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In this issue:

  * Corporate Experimentation with Multiplayer Virtual
      Environments
  * 3-D Integrated-Circuit Design
  * Promising Growth in Retirement Accounts
  * Genomics Opportunities in the Food Industry
  * VALS(TM) Insights into Women Consumers
  * Wireless Power
  * Signals of Change


	
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(Full text of SRIC-BI publications is available to
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sponsor, please visit http://www.sric-bi.com/info.shtml.)
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Corporate Experimentation with Multiplayer Virtual
Environments

Developments in multiplayer virtual environments will
enable corporate professionals and others to test ideas
and solutions in complex, open-ended virtual settings,
experimenting in ways that are difficult or impossible in
real life. Corporations are exploring the use of virtual
environments to bring together distributed teams in a
virtual space and to connect and communicate with
customers and potential customers. Such experiments are
useful and necessary, but companies need to recognize that
they carry some risk: The value of multiplayer virtual
environments is not yet well defined for business, and the
environments need to evolve further and demonstrate their
reliability and practicality. SRIC-BI's new Virtual-Worlds
Consortium will follow this evolution and help
participants evaluate emerging solutions.
(May 2007 Virtual Environments Viewpoints)
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer/VE.shtml

(This publication is part of our Explorer service and 
Virtual Worlds Consortium (VWC). To learn more about 
Explorer, see 
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer.
To learn more about the VWC, see 
http://www.sric-bi.com/VWC.)

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3-D Integrated-Circuit Design

Continued increases in chip-component density are
necessary to meet the ever-increasing performance demands
on computer chips. As decreasing feature size becomes more
problematic, chip designers must develop novel
architectures to improve overall chip performance and
efficiency while still reducing chip size. One of the many
approaches under consideration by major industry players
is three-dimensional (3-D) integrated-circuit
architectures. Though true 3-D integrated circuitry is not
yet feasible, advanced 3-D packaging is an attractive and
viable option for near-term microelectronic designs.
(May 2007 Advanced Silicon Microelectronics/ULSI
Viewpoints)
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer/ULSI.shtml

(This publication is part of our Explorer service. To
learn more about Explorer, see
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer.)


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Promising Growth in Retirement Accounts

Data from the recently released 2006-07 MacroMonitor
reveal that more than three in every five households now
have at least one type of retirement account, versus fewer
than half a decade ago. Balances in retirement accounts
are also growing. The public's awakening to retirement
needs most likely is a reaction to increased press
attention to the lack of retirement savings, the debate
about the potential insolvency of Social Security, and
incessant advertising by financial institutions. For
Boomers, seeing the experiences of their aging parents may
be the main factor jolting them out of denial. Two
potential obstacles could impede continued growth,
however: the need to care for aging dependent adults and
the possible return of adult children to live with their
parents.
(The State of Retirement: Denial No More?)
http://www.sric-bi.com/CFD/MRsummaries/MR-VIII-02.shtml

(This publication is part of CFD's MacroMonitor service.
To learn more about CFD and the MacroMonitor, see
http://www.sric-bi.com/CFD.)

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Genomics Opportunities in the Food Industry

The food industry offers opportunities for innovation. In
particular, income growth and global demographic factors
are creating dramatic lifestyle changes that are in turn
driving changes in consumers' food-consumption behaviors.
Genomics is a core enabling research platform for food-
industry innovation, presenting opportunities for
researchers to engineer crops for drought tolerance,
disease resistance, and improved yield, for example.
Opportunities also exist to develop fortified foods with
enhanced nutritional and health benefits and, in the
longer term, to develop individualized nutrition
strategies and perhaps to market related personal testing
and information services.
(April 2007 Genomics Viewpoints)
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer/GEN.shtml

(This publication is part of our Explorer service. To
learn more about Explorer, see
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer.)

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VALS(TM) Insights into Women Consumers

Though women represent 52% of the adult population in the
United States, they continue to be underrepresented in
both government and boardrooms. Yet women are critically
important consumers, with some estimates suggesting that
they are the key decision makers in some 80% of consumer-
goods purchases. When analysts interviewed a panel of
women representative of the VALS(TM) consumer groups, they
found that although education and economic status often
determine which life paths are available, a woman's
worldview (motivation) has a great influence in
determining which directions she finds most rewarding.
This information is important for marketers, given that
women's ability to affect the marketplace will increase
significantly as more of them gain economic clout and
political power.
(Women Speak Out)
http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/summaries/2007-05WomenSpeakOut.shtml

(This publication is part of our VALS(TM) service. To
learn more about VALS, see http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS.)

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Wireless Power

Power management and battery technology are two of the
most important areas affecting the further
commercialization of handheld devices. Wireless power has
the potential to resolve recharging issues and to cut the
last cord to portable devices. Certainly, most consumers
would jump at a low-cost, safe, convenient wireless power
system that would enable them to throw away the chargers
for their handheld devices. However, wireless power
systems have some way to go before they can truly replace
conventional batteries and chargers (if they ever can).
(May 2007 Portable Intelligence Viewpoints)
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer/PI.shtml

(This publication is part of our Explorer service. To
learn more about Explorer, see
http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer.)

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Signals of Change

In light of evidence that individuals metabolize food in
different ways, researchers are developing customized
nutritional-modeling capabilities for managing diet as
part of lifestyle management. The latest issue of Scan(TM)
Monthly explores this and other signals of change,
including companies' continuing use of Internet
initiatives to increase efficiency and lower business
costs, rapid changes in the energy environment,
breakthroughs in the detection and treatment of cancer,
the food industry's exploration of the sensory and
experience components of food, and new machine-translation
systems that promise to provide more useful output than in
the past.
(Scan[TM] Monthly, April 2007)
http://www.sric-bi.com/Scan/ScanMonthly/SM050.shtml#SoCs

(This publication is part of our Scan[TM] service. To
learn more about Scan, see http://www.sric-bi.com/Scan.)



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