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"From the Gold Rush to the rise of the film industry, from the free speech movement to the emergence of Silicon Valley, California has always been a frontier-a place of change and innovation, and today the state is facing some of its toughest challenges yet. Looking ahead, we need to ask … Will California reinvent itself again for the 21st century? Can everyday citizens be empowered to help transform California? Will California keep growing, start conserving, reinvent itself, or completely collapse? These were the questions posed to the participants of IFTF's California Dreams: Which Future is Yours contest-challenging everyday people to make a better future for our state."

A thousand miles off California, the North Pacific Ocean Gyre contains one of the largest ecosystems on Earth--but it may be in danger from a deluge of accumulated plastic trash. Dubbed the "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch," the debris at the center of the North Pacific Ocean has the potential to damage marine life and alter the biological environment. Though this issue has recently received popular media attention, there was little scientific information available on the composition, extent, and effects of the debris. The small pieces of plastic that make up most of the material are not detectable by satellites or airplanes. Researchers requiring detailed scientific sampling must use ships capable of traveling to this remote region.

"From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated."

Rapid change and increasingly complex operating environments create challenges beyond the reach of traditional responses. IFF's response generates new possibilities for more effective action and the capacity to realise them in practice. Practical hope and wise initiative. International Futures Forum has established Praxis Centres to make this capacity available to diverse clients, partners and challenging circumstances. IFF Praxis Ltd is based in Scotland, UK. IFF US is based in San Francisco, California. Other praxis centres are planned elsewhere in the world, in response to demand. The following pages explore what working with IFF can offer in practice. We look forward to hearing from you.

looks like an example of emerging public science and science communication - attempting to do science in a way that influences the public