Weak Signals contributed by Ivan Montenegro Perini
R&D in synthetic biofuels from algae.
There is currently much venture capital flowing into this research area, particularly the breeding and treatment of different algae types. Additionally, the famous biochemist Craig Venter is active in financing projects aimed a...
Whenever there is a major health outbreak, then people quick ...
That increases the chance of more dietary shift. Methane emission by cows, and the fact that the meat industry is one of the biggest problems for climate change, could be an impetus. Meditation, as health costs are so high and ...
The technology progresses, that does not necessarily mean th ...
You could watch the natural miniaturization of electronic devices and track that to see how far that goes and how smart these things become. There is a lot of talk about web standards and the semantic web. The difficulty tracki...
Enabling more fluctuating sources of electricity.
On the material plenty side, you could be looking at energy trading, electricity trading. You could watch the fraction of renewable energy used in Europe, the transnational trading of these things and the consolidation of regio...
Euro became fiat money and not debt money.
Talk about fiat money; and places that are strong, but so challenged economically that they need to make a fundamental change in their economic system or be totally owned by the hedge funds. We think that is far more likely. If...
Some people has insisted on cycling everywhere and using pub ...
It is almost an ideology for him. You can probably find scores of examples of people making small shifts because they think it is appropriate, rather than waiting for the big shift to happen.
Cultivating the values that lead people to work within natur ...
It is a way of approaching small-scale farming that works within the capacity of the land to maintain fertility. It is not just pragmatic, it is more about cultivating the values that lead people to work within natural boundari...
The shift towards post-material values
Going from the need to own a lot of stuff to feel good, to modes of satisfaction and fulfilment that are not based on possessions, but maybe on quality of relationships or doing the right thing by the environment. Where It stop...
The current economic crisis and the lowbrow behaviour of pow ...
The driver of this development is the significant shift of the liberalised system of values in Eastern Europe towards the only critical criterion, economic gain.
Major changes in the behaviour of ecosystems could be caused by the surface water warming by a few degrees. That could also cause an enormous burden for the power grid because water is used to cool practically the whole industr...
Less than half of UK engineering and physical science gradua ...
There are many students deferring university entry because there is perceived higher competition for university entrants places. A knock-on effect could be a sudden downturn in UK student intake, leading to a dip in terms of sk...
Scientists produced artificial lungs for mice for the first ...
Normally, after having successfully achieved tests and experiments on mice it takes around 10 to 15 years before the same results or methods can be applied to humans.
Developing an individually fitting pharmaceutical against ca ...
Particularly in biotech it is observable that current research actions aim at the development of respective technologies. These actions hint at a probable breakthrough in this field, but not within the next ten years.
Too few transnational actions concerning the regulation of f ...
Already we can observe that banks are again distributing high bonus payments to their managers, that profits of banks, which had to be supported by the governments, are increasing and that there is a reintroduction of the “ca...
The way society perceives technological advances or other cr ...
There seems to be a general public misunderstanding of science. The way society perceives technological advances or other crises can dramatically influence their opinion and acceptance of such technologies. This has been eviden...
