Welcome back, everybody. Here's the first round-up of the year
(which inevitably includes some round-ups of last year
and the usual predictions for the future.)
Business & management:
• A purely commercial Kenyan bank that concentrates on providing services to the low-income population, is now the 3rd most profitable bank in the country.
• Online collaboration is not just something used in education, but is increasingly in use in business. An “open collaborative map” has been created that provides links to the best online collaboration tools from 2008.
• In theory, alternative currencies encourage consumers to make purchases within their communities rather than elsewhere in the country or abroad. The Berkshires in Massachusetts have an alternative currency called Berkshares, one of the most successful currencies in the US.
Education
• The New Media Consortium (of more than 250 learning-focused organisations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies) has released their 2008 Horizon Report: Australia-New Zealand edition. The report provides an indicator for the next 5 years of emerging technologies as they appear in and affect higher education.
• A new UK survey has found that “helicopter parents” are using social networking sites to keep in touch with their offspring and meddle in their university life from afar.
• A secondary school in the US now offers 3 levels of online learning to its students, and new research shows that working with technology helps students learn some basic social and technical skills they'll need to participate in society.
• Alternative reality games are a new field in higher education, but initial results from a course in the UK that teaches key historical research skills, show that students were more engaged, and learnt the skills more easily.
• UK schools will receive funding to teach pupils how to listen to each other's problems and help classmates who struggle to form friendships or cope with bullying.
Environment & sustainability:
• Next month an Australian company will turn on its 1‑megawatt pilot geothermal plant in the Cooper Basin – where there are no existing underground reservoirs of water and steam. The plant will use an engineered geothermal system (EGS) to take advantage of Australia’s natural nuclear geology.
• A leading UK food specialist says that the current global food system needs to be rebuilt to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation.
• The Green Microgym in Portland, Oregon, aims to be a carbon neutral exercise facility through the use of solar power and human-generated energy from clients as they pedal and run.
• From The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience / Rob Hopkins – “6 reasons why nuclear power can’t save us”.
• The world’s first cargo ship using 328 solar panels to provide some of its power was launched in Japan last month, intended initially to transport export vehicles.
• New York City has announced that LED bulbs may soon be used to power standard streetlights across the city.
• Public buildings in England and Wales are pumping out 11m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, more than Kenya's entire carbon footprint.
• The 5 top green building stories in the US for 2008 show that the green building sector is doing well in spite of the recession, companies are taking on more measures to save cost and green their buildings, and litigation over green building codes is a new phenomenon.
• Britain is now the world's leading generator of offshore wind power, recently overtaking Denmark (other countries have greater onshore capacity). The potential is enormous, with turbines quadrupling in size, vastly increasing their efficiency and the power they can harvest.
• The Environment Agency in the UK is launching a project to reclaim urban rivers, streams and brooks around London. Under the plan, 92 projects will be announced (un)covering 14 different waterways in London, at least seven of which have been buried by history.
Health & wellbeing:
• New research shows that people who sleep fewer than 5 hours a night are more likely to develop hardening of the arteries. There is a growing body of evidence that short sleep may have subtle health consequences.
• Drinking 2 units of alcohol a day increases the risk of liver and bowel cancers by a fifth (i.e. one pint of beer, a large glass of wine or a couple of measures of spirits) and just a few sessions of heavy drinking can damage someone's ability to pay attention, remember things and make good judgments.
Law & Government:
• A “pay-as-you-throw” incentive trial for reducing rubbish and increasing recycling is not going to be taken up by over 100 councils surveyed in the UK, as the councils feel it would "damage the goodwill that has been built up over the years".
• An urban development called Western Harbour in Malmo, Sweden is built on reclaimed industrial land, but is unusual for the requirements by planners, that developers choose 10 green features out of a list of 35 to incorporate into their designs, that will promote biodiversity.
• The drive to create communities that balance environmental, economic and social responsibilities through planned development is growing as shown by projects in Texas, Georgia and Tennessee.
• There is concern in the UK that mass building schemes such as the Thames Gateway Plan, will repeat the same mistakes made in the high-rise developments of 40 years ago, creating more soulless settlements of high-density, low-quality homes where people simply won't want to live.
People, culture & diversity:
• A survey in the UK for Post Office Broadband called “Web I’m 64: ageing, the Internet and digital inclusion” has found that one in five people (18%) who can’t use the internet say they feel ignored by society and 20% hate being excluded from public information web users take for granted.
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Science, technology & transport:
• Edge.org poses a question every year to the world’s most influential thinkers. This year’s question is “What will change everything? – what game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”
• Futurist magazine has published its Outlook 2009 report, and the top 10 predictions for the future include urbanization reaching 60% by 2030 and a warning that most professions will require continuous instruction and retraining due to the pace of change.
• For a visual representation of the “megatrends” of the future, check the image: Trend Blend 2009+: a map of time and tide.
• Even US government departments are getting involved in making use of virtual worlds as a means of communication.
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced a new standard to make sites more accessible to older and disabled people. Version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) will apply to text, images, audio and video.
• Microsoft has put in place a scheme that will allow hardware firms to get hold of XP licences until 30 May 2009.
• The prospects for the space elevator have been shaken up with a simple prototype using a broomstick, demonstrated at the Second International Conference on Space Elevator and Tether Design in Luxembourg.
• Last November’s ban on USBs by the Dept of Defence in the US, was intended to help stop the spread of a virus that is a self-propagating program, which lurks unseen on USB drives. Businesses need to be aware of the use of USBs and have a security protocol that is not a hindrance that users will try to avoid.
• One commentator’s believes that the top ten predictions for green IT in 2009 all emphasise that green IT will move towards becoming the norm, and that the economic crisis will encourage green IT, not hold it back.
• Computing magazine Which? has discovered that the only way to stop fraudsters stealing information from old computer hard drives is by destroying them completely.
