AUGUST 2002 PREDICTIONS

"When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."
- Dakota Tribal wisdom

[YOUR FUTURE - INVENTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE]
Researchers are pushing technologies to create hard drives that will store nearly a trillion bytes.

[HOT TRENDS]
Forget reading the paper on the subway. A new innovative ad technique produces animated images that spring to life on subway tunnel walls as the train speeds by.

Want to know if the latest fashions are in at your favorite shop? Chips implanted in the clothes may make it easier for you to track them down — and for retailers to sell them.


[ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS]
Mars Base of the Future? The stunning art of John Frassanito and Associates offer views of a possible future Mars expedition.

[BIOLOGY PREDICTIONS]
Acid rain may be harming not only the trees birds nest in, but also the eggs they lay, a new study suggests.

Some health experts are calling on new regulations for petting zoos. They are reacting to two new studies showing that touching animals can lead to deadly infections.

[HEALTH PREDICTIONS]
A newly-isolated protein produced by a bacteria-killing virus can destroy anthrax and other resistant biological weapons.

Researchers say that someday, compounds found in coffee and chocolate could form the basis of new drugs for cancer, heart disease and inflammation.

Light or non-inhaling smokers are their lungs more seriously than they think, especially women.

Nursing shortages may cause death - A recent report links the nationwide nursing shortage to hospital deaths and injuries.

A new nutrition study explains how to predict the amount of weight you will gain in 10 years, and how to use that knowledge to try to re-shape your destiny. The surprising conclusion is that constant calorie cutters are the MOST likely to gain weight.

As the West Nile virus continues to spread, many communities are spraying insecticides to kill mosquitoes. But that may be a dangerous and ineffective solution.

The West Nile virus has infected 58 Louisiana residents, killing four of them, while spreading to virtually every corner of the state. The governor has declared a state of emergency. Before the newly announced deaths, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 185 cases, including 18 deaths, since the first Americans were diagnosed in 1999. The virus was first detected in New York City and now has been found in 34 states and the District of Columbia. West Nile can cause a potentially fatal brain inflammation. It has struck other countries for decades, from the tip of Africa up to Europe and throughout Asia.

HIV is gaining reistance to drugs in North America - Newly infected patients showed a dramatic rise in drug resistant HIV, a new study has found.

[LONG-TERM CLIMATE PREDICTIONS]
Mysterious shift in Earth's gravity suggests equator is bulging - Something strange has been going on under our feet for the past four years. Earth's gravity field suddenly shifted gears and began getting flatter, reversing a course of centuries during which the planet and its gravity field grew rounder each year.

A two-mile-thick cloud of pollution shrouding southern Asia is threatening the lives of millions of people in the region and could have an impact much further afield, according to a U.N.-sponsored study. The cloud, a toxic cocktail of ash, acids, aerosols and other particles, is damaging agriculture and changing rainfall patterns across the region which stretches from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. The lives of millions of people are at risk from drought and flooding as rainfall patterns are radically altered. There are also global implications because a pollution parcel like this, which stretches three km high, can travel half way round the globe in a week.

The devastating floods which have killed scores of people across central Europe are the wake-up call that could push industrial nations to act faster to stop the planet heating up. As the globe heats up rainfall would become heavier and more frequent in areas where it already rains a lot, while arid areas would suffer from more droughts.

[POLITICAL PREDICTIONS]
How to build a better soldier? The U.S. Army thinks part of the answer could lie in building better computer war games.

U.S. military computers are easily cracked - Experts retrieve sensitive data from military and government PCs by slipping through lax online security.

War between the United States and Iraq seems almost certain, judging from remarks on Sunday television news shows by senior U.S. political figures.

[SEASONAL WEATHER PREDICTIONS]
The Farmers' Almanac is predicting a rough winter in the U.S. this year. People from Maine to Colorado can expect heavy snow and ower-than-normal temperatures. Severe weather patterns are expected to gradually shift eastward as the winter progresses. Last year they predicted the same thing - and were wrong - it was an unusually mild winter in most areas. The Almanac's editors claim it has been historically accurate about 75% to 80% of the time.

The annual hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer is forming again over Antarctica, with scientists predicting it will expand and deepen in the coming weeks.

Seismologists say they've developed a network to provide 30 seconds of warning before potentially catastrophic earthquakes strike. So far, only Taiwan has enough monitoring stations to offer enough data for the new system.

[SPIRITUAL PREDICTIONS]
Ask the Dream Doctor - a free service by Charles Lambert McPhee, one of the country's leading experts in the field of dream analysis. He helps thousands of people interpret their dreams through his nightly radio show. His website has a database of more than 30,000 dreams submitted for online analysis, plus dream message boards and a dream symbols dictionary .

[STOCK MARKET PREDICTIONS]
Are businesses ready for cyberattacks? A new study has the answer.

Amid a weak economy, slumping stock market and rising unemployment, Americans are filing for bankruptcy in record numbers. What's behind this trend?