Smart Economy

Important step in the next generation of computing-spintronics

Research reveals vital insight into spintronics

Scientists have taken one step closer to the next generation of computers. Research from the Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge's Department of Physics, provides new insight into spintronics, which has been hailed as the successor to the transistor.

Spintronics, which exploits the electron's tiny magnetic moment, or 'spin', could radically change computing due to its potential of high-speed, high-density and low-power consumption. The new research sheds light on how to make 'spin' more efficient.

For the past fifty years, progress in electronics has relied heavily on the downsizing of the transistor through the semiconductor industry in order to provide the technology for the small, powerful computers that are the basis of our modern information society. In a 1965 paper, Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore described how the number of transistors that could be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit had doubled every year between 1958 and 1965, predicting that the trend would continue for at least ten more years.

That prediction, now known as Moore's Law, effectively described a trend that has continued ever since, but the end of that trend—the moment when transistors are as small as atoms, and cannot be shrunk any further—is expected as early as 2015. At the moment, researchers are seeking new concepts of electronics that sustain the growth of computing power.

Spintronics research attempts to develop a spin-based electronic technology that will replace the charge-based technology of semiconductors. Scientists have already begun to develop new spin-based electronics, beginning with the discovery in 1988 of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect. The discovery of GMR effect brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives and was also key in the development of portable electronic devices such as the iPod.

While conventional technology relies on harnessing the charge of electrons, the field of spintronics depends instead on the manipulation of electrons' spin. One of the unique properties in spintronics is that spins can be transferred without the flow of electric charge currents. This is called "spin current" and unlike other concepts of harnessing electrons, the spin current can transfer information without generating heat in electric devices. The major remaining obstacle to a viable spin current technology is the difficulty of creating a volume of spin current large enough to support current and future electronic devices.

However, the new Cambridge researchers in close collaboration with Professor Sergej Demokritov group at the University of Muenster, Germany, have, in part, addressed this issue. In order to create enhanced spin currents, the researchers used the collective motion of spins called spin waves (the wave property of spins). By bringing spin waves into interaction, they have demonstrated a new, more efficient way of generating spin current.

Dr Hidekazu Kurebayashi, from the Microelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, said: "You can find lots of different waves in nature, and one of the fascinating things is that waves often interact with each other. Likewise, there are a number of different interactions in spin waves. Our idea was to use such spin wave interactions for generating efficient spin currents."

According to their findings, one of the spin wave interactions (called three-magnon splitting) generates spin current ten times more efficiently than using pre-interacting spin-waves. Additionally, the findings link the two major research fields in spintronics, namely the spin current and the spin wave interaction.

Using computer models, systems biologists can predict complicated behavior of cells in living animals

In vivo systems biology

Using computer models, systems biologists can predict complicated behavior of cells in living animals

Source: Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

Shown here are mouse intestinal epithelial cells. MIT and MGH researchers have modeled how such cells respond to tumor necrosis factor
Image: The Journal of Cell Biology

March 23, 2011

Biological systems, including cells, tissues and organs, can function properly only when their parts are working in harmony. These systems are often dauntingly complex: Inside a single cell, thousands of proteins interact with each other to determine how the cell will develop and respond to its environment.
To understand this great complexity, a growing number of biologists and bioengineers are turning to computational models. This approach, known as systems biology, has been used successfully to model the behavior of cells grown in laboratory dishes. However, until now, no one has used it to model the behavior of cells inside a living animal.

In the March 22 online edition of the journal Science Signaling, researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital report that they have created a new computational model that describes how intestinal cells in mice respond to a natural chemical called tumor necrosis factor (TNF).

The work demonstrates that systems biology offers a way to get a handle on the complexity of living systems and raises the possibility that it could be used to model cancer and other complex diseases, says Douglas Lauffenburger, head of MIT's Department of Biological Engineering and a senior author of the paper.

"You're not likely to explain most diseases in terms of one genetic deficit or one molecular impairment," Lauffenburger says. "You need to understand how many molecular components, working in concert, give rise to how cells and tissues are formed — either properly or improperly."

Biological complexity

Systems biology, a field that has grown dramatically in the past 10 years, focuses on analyzing how the components of a biological system interact to produce the behavior of that system — for example, the many proteins that interact with each other inside a cell to respond to hormones or other external stimuli.

"The beauty of systems biology is that it doesn't ignore the biological complexity of what's going on," says Kevin Haigis, an assistant professor of pathology at MGH and Harvard Medical School and a senior author of the Science Signaling paper.

"Biologists are trained to be reductionists," adds Haigis, who was a postdoctoral associate at MIT before moving to MGH. "I don't think people have failed to realize the complexity of how biology works, but people are accustomed to trying to reduce complexity to make things more understandable."

In contrast, the systems biology approach tries to capture that complexity through computer modeling of many variables. Inputs to the model might be the amounts of certain proteins found inside cells, and outputs would be the cells' resulting behaviors — for example, growing, committing suicide or secreting hormones.

While at MIT, Haigis worked in the lab of Tyler Jacks, director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, studying the role of the cancer-causing gene Ras in the mouse colon. He teamed up with Lauffenburger and others to computationally model Ras' behavior in cell culture.

After Haigis moved to MGH, he and Lauffenburger decided to bring this computational approach to studying living animals because they believed that studies done in cultured cells could miss some of the critical factors that come into play in living systems, such as the location of a cell within a living tissue and the influence of cells that surround it.

Inflammation

In the new paper, the researchers tackled the complex interactions that produce inflammation in the mouse intestine. The intestine contains many types of cells, but they focused on epithelial cells (which line the intestinal tube) and their response to TNF.

Previous work has shown that TNF plays a central role in intestinal inflammation, and provokes one of two possible responses in the intestinal epithelial cells: cell death or cell proliferation. Chronic inflammation can lead to inflammatory bowel disease and potentially cancer.

In this study, the researchers got the data they needed to develop their computational model by treating normal mice with TNF, then determining whether the cells proliferated or died. They found that cell fate depended on the cells' location in the intestine — cells in the ileum proliferated, while those in the duodenum died.

The multi-faceted result would likely not have been seen in a lab dish. "In cell culture, you would have gotten one or the other," Lauffenburger says.

They also correlated the diverse outcomes with the activities of more than a dozen proteins found in the cells, allowing them to determine how the outcomes depended on quantitative combination of key signaling pathways, and furthermore, to predict how the outcomes would be affected by drug treatment. The researchers then tested the model's predictions in an additional cohort of mice, and found that they were accurate.

Modeling disease

Jason Papin, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia, says that the team's biggest accomplishment is demonstrating that systems biology modeling can be done in living animals (in vivo). "You always want to move to an in vivo setting, if possible, but it's technically more difficult," says Papin, who was not involved with this research.

The researchers are now trying to figure out in more detail what factors in the intestinal cells' environment influence the cells to behave the way they do. They are also studying how genetic mutations might alter the cells' responses.

They also plan to begin a study of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Cancer is another disease that lends itself to this kind of modeling, says Jacks, who was not part of this study. Cancer is an extremely complicated disease that usually involves derangement of many cell signaling pathways involved in cell division, DNA repair and stress response.

"We expect that our ability to predict which targets, which drugs and which patients to bring together in the context of cancer treatment will require a deeper understanding of the complex signaling pathways that exist in cancer," says Jacks. "This approach will help us get there."

When will the Recession End? Part 139 Russia admits it's dead and falling apart

A member of the Russian Advisory Council in the State Duma Committee for Regional Policy, Natalia Zubarevich, admitted that four large reasons will lead to the inevitable and inexorable death of the Russian Federation, as a result of which this country will cease to exist as a single entity and will be divided into independent states:
 
"First, the quality of life is deteriorating in the Moscow metropolitan agglomeration due to growing infrastructure and environmental problems, while the population increases. 
 

Second, economic development of large cities which are regional centers is sharply slowing because of lack of investments and deterioration of the institutional environment, which also leads to an even greater concentration of manpower in the federal city. 

Third, marginalization of vast peripheral areas is increasing, and a depopulation takes place.  Unemployment, social benefits, etc. And there is less and less money in the budget.
 
Fourth, growth of tensions, ethnic conflicts and cronyism in the North Caucasus republics stimulate migration outflow of educated and more "modernized" urban residents of the republics to other regions", complained Natalya Zubarevich.

Source:  http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2011/01/30/13423.shtml

This supports an old 2004 CIA prediction of Russian collapse:

Version 1

 
Version 2

 

CIA predicts by 2015, the disintegration of Russia by six to eight states.  

 CIA predicts by 2015, the disintegration of Russia by six to eight states. This is reported on an open site in the CIA report, the leading think tanks, which contains a forecast of the world until 2015. Specialists regard Russia as a country that is in extreme geographical and geo-economic conditions. Another factor affecting us negatively, is that two-thirds of Russian territory lies in the permafrost zone, and the average cost of a barrel of oil is $ 14-15 versus $ 4 in Saudi Arabia

http://www.ural.ru/news/life/news-39253.html  and http://www.ng.ru/regions/2011-01-24/6_we.html

see  previous related posts

1)     Thirty Seven (37) early warning signals of the collapse and decay of the Russian Federation (Putinism) and Ukraine (Yanukowych Regime)  

Similar conditions and circumstances existed just before the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago.  

2)    Is Ukraine Hitching Its Economic Cart to Collapsing Horse? Russia?  

3)   When will the Recession End? Part 133 Why Russia doesn't fit into BRIC

4)  When will the recession end ? Part 134 What could trigger a Global Double Dip Recession in 2011? Russia

5)   When will the Recession End? Part 139 Russia admits it's dead and falling apart

6)  When will the Recession End? Part 140 Who's next after Egypt? Russian editorial says Russia, Kazakhstan may be hit by "Tunisian syndrome"

7) When will the Recession End? Part 141 Growth of world hydrocarbon prices can no longer help Russia - Editorial expects budget deficits to continue despite rising oil prices

Walter Derzko

What Makes Us Unique? Not our Genes but in the sequences of DNA between them

What makes you different from every other human being? The best place to look for an answer may not be in your genes, but in the sequences of DNA between them, according to a team of researchers reporting in the journals Science Express and Nature.

While genes provide instructions for making the proteins that do specific tasks inside a cell, the sequences surrounding them help regulate how those instructions are carried out. These non-coding sequences make up about 98% of our genome. They vary from 1% to 4% among all humans, in contrast to genes, which vary only about .025%. According to the new studies, such slight variations among individuals are enough to affect how well specialized proteins, called transcription factors, bind to the non-coding DNA sequences. By comparing variations in protein binding among ten people and one chimpanzee, researchers found that differences in binding can change the way neighboring genes are expressed. The results suggest that much more of our DNA than just our genes determine how we look, who we become, and the kinds of diseases for which we’re at risk.

Sources:
Kasowski, Maya et al. 'Variation in Transcription Factor Binding Among Humans.' Science Express. March 18, 2010.
Zheng,Wei et al. 'Genetic analysis of variation in transcription factor binding in yeast.' Nature. March 17, 2010.

 

Scientists suggest that cancer is purely man-made

 

 

Cancer is a modern, man-made disease caused by environmental factors such as pollution and diet, a study by University of Manchester scientists has strongly suggested. 

The study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and earlier periods – carried out at Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and published in Nature Reviews Cancer – includes the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy.

Finding only one case of the disease in the investigation of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, with few references to cancer in literary evidence, proves that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. The disease rate has risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer – proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.

Professor Rosalie David, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.”

She added: “The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.”

The data includes the first ever histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy by Professor Michael Zimmerman, a visiting Professor at the KNH Centre, who is based at the Villanova University in the US. He diagnosed rectal cancer in an unnamed mummy, an ‘ordinary’ person who had lived in the Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period (200-400 CE).

Professor Zimmerman said: “In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization”.

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The team studied both mummified remains and literary evidence for ancient Egypt but only literary evidence for ancient Greece as there are no remains for this period, as well as medical studies of human and animal remains from earlier periods, going back to the age of the dinosaurs.

Evidence of cancer in animal fossils, non-human primates and early humans is scarce – a few dozen, mostly disputed, examples in animal fossils, although a metastatic cancer of unknown primary origin has been reported in an Edmontosaurus fossil while another study lists a number of possible neoplasms in fossil remains. Various malignancies have been reported in non-human primates but do not include many of the cancers most commonly identified in modern adult humans.

It has been suggested that the short life span of individuals in antiquity precluded the development of cancer. Although this statistical construct is true, individuals in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough to develop such diseases as atherosclerosis, Paget's disease of bone, and osteoporosis, and, in modern populations, bone tumours primarily affect the young.

Another explanation for the lack of tumours in ancient remains is that tumours might not be well preserved. Dr. Zimmerman has performed experimental studies indicating that mummification preserves the features of malignancy and that tumours should actually be better preserved than normal tissues. In spite of this finding, hundreds of mummies from all areas of the world have been examined and there are still only two publications showing microscopic confirmation of cancer. Radiological surveys of mummies from the Cairo Museum and museums in Europe have also failed to reveal evidence of cancer.

As the team moved through the ages, it was not until the 17th century that they found descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers and the first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumours have only occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps in 1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761 and Hodgkin’s disease in 1832.

Professor David – who was invited to present her paper to UK Cancer Czar Professor Mike Richards and other oncologists at this year’s UK Association of Cancer Registries and National Cancer Intelligence Network conference – said: “Where there are cases of cancer in ancient Egyptian remains, we are not sure what caused them. They did heat their homes with fires, which gave off smoke, and temples burned incense, but sometimes illnesses are just thrown up.”

She added: “The ancient Egyptian data offers both physical and literary evidence, giving a unique opportunity to look at the diseases they had and the treatments they tried. They were the fathers of pharmacology so some treatments did work

“They were very inventive and some treatments thought of as magical were genuine therapeutic remedies. For example, celery was used to treat rheumatism back then and is being investigated today. Their surgery and the binding of fractures were excellent because they knew their anatomy: there was no taboo on working with human bodies because of mummification. They were very hands on and it gave them a different mindset to working with bodies than the Greeks, who had to come to Alexandria to study medicine.”

She concluded: “Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.”

More information: A copy of the paper ‘Cancer: an old disease, a new disease or something in between?’ is available at http://www.nature. … nrc2914.html

Provided by University of Manchester

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-scientists-cancer-purely-man-made.html

Atmospheric dynamics, not ocean, could drive El Niño features

 

Scientists generally believe that ocean dynamics are the primary factor controlling El Niño sea surface temperature variability. However, new simulations show that atmospheric dynamics can account for many of the features of El Niño that were previously thought to be controlled by ocean dynamics. Dommenget uses a series of atmospheric model simulations coupled to a simple ocean model that contained no ocean dynamics. He finds that El Niño–like variations in sea surface temperature were produced in the simulations. Although ocean dynamics are a factor influencing El Niño events, the study suggests that atmospheric dynamics may be more important than previously thought in controlling El Niño. The study could change scientists' understanding of the mechanisms driving El Niño.

Title: The slab ocean El Niño

Author: Dietmar Dommenget: School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.

Source:  Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2010GL044888, 2010
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010GL044888

 

Why complex life probably evolved only once

The universe may be teeming with simple cells like bacteria, but more complex life – including intelligent life – is probably very rare. That is the conclusion of a radical rethink of what it took for complex life to evolve here on Earth.

It suggests that complex alien life-forms could only evolve if an event that happened just once in Earth's history was repeated somewhere else.

All animals, plants and fungi evolved from one ancestor, the first ever complex, or "eukaryotic", cell. This common ancestor had itself evolved from simple bacteria, but it has long been a mystery why this seems to have happened only once: bacteria, after all, have been around for billions of years.

The answer, say Nick Lane of University College London and Bill Martin of the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, is that whenever simple cells start to become more complex, they run into problems generating enough energy.

See  Nature, vol 467, p 929 and   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18734-why-complex-life-probably-evolved-only-once.html

Novel Qualitative/Quanitative Scenario Interviewing methodology for complex systems & risk illumination / mitigation developed by grad students at OCAD. Toronto

With all the attention on Goldman Sachs, greed, risk-shifting and deception, any new methods for risk illumination would benefit business, government and the consumer. 

A team of graduate students at OCAD MA Design program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation (SFI) in Toronto have developed a unique semi quantitative and qualitative scenario and interviewing methodology-which they trialed on the topic of Carbon Capture.  

But it can be applied equally well to other wicked, complex, risk-embedded issues and problems. It addresses stakeholder perceptions, real and perceived risks, liabilities and decision paradoxes and contradictions, better then any other method I’ve seen.

It seems that it might be useful as a decision-making aid and policy development tool in complex. multifactor scenarios where cross impact analysis is needed, and where the need to surface often dynamic and ever changing /evolving stakeholder situational mental models, emerging unintended consequences, conflicts, paradoxes, contradictions and anomalies that may be critical or significant  (ie Critical success factor) in the overall process.

Individual foresight methods don’t capture all this richness

 As they cite in their research report: “We’ve spent a fair amount of thought in separating out factors of biases towards and against other stakeholders in order to elicit the actual objective and subjective perceptions of each, and how those will come into game theoretic conflict…[…]… We used neuro-dynamic programming, also known as reinforcement learning.  This works by treating the domain as a partially-observable Markov decision process (POMDP).

 As a next step, they  are now looking at incorporating the sense-making methodology and my database of social, behavioral and cognitive biases from the Opportunity Clinic into the process.

To date this is proprietary and unpublished work 

I think it’s ready to take public.

The students are trying to identify a private corporation or government agency or Ministry who would be interested in this as a pilot project to use this method in addressing some of their wicked problems.

Any leads, contacts or suggestions appreciated.

Walter Derzko, The Opportunity Clinic.Smart Economy,Toronto

Sr. Fellow S-Lab, OCAD, MA Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation (OCAD) 

When will the recession end? Part 65 Designing a more robust, resilient economic system

Many people are starting to think wholesale system change when it comes to the western economy and not just treating the symptoms and it's back to business as usual. Here are some of my thoughts using China as the most current example of a potential boom and bust cycle (N.B. China is still in the pre-peak boom stage.)

Rethinking and redesigning and more Robust or Resilient Economy.

	Current Fragility  Model	New Robustness or Resilience Model
1.0	Great Hype- investment debacles generally start out with a compelling growth story- (The China Dream, Dot.com, Green tech, Clean tech)	Modest growth projections close to historic norms or fundamentals; aim for robustness and resilience
2.0	Blind faith in the competence of the authorities (The Communist Party of China We Trust. Mother Russia knows best, The Federal Reserve will protect us)	Non partisan Watchdog institutions in place
3.0	General increase in investment (Chinese investment Boom) CDS, options, derivatives	Decouple risk and banks (separate risky investment vehicles i.e hedge funds and banks who are caretakers of public money)
4.0	Corruption (rampant in China, Russia)	Oversight, transparency, watchdogs
5.0	Easy money (Money supply grew by nearly 30%, interest rates maintained well below nominal growth rates).	Tight capital
6.0	Rampant credit growth (new bank lending increased by nearly RMB 10 trillion, a sum equivalent to 29% of GDP)	Stricter lending guidelines
7.0	Fixed currency regimes (Chinese currency, the renminbi, is pegged to the U.S. dollar)	Floating currency, or a new single international trading currency for everyone
8.0	Private Banking System taking hidden risks; Precarious financial structures (Chinese banks are particularly reluctant to report problematic loans	Nationalized Transparent Banks
9.0	Bank bonuses tied to profits	Bank bonuses linked to resilience
10.0	Moral hazard (China’s leading banks, among the world’s largest by market value, are seen as too big and too complex to fail)	No bailouts for anyone, swim or sink
11.0	Strong credit growth and rapidly rising property prices (a widespread belief that the property prices can only go up)	All assets can go through boom and bust cycles. Early warning systems to reduce volatility from norm or fundamentals i.e. An early warning system for  asset bubbles> https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/ Financial_Services/Banking/An_early _warning_system_for_asset_ bubbles_2518
12.0	Anti-regulation, off-the-balance sheet accounts, Invisible market hand controls the market, government secret Comprehnsive Annual Finacial Reports (CAFR) accounts	Oversight, Viable System Modeling
13.0	Same people who said they didn’t see the crash coming still in charge of banks	Automatic turnover clauses in governance statutes
14.0	Same politicians and regulators who didn’t see the crash coming are still in government	Dismissal, remove from office

 Walter Derzko

How to predict the future with over 90% accuracy? use Bayesian Game Theory

I've been compiling a list of qualitative and quantitative foresight (prediction) methods and the total has passed over 50.

New Scientist magazine this week reviews one quantitative method called Bayesian Game Theory, in surprisingly quite an understandable fashion, that even a lay person like me can understand...well maybe not all the math details but the overall workings are quite clear.

Ever wonder what methods the CIA uses to predict complex geopolitical events?

They turn to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at New York University, who back in 1979 developed a game theory based prediction model, which he calls predictioneering. He says" I can predict events and decisions that involve negotiations, coercion (lies, bluffing, reneging on promises), cooperation or bullying." The model predicts what people will do in "strategic  situations" where the outcome also depends on other people's decisions ie domestic politics, foreign policy, geopolitical conflicts, business decisions and social interactions.  

New Scientist writes: "

"Over the past 30 years, Bueno de Mesquita has made thousands of predictions about hundreds of issues from geopolitics to personal problems. Overall, he claims, his hit rate is about 90 per cent. So how does he do it?

Examples: Terrorism & Climate Change

Terrorism:

"Bueno de Mesquita recently used it to make a prediction on the political situation in Pakistan. Working with a group of students, he asked how willing the Pakistani government would be to pursue Al-Qaida and Taliban militants in its territory, and how the US government could exert influence on their decision."

In January 2008 the students fed in data on all the players, including the US, Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf and other leading Pakistani politicans. Their assumption was that the US would offer foreign aid to persuade Pakistan's leaders to target the terrorists, and Pakistan would try to extract the maximum amount of aid possible from the US.

The model predicted that to get maximum cooperation from Pakistan, the US would need to donate at least $1.5 billion in 2009, double the projected 2008 figure. In return for this Pakistan would pursue the terrorists on a scale of 80 out of 100, but no more. In other words, the leadership would make considerable effort to reduce the terrorist threat but not to completely eliminate it. "The Pakistani government are no fools," explains Bueno de Mesquita. "They know that the money will dry up if Al-Qaida and the Taliban are destroyed. So they will rein the threat in and reduce it, but not utterly destroy it."

The outcome? According to Bueno de Mesquita, the US government authorised $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Pakistan in 2009, and the Pakistani leadership sustained pursuit of the militants at that level. "We have done very well," says Bueno de Mesquita.

Climate Change:

So what of the future? Another of Bueno de Mesquita's recent predictions addresses the future of climate change negotiations up to 2050. Depressingly, he predicts that although the world will negotiate tougher greenhouse gas reductions than in the Kyoto protocol, in practise these are likely to be abandoned as Brazil, India and China rise in power in relation to the European Union and the US."

See: The Man who sees the Future, New Scientist Volume 250 No 2752 March 20,2010,  pg 42 

Walter Derzko