Scan Monthly No. 054August 2007 |
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Signals of Change
Bioprinting
SoC255
Scientists are adapting various printing technologies for applications in the life sciences, including the design and manufacture of a range of biomaterials such as skin, cartilage, and bone. The potential for bioprinting as a viable manufacturing alternative is also creating considerable interest in several arenas beyond medicine.
Social Impediments to a Green Future
SoC256
The road to carbon neutrality will require not only technology but also a transformation of social and political thought. Changing deeply embedded social structures is extremely difficult and will require more than just convincing people that change is necessary.
The Pampered Generation
SoC257
The parents of many of young adults are assisting in the development of their children's careers by actively participating in the kids' job searches, salary negotiations, and job-acceptance decisions. Observers argue that such pampering will lead to unrealistic expectations that other parties (including employers) will have to take into account when dealing with members of this younger generation. The phenomenon is already affecting corporate human-resource departments in their attempts to recruit young talent.
Neurotherapies
SoC258
Advances in neuroscience research are creating novel theories and therapies. For example, Dr. Allan Basbaum regards pain, especially chronic pain, as a disease rather than a symptom. And brain-imaging studies help explain why talking about emotions helps decrease their intensity.
Soft Modeling
SoC259
New computing and networking infrastructures are making possible new forms of modeling human social behaviors or soft modeling. Enabling technologies such as the Internet provide the reach and ubiquity to enable ad hoc, amateur, grassroots data collection; various communication networks incorporating technologies as diverse as mobile phones, GPS, and RFID provide tracking capabilities.
Advances in Teleteaching
SoC260
Recent advances in technologies and business models are making highly effective remote-conferencing, -teaching, and -tutoring services available at both the mass-market and the high-end niche-market levels.
Insights
| The Future of Food | View full summary |
| D07-2556 | Download this Insight |
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We are all consumers of food. Every day we eat to live, not by conscious calculation but by responding to biological signals of hunger and, more commonly, to culturally learned habits and preferences about the right time to eat, the right way to eat, andmost importantthe right kinds of food to eat. Food provides not only nutrition but sensual stimulation, comfort, and context for sociability. Any discussion of the future of food therefore has to address not just the core questions of caloric quantity and nutritional quality but also the broader questions of the changing cultural meaning of food and the changing social contexts in which food is produced and consumed. In abstracts and Signals of Change during 2007, Scan has examined a variety of issues related to food. This study reviews those issues to arrive at a broader perspective on the future of food. Author: Thomas M. McKenna. 9 pages. |
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| Scan Meeting Digest: 18 July 2007 Meeting | View full summary |
| D07-2557 | Download this Insight |
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This document is a digest of the Scan abstract clusters that participants in the 18 July 2007 Scan meeting identified. The digest includes a description of the Scan process for people who have never attended a Scan meeting, a list of the clusters that meeting participants identified, and a one-page description of each cluster's premise and supporting abstracts. The document has active links that allow the reader to access the supporting abstracts for each cluster in Scan's online abstract database. The document also has links to previously published Scan documents relating to the particular cluster. Clusters of abstracts for this July meeting include the new automotive competitive landscape; tomorrow's cars; the bio age; health-care professional shortage; new technology, old government; the changing landscape of consumer electronics; the net value of Baby Boomers; next-generation urban planning; regulations versus environment (illogical environmentalism); new world disorder; and strategies for the twenty-first century. Compiler: Martin Schwirn. 36 pages. |
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Calendar
Scan Abstract Meetings
Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation on:
- 19 September 2007 at 9:00 am
- 17 October 2007 at 9:00 am
- 23 January 2008 at 9:00 am
- 19 March 2008 at 9:00 am
- 21 May 2008 at 9:00 am
- 23 July 2008 at 9:00 am.