With rising disposable incomes, expansion of stores and supporting economic factors, India’s retail sector has achieved impeccable growth over the last decade with an amiable acceptance to organised retailing formats. The industry is expected to grow to about $ 900 billion by 2014 and is maturing towards modern concept of retailing, cornering the conventional unorganised family-owned businesses making India the third-largest retail market in Asia after China and Japan.
The sector growing at a CAGR of 13%, accounts for 22% of the country’s GDP and contributes to 8% of total employment. International chains have recognised the vast potential in the industry by partnering with the country’s big wigs. With the advent of e-commerce, the online retail segment in India which opens up a sea of opportunities for international brands to showcase their products is growing at an annual rate of 35 per cent which would take its value from Rs 2,000 crore (US$ 429.5 million) in 2011 to Rs 7,000 crore (US$ 1.5 billion) in 2015.
Growth of Indian retail sector
January 3rd, 2012Waves of Innovation
August 1st, 2011Everything happens in cycles. “Konratiev Waves” help explain what carries our economy forward over generations
http://www.scienceprogress.org/2011/05/waves-of-innovation-2/
Increasing hole in the ozone layer.
April 3rd, 2011The ozone layer is vital for the continuation of much of life on earth – its protective effect stops harmful UV-C radiation from reaching the surface. The struggle still remains to ensure that the existing hole does not continue to grow.
Twenty years ago the Montreal protocol was brought into force. The treaty, which aimed to control substances which lead to the depletion of levels of ozone in the earth’s stratosphere, has been hailed as a great success. The data below shows that since the Montreal protocol came into force, the size of the ozone hole has increased in size by 36%. The hole was around the size of Cuba in 1979 (130,000 sq km) and has grown to the size of North America today (25 million sq km).
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar gases contribute heavily to the increase of the hole. Reaching the upper atmosphere, the sun’s rays breaks theses gases down, releasing highly reactive chlorine atoms. Chlorine breaks down ozone and disturbs the natural cycle which prevents harmful rays from reaching the earth’s surface.
The picture below shows a NASA graphic visualizing the extent of the ozone hole over Antarctica.
Source of text: NASA, The Guardian datastorage – Source of picture: NASA
Single page personal organizer
March 2nd, 2011
PocketMod is a website and freeware program that helps make 8-paged mini-booklets and organizers out of a single sheet of paper.
Teleportation
February 14th, 2011Teleportation involves dematerializing an object at one point, and sending the details of that object’s precise atomic configuration to another location, where it will be reconstructed, similar to sending a fax. Time and space could be eliminated from travel, we could be transported to any location instantly, without actually crossing a physical distance.
The first case of successful teleportation between objects of a different nature – the ones representing a “flying” medium (light), the other a “stationary” medium (atoms) took place in October 2006. The result was primarily of interest for practical application in realizing quantum computers or transmitting coded data, a technology called quantum cryptography. According to the science blog PhysOrg, scientists in China have recently succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km, much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.
With the teleportation of atoms, it should only be a matter of time to enable the teleportation of larger objects.
These successes though are not comparable to the complexity of teleporting a human. For a person to be transported, a machine would have to be built that can pinpoint and analyze all of the 1023 atoms that make up the human body – more than a trillion trillion atoms, sending this information to another location, where the person’s body would be reconstructed with exact precision, asking for an enormous computing power which is unrealistic, even with the approach of singularity. Next to the fact that molecules could not be even a millimeter out of place, lest the person arrive with some severe neurological or physiological defect, the original person would have to die and be rebuilt at the targeted location. This process is defined as‘bio-digital cloning’ by scientists and will arouse many ethical questions may be solved by the use of surrogate robots, artificial body doubles. Anyway, at this moment, according to the American National Institute of Health: “It would be easier to walk.”
Source of text: BBC news, wikipedia.org, howstuffworks.com, physorg.com, nullhypothesis.com – Source of picture: biology-online.org
3D printing and rapid prototyping: What is the difference?
February 5th, 2011Same technologies, different dimensions.
Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology.
3D printers are smaller in size and use the same technology of successive additive material layering.
There is a wide range of applications today including the manufacture of production-quality parts in relatively small numbers. Designers and sculptors such as the Dutch design company Freedom of Creation use the technology to produce complex shapes for product designs and fine arts exhibitions. Due to technical advances, rapid prototyping has entered the field of rapid manufacturing and it is believed by many experts that this technology will form a “next level” technology with many possibilities to produce complex forms very fast and accurate. Linked to the use of rapid prototyping are 3D scanning technologies that allow the replication of real objects without the use of molding techniques, that in many cases can be more expensive, more difficult, or too invasive to be performed; particularly with precious or delicate cultural heritage artifacts.
As 3D printers have become affordable for average households and more advanced in technology, future applications may allow familiar pieces of furniture in a contemporary home to be replaced by the combination of a 3D printer and a recycling unit. Clothing, crockery, cutlery and books can already all be printed on demand and recycled after use, meaning that wardrobes, washing machines, dishwashers, cupboards and bookshelves may eventually become redundant.
Source of text: Freedom of Creation, Fab Lab, wikipedia.org – source of picture: Freedom of Creation, showing the Gaudi chair designed by Bram Greenen.
Biometrics and banking.
February 5th, 2011Some examples that we know of today are the iris or fingerprint scan and voice recognition which will for example replace the computer’s keyboard.
Many countries have introduced the biometric passport, such as the Privium service at Schiphol Airport in The Netherlands.
Biometric technology will improve to such an extent that the physical presence of a person will be sufficient to check in for international travels, open locked doors, transfer money and do many other actions.
Due to biometric features technology will feel very intuitive and ‘natural’, especially in combination with miniaturized devices. For example, the multi-national electronics enterprise Hitachi states that “The growing use of credit cards is leading banking institutions to introduce reliable security based on biometrics to prevent fraud.” According the science blog Null Hypothesis, Japan has unveiled plans to replace credit cards with fingerprints. Hitachi hopes to launch biometric cash machines in order to fore-come identity theft. The machines work by scanning the veins in an individual’s fingertip and matching the pattern up with their unique data, which is stored in the system. At the current state of science and engineering, it is impossible to counterfeit a person’s genetics, and it is hoped that biometric banking will limit the ever-growing trend of identity theft.
Source of text: nullhypothesis.com, Hitachi, Living Tomorrow
Security measurements in the future.
December 16th, 2010The advance of technologies will offer us many opportunities, but simultaneously its control to guarantee safety will be one of the biggest challenges as advances in technology and globalization will cause crime to step up a few levels. This will effect levels of personal, organizational and global security.
Due to the advances in technology – nano-technology, bio-engineering, virtual reality and robotics – new kinds of terrorism will emerge. The world population will be exposed to the risk of a pandemic with manufactured molecular self-replicating machines that could destroy the biosphere and even eradicate intelligent life.
As a consequence, the constant fear for bio-tech will be bigger than the wish for privacy. Privacy and security are likely to become antagonistic as the life of the individual will become more transparent to institutions. Next to organizational security management, personal security markets will emerge.
Hackers will prey on banks, consumers and business, hacking into databases and stealing identities that might be sold to the highest bidder in online identity trade marts. The risk for digital and cyber crime will rise with the level of network connectivity.
Enterprises will have to invest more in security products as it will be mission-critical to the organization to keep digital data secure. Therefore the security management sector will become a very important industry offering – and this is a good thing within the threat – new job opportunities.
Security issues will also effect governmental surveillance. Engineers in collaboration with governmental and safety organizations will strive to find the perfect global surveillance network that gives sufficient protection to such attacks and at the same time grants a high quality of life for the individual. See also the web site http://www.transparency.org/.
Since there probably is yet no general defense against nanotech attacks by 2050 that could potentially destroy the biosphere, such attacks will have to be prevented by limiting the number of powers who have nanotechnology, causing many legal and political issues. In consequence of that, access to technology will be limited to authorized engineers and researchers.
The key to preventing global surveillance from turning into global suppression is to ensure that the system is transparent in both directions, so to say ”We can watch who is watching us, 2-directional transparency.”
Basic liberties and constant scrutiny of government and law-enforcement agencies will be of big importance as the coming generations will tolerate a smaller scale of privacy in their lives.
Today we would refer to it as Brave New World, or Orwell’s 1984, with Big Brother watching. But people of future generations will have to share their little vices, discovering that many have similar ones, so negative feelings will wear off. The idea that everything they will do can be researched by anybody who is interested in finding out – for example the government for global surveillance – will gradually be accepted.
Sources of texts: The Institute for Global Futures and futurologists Nick Bolstrom, Ian Pearson and Adjiedj Bakas/Dexter.
Science and technology.
October 3rd, 2010The weekly innovations in genome manipulation, microcrystalline research, bio-machinery, nanotechnology, materials science, and information processing engineering might seem an old hat to the future generations that will live around 2050, they probably won’t even notice them unless these innovations somehow stand out from amidst the crowd of routine marvels.
In the meantime, the convergence of GRIN technologies (genetics, robots, internet and nano technology) within most sectors will cause an enormous forward thrust in means of innovation and product development.