November 2003 Predictions

"...if we once start thinking, no one can guarantee where we shall come out; except that many ends, objects and institutions are doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place."
- Karl Albrecht

[YOUR FUTURE - INVENTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE]
A new Japanese cellphone worn as a wristwatch uses its owner's finger to transmit sound to the ear.

American researchers say shredded tires used as a base for golf greens can actually make them more environmentally friendly by absorbing pesticides and fertilizers.

After nearly two decades of searching, scientists have found a tiny gray ocean sponge that they think may help cure cancer.

A new type of boiler enables homeowners to generate their own electricity.

The Environment Agency paints a startling picture of what life might be like in 2020, where solar power dominates and every bathroom has a robot to analyse excrement.

[HOT TRENDS]
A record number of people were infected with HIV around the world this year, official figures reveal.

Several medications can help control HIV but in a growing number of people a mutated virus has become resistant to the drugs.

The war on hunger has suffered a setback as the number of malnourished people has risen after having fallen steadily during the first half of the 1990s, according to a UN report. 25 million people die of hunger each year.

Internet security experts are now predicting a growth in attacks that strike when people are simply browsing messages or the web. Malformed HTML can be in the body of an e-mail message or be unleashed when users go to websites which look legitimate but have been set with malicious intent.

The world is drowning in an ocean of data - the equivalent of a 30-foot pile of books of data is produced for everyone on Earth annually, a study finds.


[ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS]
Sites where asteroids struck the Earth millions of years ago may be the key to discoveries of new mineral and metal deposits in the future.

Send your name to a comet - In December 2004, NASA plans to launch the Deep Impact spacecraft and send it to Comet Tempel 1. Once it arrives on July 4, 2005, it will shoot a 370-kilogram (816-pound) impactor into the dirty snowball, making a crater some 7-15 stories deep. NASA is offering the public a chance to have their names written to a CD that will be placed on the impactor, thereby leaving their mark on a comet.

[BIOLOGY PREDICTIONS]
Gorillas are close to extinction - a warning has been issued that the clock stands at "one minute to midnight". The United Nations has appealed for 25 million dollars to help save Man's closest genetic relatives, the Great Apes, from extinction in the wild.

How can you identify genetically modified fruits? The small label on each piece of fruit contains a code which reveals the secret. Codes that start with 4 are on ordinarily produced fruit. Codes that start with 9 identify organic fruit. Codes that start with 8 are for genetically modified products.

[HEALTH PREDICTIONS]
Tiny nanoparticles could be launched into tumours and heated up using light to destroy cancer cells, say doctors.

A new study has found grandmothers who care for grandchildren nine or more hours per week have a 55 percent greater risk for heart disease than those who don't.

The forest fires that swept Southern California may not themselves cause asthma, but medical experts say they may reveal those who have the disease and didn't know it.

While cosmetic contact lenses that do things like give you cat's eyes may be fun for Halloween, they can also cause serious eye problems, even blindness, experts warn.

Scientists believe they may be able to one day reverse some of the symptoms of Down's Syndrome.

Surgeons say they have successfully grown new finger and toe joints in people with rheumatoid arthritis.

Surgeons appear ready to carry out the world's first face transplants - but say they want more public debate. Surgeons in France and the United States are now ready to graft the face of a dead person onto someone who has been facially disfigured.

Excessive tiredness or trouble sleeping for more than a month could indicate an impending heart attack in women, researchers say.

Simple smell tests could help doctors identify people at risk of developing schizophrenia, a study suggests. It has long been known that people with schizophrenia or psychosis are unable to correctly identify smells. For instance, they thought the smell from a pizza actually came from an orange or the smell of bubblegum was actually smoke.

[LONG-TERM CLIMATE PREDICTIONS]
Many ski resorts could face extinction as a result of global warming, a UN report says.

Monarch butterflies may lose their winter habitat within 50 years because of global warming, say researchers.

Africa is facing a food crisis - growing water scarcity means African crop yields may fall by almost a quarter by 2025, researchers say.

[ODDITIES]
"A crop circle laid down in 1995 reportedly displayed the positions of the planets as they would be on September 6, 2003. As a result, crop circle watchers waited eagerly for that date - which came and passed without apparent incident. Or did it? It now appears that a blast of active particles from an explosion on a distant star moved through our solar system at about that time. Subsequently, the sun has entered the most unusual period of activity ever recorded, with by far the largest solar flare ever seen, and almost continuous bombardment of earth with various types of solar radiation. As of November 13, the sun was relatively quiet on the side facing earth, but sunspots 488 and 486 are rotating around again, and still exploding, so more activity is anticipated. Scientists are not sure why the sun has suddenly begun to act in this unusual manner, but a sudden burst of energy being absorbed from elsewhere could be a contributing factor. Unfortunately, there is too little known about such rare events for us to say for certain that they were related. Perhaps somebody else did know."

A ghost tour in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, brings the curious on a creepy trip through a hillside graveyard, where they are kept away from an alleged female vampire hot spot and warned not to smile at ghosts.

Eleven people have died in the past two weeks in central Sudan after a swarm of grasshoppers caused an asthma epidemic. More than 1,600 people have been taken to hospitals. Outbreaks of locusts have also been reported in Mauritania and Niger and observers fear they could spread across the northern half of the continent. Desert locusts are normally solitary insects but when climatic conditions are favourable they can rapidly increase in number. A full-fledged desert locust plague has the potential of damaging the livelihood of a tenth of the world's population.

Dr Terry Joyce, an oceanographer, believes there is a 50% chance of a sudden climate change happening in the next 100 years. Huge Siberian rivers are discharging more water into the North Atlantic than ever before, and are predicted to increase their discharge by up to 50% in the next 100 years.

Some 600 people gathered in a remote Fijian village to attend a ceremony it is hoped will lift a curse believed placed on the town after villagers killed and ate an English missionary 137 years ago.

An Indian man who says he has survived for 68 years without eating, drinking or relieving himself has baffled doctors who have been unable to disprove his claim even after keeping him under surveillance for 10 days.

. [POLITICAL PREDICTIONS]
London is at greater risk of a terrorist attack than any major city in the U.S. or Western Europe, a study suggests.

The nightmare scenario of terrorists unleashing a nuclear weapon on a major city is real and growing - yet world efforts to meet the threat are still "shortsighted" and inadequate, researchers warn.

[SEASONAL WEATHER PREDICTIONS]
Fires tend to follow well-known rules. Still, models based on decades of research are often unable to predict a fire's path when weather conditions get in the way.

Keep your eye on the Superstorm Quickwatch on Unknowncountry. For a few weeks last month, it was indexing at "high" probability for sudden climate change, and there was strange weather worldwide. Because of the fact that the world picture had returned to a more-or-less normal state, it has been reading "moderate." But three of the biggest sunspot groups to appear in years have just crossed the Sun's face and one of them has spewed one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections ever recorded.

Sunspot activity is the highest in 1,000 years, scientists say. The sun has been acting unusual lately, with more sunspots recorded since the 1940s, than in the previous millennium.

Now, after 10 days of dramatic activity, the most powerful solar flare ever seen has exploded on the Sun's surface. It was so energetic that it overloaded the detectors on satellites monitoring the Sun's surface. Powerful solar flares are given an "X" designation. Last week there were X7 and X10 events that took place back-to-back. There was an X8 and an X3 event on Sunday. On Monday, there was an X3 flare followed by smaller ones. Tuesday's flare went off the scale, researchers say it was well above X20.

Tropical volcano eruptions may double the chances of El Nino climate fluctuations the following winter, a new study suggests. El Nino can trigger global effects, such as snowfall in the Andes, a weak hurricane season in the Atlantic and drought in southern Africa.

[SPIRITUAL PREDICTIONS]
People really shouldn't believe everything they see, say scientists. Studies have shown that people often "remember" saying or hearing things that were never actually said. Now, a study in the United States has confirmed that they can also "remember" seeing things that were never there.

A former drug abuser turned painter says he was saved by angels during an overdose. Now fans of his work say his paintings are a sign that modern-day miracles do exist.

From prayer groups to meditation sessions - signs of spirituality in the workplace are turning up in many forms, and this wave of activity is turning into a movement not just for personal growth but for fundamental organizational and cultural change.