What's Emerging mid-July 2023
A newsletter on interesting stuff that is emerging around the world so you can think about strategy.
Welcome to our mid-July newsletter
In the next few weeks, Paul will continue working on a large foresight and strategic planning program for RSL Victoria and a strategic board review with a health sector foundation. He will also be presenting on the future of Agricultural Shows in Adelaide , working with Housing Choices Australia on their long term vision and with the I CAN network on the future of their online mentoring program.
He will also be convening a group to look at experiments in futures thinking using new AI models to generate questions rather than answers. An approach beyond the current ChatGPT hysteria. Places will be limited, so please contact us if you wish to participate. First come, first served.
Paul will also be continuing his work in his position as Chair of Social Venture Partners Melbourne, which supports innovative not-for-profit startups to scale their operations through engaged philanthropy. Social Venture Partners Melbourne is looking for a new Executive Director to work flexibly two days a week helping their partners make an impact. If you know anybody who would be interested in the role please send them the ad: SVPM Executive Director or please repost the ad on LinkedIn
If you are interested in talking to us about any of these approaches, please Contact Us.
The Emergent Futures Team
In case you missed it. The most popular link from the last edition:
The run away winner by a large margin was: Complexity is not supposed to be complex
An excellent article by Sonja Blignaut …... Read more
What are we Writing About?
Due to Paul being on holidays we have nothing in this section this edition.
What’s Emerging
More countries across Asia are debuting digital artificial intelligence news readers
While some Asian countries seem to be embracing opportunities to use AI in the media landscape, Australians may not be as welcoming of its use. A new survey by market research firm Ipsos Global Advisor this week found Australians were the most worried about AI out of the 31 countries examined...…..Read More
Researchers: We've Underestimated The Risk of Simultaneous Crop Failures Worldwide
In the new research published in Nature Communications, researchers in the United States and Germany looked at the likelihood that several major food producing regions could simultaneously suffer low yields....…..Read More
Crows can understand probability like primates do
When given the chance to peck on symbols that carried different probabilities of getting food, carrion crows learned to choose the one with a higher probability of reward. Paul: and probably better than a lot of humans..........……. Read more
Zapping municipal waste helps recover valuable phosphorus fertilizer
One of humankind's most precious fertilizers is slipping away. Phosphorus, which today comes mostly from nonrenewable reserves of phosphate rock, typically winds up in municipal waste streams. In the best cases, wastewater treatment plants sequester about 90% of that phosphorus in "sludge" and decompose that sludge into something known as digestate. Engineers hope to establish a more sustainable cycle for reusing phosphorus, but toxic compounds in digestate limit the possibility of recycling it as fertilizer—it's hard to recover phosphorus from solid waste like digestate......……. Read More
New AI translates 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets instantly
Researchers have unearthed hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, but many remain untranslated. Translating an ancient language is a time-intensive process, and only a few hundred experts are qualified to perform it. A recent study describes a new AI that produces high-quality translations of ancient texts.........…..Read more
Wearable movement-tracking data can identify Parkinson’s disease years before clinical diagnosis
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative movement disorder with a long latent phase and currently no disease-modifying treatments. Reliable predictive biomarkers that could transform efforts to develop neuroprotective treatments remain to be identified..Accelerometry is a potentially important, low-cost screening tool for determining people at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and identifying participants for clinical trials of neuroprotective treatments.........…..Read more
Soya beans made more meat-like by adding genes for pig proteins
A company called Moolec has created transgenic soya beans called “Piggy Sooy” in which a quarter of the protein is pig protein rather than plant protein........….. Read more
Announcing the first Machine Unlearning Challenge
Machine unlearning is an emergent subfield of machine learning that aims to remove the influence of a specific subset of training examples — the "forget set" — from a trained model.....…. Read more
Palm-Sized Powerhouse: RIKEN’s Handheld Terahertz Device to “X-Ray” Things Without Harmful Radiation
The technology promises various applications including non-destructive imaging and quantum research, with industrial collaborations underway.......…..Read more
Fungi could be the next frontier in fire safety
When exposed to intense fire or heat, the material can transform to char – a black high-carbon residue that remains when all the water and volatile compounds have burned off. This is similar to the charcoal that remains when wood is burned. This char protects any underlying flammable material by slowing down heat transfer and preventing further combustion...........….. Read more
Artificial intelligence-based model to classify cardiac functions from chest radiographs: a multi-institutional, retrospective model development and validation study
Chest radiography is a common and widely available examination. Although cardiovascular structures—such as cardiac shadows and vessels—are visible on chest radiographs, the ability of these radiographs to estimate cardiac function and valvular disease is poorly understood. Using datasets from multiple institutions, this study aimed to develop and validate a deep-learning model to simultaneously detect valvular disease and cardiac functions from chest radiographs.........….….Read more
To Help Cool a Hot Planet, the Whitest of White Coats
Scientists at Purdue have created a white paint that, when applied, can reduce the surface temperature on a roof and cool the building beneath it.It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40 percent..….…Read more.
AGvisorPRO Partners with Young's Equipment to Launch the First Large Language Model for Equipment Dealers
visorPRO is based on a Large Language Model (LLM) AI system which is specifically designed to extract accurate answers from technical, operational, and service manuals. This visorPRO AI solution is designed to solve current dealership challenges by automating referenced responses to repeated queries with a “human-in-the-loop” approach, freeing technical experts to focus on more complex issues. Paul: An interesting application of LLM AI models..……...… Read more.
Artificial cells demonstrate that “life finds a way”
The research team has been studying a synthetically constructed minimal cell that has been stripped of all but its essential genes. The team found that the streamlined cell can evolve just as fast as a normal cell—demonstrating the capacity for organisms to adapt, even with an unnatural genome that would seemingly provide little flexibility................…Read more.
Business Tips
Virgin Family Pooling lets you share Velocity points, status credits
As an example, a return flight between Melbourne and Brisbane or the Gold Coast on an Economy Choice fare will earn 40 status credits per passenger. For a family of four, that’s 160 status credits – almost a third of the way to the 500 needed to earn Velocity Gold for a single flyer. With all of those points flowing to your account, you could be enjoying those Gold-plated perks a lot sooner than you would without the pool.....…..read more.
5 things to know about Meta's Threads app before you entangle your Instagram account
Threads, an Instagram app, is a microblogging platform that Meta released to compete directly with Twitter. Threads is Instagram's companion app, as Instagram users must create a Threads account with their Instagram credentials...…. Read More
The mathematically correct way to tie your shoes
Paul: Not sure how true this is, but it has changed how I tie my shoelaces, especially for cricket, where they kept coming undone. Seems to have worked so far…... Read more
Why every traveller should learn how to power nap
Long-favoured by politicians, academics and artists – Sir Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Salvidor Dali were all devotees of the daytime doze – the humble nap is like a fast-charge for your brain, and its benefits can be felt in as little as 15 minutes. Paul: looking forward to trying out the Jet Lag App on my next overseas trip as it seems a little like the US Air Force Jet Lag process I have used before.. ……Read more
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