What's Emerging September 2023
A newsletter on interesting stuff that is emerging around the world so you can think about strategy.
Welcome to our end-of-September newsletter
In the next few weeks, Paul will be completing a strategic board review with a health sector foundation and presenting on the future of regional business investment in Albany. He will also be working with the I CAN network on the future of their online mentoring program, as well as exploring the business model for a new social enterprise he is thinking of establishing. He will also be continuing to work with RSL Victoria on implementing their new strategic plan.
Paul also has four new invite codes for the social media network Bluesky. Click on Contact Us below if you want to get one so you can explore that new space.
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:
Scientists Think an Earth-Like Planet May Be Hiding in Our Solar System
The far reaches of the Solar System are a dim and distant realm with particulars that elude us. So far from the light of the Sun, even a relatively large planet could easily escape our notice. The trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) that we have found out there, beyond the orbit of Neptune, exhibit some peculiar clustering behaviors that could indicate the presence of a hidden world. This has led scientists to propose the idea of Planet Nine, a large terrestrial planet lurking far beyond the range of visibility...........…..Read more
What are we Writing About?
As none of our recent work is public, there is nothing in this section of this edition.
What’s Emerging
It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy - Mozilla
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label -- making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed........…..Read More
Using ROBOTS to make drugs | Multiply Labs
Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
An estimated 20 to 40 million tonnes of lithium metal lie within a volcanic crater formed around 16 million years ago. This is notably larger than the lithium deposits found beneath a Bolivian salt flat, previously considered the largest deposit in the world. Mining at the site is, however, contested by Native Americans for whom the area is sacred, and is believed to be where a massacre took place in 1865............……. Read more
World's oldest wooden structure discovered in Zambia, dating back 476,000 years, archaeologists say
Archaeologists say they have unearthed the oldest wooden structure ever discovered, dating from nearly half a million years ago, which suggests that our ancestors may have been more advanced than previously thought. ......……. Read More
‘A Pandora’s box’: map of protein-structure families delights scientists
Researchers have mined a database containing the structures of nearly every known protein — more than 200 million entries predicted using Google DeepMind’s revolutionary AlphaFold neural network. The work has uncovered completely new shapes, surprising connections in the machinery of life and other insights that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.........…..Read more
InnerPlant Secures $300K from United Soybean Board for Satellite Detection ofCrops Fluorescing WhenStressed
The funding supports the development, construction and validation of a first-of-its-kind satellite-mounted device to detect optical signals given off by crops engineered by InnerPlant to fluoresce in response to stress like an attack from pathogens or a lack of water or nutrients..........…..Read more
Japan pharma startup developing world-first drug to grow new teeth
Most people have "tooth buds" that have the potential to become a new tooth, in addition to baby and permanent teeth, although the buds usually do not develop and subsequently disappear. The team created an antibody drug that inhibits the protein that suppresses the growth of teeth. The drug works on these buds and stimulates their growth...….. Read more
‘Grey divorce’ is on the rise. But why are so many older couples calling it quits?
Figures released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in March show more than one-quarter of the 56,244 divorces granted in 2021 involved couples who were married for 20 years or more, up from about one in five in the 1980s and 1990s. And while divorce rates dropped in other age demographics, there was an upward trend for all 50+ age groups getting divorced in 2021....…. Read more
At Accelerate conference, Amazon continues to open up its logistics network
Amazon is expanding its logistics network with a new end-to-end supply chain offering that will fulfill even orders placed outside of its third-party marketplace.........…..Read more
This Museum Has 300 Tanks and Over 100 Million YouTube Views
Only a few hundred thousand people visit The Tank Museum, in the English countryside, each year. But on YouTube, it’s more popular than the Met and MoMA............….. Read more
‘It felt futile’: young Britons swap career-driven lives for family and fun
UK millennials are shunning overtime and excess work stress, and focusing more on loved ones and personal fulfilment...........….….Read more
World’s first crewed liquid hydrogen plane takes off
H2FLY has successfully kept its plane in the air for over 3 hours.….…Read more.
Antimatter feels gravity's pull, and one of biggest mysteries of the Universe stays unsolved
In the first direct measurement of antimatter's behaviour under Earth's gravity, physicists at CERN's Antimatter Factory made, corralled and dropped the antimatter version of hydrogen atoms in a tube. Turns out they fall a lot like plain old ordinary hydrogen atoms.....……...… Read more.
SwarmFarm Robotics launches 'Dock and Refill' technology
This new technology enables robots called SwarmBots to autonomously refill and refuel themselves.Paul: I am a big fan of what swarm farm robotics is doing, and this is a great advance....……...… Read more.
Business and Other Tips
The best USB-C cables for the iPhone 15 in 2023
The new iPhone 15 series supports USB-C charging, but not all cables are created equal. This definitive (and technical) guide breaks down the top options for every iPhone 15 model.......…..read more.
Boost Your Productivity With the Best Time Management Strategies
One of the greatest challenges of productivity is figuring out how to manage your time. Time management helps you structure your day. Yet there’s more at play than simply building a daily task list and working through it. When done well, the right time management strategies boost productivity and help you maintain efficient working practices in the long term. Paul: my go-to strategies are 1/ Block email replies into time-limited boxes (time boxing). 2/ The Pomodoro technique (see article). 3/ Turning off the phone for deep work sessions. 4/ Anything that can be done in less than 2 minutes, do it immediately. 5/ Avoid multitasking and task-switching fanatically. 6/ Automation of simple things (e.g. Calendly for appointment scheduling). 6/ Regular breaks (I try and do 55 minutes on, 10 minutes off and 55 minutes on and take a longer break every two hours - working from home helps this by using the longer break to do some tasks around the house)...…. Read More
Seven lifestyle factors reduce your risk of depression
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Shanghai’s Fudan University analysed the health data of nearly 290,000 middle-aged British adults over the course of nine years. During that time, nearly 13,000 of the participants experienced depression. There were seven lifestyle factors associated with a reduced risk of depression:
Getting between seven and nine hours of sleep (22 per cent)
Not smoking (20 per cent)
Frequent social contact (18 per cent)
Regular physical activity (14 per cent)
Not being too sedentary (13 per cent)
Consuming no more than small to moderate levels of alcohol (11 per cent)
Consuming a healthy diet, as per the dietary guidelines (6 per cent).
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