May 2002 Predictions

"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference."
- Tom Brokaw

[YOUR FUTURE - INVENTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE]
Bizarre structures, like an ocean-going turbine that sprays water vapour high into the air, could one day humidify the air and bring rain to arid regions.

Rat movements guided by remote control - Rats guided by electrical impulses could one day act as living robots, capable of searching for survivors in a disaster or helping to clear landmines, researchers say.

An Israeli geneticist has developed a featherless chicken. He crossbred a small, bare-skinned bird with a regular boiler chicken as part of a research project to develop succulent, low fat poultry that is environmentally friendly. The red-skinned chicken looks a little ridiculous, but the lack of feathers keeps the birds cooler and leaner than their feathered cousins - useful in hot countries.

A U.S. government sponsored commission sees a future that includes space tourism and a powerful melding of communications, navigation and surveillance technologies to shape American life in the decades to come.

Researchers have trapped a kilometers-long laser pulse inside a small glass chamber --and released it again intact. Such extraordinary command of light could lead to mind-boggling new technologies.

A grocery store in Seattle, Washington has become the first retailer in North America to use finger scans as a way of authorising payment. West Seattle Thriftway uses finger biometrics to link customers to their credit cards or bank accounts.

Researchers in Japan have developed a clever glass that knows when you need a refill. The system works by using an adaptation of the electronic tag technology that is used in shops to deter shoplifters. When your drink gets low, a microchip senses the problem and communicates with a receiver in the table to alert the waiter. Getting drunk has never been easier.

[HOT TRENDS]
Men's cleavage and breath mints for dogs are about to hit the streets in a big way. The latest hot new trends in fashion and more.

The housing market has been a foundation for a shaky economy. But some see signs of a bubble about to burst.

More than seven million Canadians depend on groundwater for their water supplies but protecting it has become a challenge. Groundwater supplies across the country are increasingly becoming contaminated.

A brightly-lit building may be a brilliant sight at night, but a survey finds it's a death trap for migrating birds.

A Florida family has been successfully implanted with controversial ID chips.

Bugs that eat roads and buildings. Biocatalysts that break down fuel and plastics. Devices that stealthily corrode aluminium and other metals. These are just a few of the non-lethal weapons the US has tried or is trying to develop. Reports proposing or describing the development of these weapons are supposed to be public. So why is the US trying to keep them secret?

Shoplifting clothing is about to get trickier. Many apparel retailers are using smaller and smaller devices to help thwart would-be thieves. A look at the solution to shoplifting that you may not even see.

Future blimps may haul heavy loads - the airships may return as high tech floating cranes.

At the moment, making genetically modified mammals is laborious and expensive, so it is only done for research and to create animals that yield high-value medical products. Now Biotech company Tosk of San Francisco claims to have devised a cheap and easy technique that promises to turn the current trickle of genetically modified mammals into a flood. If it succeeds, companies could soon be modifying everything from farm animals to pets. Tosk's method could even be used to correct genetic faults in people.


[ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS]
A huge sea of ice lies just under the surface of Mars, ready to be tapped by future explorers as a source of fuel and maybe even drinking water...It might also harbor life, and certainly explains where all the water went when Mars went from being a warm and wet place to the cold, dry desert it is now.

NASA has unveiled 15 design concepts for the next generation of reusable space planes, which it says will be safer and cheaper to operate.

NASA mulls future space shuttles with no pilots - The replacement for NASA's aging space shuttles may take off like a plane, be propelled by booster rockets that fly back to Earth and, in one of the more radical moves, eliminate pilots.

NRC study urges caution about possible dangerous Martian life - NASA faces a dilemma in planning to send people to Mars: The scientific desire to search for life there versus the need to prevent any such life from endangering the astronauts or the Earth.

[BIOLOGY PREDICTIONS]
Gene warfare - For the first time, biologists are planning to genetically modify an invasive species with the express purpose of killing it off. The target? A European carp that has taken over many Australian rivers and streams. The weapon? A gene called "daughterless" which will stop the fish producing female offspring.

We used to think we knew what biological and chemical weapons we faced. Now we're not so sure. Governments are preparing for the possibility that the spectrum of threats from bioterrorists may be much broader than we once thought. The Siamese fighting fish is a master of disguise and simply changes colour whenever it wants camouflage or to attract a mate. But Phil McFadden of Oregon State University has found that the cells responsible for these transformations also change colour in the presence of almost any toxin. A new detection system is based on living cells that could warn us about the biological and chemical weapons we know about...and the ones we don't. Read the full feature in the print edition of New Scientist magazine.

A researcher is setting out to prove what many cat owners might already suspect: The animal's "meow" has evolved to better manipulate people.

[HEALTH PREDICTIONS]
Some fast food restaurants are revamping their menus to include health foods and improving service to keep up with the hectic pace of change. A look at some changes you might see at your favorite drive-through.

Sound waves are breaking the pain barrier by blasting sick bodies with healing rays. A new wave of medicine that relies on beams of high-intensity ultrasound can staunch a haemorrhage or destroy a tumour without the surgeon so much as breaking the patient's skin. Story in 'New Scientist' magazine.

Passengers on packed trains could unwittingly be exposed to electromagnetic fields far higher than those recommended under international guidelines. The problem? Hordes of commuters all using their mobile phones at the same time.

If your daughter starts puberty early, you might want to check her shampoo. A few hair products contain small amounts of hormones that could lead to premature sexual development in girls. Though the evidence against these products is largely circumstantial, some researchers are worried.

Eating too much bread or cereal may be making some children short-sighted. Highly refined starchy foods cause the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin, and this excess may affect the shape of the developing eyeball. With myopia now affecting over 30 per cent of people of European descent it's something to think about when you decide whether to put white bread or brown in the weekly shopping basket.

You might be one of the immortals. Particularly if you are less than 50 years old, in reasonably good health, and live a moderate lifestyle. There are men and women alive today who may well be able to live for centuries, perhaps even extend their life spans indefinitely. For them, death will not be inevitable. Just because human beings have always died does not mean that they always will die. People will still be vulnerable to poor judgment, bad luck, and evildoers. But death from old age, death as the inescapable end of life, will become a thing of the past, a dark memory of primitive days. - Dr. Ben Bova argues that medical breakthroughs will soon make it possible for many of us to live a whole lot longer in his book 'Immortality: How Science Is Extending Your Life Span and Changing the World'.

[LONG-TERM CLIMATE PREDICTIONS]
Jet trails may affect climate. The trails left by commercial jet liners may keep the Earth cooler, a new study suggests.

High sea temperatures are causing an epidemic of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the world's largest coral reef. It is also reported to be spreading through the coral islands of the South Pacific. A full survey is in progress, but coral expert Thomas Goreau says: "Catastrophic mortality will certainly have taken place."

[MOVIES AND TV]
Nelson Mandela touts the healing power of films - Now more than ever, films can help foster understanding and respect among people around the world, Nelson Mandela said at the start of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Will former President Clinton be the next Oprah?

[POLITICAL PREDICTIONS]
In two weeks, Afghanistan's government will begin to change. Will it be another step on the road to recovery, or will it mean a move backwards into chaos?

Tensions rise between India and Pakistan - After a weekend of the most intense cross-border fighting between India and Pakistan this year, fears rose of another war between the two countries.

The GOP is seriously considering a 9-11 national nominating convention in 2004.

"We know by now who was behind Sept. 11 - especially since the al Qaeda network has taken credit for it. But there are still those who think the government did it, or Bush did it, or the Israelis did it, or even space aliens. What are they thinking, and why are there so many odd-ball theories about the most horrifying day in recent U.S. history?...And these are not the usual voices of doubt and dissent calling on the government to reconsider its foreign policy, or pick its allies more carefully, or even those who say the U.S. government bears a kind of moral responsibility for what happened on Sept. 11 because of the mistakes of the past. There are voices popping up on Internet Web sites, in chatrooms and making the rounds in e-mail chains - even some conspiracy theorists who are packing hundreds of people into lecture halls - saying that evidence points to some direct level of involvement in the attacks by the U.S. government... Even a congresswoman seems bitten by the bug, and wants an investigation into what President Bush knew and when he knew it - because so many of his friends have profited so handsomely from the resulting U.S. actions."

U.S. intelligence officials have received threats that terrorists will strike a U.S. nuclear power plant July 4, and are reviewing the information to determine whether it is reliable. The threat suggested that an unidentified Islamic terrorist group is planning to attack the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania or another plant elsewhere in the Northeast.

U.S. officials are concerned by a recent increase in communications among al Qaeda members that resembles the situation before Sept. 11. Vice President Dick Cheney says another eventual terrorist attack on America is "almost a certainty."

Nuclear plants and military installations around the country may still
employ beefed-up physical security measures, but sensitive satellite
photographs of America's most heavily guarded facilities are being
sold on the Internet for anyone to buy. Earlier this year, satellite photographs of nuclear plants, a submarine base and other high-profile structures were found in al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan.

Weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. intelligence told President Bush that Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization might hijack American planes, but the White House insists the threats were not specific. Two months before the hijackings, FBI agents in Phoenix sent a memo to FBI headquarters, recommending an urgent nationwide review of flight schools "for any information that supports Phoenix's suspicions" of a terrorist connection. The memo said terrorists might be seeking jobs with U.S. airlines or airports and urged FBI headquarters to "obtain visa information" on all "individuals obtaining visas to attend these types of schools" around the country. None of that was done. Just weeks later, agents in Minnesota told headquarters of the arrest of suspected terrorist Zacharias Moussaoui at a flight school in St. Paul, suggesting he might be planning to hijack a plane and crash it into the World Trade Center.

[SEASONAL WEATHER PREDICTIONS]
An afternoon shower in London may have more in common with an
earthquake in California than you might think. According to physicists, thinking about rain as a kind of "earthquake in the sky" may help improve models of the weather.

The United States has begun an effort to coordinate its weather satellite programs with those of other countries to create a global meteorological information network, according to a senior U.S. government official.

Air pollution seems to reduce rainfall - Tiny airborne particles of pollution seem to change the number and size of ice crystals in thunderclouds, a geophysicist has found.

Scientists say there are unusual global forces at work - some from as far away as the Indian Ocean - that are affecting the weather. Rain has pummeled the Eastern seaboard for two weeks now, but it still won't change four years of drought.

[SPIRITUAL PREDICTIONS]
A stroll through failed prophecies-to-be - for 2012 and beyond.

Are hypnotists all hype, or is there science behind this mysterious practice? Experts say that hypnosis is not as strange as it may seem.

Should animals be able to sue through legal guardians? A growing number of legal experts think so.