benefit both individual nations and the world as a whole. Obstacles to overcome include outdated and unfair policies, special-interest pandering, and fear of the future. Read more.

Crime in the Year 2030

By Gene Stephens

Emerging technologies have always had effects on criminal activity as well as on crime detection and prevention. A futurist specializing in criminal justice assesses his previous predictions about crime in the year 2000 and looks to potential outcomes in the decades ahead. Read more.

Eldering: Aging with Resilience

By James H. Lee

As populations grow older in developed countries, societies are meeting the challenges of aging with newfound resilience. By tapping the maturity and improved vitality of their seniors, families may grow stronger, economies more sustainable, and nations more peaceful. Read more.

The Coming of Intelligent Green Vehicles

A Report from the TechCast Project

By Laura B. Huhn, Kenneth W. Harris, and Dexter Snyder

While many people simply want to get from A to B, transportation options (and especially automobiles) have to meet a variety of consumer demands: They must be clean, affordable, safe, and increasingly intelligent. Here is an overview of the choices and challenges for carmakers and consumers over the next 10 to 15 years. Read more.

Science and a New Kind of Prediction: An Interview with Stephen Wolfram

Interview by Patrick Tucker

Better living through data? When a pioneer of data collection and organization turned his analytical tools on himself, he revealed the complexity of automating human judgment and the difficulty of predicting just what is predictable. Read more.

Tomorrow in Brief

• Liberal Arts Colleges Are Disappearing
• Underwater Navigation Modeled on Fish
• Radiation Shields for Space Workers
• Progress toward Nano Self-Construction
• WordBuzz: Narbs

And MANY more stories.

Join today!