What's Emerging End of May 2021
A newsletter on interesting stuff that is emerging around the world so you can think about strategy
Introduction
Welcome to our end of May newsletter for 2021.
In the next few weeks, Paul will continue working with a council on their community vision, work with a new leadership team in the food sector, and working on strategy and foresight for a listed ASX company. He will be working on a value adding strategy for agriculture in Queensland. Paul will also continue working in his role as advisor for foresight and strategy to Save the Children Australia . He will also be presenting to an agricultural forum in Western Australia (COVID gods willing)
Paul is also acting as lead partner for a Social Venture Partners Melbourne pro bono project with Little Dreamers, a fantastic organisation helping young people who are caring for a family member.
We continue to build our Red Teaming initiative and more outside experts have been added since the last newsletter. You can read more about Red Teaming here or you can see the amazing breadth of our team here.
If you want to talk about the use of foresight or red teaming in your strategy for 2021 then please Contact Us.
The Emergent Futures Team
In case you missed it. The most popular link from the last edition:
Some what sadly it was:
How to use the Siri 'I'm Getting Pulled Over' shortcut to record police encounters during traffic stops with your iPhone
One of our business tips….. read more
What are we Writing About?
We have nothing in this section this newsletter as most work has been commercial in confidence.
What’s Emerging
Fat Tire Releases Beer Made From Ingredients Available In The Future. It’s Awful And They Know It.
Fat Tire is launching ‘Torched Earth Ale:” a beer made entirely with ingredients available in a climate-ravaged future. It’s not good—the brew calls for everything from smoke-tainted water and dandelion weeds to drought-resistant millet and buckwheat grains. …. Read More
First known gene transfer from plant to insect identified
Discovery that a whitefly uses a stolen plant gene to elude its host’s defences may offer a route to new pest-control strategies.….. Read more
Meet The Bioprinted Pancreas That Could End Diabetes
The design flow of a 3D printed pancreas begins as a transparent shape on a computer screen — engendering a tiny digital replica of the human pancreas. But incredibly, it only takes 30 seconds to print the tissue out of a bioprinter, blood vessels and all. This is done using a small sample of stem cells. ..…. Read more
Netherlands unveils home 3D printed with concrete, and it wants to use the technology to house its growing population
The home is made up of 24 concrete units "printed" by a machine that squirts layer upon layer of concrete at a factory in the city before being trucked to a neighbourhood of other new homes. There, the finishing touches — including a roof — were added. The layers give a ribbed texture to its walls, inside and out.….. Read more
Flu Has Disappeared Worldwide during the COVID Pandemic
Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization have dropped to minuscule levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading also stop the flu. Influenza viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, but they are less effective at jumping from host to host. .…. Read more
Consortium unveils greenhouse gas monitoring constellation Carbon Mapper
A consortium led by the State of California, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Planet announced plans April 15 for a constellation of hyperspectral satellites to pinpoint, quantify and track point sources of methane and carbon dioxide. The constellation is one element of Carbon Mapper, a public-private partnership aimed at providing information to help limit greenhouse gas emissions.….. Read more
Streams and lakes have rights, a US county decided. Now they’re suing Florida
A network of streams, lakes and marshes in Florida is suing a developer and the state to try to stop a housing development from destroying them. The novel lawsuit was filed on Monday in Orange county on behalf of the waterways under a “rights of nature” law passed in November. It is the largest US municipality to adopt such a law to date. The listed plaintiffs are Wilde Cypress Branch, Boggy Branch, Crosby Island Marsh, Lake Hart and Lake Mary Jane...….. Read more
Baidu Apollo to launch fully driverless ride-hailing services in Beijing
This will be China’s first paid autonomous vehicle service where users can hail a robotaxi without a safety driver behind the steering wheel, marking a landmark step on the road to commercialization of autonomous driving....…. Read more
DNA-inspired ‘supercoiling’ fibres could make powerful artificial muscles for robots
We see supercoiling in everyday life, for example when a garden hose becomes tangled. Twisting any long fibre can produce supercoiling, which is known as “snarling” in textiles processing or “hockling” when cables become snagged..…..Read more
Stockpile of Unfinished Ford Super Duty Pickups Missing Chips Is Now Visible from Space
Just because vehicles need chips to be delivered doesn't mean you have to stop making 'em altogether. Case-in-point, Ford is still making trucks; it's just making them without the necessary bits, holding them until the chips finally come in, and then shipping them out to dealers. Ford is doing this with what looks like thousands of vehicles, and you can see the results from space. ….….Read more
Amazon expands in-garage grocery delivery to more than 5,000 cities
After launching as a pilot program in just five cities, Key by Amazon's in-garage grocery delivery is now available anywhere Amazon delivers groceries. .…. Read more
Why promoted women are more likely to divorce
In Sweden, which ranks first in the EU’s gender equality index thanks to factors like generous parental leave, subsidised daycare and flexible working arrangements, economists recently studied how promotions to top jobs affected the probability of divorce for each gender. The result: women were much more likely to pay a higher personal price for their career success. …. Read more
EVs will be cheaper than petrol cars in all segments by 2027, BNEF analysis finds
Electric sedans (C and D segments) and SUVs will be as cheap to produce as petrol vehicles from 2026, while small cars (B segment) will follow in 2027, BNEF projects. It finds that falling battery costs [1], new vehicle architectures, and dedicated production lines for electric vehicles will make them cheaper to buy, on average, even before subsidies. …..Read more
THE WORLD’S LARGEST SINGLE-DOMED GREENHOUSE PUSHES THE BOUNDARIES OF INNOVATIVE ARCHITECTURE
Designed by French firm Coldefy & Associates, it will be located on the Côte D’opale in Northern France and construction will begin in 2024. Coldefy & Associates have collaborated with energy company Dalkia for the $62-million ambitious project. The gigantic greenhouse wants to immerse its visitors in a tropical environment that spans over 215,000 square feet and is covered with a massive 35-meter-tall dome. The indoor ventilated temperature will be maintained at 26°c to accommodate the needs of a diverse range of birds, butterflies, fish, reptiles, and exotic plants, fauna, and flora. Read more
Business Tips
Patch issued to tackle critical security issues present in Dell driver software since 2009
The DBUtil BIOS driver comes on many Dell machines running Windows and contains a component -- the dbutil_2_3.sys module -- which is installed and loaded on-demand by initiating the firmware update process and then unloaded after a system reboot -- and this module was subject to Dekel's scrutiny....Read more
Poised
Poised is an AI-powered communication coach that provides you personalized feedback and lessons by observing your online meetings …… Read more
Review: using Apple’s AirTag for tracking checked luggage
The size of a 20c piece and the shape of a coat button, AirTags are wireless gizmos which can be attached to anything you’re likely to temporarily misplace, leave behind or full-on lose. Powered by a replaceable CR2032 coin battery, each AirTag is constantly broadcasting a silent, sonar-like Bluetooth ping. Any of the billion-plus other devices in Apple’s cloud-based Find My network – other people’s iPhones, iPads etc – can pick up the Bluetooth signal from any nearby AirTag and privately relay its location back to the owner .…. Read more
How to secure your hybrid work world with a Zero Trust approach
While this is essentially a Microsoft advert it contains some useful information and is well worth looking at when thinking about IT risks in a world where lots more people work from home.….. Read More
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