Opinion & Analysis: "In the longer term a lot hinges on the willingness of the world to hold dollars as the preferred reserve currency. There are no immediate signs of declining confidence but the huge dollar stocks in hands of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan make the whole system depend on sentiment in a few countries. Could an aggressive US enmeshed in overseas adventures provoke a reaction? What of the possible impact of US domestic debt burden on confidence? If the US cannot finance its balance of payments deficit, major expenditure adjustments will follow in the US government (with implications for its defence posture) or in the private sector (with implications for world exports to the US). But the world needs a reserve currency and the plausibility of this scenario depends on how the euro emerges and whether the principal holders of world reserves, the East Asian countries, develop their monetary co-operation to a point where a new preferred reserve currency emerges. "

Opinion & Analysis: "A country�s foreign and defence policy is generally shaped by what it perceives as threats to its security and integrity where an explicit and hostile intent by specific parties can be identified and countered. But in today�s world a country�s external policy must move beyond direct threat perceptions and take into account two further concepts�competition and vulnerability.

Competition refers to rivalries that fall short of explicit threats in the political, economic, cultural spheres. The tussle to get oil concessions is an example. Vulnerability is a much broader concept. It covers the impact on the possibility of stable progress at home of events/trends/policies in other parts of the world. These may not be directed at us specifically. Yet they have an impact on us, and our external policy must look beyond threat management and provide insurance against vulnerability. "
Vulnerability can come from instability in other countries, its spillover effect, and the effect of responses of regional or global powers to this.

10 global trends to watch in 2006: "1. The article says that although the United States will continue to 'account for the largest share of absolute economic growth' over the next 20 years, major hubs of economic activity worldwide will shift dramatically. Manufacturing and IT services sectors too will witness major shifts. And this trend will not be limited across nations, but will also happen within regions. The authors say that the Asian economy will boom during the next two decades and account for more than 30 per cent of world GDP, like Europe."

Telegraph | News | Ban all schools? That's a dangerous thought: "Biotechnology will be domesticated in 50 years
This means cheap tools and do-it-yourself kits for gardeners to design roses, and for animal-breeders to design lizards and snakes. It means biotech games for children, like computer games but with real eggs and seeds.
There are two dangers. First, smart kids and malicious grown-ups will find ways to convert biotech tools to the manufacture of lethal microbes.
Second, ambitious parents will find ways to apply the tools to the genetic modification of babies.
The unanswered question is, whether we can regulate domesticated biotechnology so that it can be applied to animals and vegetables but not to microbes and humans."

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006 � P6: "Since the major absorption of scientific method into the research and practice of medicine in the 1860s, the longevity curve, at least for the white population in industrial countries, took off and has continued fairly constantly. That has been on the whole a benign result, and has begun to introduce the idea of tolerably good health as one of the basic Human Rights. But one now reads of projections to 200 years, and perhaps more. The economic, social and human costs of the increasing fraction of very elderly citizens have begun to be noticed already."

Land of Cliches - New York Times: "The unfortunate fact is that killing has proved to be an effective solution to an array of adaptive problems in the ruthless evolutionary games of survival and reproductive competition: Preventing injury, rape, or death; protecting one's children; eliminating a crucial antagonist; acquiring a rival's resources; securing sexual access to a competitor's mate; preventing an interloper from appropriating one's own mate; and protecting vital resources needed for reproduction. ... "

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006: "Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. A realistic biology of the mind, advances in evolutionary biology, physics, information technology, genetics, neurobiology, psychology, engineering, the chemistry of materials: all are questions of critical importance with respect to what it means to be human. For the first time, we have the tools and the will to undertake the scientific study of human nature. "

Custom-Made Microbes, at Your Service - New York Times: "Some scientists envision that biological engineers will one day sit at computers writing programs for cells, like software developers. But the code would be written in sequences of DNA, rather than computer language. When finished, the programmer would press the 'print' button, as it were, and the DNA would be made to order."

Custom-Made Microbes, at Your Service - New York Times: " 'We're talking about taking biology and building it for a specific purpose, rather than taking existing biology and adapting it,' Professor Keasling of Berkeley said. 'We don't have to rely on what nature's necessarily created.' "

Legal Applications of Artificial Intelligence -- (University of Texas -- January 10, 2006)
http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~palmquis/courses/project98/ailaw/ailaw.htm
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology develops, the creation of computers that can autonomously reason with the law to determine legal solutions is slowly becoming a reality. Expert systems will one day be able to predict the outcome of litigation with a good degree of accuracy. An important attribute of expert systems is their ability to explain why a particular analysis or recommendation was produced. The process usually involves the assignation of numerical "weights" in relation to case facts. This website is a great starting point for those interested in the future of law and AI.

Why this brain flies on rat cunning - Science - www.theage.com.au: "The goal is to study how cortical networks perform their neural computations. The implications are extremely important,' "

Why this brain flies on rat cunning - Science - www.theage.com.au: "Under the microscope they looked at first like grains of sand, but soon the cells begin to connect to form what scientists are calling a 'live computation device' (a brain). The electrodes measure and stimulate neural activity in the network, allowing researchers to study how the brain processes, transforms and stores information."

Blogs Offer Taste of War in Iraq -- (BBC -- December 29, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4555590.stm
The war in Vietnam is often referred to as the first war on television, and the wars in Afghanistan and now in Iraq will be known as the first wars to be blogged. A new generation of soldier bloggers in the US, known as milbloggers, are both fighting in the field and writing about their experiences. It is opening up a new window on modern warfare and is creating a new genre of war-time writing.

Will We Merge With Machines? - Popular Science: "Shock Therapy For the Gut
� 0 - 5 years
A pacemaker created by Transneuronix in New Jersey is helping test subjects lose 25 to 40 percent of their body fat. Its mild shocks relax and expand the upper part of the stomach, and the brain interprets the distended stomach as feeling full."

Will We Merge With Machines? - Popular Science: "Four-Dimensional Vision
� � � � 16+ years
Humans have three color-producing cones in our eyes�red, green and blue. What if we had four? Scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin hope to give us genes for a fourth cone to enable us to see new hues that we can�t even imagine right now."

Will We Merge With Machines? - Popular Science: "Heart of Titanium
� 0 - 5 years
Today�s state-of-the-art artificial heart is the Abiocor. Unfortunately, the device fits just 50 percent of the male population. It also quits working after a year or two. The Abiocor II, due out in 2008, will be 30 percent smaller, fitting most men and 50 percent of women, and will last up to five years."

Will We Merge With Machines? - Popular Science: "Researchers at Brown University and Cyberkinetics in Foxborough, Massachusetts, are devising brain implants that will enable us to communicate with machines. A microchip implanted in the motor cortex just beneath your skull will intercept nerve signals and reroute them to a computer, which will then wirelessly send the command to any of various electronic devices, including computers, stereos and electric wheelchairs."

Harvard Gazette: Is 7-million-year-old skull really human?: "These fossils give researchers and others concerned about our deep past plenty to think, or argue, about. The evolutionary path from ape to man was once compared to a straight ladder. As fossils accumulated, a luxuriantly branching tree became needed to account for all the different hominid skulls, leg bones, arm bones, jaws, and teeth that were discovered. But, notes Pilbeam, 'at the base of this tree, there might well have only been one hominid for the first few million years. And that one may have been like Toumai.' "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Russia's international political interests now lay in reasserting its influence in Ukraine, cooperating with China in Central and East Asia, and expanding its influence in the Persian Gulf (as can be seen in Moscow's hostility toward possible coercive actions against Tehran). Such goals -- which appear quite logical from the Russian point of view -- would be at odds with Germany's ambition of becoming Washington's privileged partner in Western Europe. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): " Because of geographical realities, Germany needs Russia as an energy supplier. Because of the world's geopolitical configuration, Berlin perceives its interests as being those of a great power which needs to function as a 'bridge' between the dominant Western power -- the United States -- and Europe. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Merkel's statement made clear Berlin's commitment to its common energy strategy with Russia established the year before. However, Germany and the present Austrian E.U. presidency are obviously concerned about Europe's strong energy dependence upon Russia. "

State of the World 2006: China, India, the U.S., Europe, and Japan by the Numbers: Worldwatch Institute News: "These slides offer a glimpse of the rising ecological impact of two populous developing nations, China and India, while illustrating that the per-capita resource consumption and pollution of countries in the industrialized world�including the United States, the European Union and Japan�is much higher. If by 2030, China and India alone were to achieve a per-capita footprint equivalent to that of Japan today, together they would require a full planet earth to meet their needs. "

State of the World 2006: "From the Foreword:

'The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources�energy and materials�and generates enormous waste. The industrialized world has mitigated the adverse impacts of wealth generation by investing huge amounts of money. But... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory.'

World Future Society � THE FUTURIST � World Trends & Forecasts: "he economy of China is growing faster than that of any other nation on earth. Chinese manufacturers currently produce more than 70% of the world's toys, 60% of its bicycles, half its shoes, one-third of its television sets and air conditioners, and half of its microwave ovens. Despite the accomplishments of Chinese manufacturing firms on behalf of such recognizable Western brands as Boeing, efforts to market uniquely Chinese brands have thus far stalled. However, that may soon change, according to a new book, The Chinese Century (Wharton 2005). "

World Future Society Book Review: "For all his careful analysis of economics, technology, demography, and ideology, Kelly envisions a future that is guided by no single area of knowledge. Rather, he foresees a future where new and newly efficient organizations, as well as individuals, realize unprecedented power. This vision is at once hopeful and terrifying. History has seen the transfer of power from mobs to empires, and from empires to states, but this final transfer, from states to groups and citizens, may be the last if citizens fail to wield power responsibly. "

World Future Society Book Review: "In Powerful Times, Global Business Network CEO and President Eamonn Kelly lays bare the real and existential conflicts that surround us. He calls these conflicts 'key dynamic tensions,' and, according to Kelly, they are shaping both this age and the next: Human knowledge, in the form of technology, is expanding across the globe. In spite of that positive trend, religious extremism continues to attract followers. Opportunities for economic growth are accelerating, along with economic pitfalls. The Internet has opened up vast virtual frontiers; simultaneously, our ecosystems are straining under ecologically disastrous human behaviors and practices. According to Kelly, how humanity chooses (or does not choose) to resolve these key conflicts will determine the face of the next era of human history"

People's Daily Online -- Beijing to control population within 16 million by 2010: "The Chinese capital will take measures to keep its permanent residents within 16 million by 2010, according to an economic and social development program for 2006-2010 to be discussed at the municipal legislature's annual session. "

SPACE.com -- E-Weapons: Directed Energy Warfare In The 21st Century: "LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico -- There is a new breed of weaponry fast approaching�and at the speed of light no less. They are labeled 'directed-energy weapons' and may well signal a revolution in military hardware�perhaps more so than the atomic bomb. "

G A P M I N D E R: HOME: "HUMAN DEVELOPMENT TRENDS 2005
Gapminder produce an interactive presentation for the 'Human Development Report 2005' by UNDP."

EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Digging for data that can change our world: "Scientific research is being added to at an alarming rate: the Human Genome Project alone is generating enough documentation to 'sink battleships'. So it's not surprising that academics seeking data to support a new hypothesis are getting swamped with information overload. As data banks build up worldwide, and access gets easier through technology, it has become easier to overlook vital facts and figures that could bring about groundbreaking discoveries."

Cells That Read Minds - New York Times: "The ability to share the emotions of others appears to be intimately linked to the functioning of mirror neurons, said Dr. Christian Keysers, who studies the neural basis of empathy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and who has published several recent articles on the topic in Neuron.
When you see someone touched in a painful way, your own pain areas are activated, he said. When you see a spider crawl up someone's leg, you feel a creepy sensation because your mirror neurons are firing.
People who rank high on a scale measuring empathy have particularly active mirror neurons systems, Dr. Keysers said. "

Cells That Read Minds - New York Times: "Mirror neurons provide clues to how children learn: they kick in at birth. Dr. Andrew Meltzoff at the University of Washington has published studies showing that infants a few minutes old will stick out their tongues at adults doing the same thing. More than other primates, human children are hard-wired for imitation, he said, their mirror neurons involved in observing what others do and practicing doing the same things. "

Cells That Read Minds - New York Times: "Other animals - monkeys, probably apes and possibly elephants, dolphins and dogs - have rudimentary mirror neurons, several mirror neuron experts said. But humans, with their huge working memory, carry out far more sophisticated imitations. "

Cells That Read Minds - New York Times: "In a study published in March 2005 in Public Library of Science, Dr. Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or clear it from the table. 'Mirror neurons provide a powerful biological foundation for the evolution of culture,' said Patricia Greenfield, a psychologist at the U.C.L.A. who studies human development.
Until now, scholars have treated culture as fundamentally separate from biology, she said. 'But now we see that mirror neurons absorb culture directly, with each generation teaching the next by social sharing, imitation and observation.' "

The Empire: What It Is and What It Means for All of Us - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: " A majority of Americans now feel that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. They would like the Bush Administration to set a deadline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. It is significant that armed forces recruitment exercises in the last one year or so have consistently recorded shortfalls. In other words, fewer and fewer Americans are prepared to go and fight in Iraq. "

The Empire: What It Is and What It Means for All of Us - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "However, resistance from outside alone will not be enough to bring down the Empire. It is one of the unerring laws of history that empires collapse partly because of internal weaknesses. "

The Empire: What It Is and What It Means for All of Us - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Like other empires in the past, this empire is also being forged through the force of arms. The US today commands overwhelming military power. It is not only more powerful than any other nation on earth. Its strength exceeds that of the next 14 militarily powerful states put together. There has never been a military power as formidable as the US in history. No less than 800 US military bases garrison the globe. Its military strength extends from the depths of the ocean to the outer reaches of space. It aims for �total spectrum dominance�. "

Books from the Earth Policy Institute - Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble: "�If we fail to build a new economy before decline sets in, it will not be because of a lack of fiscal resources, but rather because of obsolete priorities,� adds Brown. �The world is now spending $975 billion annually for military purposes. The U.S. 2006 military budget of $492 billion, accounting for half of the world total, goes largely to the development and production of new weapon systems. Unfortunately, these weapons are of little help in curbing terrorism, nor can they reverse the deforestation of the earth or stabilize climate.
�The military threats to national security today pale beside the trends of environmental destruction and disruption that threaten the economy and thus our early twenty-first century civilization itself. New threats call for new strategies. These threats are environmental degradation, climate change, the persistence of poverty, and the loss of hope.� "

Books from the Earth Policy Institute - Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble: "If China one day has three cars for every four people, U.S. style, it will have 1.1 billion cars. The whole world today has 800 million cars. To provide the roads, highways, and parking lots to accommodate such a vast fleet, China would have to pave an area equal to the land it now plants in rice. It would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. Yet the world currently produces 84 million barrels per day and may never produce much more. "

Books from the Earth Policy Institute - Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble: "Although it is obvious that no society can survive the decline of its environmental support systems, many people are not yet convinced of the need for economic restructuring. But this is changing now that China has eclipsed the United States in the consumption of most basic resources, Brown notes in Plan B 2.0, which was produced with major funding from the Lannan Foundation and the U.N. Population Fund.
Among the basic commodities�grain and meat in the food sector, oil and coal in the energy sector, and steel in the industrial sector�China now consumes more than the United States of each of these except for oil. It consumes nearly twice as much meat (67 million tons compared with 39 million tons) and more than twice as much steel (258 million to 104 million tons). "

IFTF's Future Now: "IFTF's Future Now"

Foreign Affairs - A Natural History of Peace - Robert M. Sapolsky: "The first half of the twentieth century was drenched in the blood spilled by German and Japanese aggression, yet only a few decades later it is hard to think of two countries more pacific. Sweden spent the seventeenth century rampaging through Europe, yet it is now an icon of nurturing tranquility. Humans have invented the small nomadic band and the continental megastate, and have demonstrated a flexibility whereby uprooted descendants of the former can function effectively in the latter. "

Foreign Affairs - A Natural History of Peace - Robert M. Sapolsky: "In other words, adolescent males that enter Forest Troop after having grown up elsewhere wind up adopting the unique behavioral style of the resident males. As defined by both anthropologists and animal behaviorists, 'culture' consists of local behavioral variations, occurring for nongenetic and nonecological reasons, that last beyond the time of their originators."

Foreign Affairs - A Natural History of Peace - Robert M. Sapolsky: "To some extent, the age-old 'nature versus nurture' debate is silly. The action of genes is completely intertwined with the environment in which they function; in a sense, it is pointless to even discuss what gene X does, and we should consider instead only what gene X does in environment Y. Nonetheless, if one had to predict the behavior of some organism on the basis of only one fact, one might still want to know whether the most useful fact would be about genetics or about the environment."

Foreign Affairs - A Natural History of Peace - Robert M. Sapolsky: "And so the crude picture of combat as the sole path to evolutionary success is wrong. The average male baboon does opt for the combative route, but there are important phases of his life when aggression is less important than social intelligence and restraint, and there are evolutionarily fruitful alternative courses of action."

Foreign Affairs - A Natural History of Peace - Robert M. Sapolsky: "More discomfiting is the continuum that has been demonstrated in the realm of cognition. We now know, for example, that other species invent tools and use them with dexterity and local cultural variation. Other primates display 'semanticity' (the use of symbols to refer to objects and actions) in their communication in ways that would impress any linguist. And experiments have shown other primates to possess a 'theory of mind,' that is, the ability to recognize that different individuals can have different thoughts and knowledge."

Foreign Affairs - A Natural History of Peace - Robert M. Sapolsky: "The evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, 'All species are unique, but humans are uniquest.' Humans have long taken pride in their specialness. But the study of other primates is rendering the concept of such human exceptionalism increasingly suspect.
Some of the retrenchment has been relatively palatable, such as with the workings of our bodies. Thus we now know that a baboon heart can be transplanted into a human body and work for a few weeks, and human blood types are coded in Rh factors named after the rhesus monkeys that possess similar blood variability."

News & Broadcast - Press Reviews: "But for all its shortcomings, she writes, the coming-of-age of the politics of global inequality is being driven by an important issue that will ensure it stays on the international agenda: at its heart is a question of legitimacy. The west's global dominance is being challenged as unjust - whether that is by the WTO�s new bloc of leading developing countries or even by the fanatical violence of the Islamist extremists. The huge wealth generated by globalization, with its equally huge ecological footprint, cannot largely be for the benefit of a tiny proportion of the world's population."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Therefore, prospects exist for new and enhanced plans for ending such dependence. Already in September 2005, a group of European deputies announced the creation of a broad platform designed to implement a European hydrogen-based economy in the coming decades. Additionally, nuclear energy is, once again, considered to be an economic priority by many players."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The Russian president is now in control of the energy giant, guaranteeing that he will remain a key player, at least indirectly, even if he fails to be re-elected in 2008. His main international strategy is to give Russia the status of a great power in a new, multipolar world order in which Russia, China and India will be the main Eurasian powers."