Signals of Change

Commercializing the Web SoC345

A rapid increase in the number of business models that depend on the Web to distribute digital content promises to transform the Web and its use.

Advanced Sensors as Application Enablers SoC346

Advances in sensor technologies are at the point of greatly expanding the range and utility of sensor applications. Companies are increasingly able to integrate real-time—or close-to-real-time—sensor data with existing applications and services, providing a quantum leap in capabilities for business and scientific endeavors.

The U.S. Consumer and Global Warming SoC347

In 2008, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization, ecoAmerica, launched a research effort to measure the impact that a year of global-warming messaging had had on U.S. attitudes and to identify themes that would be useful in messaging campaigns about global warming. This SoC relates some of the results.

The Art and Science of Taste SoC348

Increasingly, researchers are discovering intriguing and complex dynamics among the human senses. One important dimension of the human sensory experience is taste, and researchers are expanding the set of potential applications for taste as quickly as they have expanded the possibilities for the other senses.

Neuroscience on Trial SoC349

Electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging are beginning to influence the world outside their traditional application domains in research and medicine. But their use in courts of law is generating considerable controversy.

Food Prices Evolve the Supply Chain SoC350

Food prices have become extremely volatile because of a number of factors, including international trade dynamics, newly affluent segments of developing-world populations, and increasing demand for biofuels. The volatility is evolving and reshaping the supply chain as countries scramble to assure their food sources and as the global food market continues to depend on a few key countries only.

Insights

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 19 November 2008 Meeting D09-2586

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 19 November 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 November meeting included advanced maps, crowdsourcing causes, phonovation, woodwork, multisensory interfaces, aging is fun, restructuring rigid models, technology addicts, unconscious economics, skip the gym, water footprint, geek king, and human robots or robotic humans. Compiler: Kimberly H. Wiesbrock. 39 pages.

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 17 December 2008 Meeting D09-2587

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 17 December 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 December meeting included textin' 'bout my generation, a whole new kind of stupid, evolutionary baggage, funky creative energy sources, portable distraction, beware the herd, URL-ing the world, India and China in a slowdown, the upside of the downturn, surveillance by search, lifelogging, science's new leaders, countries closing shop, and global BRIC breaking. Compiler: Kimberly H. Wiesbrock. 42 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 in Menlo Park on:

• 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
• 20 January 2010 at 9:00 am.

Scan also sponsors occasional Scan abstract meetings in Croydon, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. Contact your SRIC-BI (now SBI) marketing representative to schedule participation in any of the Scan abstract meetings.