tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/back-to-the-future-4408/articlesBack to the Future – The Conversation2020-12-03T14:45:59Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1513082020-12-03T14:45:59Z2020-12-03T14:45:59ZHow a tiny worm is helping to find a cure for an extremely rare form of cancer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372823/original/file-20201203-17-1h4vco.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C1294%2C504&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scientists have recreated the mutant gene that causes a rare cancer called phaeochromocytoma in a millimetre-sized worm.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Dundee</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the Williamson family from Dundee <a href="https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/833499/tayside-dad-who-tragically-lost-his-wife-to-cancer-features-in-new-tv-campaign/">lost their mother Sue to a rare cancer</a> named <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/phaeochromocytoma/">phaeochromocytoma</a> in 2003, they didn’t realise that further devastation was to follow.</p>
<p>Of her four children, twins Jennie and James discovered that they also have the faulty gene that cut short their mother’s life. Both twins are affected with inoperable tumours wrapped around vital blood vessels and nerves in their necks. Father Jo decided to appear in a Cancer Research pledge video (below) in memory of his wife and to raise awareness of the important work that cancer researchers do for people like his children.</p>
<p>We have been working closely with the family to understand more about the gene mutation that causes this cancer. Along with a consortium of researchers from universities in Hungary and India, we have, for the first time, been able to recreate the Williamson defect in a tiny worm, just one millimetre long. This progress is vital to better understand the mutation, and it helps point to possible treatments for the cancer.</p>
<p>The cancer is called a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PhaeoPara/">phaeo</a>. It pulses excessive adrenaline-like hormones into the circulation. Phaeo is hard to diagnose because it mimics conditions such as high blood pressure and can kill patients receiving routine anaesthesia.</p>
<p>When symptoms occur in the young, phaeo may be picked up on imaging (such as ultrasound and MRI/CAT scans) with a high chance of phaeo-causing genes in their DNA. This is the case in the Williamson family, where mum Sue was the index case, but died of malignant-phaeo, despite the removal of a tumour in her twenties.</p>
<p>And even though two of her children carry this defective gene, the first modicum of hope is now on the horizon in familial phaeo after the family decided to find an alternative approach to their DNA mutation. The new hope fuses science, serendipity and a minuscule worm that has been around for hundreds of millions of years.</p>
<h2>The Williamson worm</h2>
<p>The defective gene in the Williamson family altered the structure of a protein called <a href="https://dmm.biologists.org/content/13/10/dmm044925">SDHB</a>. SDHB has a very unusual function that needs an introductory explanation from science fiction. In the <a href="https://www.backtothefuture.com/movies/backtothefuture1">Back to the Future</a> films, Doc Brown’s time-travelling DeLorean sports car is powered by a water-fuelled “flux-capacitor” that can generate vast power. Now imagine that human life itself depends on the biological equivalent of such a device that fuels our internal power generation system. In biology, SDHB is like a flux capacitor that splits apart the sugar we eat into its constituent hydrogen and electricity.</p>
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<img alt="A poster of the original Back To The Future film showing the star Michael J Fox." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372820/original/file-20201203-17-y7r183.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Human biology requires a similar kind of power-generating ‘flux capacitator’ that we see in Back To The Future.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future">Universal Pictures</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>So in the Williamsons, the puzzle lay in finding out how a tiny malfunction in one DNA instruction (mutant SDHB) could cause recurrent cancer in the family. In the past attempts by researchers to make a mouse phaeo model failed to yield insight because the mice looked healthy.</p>
<p>A new approach was needed. By genetic manipulation of DNA, our international group created a worm model of SDHB malfunction that has yielded some new data. We chose to model phaeo using worms because the worm equivalent of SDHB has remained substantially unchanged over hundreds of thousands of years.</p>
<p>So, despite the vast gulf of time that separates worms from modern humans, nature had not changed the DNA blueprint for this essential “flux-capacitor” that permits the energy generation needed for life. This power generator was perfected over 400 million years ago and still works unchanged in animal cells today.</p>
<h2>The results</h2>
<p>The results are revealing because it was immediately obvious that the Williamson mutant worms are sick, sterile, small and sickle shaped. Importantly, the changed appearance can be further investigated by mating them with other mutant worms with other cancer-causing genetic defects. This is underway. In the meantime, a few conclusions can be drawn.</p>
<p>First, the Williamson family mutation does not delete the whole SDHB gene in the affected DNA. This family has a differently folded three-dimensional “origami” structure to their SDHB protein driven by the wrong instructions from their mutant SDHB gene. The Williamson SDHB protein is misshapen, exactly where fuel metabolism occurs. These worms also make so much less of this mutant misshapen SDHB protein. So Williamson worms have contributed something new to nature.</p>
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<p>Second, Williamson worm power stations – or <a href="http://www.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk/what-are-mitochondria">mitochondria</a>, the part of the cell that transforms what we eat (proteins, sugars, fats) into energy – use a very different fuel mix. Normal SDHB runs like a car that can seamlessly switch fuel sources when one fuel runs low. Williamson worms cannot do this and they can only partially burn fuels to release <a href="https://www.livescience.com/lactic-acid.html">lactic acid</a> as a “frustrated” end product of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/glucose-metabolism">glucose metabolism</a>.</p>
<p>So when pushed to perform at their collective personal best, and despite plentiful oxygen trapped inside a tiny molecular cage or cavity made of iron and protein found inside all mitochondria, the Williamson mitochondria cannot effectively maximise their energy output.</p>
<p>Third, and rather excitingly, it is possible to kill Williamson worms with drugs that leave normal worms unscathed. This is where new hope arises because at the moment there is no cure for the Williamson cancer. The search is now on for useful drugs to test in animals, and the findings of this research mean they could now be developed.</p>
<p>Finally, SDHB has just been found to be abnormally controlled across a wide variety of common cancers which adds to the potential of this worm research. Which means that rare and common may well be different manifestations of the cancer process.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anil Mehta has acted as a scientific advisor to the governments of Ireland and Finland, and to the Phaeo and Para charity. In the past he has received research support from many sources including the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon Stewart has received grant funding form the Wellcome Trust and other charitable organisations. </span></em></p>A new discovery fuses science, serendipity and a millimetre-sized worm that is hundreds of millions of years old to help develop a treatment for phaeochromocytoma.Anil Mehta, Honorary Reader in Experimental Medicine, University of DundeeGordon Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Medicine, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1083452018-12-16T19:22:58Z2018-12-16T19:22:58ZThe great movie scenes: Back to the Future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249383/original/file-20181206-128193-cb6864.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C13%2C2937%2C1459&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Still from Back to the Future, 1985.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Back to the Future (1985)</span></figcaption>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-back-to-the-future-day-today-so-what-are-the-next-future-predictions-48740">It's Back to the Future Day today – so what are the next future predictions?</a>
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<p>Back to the Future is that rare Hollywood film that is both a blockbuster and a cult classic, and was easily the <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1985&p=.htm">highest grossing</a> film that year. In this episode of Close-Up, we look at the politics underpinning Back to the Future in the era of Reagan’s America.</p>
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<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">Hitchcock’s Vertigo</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">Antonioni’s The Passenger</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-steven-spielbergs-jaws-79043">Steven Spielberg’s Jaws</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-psycho-and-the-power-of-jarring-music-97325">Hitchcock’s Psycho</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The Godfather</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-100170">Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-sofia-coppolas-marie-antoinette-101893">Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-darren-aronofskys-requiem-for-a-dream-103916">Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-matrix-and-bullet-time-105734">The great movie scenes: The Matrix and bullet-time</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Back to the Future is one of the most loved films from the 1980s, and galvanised audiences across every demographic. In this episode of Close-Up, Bruce Isaacs looks at the politics underpinning the film.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1072332018-11-21T18:40:36Z2018-11-21T18:40:36ZInspired by sci-fi, an airplane with no moving parts and a blue ionic glow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246695/original/file-20181121-161627-1ydgdop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A time-lapse image showing the plane flying across a gymnasium.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0707-9">Steven Barrett, MIT</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since their invention more than 100 years ago, airplanes have been moved through the air by the spinning surfaces of propellers or turbines. But watching science fiction movies like the “Star Wars,” “Star Trek” and “Back to the Future” series, I imagined that the propulsion systems of the future would be silent and still – maybe with some kind of blue glow and “whoosh” noise, but no moving parts, and no stream of pollution pouring out the back.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Science fiction inspires research and reality.</span></figcaption>
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<p>That doesn’t exist yet, but there is at least one physical principle that could be promising. About nine years ago, I started investigating <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2013/ionic-thrusters-0403">using ionic winds</a> – flows of charged particles through the air – as a means of powering flight. Building on decades of <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a8889/ion-thrusters-from-science-fair-experiment-to-aircraft-engine-15326499/">research and experimentation</a> by academics and hobbyists, professionals and high school science students, my <a href="http://lae.mit.edu/">research</a> <a href="http://barrett.mit.edu/group">group</a> recently flew a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0707-9">nearly silent airplane without any moving parts</a>.</p>
<p>The plane weighed about five pounds (2.45 kilograms) and had a wingspan of 15 feet (5 meters), and traveled about 180 feet (60 meters), so it’s a long way from efficiently carrying cargo or people long distances. But we have proved that it is possible to fly a heavier-than-air vehicle using ionic winds. It even has a glow you can see in the dark.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A plane powered by ionic wind takes flight.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Revisiting discarded research</h2>
<p>The process our plane uses, formally called electroaerodynamic propulsion, was investigated <a href="https://www.wired.com/2003/08/pwr-antigravity/">as far back as the 1920s</a> by an eccentric scientist who thought he had discovered anti-gravity – which was of course not the case. In the 1960s, aerospace engineers <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US3130945A/en">explored using it to power flight</a>, but they concluded that wouldn’t be possible with the understanding of ionic winds and the technology available at the time.</p>
<p>More recently, however, a huge number of hobbyists – and high school students doing science fair projects – have built small electroaerodynamic propulsion devices that suggested it could work after all. Their work was pivotal to the early days of my group’s work. We sought to improve on their work, most notably by conducting a large series of experiments to learn how to optimize the design of electroaerodynamic thrusters.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A homemade lifter using the same principle as the new MIT airplane.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Moving the air, not the plane parts</h2>
<p>The underlying physics of electroaerodynamic propulsion is relatively straightforward to explain and implement, although some of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge#Mechanism">underlying physics is complex</a>. </p>
<p>We use a thin filament or wire that is charged to +20,000 volts using a lightweight power converter, which in turn gets its power from a lithium-polymer battery. The thin filaments are called emitters, and are nearer the front of the plane. Around these emitters the electric field is so strong that the air gets ionized – neutral nitrogen molecules lose an electron and become positively charged nitrogen ions. </p>
<p>Farther back on the plane we place an airfoil – like a small wing – whose leading edge is electrically conductive and charged to -20,000 volts by the same power converter. This is called the collector. The collector attracts the positive ions toward it. As the ions stream from the emitter to the collector, they collide with uncharged air molecules, causing what is termed an ionic wind that flows between the emitters and collectors, propelling the plane forward.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">How MIT’s airplane works.</span></figcaption>
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<p>This ionic wind replaces the flow of air that a jet engine or propeller would create.</p>
<h2>Starting small</h2>
<p>I have <a href="http://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2014.0912">led research</a> that has <a href="http://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2012.0623">explored how</a> this type of propulsion actually works, developing detailed knowledge of how efficient and powerful it can be.</p>
<p>My team and I have also worked with electrical engineers to develop the electronics necessary to convert batteries’ output to the tens of thousands of volts needed to create an ionic wind. The team was able to produce a power converter far lighter than any previously available. That device was small enough to be practical in an aircraft design, which we were ultimately able to build and fly.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Steven Barrett speaks in a ‘Nature’ mini-documentary about the first flight of an ionic-wind-driven plane.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Our first flight is, of course, a very long way from flying people. We’re already working on making this type of propulsion more efficient and capable of carrying larger loads. The first commercial applications, assuming it gets that far, could be in making silent fixed-wing drones, including for environmental monitoring and communication platforms.</p>
<p>Looking farther into the future, we hope that it could be used in larger aircraft to reduce noise and even allow an aircraft’s exterior skin to help produce thrust, either in place of engines or to augment their power. It’s also possible that electroaerodynamic equipment could be miniaturized, enabling a new variety of nano-drones. Many might believe these possibilities are unlikely or even impossible. But that’s what the engineers of the 1960s thought about what we’re already doing today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barrett received funding for this work from the MIT Bose Fellowships, MIT Lincoln Lab, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. </span></em></p>Ionic winds – charged particles flowing through the air – can move airplanes using only electricity; no propellers or jet engines needed. The scholar who led the project explains how it works.Steven Barrett, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/496412015-10-27T04:14:39Z2015-10-27T04:14:39ZHow Hollywood saved a futuristic car from obscurity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99487/original/image-20151023-27601-1e49fxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There was no joy for the creator of the DeLorean – the car was a failure. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Andrew Kelly</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Marty McFly: Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?</p>
<p>Dr. Emmett Brown: The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?</p>
<p>– Back To The Future, 1985.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thirty years after <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/back-to-the-future-released-features-1981-delorean-dmc-12">Back to The Future</a> was released, the story of how former General Motors executive <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1359338/bio">John Z. DeLorean</a> failed in his ambition to make a commercial success of his futuristic car still revs at the heart-strings. </p>
<p>The iconic DeLorean car was written off as a failure after its release in the 1980. But Hollywood saved it.</p>
<p>Today, the iconic DeLorean sports car is probably better known as the fictional time machine from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRk4xG-JCI">Back to the Future</a> movies than for its motoring prowess. Few people would remember that the car with iconic <a href="http://gullwingdoors.net/">gullwing doors</a> but no time travel capability went on general sale in the early 1980s. Out of the 9000 made, only <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/back-to-the-future-released-features-1981-delorean-dmc-12">6500</a> are still around. </p>
<p>A few exist even in Cape Town, and are available to rent for the wealthy or for hire to use in <a href="http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/is-cape-town-the-hollywood-of-africa">movies</a> shot in the city. It is among the classic car collection available to rent for US$38,481 a year at an exclusive <a href="http://crossley-webb.com/the-iconic-delorean-at-crossley-webb-for-88mph-event/">dealership</a> in Cape Town.</p>
<h2>A business failure</h2>
<p>But the true story of the DeLorean is how the company became one of the biggest-ever business disasters, even with a generous <a href="http://www.esquire.co.uk/gear/cars/7159/delorean-dmc-12-back-to-the-future/">subsidy</a> from British taxpayers. </p>
<p>It failed despite the involvement of DeLorean, successful car designer <a href="http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/motoring-issues/2015/design-legend-giorgetto-giugiaro-quits-his-own-company-as-audi-takes-over/">Giorgetto Giugiaro</a>, and Formula One engineering expert <a href="http://en.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/driver/704.html">Colin Chapman</a> of Lotus. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99449/original/image-20151023-27615-8fp5lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Big screen success but a failure on the road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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<p>After almost 20 years in the automotive industry as a designer and after becoming the youngest vice-president of General Motors at the age of 40, DeLorean resigned from his position in 1973 to pursue his own venture.</p>
<p>The DeLorean Motor Company was established to produce his “dream-car”, with an eye on the US market. The DeLorean DMC-12 was unusual. It had lift-up gullwing doors, which had been applied to date only to a few other sports cars with modest commercial results. To cast his car’s style in history, DeLorean commissioned the design from Giugiaro. </p>
<p>The first prototype was unveiled in 1977 in New Orleans to raise interest and attract investors. DeLorean managed to raise around US$10 million by selling part of the company’s shares to 343 dealers, and US$1 million from individual investors. </p>
<p>Almost US$100 million was raised from the British government via the Northern Ireland Development Agency and the Department of Commerce. This was given under the promise to create 2500 new jobs in Dunmurry, Belfast. The aim was to reach a production of 30,000 cars a year.</p>
<p>DeLorean hired Chapman from Lotus to come up with an engineering solution for the car in 18 months. Lotus’ involvement in Formula 1 had given DeLorean hope of a quick development time and innovative engineering that would come from sharing the same “father”. As a result, Lotus Esprit and DMC-12 could enjoy similar technological solutions. </p>
<p>DeLorean made it to market in 1981. But despite looking similar to the original 1976 prototype, it compromised on many technological solutions. For example, the composite plastic monocoque and the mid-engine were substituted with a steel backbone chassis-frame and a rear-engine. </p>
<p>Critics complained that the car under-delivered, handled poorly, and performance was not great – especially considering the high US$25,000 price tag. </p>
<p>The negative rumours escalated to even claiming false considerations, such as that gullwing doors were impossible to open in tight spaces when it was proven that they actually needed less space than regular doors to open. </p>
<h2>Dreams bust</h2>
<p>In 1982, DeLorean filed for bankruptcy. </p>
<p>Things were going to get worse. In October 1982 DeLorean was arrested for cocaine smuggling.</p>
<p>Investigations into his firm’s finances revealed that US$17.5 million of money from the British investment had disappeared, allegedly to pay Lotus via “GDP”, a Swiss Panama-based firm. </p>
<p>Still, Lotus claimed to have never received that money. But Chapman, one of the few people who would have been able to explain what happened with GDP, died before being interviewed. </p>
<p>Against all expectations, and despite the many shadows still unresolved in his cases, DeLorean was found not guilty on both drug and fraud charges. A life of personal and professional highs and lows followed until his death from a stroke in 2005. </p>
<h2>Finally revved up</h2>
<p>That the car starred in the Back to the Future trilogy was fortuitous for DeLorean. In the original screenplay the time machine was going to resemble a refrigerator until director Robert Zemeckis abandoned the idea because he was afraid children would have locked themselves in their home fridge.</p>
<p>Funnily enough, the DeLorean DMC-12 was picked ahead of other cars despite being the disgraced product of a failing company. Ironically, the weirdly futuristic look of its stainless steel panels and gullwing doors, and the unusual and perhaps unreasonable characteristics that made it a market failure, created the basis to make it a movie icon. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.delorean.com/">DeLorean Motor Company</a> has reappeared as a second-hand dealer which provides spare parts and after-sale service, as well as the possibility to rent time machine replicas. </p>
<p>Also, the huge renewal of interest for exclusive gadgets inspired by Back to the Future – such as the <a href="http://news.nike.com/news/nike-mag-2015">Nike Air Mag</a> and the geeky attempt to invent flying technologies such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-lexus-hoverboard-actually-work-a-scientist-explains-46570">Lexus Hoverboard</a> – might provide the market conditions for a launch of a DMC-12 restyling. </p>
<p>But similar to all the other famous predictions seen in the movie, to really know whether a new DeLorean might possibly “fly” with tomorrow’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11916393/DeLoreans-could-come-Back-to-the-Future-after-time-machine-parts-found.html">consumers</a>, we might need to ask “Doc” to bring us back to the future once again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49641/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paolo Aversa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Few would remember this fantasy car as a model of motoring excellence. It owes its success instead to a fantasy film that has turned 30.Paolo Aversa, Lecturer in Strategy, Cass Business School, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/487402015-10-20T19:31:08Z2015-10-20T19:31:08ZIt’s Back to the Future Day today – so what are the next future predictions?<p><em>When Doc and Marty travelled forward in time from 1985 and landed the <a href="http://www.delorean.com/">DeLorean</a> on October 21, 2015, they found a world of flying cars, hover boards and 3D holographic technology.</em></p>
<p><em>Some of the technologies predicted are <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/how-many-back-to-the-future-predictions-came-true/story-e6frfmvr-1227479751899">now a reality of sorts</a>, but the world of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096874/">Back to The Future II</a> is not quite <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-the-back-to-the-future-we-imagined-23440">what we see around</a> us today. The movie makers didn’t envisage the abundance of smartphones and other technologies that dominate our lives today.</em></p>
<p><em>But Hollywood is always a little hit or miss when it comes to future predictions.</em></p>
<p><em>So let’s see if the tech experts of today are any better. _The Conversation</em> asked what they would predict for the technologies in use 30 years from now, on October 21, 2045._</p>
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<h2>Michael Cowling</h2>
<h3>Senior Lecturer & Discipline Leader, Mobile Computing & Applications, CQUniversity Australia</h3>
<p>Back to the Future II envisioned a connected future that is <a href="http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/10/06/windows-10-continuum/">almost</a> <a href="http://www.imore.com/how-use-continuity-iphone-ipad-and-mac-ultimate-guide">here</a>, but it didn’t go far enough!</p>
<p>By the year 2045, the word “computer” will be a relic of the past, because computers as we know them will be built so seamlessly into every facet of our lives that we won’t even notice them anymore. </p>
<p>Every device around us will become a possible input and output device for us to access a seamless computing experience customised to our own particular needs, and fed from our own personal repository of information stored privately and securely in what we today call the “cloud”, but in the world of 2045 might simply be our digital essence.</p>
<p>It’s hard for us to imagine it now, surrounded by individual devices like our phone, tablet and laptop that each require separate configuration, but by 2045 those devices will be much less important, and we will be able to move away from these individual “personal” devices towards a much more ubiquitous digital existence. </p>
<p>The world of 2045 will be a world of <a href="http://www.ubiq.com/weiser/UbiHome.html">truly ubiquitous</a>, <a href="https://stratechery.com/2015/apple-watch-and-continuous-computing/">continuous computing</a>, with the personal smartphone and tablet as much of a novelty as the paper sports almanac was to Marty in 2015!</p>
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<h2>Philip Branch</h2>
<h3>Senior Lecturer in Telecommunications, Swinburne University of Technology</h3>
<p>The video conference where Needles goads Marty Snr into participating in a scheme that gets him fired got things about right, although Marty would be more likely to use Skype or something similar today. So what might telecommunications look like in another 30 years?</p>
<p>Perhaps Doc Brown’s <a href="http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Brain-wave_analyzer">brain-wave analyser</a> will be perfected, making telepathy a feasible network interface. This technology is surprisingly advanced. It has been possible for some time to control machines through <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130829-mind-brain-control-robot-brainwave-eeg-3d-printing-music/">brain control</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps we will have those <a href="http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Torchwood_contact_lenses">contact lenses from Torchwood</a> that transmit everything the wearer sees. There have been <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TimeBase/posts/458596494177359">some developments</a> that might make them possible.</p>
<p>But perhaps change will continue at a much slower pace than the past few decades. Maybe we will see a return to evolutionary rather than revolutionary change and the technologies we have now will still be around – much faster, more sophisticated and ubiquitous of course, but still recognisable. Or maybe some combination of economic, social and environmental apocalypse will cause the collapse of existing infrastructure and telecommunications will be back to pencil and paper or something even more primitive.</p>
<p>As many people have pointed out, it is hard to make predictions, <a href="http://www.larry.denenberg.com/predictions.html">especially about the future</a>.</p>
<h2>Hamza Bendemra</h2>
<h3>Research engineer, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University</h3>
<p>Flight vehicles are mostly represented in the form of flying cars – as opposed to commercial aircraft – in Back to the Future II. Looking forward to 2045, commercial aviation is likely to have seen significant changes between now and then thanks to breakthroughs in several industries including electronics, software engineering, materials research, jet propulsion and automated manufacturing. </p>
<p>Cutting-edge technology being researched today – in many cases with Australian researchers involved – will have matured by 2045. Advances in <a href="http://www.howitworksdaily.com/what-is-a-fly-by-wire-system/">fly-by-wire</a> and computer software will likely have made pilots obsolete in 2045. Flying will become a hobby as opposed to a profession, the same way that today we ride horses for fun rather than transport. </p>
<p>Airplanes will be lighter with structures consisting of <a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-stick-together-composite-materials-aeroplanes-and-you-7207">composite materials</a> and embedded with sensors that will allow “smart” aircraft structures to monitor their structural integrity and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/the-self-healing-plane/6361282">repair themselves</a> in the case of damage. The use of petroleum-based gasoline will be considered primitive, if not illegal, and sustainable <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-biofuels-12907">biofuels</a> will have emerged as a widely used clean alternative. </p>
<p>Jet engines will reach new heights in efficiency, making flying cheaper and more accessible to the masses. The mega-rich of 2045 may have <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/f_scramjets.html">scramjet-powered</a> airplanes that can break the sound barrier multiple times over and result in a London-Sydney flight <a href="https://theconversation.com/sydney-to-london-in-an-hour-the-future-of-hypersonic-air-travel-2828">taking less than one hour</a>.</p>
<p>The price of oil may also increase to record levels and result in the collapse of the aviation industry as we know it! The price of crude oil has a significant impact on airlines’ bottom line as fuel costs typically makes up about 30% of an airline’s operating costs. Hence, the major driver of reduced profitability for airlines are rising oil prices. Finding alternative fuel sources will be key for a greener and safer future for the commercial aviation industry.</p>
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<h2>Thas Nirmalathas</h2>
<h3>Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne</h3>
<p>Our world in 2045 will be fully connected: constantly and autonomously keeping us in sync with the people in our lives, the places where we live and work, and the things we control. These connections enable people to concurrently engage with a multitude of different people, places and things, with people becoming digitally everpresent. </p>
<p>Each individual will have a unique global digital identity containing dynamically adjustable privacy-transparency settings. These settings can be adjusted depending upon the level of trust within the environment. Individual lives will be captured digitally and security platforms will actively protect against unauthorised digital access. </p>
<p>Data will be owned by the individual who creates it. There will be a property right within data allowing individuals to trade, share and volunteer their data for personal gain – such as providing data to receive targeted advertising and product discounts or, in aggregate, providing demographic information to assist in policy development. </p>
<p>Digital everpresence will disturb existing political systems enabling individuals to transcend territorial boundaries and wield digital influence outside of the nation state. Everpresent personas will disrupt domestic political orders transforming the Earth.</p>
<h2>Justin Zobel</h2>
<h3>Head, Department of Computing & Information Systems, University of Melbourne</h3>
<p>Interfaces will have become seamless by 2045 and are accessed continuously through familiar, unconscious actions.</p>
<p>During your morning run, body radar triggers a gentle vibration against your skin; someone is approaching around a blind corner.</p>
<p>In the kitchen, active contact lenses create the illusion that your friend is with you, by generating an image and overlaying it on the room. The image is stable, no matter how your head and eyes move. In conversation, she is present but also thousands of kilometres away.</p>
<p>At your desk, the contact lenses create the illusion of a screen in front of you. Its actions are controlled by finger gestures, while your rapid, subtle muscle movements are interpreted as a stream of text to be captured in an email.</p>
<p>Through your neural implants, you are aware of activity in your networks. These are not sounds, or images, or touch but some mingling of them into a new form of sensation. You try to contact your mother, but she is offline, perhaps sleeping. No matter, her house can sense her and assures you that she is well.</p>
<p>You decide to go offline yourself for a while, and your sensors fall quiet. As always, it feels like a kind of blindness – like closing one’s eyes for sleep, but so much more acute. You are surrounded by just the peaceful emptiness of reality.</p>
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<h2>Robert Merkel</h2>
<h3>Lecturer in Software Engineering, Monash University</h3>
<p>Where we’re going, we won’t need roads – at least, not all of the time. </p>
<p>By 2045 the much-mocked flying car (or, more accurately, a flying taxi) is likely to be widely available. Furthermore, my own discipline of software engineering is key – perhaps even <em>the</em> key – to making it happen.</p>
<p>Even today, we could mass-produce personal helicopters at an affordable financial cost, but at a terrible human one. Helicopters are extremely difficult to learn to fly, and even with extensive pilot training are arguably the riskiest form of transport we use.</p>
<p>The science of a solution is already to hand. We don’t walk the family dog with a drone mini-helicopter, as depicted in the 2015 of Back to the Future II, but drones are a widely available commercial product. </p>
<p>Developing the software that controls these miniature flying cars to the point where it is both reliable and robust enough to control much larger vehicles in real-world conditions – including handling hardware failures – will take years of testing and revision. Convincing conservative air safety regulators will probably take years more.</p>
<p>But my educated guess is that these problems will be overcome by 2045. The result won’t look like a hot-rodded DeLorean, and it certainly won’t double as a time machine. But, finally, humanity just might have the freedom of the skies. </p>
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<h2>Toby Walsh</h2>
<h3>Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW and research group leader at Data61 (formerly NICTA)</h3>
<p>My background is in artificial intelligence so I’ll stick to predicting where AI might be in 2045.</p>
<p>In 2030, Apple releases the latest version of its platform wide operating system, iOS 20 which delivers true artificial intelligence in all the major languages of the world to our phones, tablets and computers. Google responds with its latest version of Android which offers similar capabilities but has a cheekier sense of humour.</p>
<p>You want to go out for dinner? You simply tell your smart phone: “Book me a table for 8pm at that restaurant I read reviewed in the paper last weekend and let my wife know.” Problem solved. </p>
<p>And by 2045, Apple and Google’s AI operating systems are competing to control seamlessly our cars, homes, phones and offices. </p>
<p>In the morning, you walk to your car, which is already nice and cool as the front door said you were on the way. The car then drives you to work autonomously. But due to heavy traffic en route, your calendar pushes back your first appointment 15 minutes. The technology is pro-active, anticipating requests, and smoothing your life.</p>
<p>But then some robot digger repairing the road digs up the NBN cable by mistake and the cloud goes down. </p>
<p>So you walk home and kiss your wife on the cheek. “Shall I see if we can still fire up the barbecue?”</p>
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<p><em>Michael Cowling will be on hand for an Author Q&A between 11am and noon AEDT today, October 21. You can ask him about your prediction for the technology that will be in use in 30 years from now?</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48740/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thas Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas receives funding from the Australian Research Council, State Government of Victoria and Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Toby Walsh receives funding from ARC, AOARD and the Humboldt Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hamza Bendemra, Justin Zobel, Michael Cowling, Philip Branch, and Robert Merkel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The movie got some predictions right on what Doc and Marty would find when the arrive in the “future” today. But what could they find if they took another 30 year leap into the future?Michael Cowling, Senior Lecturer & Discipline Leader, Mobile Computing & Applications, CQUniversity AustraliaHamza Bendemra, Research Engineer, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National UniversityJustin Zobel, Head, Department of Computing & Information Systems, The University of MelbournePhilip Branch, Senior Lecturer in Telecommunications, Swinburne University of TechnologyRobert Merkel, Lecturer in Software Engineering, Monash UniversityThas Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas, Director - Melbourne Networked Society Institute, Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Co-Founder/Academic Director - Melbourne Accelerator Program, The University of MelbourneToby Walsh, Professor of AI, Research Group Leader, Optimisation Research Group , Data61Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/493272015-10-20T15:48:55Z2015-10-20T15:48:55ZHow close are we to Back to the Future’s vision of today? A scientist’s view<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99035/original/image-20151020-32269-1c791bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1222%2C695&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Great Scott! We're in the future</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/riyagi/20233945849/">Ricardo 清介 八木/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The art of futurology – predicting what future society might look like – is plagued with difficulties. Books, films, TV shows and plays that feature such efforts are all judged through the prism of hindsight.</p>
<p>The 1989 film Back To The Future Part II (BTTF2) saw its characters travel in time to 21 October 2015 and experience a world hugely different to the 1980s one they came from. Now we have reached 2015, it is clear that some of the predictions have proved surprisingly accurate – while others have fallen woefully flat. But we’re also surprisingly close to seeing a few of the film’s wackier technologies become reality.</p>
<h2>Fashion: self-tying shoes and auto-fitting jackets</h2>
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<p>The film sees teenage Marty McFly (played by Michael J Fox) and inventor Dr Emmett Brown (aka Doc, played by Christopher Lloyd) travel to 2015 in a fusion-powered DeLorean time machine. Of course, McFly needs the right outfit to blend in as he violates the law of space-time causality, so in the film’s 2015, he sports an automatically fitting and self-drying jacket with self-tightening high-top trainers. This kind of outfit still sounds distinctly like science fiction but it’s actually closer to fact than you might think.</p>
<p>Bringing this technology to a department store near you will involve integrating novel materials with everyday clothes. But instead of mechanical systems that can automatically change the size of a jacket, we’re more likely to see the use of something called <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-4d-printing-35696">memory material</a>. This is a material that can be bent or stretched into different shapes but then return to its original programmed design. Memory material is already used to create glasses that if squashed will recover to a perfect fit.</p>
<p>While we might not yet have jackets with built-in blow-dryers, in other ways real world clothing technology will soon far surpass that of BTTF2. Flexible materials that can <a href="https://theconversation.com/dead-battery-charge-it-with-your-clothes-26097">generate electricity</a> from body heat, sunlight, and motion already exist in research labs and it won’t take much to integrate them into our everyday clothing. </p>
<p>The last couple of years have also seen an explosion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/smarty-pants-wearable-electronics-will-recharge-your-life-12543">wearable technologies</a> that can monitor our vital signs. Soon, flexible electronics and transducers will enable our clothing to know what we are doing, how we are feeling and our state of health. The list of possibilities is endless.</p>
<h2>The home of tomorrow, today</h2>
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<p>In the 2015 of BTTF2, the technologies in and around McFly’s house are manifold, including rehydratable pizzas, a hydroponic garden dining table centrepiece, and Skype-like video calls made with what looks suspiciously like <a href="https://theconversation.com/see-change-is-google-glass-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-13268">Google Glass</a>.</p>
<p>But what about today? We’ve had rehydratable food since the advent of the space age but its use on Earth isn’t really clear. Besides, rehydratable pizzas would be disgusting. </p>
<p>Home hydroponics certainly exist but are mostly used for growing, well, not vegetables. And while video-phone glasses exist in the form of Google Glass, so far consumers have roundly <a href="https://theconversation.com/google-glass-finally-cracks-it-was-a-product-looking-for-a-market-36440">rejected them</a>.</p>
<p>The film rather absurdly predicted that fax machines would be essential in every room of the home, while failing to see the enormous impact that the internet and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, now plays in our day-to-day lives.</p>
<h2>Where’s my hoverboard?</h2>
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<p>The two main modes of transport in the movie have to be among the most desired by its child (and adult) viewers: hoverboards and flying cars. Earlier this year, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-lexus-hoverboard-actually-work-a-scientist-explains-46570">Lexus unveiled</a> a real-life working hoverboard that uses liquid nitrogen to create a superconducting magnet that lifts the board above a specially designed track. It’s effectively a mini magnetic levitation train for your feet.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the need for dedicated tracks and regular liquid nitrogen top-ups mean that the Lexus device in its current form probably wouldn’t be worth the large pricetag it would come with. </p>
<p>Likewise, several companies have developed what they call “<a href="https://theconversation.com/transports-innovation-problem-why-havent-flying-cars-taken-off-46094">flying cars</a>” but <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/technology/80255/is-the-age-of-the-flying-car-upon-us.html">so far</a> they look more like roadworthy planes with fold-away wings and have yet to find a market.</p>
<h2>Mr Fusion</h2>
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<p>Even with the reality-check that comes with a few decades’ physics experience, I still dream of a world where Mr Fusion, a kitchen appliance-style home nuclear power generator, provides cheap and clean energy for everyone. Such an invention could enable some of the more speculative ideas in BTTF2, plus a whole bunch of innovations not even dreamt of yet, to become reality.</p>
<p>Scientists are currently building what they hope will be the first experimental <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-decades-a-distant-dream-the-countdown-to-nuclear-fusion-may-have-finally-begun-17801">fusion reactor</a> to produce more energy than it uses, with very little radioactive waste compared to existing nuclear fission reactors. The International Tokomak Experimental Reactor (ITER) will be housed in a 60m-tall building in southern France and use superconducting magnets to manipulate plasma made up of hydrogen ions heated to 150 million°C. The ions will fuse together to create helium and release large amounts of energy, replicating the reaction that powers the Sun but at temperatures 10 times hotter.</p>
<p>ITER will start operating around 2020 and test ideas in fusion research for 20 years, hopefully confirming that we can harness this energy production mechanism here on Earth. But it’s hard to imagine fitting something like ITER to the back of a DeLorean or keeping one on your kitchen counter, let alone fuelling it with rubbish. We might have to wait a bit longer for that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Boogert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hoverboards, self-fitting jackets, nuclear fusion generators…. Some of Back to the Future’s wacky inventions are closer to reality than you might think.Stewart Boogert, Professor of Physics, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/465702015-09-07T13:34:16Z2015-09-07T13:34:16ZHow does the Lexus hoverboard actually work? A scientist explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93329/original/image-20150828-19916-9i5obf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Riding on air</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lexus</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Marty McFly wouldn’t be surprised. Lexus <a href="http://www.lexus-int.com/amazinginmotion/slide/">recently announced</a> it had fulfilled the dreams of Back to the Future Part II fans everywhere by building a working hoverboard. And just in time for the October 2015 date that Marty visits in the film to discover kids have ditched skateboards in favour of their flying counterparts.</p>
<p>The Lexus “Slide” hoverboard isn’t set to go on sale but a prototype was recently put through its paces by pro-skateboarder Ross Mcgouran at a custom-built skate park in Barcelona. Now Lexus has also revealed how the device actually works, involving a special track that enables the board to magnetically levitate above it, in a very similar way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-future-of-rail-travel-and-why-it-doesnt-look-like-hyperloop-45354">maglev trains</a>.</p>
<p>It’s an amusing coincidence that, while Back to the Future featured technology called a flux capacitor, the Slide relies on something called flux pinning, as well as a principle called the <a href="http://www.supraconductivite.fr/en/index.php?p=supra-levitation-meissner-more">Meissner effect</a>. And this all works because of something called superconduction.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.superconductorweek.com/what-is-superconductivity">A superconductor</a> is a material cooled to a very low critical temperature that, when you run a current through it, experiences no electrical resistance (the material doesn’t push back against the current). When a material becomes a superconductor it pushes away any magnetic fields inside it. This is known as the Meissner effect.</p>
<p>The Slide hoverboard contains a series of metal alloy superconducting blocks cooled to -197°C by reservoirs of liquid nitrogen. The track below contains three magnets that induce a current in the blocks, causing the Meissner effect to take hold and expel the magnetic field back towards the track in a mirror image.</p>
<p>These mirroring magnetic forces repel each other and so the board is lifted above the track. Even if someone stands on the board, the magnetic forces are strong enough to keep it levitating because the lack of electrical resistance in the superconductor means the magnetic field can adjust to deal with external pressure.</p>
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<p>But another scientific phenomenon makes the hoverboard even more stable. When the cooling process is switched on and the blocks in the board become supercondutors, they effectively trap the lines of the magnetic field from the track. This causes the blocks to be pinned at a fixed height above the track, a process known as flux pinning, which provides much more stable levitation. Flux pinning ensures the hoverboard doesn’t deviate either horizontally or vertically from the track. </p>
<p>As a proof of concept, the Slide shows that constructing a hoverboard with stable levitation is entirely possible. Sadly, before we get too excited, the technology looks unlikely to hit the market in the near future for several reasons. The current board <a href="http://www.lexus-int.com/amazinginmotion/slide/">weighs 11.5kg</a>, including the superconducting material and the liquid nitrogen on board, making it rather cumbersome to carry. The liquid nitrogen also requires a top-up roughly every 10 minutes to ensure that the superconducting material remains at optimal temperature.</p>
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<p>On top of that, the board currently only works at one custom-built skate park. Lexus hasn’t disclosed the cost for this proof of concept, but it is safe to presume that superconducting blocks, supplies of liquid nitrogen and a custom-built park awash with permanent magnets could not have been cheap. </p>
<p>Despite these limitations – <a href="http://www.techtimes.com/articles/63215/20150624/lexushover-lexus-teases-a-real-and-rideable-hoverboard-video.htm">and as Lexus points out</a> – nothing is impossible. It is entirely plausible to imagine similar parks and guide-ways being constructed as part of future smart cities. Perhaps the hoverboard could even offer a greener travel alternative within the city as well as a leisure activity. In years to come, we could well find ourselves topping up our boards with liquid nitrogen at city-wide charging points, just as we fill up our cars today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tan Sharma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The engineers who brought this science-fiction stable to life relied on some very well established science fact.Tan Sharma, Associate of Informatics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113002012-12-12T05:52:40Z2012-12-12T05:52:40ZIn the Libor scandal, where were the regulators?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18598/original/jpnkfgfh-1355287321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As regulators finally move on the Libor scandal, are they asking themselves the right questions?</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>Welcome to the third and final part of Back to the Future.</em></p>
<p><em>AS HSBC is fined US$1.9 billion for “egregious” money laundering and the first arrests are made in the Libor scandal, the need for the public interest to be considered foremost in the reform of our global financial systems has never seemed greater.</em></p>
<p><em>Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales, Justin O'Brien argues a culture of restraint, with accountability and integrity at its heart, must be what reform aims for.</em></p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of the article, which is available in full <a href="http://www.clmr.unsw.edu.au/article/accountability/history-of-securities-regulation/back-future-reinventing-rationale-intervention-capital-markets-part-three">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>We are living at a moment of potentially huge change. The dominant conception of corporate governance and financial regulation — based on rational actors operating within efficient markets — is losing coherence, legitimacy and authority. </p>
<p>Effective government control through dominant shareholdings in major banks has forced unresolved reflection on what should constitute optimal corporate governance and regulatory oversight. The global financial crisis has unleashed an avalanche of reform initiatives. But more often than not, these same initiatives tend to privilege the politics of symbolism. </p>
<p>Two accounts from notable insiders highlight the extent of the groupthink. The first comes from Claudio Borio, the chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements. He used a G20 forum in Mumbai to explain why policymakers were incapable of exercising ex-ante restraint.</p>
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<p>To varying degrees, policymakers, just like everyone else, underestimated the threat. They were caught up in what, in retrospect, has partly turned out to be a Great Illusion. And even had the threat been fully recognized — and some no doubt did — the political economy pressures not to change policies would have been enormous. </p>
<p>On the face of it, the regimes in place had proved to be extremely successful… And not even the often more critical academic community provided any support for change. Indeed, as regards macroeconomic policy, that community turned out to be part of the problem, not of the solution.</p>
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<p>The second comes from Raghuram Rajan. Professor Rajan gave a paper at the influential Jackson Hole retreat organised by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas in August 2005 at which he warned of the inevitability of collapse. He later recounted the audience reaction:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I exaggerate only a bit when I say I felt like an early Christian who had wandered into a convention of half-starved lions. As I walked away from the podium after being roundly criticized by a number of luminaries (with a few notable exceptions), I felt some unease. It was not caused by the criticism itself, for one develops a thick skin after years of lively debate in faculty seminars: if you took everything the audience said to heart, you would never publish anything. Rather it was because the critics seemed to be ignoring what was going on before their eyes.</p>
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<p>But the testimony provided by Alan Greenspan in 2008 of a flaw in his “ideological reasoning” punctured the self-referential belief in the power of free-markets to self-correct - as did the following bail outs to large swathes of the financial sector.</p>
<p>Following the implosion of the securitisation market, the individual corporate and societal consequences of this myopia became clear. </p>
<p>Investment losses triggered an enormous erosion of private wealth. Housing and capital markets went into a downward spiral and credit stopped flowing. Emergency funding to the banking and financial services sector solved neither the underlying liquidity nor solvency problems. It merely transferred the risk. Sloganeering about the inherent unfairness of “privatized profits and socialized losses” became more than a worn-out cliché. </p>
<p>Throughout the crisis and beyond, senior bankers expressed carefully couched regret. At no stage did they accept responsibility. Instead a narrow technical defence was proffered. </p>
<p>As the immediate crisis facing the banks receded, the strategies were framed even more aggressively. To preserve the sanctity of contract, there was a stated need to uphold terms entered into freely (if misguidedly). Moreover, a similar rationale justified the payments of market-determined bonuses to executives then working in de facto nationalized institutions. Second, the privileging of caveat emptor facilitated the transference of responsibility. Equally understandably, both sets of strategies fuelled public resentment. This prompted, in turn, political recognition of the need for substantive reform to safeguard legitimacy. </p>
<p>Into this toxic environment has emerged the Libor scandal. The $US450 million regulatory fine is just the beginning for Barclays, which is a defendant in some of the 24 interrelated Libor lawsuits that have been aggregated before a Manhattan federal court. US liabilities may be higher because US plaintiffs are permitted to request punitive damages, while UK plaintiffs are limited to compensatory awards. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/814cafd2-4388-11e2-a68c-00144feabdc0.html">Criminal liability</a>could be added to those regulatory fines and civil lawsuits. Further, the Barclays settlement is just the first in the joint trans-Atlantic investigation. On August 3, 2012, the Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed that it had retrenched staff in relation to the Libor scandal, with chief executive Stephen Hester stating that “it is a stark reminder of the damage that individual wrongdoing and inadequate systems and controls can have in terms of financial and reputational impact”.</p>
<p>On August 16, 2012, Bloomberg reported that subpoenas have now been sent to JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, HSBC (which has been hit with a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/11/banking-libor-fine-hsbc">record-breaking US$1.9 billion fine</a> for money laundering by US regulators), Citigroup and UBS, all of which are being investigated with respect to Libor manipulation. Media outlets are reporting the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/11/libor-investigation-three-arrested">first arrests</a> from the Libor scandal. </p>
<p>While the method by which Libor is set largely contributed to such widespread collusion, it could not have persisted without negligent oversight and the failure to enforce by regulators. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of the scandal, the New York Federal Reserve has played defence, stating that it although in 2008 it was aware of the structural flaws in setting Libor, it lacked the jurisdictional power to effect any meaningful change other than provide written recommendations to the Bank of England. </p>
<p>For its part, the Bank of England claimed that the recommendations lacked the substance to either start an investigation or even set off alarm bells. The tortured justifications, while self-serving and deeply problematic, could also equally apply to US regulators who are faced with equally serious questions of competence. </p>
<p>In the United Kingdom itself, the Libor scandal has had a deep impact on regulatory authority. The Treasury Select Committee provides a devastating critique of past, current and future trajectories, accusing the FSA of being blinded to the initial and ongoing systemic failure of compliance at Barclays. </p>
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<p>“The FSA has concentrated too much on ensuring narrow rule-based compliance, often leading to the collection of data of little value and to box ticking, and too little on making judgments about what will cause serious problems for consumers and the financial system”. </p>
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<p>The Committee found that “naivety” and inaction underscored the “the dysfunctional relationship between the Bank of England and the FSA which existed at that time to the detriment of the public interest.” </p>
<p>The erroneous calculation by the bank and the FSA as well as the Bank of England was that early cooperation would pay dividends. The settlement did not place the blame on any individual executive; nor was there initially any expectation from UK or US regulators that resignations were required or appropriate. </p>
<p>Each was taken aback by the ferocity of political criticism of the deal and the perceived lack of accountability for infractions that point to widespread collusion. FSA chairman Lord Adair Turner belatedly acknowledged this, saying the activities of Barclays revealed “a degree of cynicism and greed which is really quite shocking… and that does suggest that there are some very wide cultural issues that need to be strongly addressed”. </p>
<p><strong>Regulating culture</strong></p>
<p>The disjuncture between stated and lived values, linked to the failure of internal compliance or disclosure to counteract it, underpins political demands for an oversight design that better institutionalises restraint. </p>
<p>The crisis and its aftermath demonstrate much more holistic approaches to risk management are required that link private rights to public duties. If defective disclosure was not the cause of the myopia, a better articulation of risk is unlikely, in itself, to be effective. </p>
<p>Satisfactory answers require an evaluation of how a reform agenda addresses not just objective efficiency (i.e. lower transaction costs). Three additional distinct but overlapping criteria must be applied. First, permissibility (i.e. whether a particular product can be sold and if so to whom and on what basis); second, responsibility (i.e. who carries the risk if the investment sours and on what terms); and third, legitimacy (i.e. does the product serve a legitimate purpose and who should determine it). </p>
<p>The danger is that an ill-thought-out structure will exacerbate rather than resolve conflicts within the industry. It risks creating another layer of formal restraint that does little to change either corporate practice or facilitate voluntary progression towards higher ethical standards. It is also clear, however, that the construction of accountability mechanisms cannot rely on self-certification alone. It demands external validation. </p>
<p>The framework to measure and evaluate culture was <a href="http://www.complinet.com/global-rulebooks/display/display.html?rbid=12&element_id=47484">outlined</a> by the then chief executive of the FSA, Hector Sants. </p>
<p>Starting from the premise that society has the right to expect ethical behaviour and warranted commitment to stated values, he maintained that regulators cannot avoid judging culture, a term he judged less problematic and more amenable to measurement than ethics. </p>
<p>Accountability and integrity, as Sants pointed out are, in essence, design issues. It is time to get to work. A necessary starting point would be virtual attendance at the imaginary inaugural lecture <a href="https://theconversation.com/reinventing-the-rationale-for-market-intervention-11191">James M. Landis</a> offered in 1930. It is time to go back to the seminar room. </p>
<p><strong>Final thoughts</strong></p>
<p>As I write this conclusion the news emanating out of both London and New York is unremittingly bleak. Attempts by business today to limit the remit of the Securities and Exchange Commission mirror the charged atmosphere facing Landis as he drew up the legislation that established the agency.</p>
<p>Writing in 1934 just before the bill was debated in Congress, Landis complained: “The Stock Exchange Bill is receiving a terrific beating. All the corporate wealth of this country has gone into the attack and carried it all the way to the White House.” </p>
<p>Although the bill was passed and the SEC established, its remit and authority waned incrementally at first and then dramatically in the 1990s. The reduction in power has consistently failed to ignite public controversy.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, periodic successes, such as the insider trading investigations and high-profile individual prosecutions, enhanced the visibility of the SEC but not necessarily its authority. In the absence of the kind of catastrophic crisis witnessed in the Great Crash of 1929 or the extent of corporate scandal revisited at the cusp of the millennium or again in 2008, battles over financial regulation take piecemeal form through refinements to individual legislative clauses. </p>
<p>Landis told the New York Times in 1937, somewhat optimistically, that brokers “are beginning to realize more clearly that their interest is tied up with the public interest. They are beginning more often to subordinate their own interest to the larger interest. People are beginning also to look upon the exchanges not so much as private institutions as public utilities”. </p>
<p>The tragedy here is not Landis’ misplaced optimism but the misplaced trust that the financial services sector has recognised its obligations. In this sense the failure to deliver on the pledge for restraint by the erstwhile chairman of Barclays to the Financial Times is talismanic of the sector’s bad faith. Society has a right to expect better. </p>
<p>Regulators have a duty to ensure protection is offered and political actors have an obligation to ensure the lessons of history are learnt, not repeated. </p>
<p><em>The author is writing a biography of James M. Landis, which will be published in 2014.</em></p>
<p><strong>Read more:</strong></p>
<p>Part One: <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-to-the-future-how-global-financial-regulation-has-failed-11168">Back to the Future: how global financial regulation has failed</a></p>
<p>Part two: <a href="Reinventing%20the%20rationale%20for%20market%20intervention">Reinventing the rationale for market intervention</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Brien receives funding from the Australian Research Council for four grants related to corporate governance, financial regulation and accountable governance, including an ARC Future Fellowship. This opinion is simultaneously published on an online portal that maps and tracks regulatory reform in the aftermath of the GFC - <a href="http://www.clmr.unsw.edu.au">www.clmr.unsw.edu.au</a>.</span></em></p>Welcome to the third and final part of Back to the Future. AS HSBC is fined US$1.9 billion for “egregious” money laundering and the first arrests are made in the Libor scandal, the need for the public…Justin O'Brien, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113042012-12-12T04:19:15Z2012-12-12T04:19:15ZBanks behaving badly: HSBC settles in money laundering probe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18593/original/3jg9vknm-1355284937.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Institutionalising restraint is business practice will prove challenging for HSBC and regulators alike. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/us-hsbc-probe-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211">$1.92 billion deferred prosecution</a> entered into by HSBC with US regulators is one of the most significant financial penalties imposed on a global bank.</p>
<p>On Tuesday in a Federal Court in Brooklyn, HSBC agreed to a legally binding settlement in which it accepted responsibility for systematic sanctions violations and the facilitation of money laundering on an industrial scale. It was also held accountable for threatening national security by providing financing facilities to a Saudi Arabian bank with links to terrorist groups.</p>
<p>“HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries, and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries,” noted the head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/hsbc-to-pay-record-fine-to-settle-money-laundering-charges/?ref=business">Lanny Breuer</a>.</p>
<p>As with a separate deferred prosecution agreement with the New York District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, HSBC was required to admit the charges. Should further violations be uncovered, it faces immediate indictment. </p>
<p>The settlements come as Standard Chartered, another UK-domiciled bank, <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2012/standard-chartered-bank-agrees-to-forfeit-227-million-for-illegal-transactions-with-iran-sudan-libya-and-burma">agreed</a> to an overarching settlement of $327 million to bring closure to charges brought by a range of regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the Department of Justice along with the Manhattan District Attorney. This, in turn, follows the success by New York Department of Financial Services in securing a $340 million settlement with Standard Chartered in August this year, a trailblazing investigation in which the head of the DFS described Standard Chartered as a rogue organisation.</p>
<p>Both announcements reflect the growing centrality of deferred prosecutions as the prosecutorial tool of choice in the battle to ensure substantive compliance to violations of anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist legislation and sanctions imposed on regimes regarded as rogue state by the United States. </p>
<p>The expansion of the measure reflects both its strengths and limitations. On the one hand, it avoids the very real possibility of broader collateral damage. A criminal conviction would automatically trigger licence revocation, which would have devastating consequences for both the individual institutions and, given their systemic importance, the stability of the global financial system.</p>
<p>The limitation is that in absence of substantive requirements to change not only compliance practice but also broader risk and corporate governance reporting frameworks, the financial penalties could be written off as part of the cost of doing business.</p>
<p>In this regard, the scale of the HSBC fine sends an unambiguous message that materiality is increasing. As the <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7e97873a-43a1-11e2-a48c-00144feabdc0.html">Financial Times</a> noted this morning, “a billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about serious money”.</p>
<p>HSBC has done much to improve the quality of its internal governance, including recruiting former heavyweights from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to pivotal management positions. The Department of Justice has praised the bank’s level of cooperation.</p>
<p>But in sharp contrast to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s non-prosecution deal with Goldman Sachs, the Department of Justice has not taken HSBC’s word for it. It has forced the bank to impose an external monitor for the duration of the five-year period in which the deal is operational.</p>
<p>The external monitor holds what <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-fine-prosecution-money-laundering">Lenny Breuer describes as a “Sword of Damocles”</a> over the bank. It also applies to the various banking regulators who negotiated the deal. Future violations will automatically trigger the criminal conviction and produce the very outcome the settlement is designed to avoid.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the settlement, HSBC’s share price rose marginally, reflecting a degree of closure. If anything, however, the sword is even more delicately poised. Global banking is on a precipice. A misstep could prove fatal. Governance, Risk and Compliance is likely to become a proto-profession in greater short-term demand.</p>
<p>The challenge, for both the professionals and regulators, is to ensure they institutionalise restraint. If not, the price of compliance failure will be too high to pay.</p>
<p><em>Justin O'Brien writes a column for The Conversation, The ethical deal, and is director of the U<a href="http://www.clmr.unsw.edu.au/">NSW Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation portal</a>, where this story also appears.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Brien receives funding from the Australian Research Council for four grants related to corporate governance, financial regulation and accountable governance, including an ARC Future Fellowship. This opinion is simultaneously published on an online portal that maps and tracks regulatory reform in the aftermath of the GFC - <a href="http://www.clmr.unsw.edu.au">www.clmr.unsw.edu.au</a>.</span></em></p>The $1.92 billion deferred prosecution entered into by HSBC with US regulators is one of the most significant financial penalties imposed on a global bank. On Tuesday in a Federal Court in Brooklyn, HSBC…Justin O'Brien, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111912012-12-06T06:19:58Z2012-12-06T06:19:58ZReinventing the rationale for market intervention<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18417/original/8wfznbc4-1354772609.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The battle over regulation of capital markets seemed over by 1937: but by the global financial crisis in 2008, separation of the corporation and the capital market was no longer assured.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>Welcome to part two of Back to the Future. Through the Securities and Exchange Commission, James M. Landis helped legitimise the authority of the state to intervene in capital markets, despite a judiciary deeply uncomfortable with its methods.</em></p>
<p><em>Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales, Justin O'Brien writes that it was an approach that typified the Roosevelt’s New Deal: yet why did this legitimacy evaporate during the global financial crisis?</em> </p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of the article, which is available in full <a href="http://www.clmr.unsw.edu.au/article/accountability/history-of-securities-regulation/back-future-reinventing-rationale-intervention-capital-markets-part-two">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>When considering the crisis afflicting the Anglo-American model of capitalism, the search for a credible and effective approach to regulatory reform necessitates going “back to the future”. </p>
<p>When Joseph Kennedy left the board of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934 he interrupted the first James M. Landis press conference by calling out “Good-bye Jim. Good luck to you. Knock ‘em over.” </p>
<p>As history shows, it was a task Landis took to with gusto. For the progenitors of the administrative state the aim was not to operate within accepted paradigms — legal, institutional and theoretical — but to destabilise them by creating an alternative reality; one that legitimated state intervention. Extending far beyond the narrow realm of banking and securities regulation, the New Deal was designed to recalibrate society itself. </p>
<p>The debates that the New Deal engendered were as much political as judicial, practical as theoretical. They took place in the context of domestic industrial and financial failure and looming conflagration in Europe – the rise of the Soviet Union, the emergence of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. </p>
<p>The self-proclaimed crusade brought the administration into immediate and repeated conflict with the Supreme Court over what constituted or should constitute the appropriate balance between individual rights and public duties. </p>
<p>The judicial repositioning in turn, was played out in the context of rising unemployment, an increasingly disputatious labour environment and a deepening recession. In ruling flagship programs, such as the National Recovery Authority and Agricultural Adjustment Act, unconstitutional the Supreme Court sharpened an existential dispute that dated back to its 1905 decision to strike down state-based working hour restrictions in New York bakeries on the basis that it was “unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract”. By 1937 it was clear that Roosevelt had had enough of recalcitrant judges. </p>
<p>In the 1936 presidential campaign he had promised to deal with court activism and the threat he deemed it to hold to the functioning of the democratic order. In his second “fireside chat” following re-inauguration, broadcast on March 7, 1937, he reiterated the campaign promise and announced a plan to dilute the poison by expanding the number of judges on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>To generate support for this goal, Roosevelt turned to James M. Landis. Landis was the critical figure in the academic and policy debates over the rise of the administrative state. Steeped in the administrative process as both an academic and policymaker, as early as 1930 he had dismissed juridical restrictions on agency discretion as little more than an attempt to curtail the legitimate exercise of public power for the public good. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18426/original/gf9tstw3-1354835889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Roosevelt’s New Deal was designed to recalibrate society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/</span></span>
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<p>Asked by his long-term confident Felix Frankfurter to help the Roosevelt administration transform an initial election pledge to regulate securities in 1932 to credible legislation, Landis began a commute from Cambridge to Washington that was to transform the governance of Wall Street and American society through the auspices of the Securities and Exchange Commission. </p>
<p>Putting into practice the ideas developed in his innovative course on legislation at Harvard, he became one of the most significant policy actors of his generation (and arguably in the history of regulatory design). </p>
<p>Landis had stewarded the agency through early legitimacy and accountability firefights with the financial sector, showing as much acumen in navigating the complexity of political contingency and judicial gamesmanship as in legislative drafting. Although the enforcement methods used by the SEC, for example, had come under attack from a Supreme Court and a legal profession deeply troubled by the expansion of the administrative state, it had been deemed constitutional, if potentially dangerous. </p>
<p>Landis endorsed wholeheartedly the president’s proposal to inject new blood into the court, dispensing with any pretence that the move was designed to enhance the efficiency of court business. Instead, the unalloyed political reality was presented in forceful terms: “the issue is not one of the Constitution but an issue of men whose interpretations of that document makes it a straitjacket upon our national life”. </p>
<p>Although the plan to stack the court was not followed through, it marked a defining moment in New Deal politics. It marked the point that the court finally recognised the legitimacy of administrative power. </p>
<p>Throughout his career Landis was determined to ensure flexibility without subjecting the agency to accusations of economic or ideological bias. </p>
<p>It remains the defining text of administrative rule. In his book, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), Landis’ book argued regulatory lawmaking as an essential pre-condition for democracy. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18421/original/w47jrzz5-1354774560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There was considerable judicial dismay at SEC enforcement methods.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a critical passage Landis argued “if the doctrine of the separation of power implies division, it also implies balance, and balance calls for equality.” The creation of administrative power may be the means for that balance, so that paradoxically enough, though it may seem in theoretic violation of the doctrine of the separation of power, it may in matter of fact be the means for the preservation of the content of that doctrine. </p>
<p>For Landis, therefore, the rise of the administrative state was an exercise in modernisation, legitimated by “the inadequacy of a simply tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems”. </p>
<p>What becomes clear is that the battle over the authority to intervene was fought and won by 1937. Moreover, deference to agency power has long been recognized in cases that date back to the 1940s and where definitively ruled upon in 1984 in the landmark Chevron ruling. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in <em>Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.</em>, judicial deference to agency interpretations was based on pragmatism. </p>
<p>Courts would give deference to agency interpretations depending upon “the thoroughness evident in [the agency’s] consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.” </p>
<p>Additionally, courts looked to see if the agency, opinion had “warrant in the record and a reasonable basis in law.”
Accordingly, while some deference was accorded to agencies, the amount of deference varied considerably, based on the facts surrounding the interpretation. Chevron changed the basis for deference. It laid out a two-step process for determining the validity of an agency’s statutory construction. </p>
<p>First, if the intent of Congress in enacting a statute is clear, then the court must ensure that the agency has given effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. If, however, a statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, then a court must apply a second step and ask whether the agency’s interpretation is based on a permissible construction of the statute. </p>
<p>In developing its two-step framework, the court articulated three reasons to justify its decision to defer to the agency: implicit delegation, agency expertise, and political accountability. </p>
<p>First, with respect to the “implicit delegation” rationale, the court reasoned that with the power to administer a congressionally-created program comes the power to formulate policy and make “rules to fill any gap left, whether implicitly or explicitly, by Congress.</p>
<p>"When Congress explicitly leaves a gap for an agency to fill, the agency’s interpretation controls, so long as it is not arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute. And when delegation is implicit, "a court may not substitute its own construction of a statutory provision for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrator of an agency.” This interpretation effectively expanded the powers of legitimate agency lawmaking. </p>
<p>Second, while the Court had previously alluded to “agency expertise” in the decisions of Skidmore and Hearst, in Chevron it clarified that “[j]udges are not experts,” at least not in these technical areas. Agency personnel are highly qualified to make technical determinations and are charged with making these determinations. Regardless of whether Congress actually intended to delegate to the agency, it simply makes sense to defer to such expertise. </p>
<p>Third, the court was of the view that the Executive, unlike the Judicial branch of government is accountable to the public. It is therefore more appropriate for the political branch of the government to resolve conflicting policies “in light of everyday realities.” “Federal judges, who have no constituency, have a duty to respect legitimate policy choices made by those who do.” </p>
<p>Deference, however, is only part of the story. The travails facing the contemporary SEC were well noted by its official biographer, Joel Seligman in 1999, “The challenge is to strike the right balance between expertise, which is a consequential virtue of a well-run regulatory agency, and political effectiveness, which often can be better achieved by reducing the number of responsible agencies and increasing resources for each.” Here again revisiting the thought of Landis in regulatory design pays dividends. </p>
<p>In 1960 in what was to be his last public intervention in regulatory politics, Landis provided an extraordinary report to president elect John F. Kennedy. The report highlighted both the ambition and the intrinsic flaws associated with the delegation of discretion. </p>
<p>The delegation he still maintained was necessary and persuasive given the complexity of modern society, the incapacity of Congress to devote the time or the resources to deal with them and a conviction that “the issues involved were different from those that theretofore had been traditionally handled by courts and thus were not suited for judicial determination.” The policy problem was that once ceded it had become impossible to limit or retract authority. Indeed “on the contrary, the tendency is to expand them as more and more complex problems arise. </p>
<p>The legislative standards under which the delegations are made are similarly increasingly loosened so that not infrequently the guide in the determination of problems that faces the agencies in not much more than their conception of the public interest”. </p>
<p>He warned that in sharp distinction to the optimism that accompanied the New Deal. The “fires that then fed a passion for public service have burned low”. This, he attributed to rising cynicism, unacceptable delays, increased costs and a deterioration in the quality of staffing. </p>
<p>The “prevalence is threatening to thwart hope so bravely held some two decades ago by those who believed that the administrative agency, particularly the "independent” agency, held within it the seeds for the wise and efficient solution of the many new problems posed by a growingly complex society and a growingly benevolent government". </p>
<p>Urgent action was required because “the spark, the desire of public service, has failed of re-ignition”. </p>
<p>Complaining of sinecures and the power of practitioners to gain privileged off-the-record access to senior commission staff, he foreshadowed many of the recurrent problems associated with the regulatory capture literature. </p>
<p>He also complained bitterly about the failure to address foreseeable problems. Absent such planning the need for ad hoc solutions to the particular manifestations of the problem precede and, indeed may preclude any basic policy formulation. </p>
<p>As Landis puts it, “where, however, the greatest gaps exist are in the planning for foreseeable problems. Absent such planning the need for ad hoc solutions to the particular manifestations of the problem precede and, indeed, may preclude any basic policy formulation”. </p>
<p>Resolving them are, ultimately, questions of political design, a fact Landis always recognised. It is in this broader political context that the Global Financial Crisis has such potential programmatic and paradigmatic power.</p>
<p>Quiescence to a flawed design, based on a separation of the corporation and the capital market form societal obligation is no longer assured. This in turn has profound implications for the conceptual frameworks that underpin contemporary regulatory practice; practice that is informed by timidity rather than audacity, inaction, and the maintained faith in false prophets. </p>
<p>It is a response that would — justifiably — have horrified both Roosevelt and his chief regulatory architect, James M. Landis. The unresolved question is why that has occurred, a question to which we now turn. </p>
<p><em>The author is writing a biography of James M. Landis, which will be published in 2014.</em></p>
<p><strong>Read Part One of Back to the Future <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-to-the-future-how-global-financial-regulation-has-failed-11168">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Brien receives funding from the Australian Research Council for four grants related to corporate governance, financial regulation and accountable governance, including an ARC Future Fellowship. This opinion is simultaneously published on an online portal that maps and tracks regulatory reform in the aftermath of the GFC - <a href="http://www.clmr.unsw.edu.au">www.clmr.unsw.edu.au</a>.</span></em></p>Welcome to part two of Back to the Future. Through the Securities and Exchange Commission, James M. Landis helped legitimise the authority of the state to intervene in capital markets, despite a judiciary…Justin O'Brien, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.