BT’s futurology department has compiled a Technology Timeline for the next 60+ years. In the past they’ve correctly predicted text messaging, email spam and internet search engines. Here’s a sample:

2006 - 2010 Emotionally responsive toys. Electronic medical prescriptions. Video tiles.
2008 - 2012 Medicine delivered via fruit. Video tattoos. Heart rate/temperature sensitive fabrics.
2011 - 2015 Self-driving car. Tooth regeneration. Microchips in food.
2013 - 2017 Active make-up. Robots guiding the blind.
2016 - 2020 Electornic life forms get basic rights. Viewers play film roles. Emotion control devices.
2021 - 2025 E-translation. Holographic TVs.
2026 - 2030 3D home printers.
2031 - 2035 Biostasis in space travel. Computer geniuses.
2036 - 2040 Space elevator.
2041 - 2045 Moon base
2046 - 2050 Mars colony. Nuclear fusion.
2051+ Brain downloads.

Technology Timeline, [PDF]
Technology Timeline Home, BTPLC.com

By training captive chimps to use tools in different ways, a team at the University of St Andrews in the UK and the National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, US, have shown experimentally that primates develop cultural traditions through imitation. They presented two different groups of chimps with a problem: how to retrieve an item of food stuck behind a blockage in a system of tubes. One chimpanzee from each group was secretly taught a novel way to solve the problem. Ericka was taught how to use a stick to lift the blockage up so that the food fell out. Another female chimp, Georgia, was shown how to poke at the blockage so that the ball of food rolled out of the back of the pipes. Each chimp was then reunited with its group, and the scientists watched how they behaved. They found that the chimps gathered around Ericka or Georgia and soon copied their behaviour. By the end of two months, the two different groups were still using their own way of getting at the food and two distinct cultural traditions had been established.

Chimpanzee Culture Confirmed, BBC.co.uk

Jon-Kar Zubieta’s team at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, US, has confirmed that placebos relieve pain by boosting the release of endorphins. Fourteen healthy males in their twenties volunteered to try what they were told was "a medication that may or may not relieve pain". To induce pain, the researchers gave the young men infusions into the jaw that made them ache. All the volunteers, who were given a placebo of salt solution, reported feeling less pain. But the researchers did not simply take their word for it: instead, they scanned the volunteers’ brains using positron emission tomography (PET). They had injected the volunteers with a radioactive tracer that binds to the same mu-opioid receptors as endorphins do, which allowed them to figure out the level of endorphins produced in each volunteer’s brain. The scans revealed that after the volunteers took the placebo, their brains released more pain-relieving endorphins than normal. Zubieta thinks the placebo effect is piggybacking on the body’s innate painkilling system. "[The system] is there to ensure the survival of the organism," he says. "The placebo effect is acting through these mechanisms." But exactly how it does this remains a mystery.

Placebos trigger and opioid hit in the brain, NewScientist.com

Abstract: The fundamental revelations to the founders of the three monotheistic religions, among many other revelation experiences, had occurred on a mountain. These three revelation experiences share many phenomenological components like feeling and hearing a presence, seeing a figure, seeing lights, and feeling of fear. In addition, similar experiences have been reported by non-mystic contemporary mountaineers. The similarities between these revelations on mountains and their appearance in contemporary mountaineers suggest that exposure to altitude might affect functional and neural mechanisms, thus facilitating the experience of a revelation. Different functions relying on brain areas such as the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex have been suggested to be altered in altitude. Moreover, acute and chronic hypoxia significantly affect the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex and both areas have also been linked to altered own body perceptions and mystical experiences. Prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially in social deprivation, may also lead to prefrontal lobe dysfunctions such as low resistance to stress and loss of inhibition. Based on these phenomenological, functional, and neural findings we suggest that exposure to altitudes might contribute to the induction of revelation experiences and might further our understanding of the mountain metaphor in religion.

Why revelations have occurred on mountains? Shahar Arzya, Moshe Ideld, Theodor Landisb and Olaf Blankea

A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light - both slowing it down and speeding it up - in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.

Using their Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) method, the group was able to slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6, creating a sort of temporary “optical memory.” They were also able to create extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than 300 million meters a second. And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn’t move over - relativity isn’t called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected.

Abstract: We demonstrate a method to achieve an extremely wide and flexible external control of the group velocity of signals as they propagate along an optical fiber. This control is achieved by means of the gain and loss mechanisms of stimulated Brillouin scattering in the fiber itself. Our experiments show that group velocities below 71 000 km/s on one hand, well exceeding the speed of light in vacuum on the other hand and even negative group velocities can readily be obtained with a simple benchtop experimental setup. We believe that the fact that slow and fast light can be achieved in a standard single-mode fiber, in normal environmental conditions and using off-the-shelf instrumentation, is very promising for a future use in real applications.

Light that travels… faster than light! ScienceBlog.com
Optically controlled slow and fast light in optical fibers using SBS, Miguel Gonzalez-Herraez, Kwang-Yong Song, and Luc Thevenaz

Richer people tend to be happier than poorer people, according to sociological researcher Glenn Firebaugh, Pennsylvania State University, and graduate student Laura Tach, Harvard University. Their research is focused on whether the income effect on happiness results largely from the things money can buy (absolute income effect) or from comparing one’s income to the income of others (relative income effect). They present their research in a session paper, titled "Relative Income and Happiness: Are Americans on a Hedonic Treadmill?," at the American Sociological Association Centennial Annual Meeting on August 14.

Firebaugh argues that, in evaluating their own incomes, individuals compare themselves to their peers of the same age. Therefore a person’s reported level of happiness depends on how his or her income compares to others in the same age group. Using comparison groups on the basis of age, the researchers find evidence of both relative and absolute effects, but relative income is more important than absolute income in determining the happiness of individuals in the United States. This may result in a hedonic treadmill, because incomes in the United States rise over most of the adult lifespan.

This seems to be support French philosopher Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. While we assume that desire is either objective or subjective, in reality it usually rests on a third party. We want what others want. Opposition strengthens desire, because rivalry validates the object of desire as something worth pursuing. Inversely, quiet and untroubled possession weakens desire. E.g. The man whose wife I desire had perhaps ceased to desire her over time. His desire was dead, but upon contact with mine, which is living, it regains life.

Money can buy you happiness but only relative to your peer’s income. Eurekalert.org
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Rene Girard