World Futures Fall 2021

"For a snapshot of what all this points to regarding the total materials footprint of the green energy path, consider the supply chain for an electric car battery. A single battery providing a useful driving range weighs about 1,000 pounds.[15] Providing the refined minerals needed to fabricate a single EV battery requires the mining, moving, and processing of more than 500,000 pounds of materials somewhere on the planet (see sidebar below).[16] That's 20 times more than the 25,000 pounds of petroleum that an internal combustion engine uses over the life of a car."

Join us for a fascinating talk followed by Q&A with St Cross alumna Kristina Lunz (MSc Global Governance and Diplomacy, 2014) entitled 'The Future of Foreign Policy is Feminist - Insights from building a feminist start-up to change the status quo of foreign policy'. Kristina will discuss her work as a co-founder and co-CEO of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy - the world's first research and advocacy organisation promoting an intersectionally feminist and people-centered approach to foreign policy.

"Excess release of phosphorus is the main culprit for the eutrophication of freshwater and marine ecosystems [1]. Phosphorus is a nonrenewable and irreplaceable element for plant growth, and its role is crucial in agricultural production [2]. The accelerated growth in food demand has also increased the demand for phosphate fertilizers, which has placed stress on phosphate rock sources and is exhausting existing deposits [3]. The phosphate mining industry is also facing serious challenges regarding water availability for the mining process and a decrease in the quality of phosphate rocks"

"Improving the microbial quality of agricultural water through filtration can benefit small farms globally. The incorporation of zero-valent iron (ZVI) into sand filters (ZVI-sand) has been effective in reducing E. coli, Listeria spp., and viruses from agricultural water. This study evaluated ZVI-sand filtration in reducing E. coli levels based on influent water type and the percentage of ZVI in sand filters"

"The directive sets essential quality standards at the EU level. One requirement of the directive is that a total of 48 microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters must be regularly monitored and tested. When transposing the Drinking Water Directive into national law, EU member states can set higher but not lower standards. The limits of the microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters are specified in the annexes to the Drinking Water Directive. For water meters, this means that the measurement accuracy must be maintained for all types of water that comply with the parameter limits specified in this document. This can pose a real challenge in terms of the measurement accuracy and particularly the measurement stability of water meters for some of the parameters"

"However, in this configuration, the alluvial aquifers are also highly vulnerable to pollution. To address the issue of pollutant transfer, it is common to use natural or artificial tracing methods. In particular, the stable isotopes of the water molecule (2H, 18O) have many applications, allowing a better understanding of hydrosystems. They are used to estimate the recharge, to know the origin of water, the mixing processes and the transit times [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The use of this tracer is particularly relevant in the context of short transit times within the aquifer, as is the case for exchanges between alluvial aquifers and rivers. However, it is necessary to have a marked isotopic signature for the input signal to the system and a different signature between the input and output signal [11]."

"The defining characteristic of this new version of the creative class may not be where it lives, but its ability to live anywhere it wants. Put differently, people move to certain cities in search of better-paying jobs, but it's now possible to earn high (if not the highest) salaries from almost anywhere. That has been true in certain smaller cities in recent years (Austin and Denver in the United States, for example, and Manchester and Leeds in Britain). To a lesser extent, it has also been true for people who chose not to live in cities at all." Workers hold the power and they need to be able to live and work where they want when they want. We're very reliant on humans, we need to make them valued and show that we are investing in the things they care about.

Interesting article about the clash (and likely continued clash) amongst unions and port operators/authorities and the increased use of automation resulting in the need for fewer employees at the ports. Mentions concern for the government's stance on the introduction of new technology.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu said the agency is working with a number of other financial regulators to coordinate digital asset regulation. Regarding cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance, Hsu "said it is necessary for regulators to 'ensure that crypto/DeFi activities that take place within the banking system or are facilitated by banks are trustworthy.'" However, since most DeFi activity "takes place outside of the regulated banking system, it is unclear whether Hsu's remarks can be interpreted as reflecting OCC's aspiration to extend its purview over DeFi platforms."

Countering a common point of view, Liberty Street Economics claims that on the policy front, physical distance from a bank seems not to be what keeps the unbanked away, and so motivating or compelling banks to open branches near the unbanked may not reduce their numbers. In fact, in the FDIC's 2015 survey, only 2 percent of unbanked respondents cited "inconvenient location" as the main reason why they did not have a bank account. Far more important reasons were "not enough money to keep in account," "don't trust banks," and "account fees too high." Those issues merit more attention than banking deserts.

The closing of thousands of bank branches in the aftermath of the 2007-09 recession has served to intensify societal concerns about access to financial services among low- income and minority populations, groups that are often affected disproportionately in such situations. These sorts of concerns were expressed recently by, among others, researchers Terri Friedline and Mathieu Despard in an article in The Atlantic.1 We explored these concerns from the perspectives of those living in existing banking deserts as well as those who are dependent on isolated branches that, if closed, would create new deserts.

Mobile money has grown quickly in Africa and other countries with large unbanked populations. The activity and market share is attracting international and US investment and could herald a change in US options and activity for the unbanked or underbanked.

Definition of Mobile Money from IMF's Knowledge Bank

The rapid uptake of mobile money in recent years has generated new data needs and growing interest in understanding its impact on broad money. This paper reviews mobile money trends using mobile money data from the Financial Access Survey (FAS) and examines the statistical treatment of mobile money under the IMF's Monetary and Financial Statistics (MFS) framework. MFS guidance is straightforward in most cases, as many jurisdictions have adopted regulations which ensure that mobile money is captured in the banking system and thus in the calculation of broad money. However, in cases where mobile network operators (MNOs) act as niche financial intermediaries outside the banking regulatory perimeter and are allowed to invest their customer funds in sovereign securities and other permitted assets, mobile money liabilities may remain outside the banking system as well as monetary statistics. In that case, information on mobile money liabilities need to be collected directly from MNOs to account for mobile money as part of broad money.

In 2012, this article stated: "The University of Nairobi's Tonny Omwansa, who is writing a book on mobile money, believes the slow growth of mobile cash in the US comes down to Americans' trusting relationship to banking institutions, despite recent protests." Declining trust in established institutions and government since that time may mean that America is ripe for Mobile Money expansion.

"This book tells a tale of innovation, disruption, and transformation. Mobile money, e-money, e-float, e-wallets, mobile banking, however you characterise it, is not just a cool app. It s a killer app, the first for mobile phones in the developing world. It s also a disruptive innovation that threatens incumbent businesses and is sparking new business formation and entrepreneurship. Nowhere is this mobile money phenomenon more prevalent and successful than in Kenya. In five years, 19 million Kenyans, more than 70% of the adult population, have signed up for mobile money services. Fifteen million are customers of M-PESA ( M for Mobile and pesa means money in Swahili). Now, one out of every two people in the world who sends money over a mobile phone is a Kenyan. Mobile money is the rare case in which an African country is the global market leader and an exporter of innovation." The author says, "It has been so successful in these markets because it leapfrogged the payment card industry," he said, "which requires expensive ATM and Point of Sale (POS) networks to function. ATMs and POS Terminals require regular maintenance and, with ATMs, regular liquidity balancing. By leveraging third party retail outlets and making the phone the primary means of exchange, mobile money bypassed the need to distribute ATMs and POS Terminals. The reverse is true in the US: mobile money isn't leapfrogging the payment card industry, it's augmenting it."

New materials can be seen as a disruption but,at the same time, innovation to the corrosion control industry workforce.Legislation,Legislation, Internet of Things and Microbiologically influenced corrosion are a few of the main changes perceived by experts that may might affect the corrosion industry and its workforce.

The job scope for materials engineers are not in decline which can bring more inovation to prevent corrosion. .The median annual wage for materials engineers was $95,640 in May 2020. Numbers of current jobs:25,100. The projected percent change in employment from 2020 to 2030. The average growth rate for all occupations is 8 percent.The projected numeric change in employment from 2020 to 2030 is 2,100. There is no additional training needed (postemployment) to attain competency in the skills needed in this occupation.The wage at which half of the workers in the occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. Median wage data are from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey. In May 2020, the median annual wage for all workers was $41,950.