What's Emerging mid-April 2021
A newsletter on interesting stuff that is emerging around the world so you can think about strategy
Introduction
Welcome to our mid-April newsletter for 2021.
First of all apologies for the last edition not being produced. Unfortunately Paul was hospitalised before the newsletter was put together last month and ended up in hospital for a week. He is back home and working now and there are no long term issues or consequences.
In the next few weeks, Paul will continue working with two councils 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. Paul has also been appointed as a special advisor for foresight and strategy to Save the Children Australia and will be working with them on strategy and organisational design. He is also running a strategy workshop for Animal Aid, a not for profit organisation in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. He will also be recording a new podcast (see more under what are we writing about).
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:
ACCOR LAUNCHES HYBRID-MEETING CONCEPT POWERED BY MICROSOFT TEAMS
The new concept is designed to enable guests around the world to adapt to the new ways of working that are expected to be an enduring legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic….. read more
What are we Writing About?
Paul presented on foresight and strategy to GroWQ in Longreach in March. GroWQ is a not for profit organisation dedicated to growing the economy and the community in the Longreach area. You can see his presentation and notes by going to our home page and looking under our latest work
What’s Emerging
The Air Force Is Making an App That Basically Does What a General Does
The nascent app aims to generate options, recommendations, and mission orders.. ….. Read More
How 'agromining' — farming plants that contain metal — could help power the future
Cuttings from these woody plants can be dried and incinerated into ash. That ash is known as "bio-ore". "It's extremely high-grade ore, which can then be processed using standard hydrometallurgical techniques," Dr van der Ent says. Nickel is where the most potential lies….. Read more
Ghana is using drones to deliver coronavirus vaccines to rural communities
Zipline, a San Francisco startup, has been delivering medical supplies including blood, personal protective equipment, and vaccines since 2016 using patented, autonomous drones. ..…. Read more
A Tiny Particle’s Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of Physics
Experiments with particles known as muons suggest that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science. ….. Read more
L3Harris sends 3D printed electronic circuit to the ISS
An L3Harris-designed Radio Frequency (RF) circuit and an array of various 3D printed material samples launched into space, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The components, produced on a Dragonfly electronics 3D printer, are part of an experiment to assess the viability of 3D printed materials for RF applications. .…. Read more
World’s First-Ever Drone-led Dengue Prevention Campaign is a Success
WeRobotics has led the development and deployment of a drone-based release mechanism that enables the precision release of hundreds-of-thousands of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes per flight. This is an altogether different kind of cargo drone delivery! ….. Read more
Beijing now has more billionaires than any city
Beijing is now home to more billionaires than any other city in the world, according to the latest Forbes' annual rich list. The Chinese capital added 33 billionaires last year and now hosts 100, said the business magazine. This narrowly beats New York City, which hosts 99 and has held the top ranking for the last seven years..….. Read more
SpaceX launches another set of Starlink satellites as it nears global coverage
SpaceX continued the rollout of its Starlink broadband constellation with another launch of 60 satellites April 7, edging closer to providing continuous global service. ...…. Read more
Novel HIV vaccine approach shows promise in “landmark” first-in-human trial
One of the lead investigators on the trial, Dr Julie McElrath, senior vice president and director of Fred Hutch’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, said the trial was “a landmark study in the HIV vaccine field,” adding that they had demonstrated “success in the first step of a pathway to induce broad neutralising antibodies against HIV-1.” …..Read more
Can Geothermal Power Play a Key Role in the Energy Transitio
Aided by advances in deep-drilling technology for fracking, engineers are developing new methods of tapping into the earth’s limitless underground supplies of heat and steam. But the costs of accessing deep geothermal energy are high, and initial government support will be crucial.….….Read more
Russia’s latest combat drone to control swarm of reconnaissance UAVs
Russia’s latest Grom (Thunder) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will be capable of controlling a swarm of 10 Molniya (Lightning) small-size drones in their reconnaissance and strike configurations with the option of altering their flight assignments .…. Read more
Scientists Grow Mouse Embryos in a Mechanical Womb
The experiments, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, were meant to help scientists understand how mammals develop and how gene mutations, nutrients and environmental conditions may affect the fetus. But the work may one day raise profound questions about whether other animals, even humans, should or could be cultured outside a living womb. .. …. Read more
Inside Facebook Reality Labs: Wrist-based interaction for the next computing platform
A wrist-based wearable has the additional benefit of easily serving as a platform for compute, battery, and antennas while supporting a broad array of sensors. The missing piece was finding a clear path to rich input, and a potentially ideal solution was EMG. …..Read more
Audi Will Stop Developing Internal Combustion Engines
In an interview with German-language industry news outlet Automobilwoche, Audi CEO Marcus Duesmann confirmed the decision. "We will no longer develop a new internal combustion engine, but will adapt our existing internal combustion engines to new emission guidelines," Duesmann told the publication (as translated by Google). ...… Read more
Business Tips
Phone wet and won’t turn on? Here’s how to deal with water damage (hint: soaking it in rice won’t work)
While new phones are advertised as “water resistant”, this doesn’t mean they are waterproof, or totally immune to water. Water resistance just implies the device can handle some exposure to water before substantial damage occurs. .…..Read more
Deep Collaboration Platform CoScreen Launches with $4.6M in Seed Funding to Cure Video Chat Fatigue
Initially developed as part of a corporate skunkworks project, CoScreen goes beyond basic chat and passive screen-sharing. It allows remote teams to discuss, edit, and demo their work simultaneously on a joint desktop, making tasks like onboarding, code reviews, and solving service outages easier than ever. CoScreen users can edit each other's shared windows as if they were their own. …… Read more
Flight Penguin is a new flight search Chrome app that promises ‘no collusion’
it’s a Chrome browser extension that simultaneously searches a bunch of airline websites and then presents the results in a familiar format. Rather than taking a commission or affiliate fee, Flight Penguin will instead charge its users $10 per month — it’s designed for people who travel a lot (or, since there’s still a pandemic on, people who will imminently travel a lot). …. Read more
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