Uke 03

Katastrofer

Nature News bragte nylig en artikkel om "Planetary disasters: It could happen one night", der man forespeiler mulige katastrofer:

Death by volcano: One estimate1 suggests that there is a 1% chance of a super-eruption in the next 460–7,200 years.

Death by fungus:

Although viruses and bacteria grab more attention, fungi are the planet's biggest killers. Of all the pathogens being tracked, fungi have caused more than 70% of the recorded global and regional extinctions3, and now threaten amphibians, bats and bees.

Given these trends, experts say that fungi have not received enough attention from researchers and governments. “I'd be very surprised if an abrupt fungal infection killed a large swathe of people. But it's not impossible,” says Matthew Fisher, an emerging-disease researcher at Imperial College London. “Complacency is not a recommended course of action.”

Death from above:

The heavens hold plenty of threats. The Sun occasionally launches outsize solar flares, which fry electricity grids by generating intense currents in wires. The most recent solar megastorm, in 1859, sparked fires in telegraph offices; today, a similarly sized storm would knock out satellites and shut down power grids for months or longer. That could cause trillions of dollars in economic damage.

Death by water:

Eight thousand years ago, sediments covering an underwater area the size of Scotland slipped from their moorings off the west coast of Norway and raced along the sea floor. The Storegga slide triggered a tsunami that ran at least 20 metres up the nearby Shetland Islands, and probably wiped out some coastal tribes as it clobbered shores around northern Europe. The scar it left on the ocean floor stretches nearly 300 kilometres. “It's absolutely enormous, and I'm not using the word 'enormous' lightly,” says Peter Talling, a sedimentologist at the University of Southampton, UK, who is leading a project to assess the country's risk of similar slides.

Genetisk helbredelse(?)

Nettstedet CRISPR Genome Engineering Resources bringer informasjon om hvordan man kan endre sitt DNA (dvs. gener). Siden mange lidelser er genetisk bestemt, kan vi etterhvert få vårt eget hospital der vi kan helbrede oss selv i løpet av minutter.

Selvtilfredsheten dreper innovasjon

Jeffrey Phillips skriver i sin blog "Innovate on Purpose" om hvordan organisasjoner manøvrerer seg inn i en situasjon preget av bekvemmelighet og sevtilfredshet. Der motsetter man seg enhver forandring som truer denne posisjonen.