June 2002 Predictions

"This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

[YOUR FUTURE - INVENTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE]
Smarter, more energy-efficient cars were supposed to be the future of the automobile industry. Why, then, does the gas-guzzler still rule?

Engineers and researchers are working to develop software that can figure out your mood by watching your face.

A tiny, disposable chip could replace bar codes and expiration labels and act as a sensor to tell if food has spoiled. The food — not the manufacturer — would tell you whether it has gone bad. Prototypes will be completed this summer, but the sensors will not hit the consumer market for another five years.

A company has created aan electric car that can outstrip most gas-powered cars.

[HOT TRENDS]
Although it's been cut off from its former base in Afghanistan, analysts believe al Qaeda is now operating in smaller, more independent units around the globe and remains as dedicated as ever to violence.

U.S. experts say that, contrary to popular belief, shark attacks are not on the rise.

Human beings will continue to live longer lives and life expectancies could reach 100 in the next 60 years, a new study suggests.

What might happen when wireless technology makes the Net available everywhere all the time? the wireless world of the future.

Forget your wallet? Try swiping your finger. Groceries across the nation are adopting fingerprint technology at cashiers.

Argentina is sending its own "X-Files" scientists to probe strange deaths of farm animals found dissected, mutilated and drained of blood on remote Pampa plains, killings some have blamed on aliens. At least 70 animals were reported killed in recent weeks, some with their genitals and tongues pulled out with surgical precision surrounded by charred grass with no signs of blood stains. One horse's hoof had a circle drawn into it.


[ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS]
All around us are tiny doors that lead to the rest of the Universe. Predicted by Einstein's equations, these quantum wormholes offer a faster-than-light short cut to the rest of the cosmos - at least in principle. Now physicists believe they could open these doors wide enough to allow someone to travel through.

[BIOLOGY PREDICTIONS]
Computer tests proves handwriting analysis is legitimate - Is handwriting as unique as a fingerprint? Recent computer tests suggest they are.

Researchers who transplanted cloned cattle cells that formed working mini-kidneys say their experiment shows the potential of cloning replacement tissues and organs.

[HEALTH PREDICTIONS]
People with incurable cancer are better able to predict how long they will survive than doctors using commonly used indications of disease prognosis, researchers report. This innate ability indicates that "patients have a tremendous ability to use external and internal information to assess their own health".

Can you influence the sex of your baby? Diverse diets, sperm-sorting, and lunar logistics are just a few of the things conceiving couples try when trying to influence the sex of their child. But is it all a waste of time?

[LONG-TERM CLIMATE PREDICTIONS]
A new study warns that the change in climate may allow disease-causing bacteria, viruses and fungi to move into new areas where they may harm humans.

Warmer climate is prompting flowers to bloom earlier - plants bloom up to two weeks earlier in the spring, say British researchers who analysed 47 years of flowering data.

The Global Environment Outlook-3 report predicts an increasingly volatile world in which ever-more-severe natural disasters and environmental degradation will endanger millions of humans as well as plant and animal species. The U.N. Environment Program warns that political choices over the next 30 years could spell the difference between environmental salvation and environmental doom. As much as 30 percent of species diversity will be erased by the middle of this century. Global hunger is falling, and could affect as little as 2.5 percent of the world's population by the year 2032, but 40 percent of the world's population was already suffering serious water shortages by the mid-1990s. Weather-related hazards such as cyclones, droughts and floods appear to be increasing in strength and frequency and are affecting more people.

[MOVIES AND TV]
After making Minority Report, Steven Spielberg is even more certain that Big Brother will be watching our every move in the not-too-distant future.

[POLITICAL PREDICTIONS]
Four of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept. 11 tried to get government loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance their plots,luding ringleader Mohamed Atta, who sought $650,000 to modify a crop-duster. Being turned down for the loan altered the hijackers' plans. According to law enforcement officials, packing twin-engine planes with explosive chemicals, making it a flying bomb, had been the terrorists' plan since the mid-1990s. When Atta reported to his group that he could not get a loan to buy smaller planes, the plan was switched to hijacking passenger jets. So in the fall of 2000, the hijackers who had been learning to fly small planes began to seek simulator training in the large jets they would fly into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

All-out nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill as many as 12 million people and injure as many as 6 million, a Pentagon official said, citing a classified report. Worries about a possible nuclear war in South Asia took center stage in Washington as the United States urged more than 60,000 U.S. citizens to leave India and Britain warned its nationals to consider getting out.

As the threat of nuclear war looms between India and Pakistan, how dangerous is the threat of the radiation that could be released on people living in the United States?

With the Bush administration warning that another attack could come at any time and in any place, some of the boldest terrorist plots of the past may provide clues to the future. "Terrorists have relied on hijackings, assassinations, poison gas attacks, kidnappings and suicide bombers over the years. They have attacked from land, sea and air...How do you terrorize a population? You do it by doing the unimaginable."

[SEASONAL WEATHER PREDICTIONS]
Above-Average Hurricane Activity Forecast - As hurricane season begins, some see dangerous odds. Could the continental United States get socked? No hurricanes made landfall on the continental United States last season or in 2000. Such a hurricane-free streak has never lasted three straight years since records started being kept in the late 1800s.

[SPIRITUAL PREDICTIONS]
Can people send signals after they die? A recent Gallup Poll showed 38 percent of Americans believe that ghosts or spirits can come back and communicate with the living. Science may have the answers to explain the afterlife.

A millionaire entrepreneur and mathematical genius named Stephen Wolfram has developed a new theory that could explain just about everything in the universe.