Signals of Change

Health-Care Connectivity SoC339

Advances in technologies and techniques that provide remote diagnostic and treatment capabilities in underdeveloped and developing countries will help deal with rising costs of health care there and possibly reduce health-care costs everywhere.

Emotion Interfaces SoC340

Human-machine interfaces have been a crucial element in creating market success for digital and electronic devices and appliances, leading to a proliferation of innovative interfaces in the past ten years. Now, novel interfaces are tackling the last frontier: reading, responding to, communicating, or generating emotional reactions and feelings.

Fingerprints and Beyond SoC341

Recent developments in technology have greatly expanded the use of fingerprints and similar technologies as identifiers, extended the use of fingerprints in monitoring and surveillance applications, and explored new law-enforcement applications that depend on fingerprinting techniques.

New Tactics in the War on Obesity SoC342

A variety of regulatory, punitive, and remunerative measures are emerging in attempts to stem the increasing occurrence of obesity throughout the world. Motivations for the measures vary all the way from companies' trying to control costs and improve productivity to governments' trying to protect citizens from unhealthful behaviors.

Systems Controlling Themselves SoC343

Systems approaches to business, social, and scientific endeavors continue to mature. Now, though, researchers are encountering difficulties in making sense of ever-more-complicated dynamics in systems from biological systems to information-technology systems. Indicators suggest that in some systems, trying to control or influence the system may be counterproductive.

Consumer Attitudes to Food Technologies SoC344

Consumer attitudes concerning technology in food production are shifting because of a variety of factors, including high food prices, widespread crop failures, and expanding global population. Foods produced by means of controversial technologies, such as genetically modified foods and in vitro meat, are seeing increasing levels of acceptance in some parts of the world.

Insights

Social RFID Applications: Benefiting Everyone? D08-2584

Radio-frequency–identification (RFID) technology has proved its ability to provide benefits for very specific applications such as tracking goods through the supply chain. But it can also function as an enabler, or even as an entire infrastructure, that allows organizations or governments to build applications that offer more general benefits for communities and societies as a whole. The development of an e-pedigree system that certifies the origin and safety of medicines, for example, helps the pharmaceutical industry in particular, but also improves the quality and safety of health care for society at large. Data from e-pedigree systems may eventually serve research purposes or help patients improve the efficacy of their drug regimens. Other RFID solutions clearly provide societal benefits, making them suitable for government sponsorship or funding. The RFID-enabled e-passport is an example of such an application. This study examines several categories of applications in which RFID technology has the potential to help with solutions to social needs or problems. Author: Martin Schwirn. 15 pages.

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 22 October 2008 Meeting D08-2585

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 22 October 2008 Scan meeting identified. The digest includes a description of the Scan process for people who have never attended a Scan meeting, a list of the clusters that meeting participants identified, and a one-page description of each cluster's premise and supporting abstracts. The document has active links that allow the reader to access the supporting abstracts for each cluster in Scan's online abstract database. The document also has links to previously published Scan documents relating to the particular cluster. Clusters of abstracts for this October meeting included advertising 3.0, your data on a billboard, intelligent population management, locavores are cool, global commodity cartels, Africa rising, big brother everyone, insurance-driven diet change, guilty by body type, and counterintuitive safety effects. Compiler: Aster Peng. 36 pages.

Calendar

Scan™ Abstract Meetings

Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation on:

• 21 January 2009 at 9:00 am
• 18 March 2009 at 9:00 am
• 20 May 2009 at 9:00 am
• 22 July 2009 at 9:00 am
• 23 September 2009 at 9:00 am
• 21 October 2009 at 9:00 am.

Please contact your SRIC-BI (now SBI) marketing representative to schedule participation in any of the Scan Abstract Meetings.