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Researched and designed by technologist Michell Zappa, Envisioning Technology is a speculative and subjective overview of potential future technologies. Based on personal research and observations, this map is intended to facilitate predictions of where the technium is going, as well as provoke thought and stimulate debate. Due to the intrinsic difficulty of speculation, the visualization is not to be interpreted as a roadmap, but rather as a point of reference for those investigating (or designing) the future of technology. Each hub represents an important area of development to which actual technologies (shown as nodes) belong. The center of the map marks where we are today, and the further out points indicate how far into the future each technology is predicted to become mainstream. The visualization also attempts to distinguish the predicted importance of each area, shown by the relative size of the nodes

US President Barack Obama said Saturday that a transition to cleaner energy will help create more American jobs as he promoted his new initiative designed to reduce US energy imports by a third.

"Dendrochronologists have shown that tree-ring data produce a remarkably accurate history of droughts and other climate changes. Combined with reliable drought indices and historical descriptions of climate conditions, dendrochronology - the technique of dating events and environmental change by relying on characteristic patterns of tree-ring growth - can provide a climate perspective on important events such as large-scale human migration and even the rise and fall of entire civilizations."

A San Francisco State University biologist has released the initial results of her nationwide citizen science project to count bee populations and has found low numbers of bees in urban areas across America, adding weight to the theory that habitat loss is one of the primary reasons for sharp declines in the population of bees and other important pollinators.

"A new Arctic study in the journal Science is helping to unravel an important mystery surrounding climate change: How quickly glaciers can melt and grow in response to shifts in temperature."

New research has found that individuals and the private sector have an important role to play in the provision of public policies to help society adapt to the impacts of climate change.

A University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led study shows a link between large dust storms on Iceland and glacial melting. The dust is both accelerating glacial melting and contributing important nutrients to the surrounding North Atlantic Ocean. The results provide new insights on the role of dust in climate change and high-latitude ocean ecosystems.

Wild bees are important pollinators and numerous studies dealing with pollination of wild plants and crops underline their vital role in ecosystems functioning. While honey bees can be easily transported to various location when needed, wild bees' presence is dependent on the availability of high quality semi-natural habitats. Some crops, such as apples and cherries, and many wild flowers are more effectively pollinated by wild bees and other insects rather than managed honey bees.

How important is Twitter in the political revolutions sweeping the Middle East? That was the topic of discussion on stage at the CTIA mobile and wireless convention today in Orlando, Florida and two very different, very strong opinions were voiced. "I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that sending a tweet is the equivalent of activism," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, "but it's another tool people can use." Kenneth Roth, executive director of of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's most respected human rights organization, framed things very differently though. He said on stage (above) that mobile technology in general would make it impossible today for something like Nazi Germany to unfold again the way it did historically.

Transparency builds trust. The phrase has become so axiomatic in corporate relations that it's inching perilously close to cliché. And while virtues of openness and transparency are well-established in the corporate world, they're even more essential when applied to the operation of city governments. A recent Knight Foundation/Pew Research study shows how important, demonstrating that if citizens believe their city governments behave in a transparent manner and make information easily accessible, they tend to think more highly about their town and its civic institutions.

Few things in this world can be more annoying than running out of battery. It seems like your cell phone has made the application of Murphy's Law its raison d'etre. It dies right before you are expecting that important call from a client. It dies the day that your kids are sick. It always seems to die when you have just left the spot that had an easily accessible outlet.

Researchers are testing different ways of improving rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and nanotechnology plays an important role in the development. The aim is to offer batteries that have fast charge and discharge rates as well as high stored energy per mass. This can make electric vehicles a competitive alternative to petrol-powered vehicles.

Natural gas is important in many sectors of the economy: for generating electricity, as a heat source for industry and buildings, and in chemical feedstock. Given the abundance of natural gas available through large global resources and the recent emergence of substantial unconventional supplies in the United States, worldwide usage of the fuel is likely to continue to grow considerably and contribute to significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come, according to a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study carried out over the last three years by MIT researchers.

Any architect recognizes the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), lead by star architect Rem Koolhaas, as one of the most important and thought-provoking architectural firms in the world. The counterpart to OMA's architectural practice is AMO, a design and research studio that specifically focuses on areas beyond the traditional boundaries of architecture, such as media, politics, sociology, technology, fashion or graphic design. Remarkably, it seems AMO is getting more and more active in developing complex-scale, mass-medium data graphics. In February of this year, they presented the "Energy Report" for the WWF, a comprehensive study claiming that the world can be 100 percent reliant on renewable energy by 2050.

Marine researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups have created a map of the world's corals and their exposure to stress factors, including high temperatures, ultra-violet radiation, weather systems, sedimentation, as well as stress-reducing factors such as temperature variability and tidal dynamics.

Bats in North America are under a two-pronged attack but they are not the only victim - so is the U.S. economy. Gary McCracken, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, analyzed the economic impact of the loss of bats in North America in agriculture and found it to be in the $3.7 to $53 billion a year range.

There is a vitally important national and state-level discussion taking place about how to address the government's frighteningly large deficits while limiting disruptions for all Americans. But while federal and state actions affect us all, much of what concerns Americans most directly and personally happens closer to home and increasingly, this means in our cities. Budget cuts simply can't derail efforts to make our cities smarter. Today our nation's cities are facing a "perfect storm." For many cities, their populations are growing at the same time that their budgets are shrinking. Today, for the first time, more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities. In the last decade large metropolitan areas in the U.S. grew by a combined 10% - nearly double the rate of the rest of the country. Our large metro areas now house two thirds of America's total population. They have become the dominant forces in our economy and society.

essays in this book reflect pioneering efforts to study the global movement of ideas and institutions. They deal with topics of significant contemporary importance: initiatives to address the AIDS epidemic in East Africa; to protect the peoples and ecosystems of the Amazon; to advance the "truth and reconciliation" process in South Africa and in other areas of great conflict; to promote "civil society" in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; to advocate for environmental protection in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan; and to spread Rotary Clubs and encourage "social entrepreneurship" throughout the world. These essays highlight a wide range of research, paying close attention to the realities of particular situations and to current thinking about general processes.

A new paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that people, governments, and institutions that shape the way people interact may be just as important for determining environmental conditions as the environmental processes themselves.

IN JUST a few thousand years, we humans have created a remarkable civilisation: cities, transport networks, governments, vast economies full of specialised labour and a host of cultural trappings. It all just about works, but it's hardly a model of rational design - instead, people in each generation have done the best they could with what they inherited from their predecessors. As a result, we've ended up trapped in what, in retrospect, look like mistakes. What sensible engineer, for example, would build a sprawling, low-density megalopolis like Los Angeles on purpose? Suppose we could try again. Imagine that Civilisation 1.0 evaporated tomorrow, leaving us with unlimited manpower, a willing populace and - most important - all the knowledge we've accumulated about what works, what doesn't, and how we might avoid the errors we got locked into last time. If you had the chance to build Civilisation 2.0 from scratch, what would you do differently?