A manuscript has been floating around the interweb which describes an experimental test of the hypothesis that languages which grammatically distinguish between present and future events (what linguists call strong future-tense reference languages) lead their speakers to take fewer future-oriented actions. 

The manuscript is entitled, The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets (pdf), and it compares languages that have different future-time...

A 24 year old Cameroonian engineer, Arthur Zang, has invented the Cardiopad, a touchscreen medical tablet used to perform tests similar to a traditional electrocardiograph. The Cardiopad can wirelessly transmit the results of a heart test from a remote location to specialists typically located in urban centers. 

Cardiopad

When compared to the traditional electrocardiograph, The Cardiopad has...

Over the past few years IFTF’s Global Food Outlook Program research has focused on food choices and how the values people hold, the contexts that surround them, and people’s behaviors themselves, will change in the coming decade.

We have been asking questions such as, how will we decide what’s for dinner, and how will our values shape our everyday decisions? Where will we get fresh food? And of course, how will people...

During their work on the Future of Persuasion, my colleagues in the Technology Horizons program developed the idea of a personal persuasion profile - that, in effect, each of us will be profiled based on the kinds of pitches, targeting and information we're most likely to respond to, that, over time, will follow us around in our virtual lives. It seems to me that in health, we may be on the verge of a similar concept in health: A personal placebo profile that identifies the kinds of non-biological medical practices that influence us, which can follow us around from medical encounter to medical...