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48 Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2013
❖ For its new iMac computers, Apple is employing a
process that welds the front and back aluminium parts
of the product to create an extra-thin unit. The method,
known as friction-stir welding, softens but does not melt
or distort the materials being joined.
Friction-stir welding, which uses heat and pressure
to join metals and alloys, was invented by the Welding
Institute in the United Kingdom in 1991. Since then, the
US Office of Naval Research (ONR) has invested heavily
in modelling, tools, and specifications for the process.
ONR researchers have employed the process to fuse
everything from steel and aluminium to nickel and
bronze. Dr Thomas Killion, director of transition at ONR,
told R&D Magazine (7th December): “The importance
of our continued investment in this area has paid off in
advances in this technology, which is being used by a
variety of industries today.”
In addition to applications in the aerospace, automotive,
and railway industries, friction-stir welding — with its
clean precision and leeway for unconventional welds —
has the potential to open new avenues in ship design.
For the Navy, it could provide an affordable, efficient way
to create ship hulls from stronger and lighter materials,
such as titanium, that are also resistant to corrosion.
Global trends
A newly energy-independent US can look
forward to a bright future – but as the No
2 economy behind China
Every four years, following the presidential election,
the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) publishes a
report intended to aid policymakers worldwide in their
long-term planning on key issues of global importance. The
forward-looking document draws on expertise from outside
government on factors such as globalisation, demography
and the environment. The latest instalment, Global Trends
2030: Alternative Worlds, was released in December.
As noted by Thom Shanker of the International Herald
Tribune, this product of four years of intelligence-gathering
and analysis “presents grounds for optimism and pessimism
in nearly equal measure.” Most notably, it sees the US
ceding to China the position of No 1 economic power, but
expects America to remain an indispensable world leader,
benefiting from its domestic oil and natural gas supplies
and new technologies to tap them. (“US Forecast as No 2
Economy, but Energy Independent,” 10th December).
The NIC, which reports to the director of national
intelligence and has responsibilities for long-term strategic
analysis, sees the US as perhaps even becoming a net
exporter of fuel. Global Trends 2030 also looks for a
decline in economic strength for countries reliant on oil for
revenues. (The full report is available free at via
PDF as well as for most content platforms and e-readers).
Other important demographic trends anticipated by the NIC
are aging populations in Europe, Japan, South Korea and
Taiwan, which could slow their economies further.
The report warns that Russia will join these counterparts
in the “slow relative declines” of their economies. China, it
says, “will probably have the largest economy, surpassing
that of the United States a few years before 2030.”
In general, the NIC foresees, the health of the global
economy “increasingly will be linked to how well the
developing world does – more so than the traditional West.”
According to the report, in addition to China the developing
nations that will become especially important to the global
economy include Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria,
South Africa and Turkey.
❖ Mr Shanker noted one remarkable development
anticipated by the NIC: spreading affluence, leading to
a larger, better-educated global middle class that has
wider access to communications technologies like the
Internet and smartphones.
“The growth of the global middle class constitutes a
tectonic shift,” the study says, adding that billions of
people will gain new individual power as they climb out
of poverty. “For the first time, a majority of the world’s
population will not be impoverished, and the middle
classes will be the most important social and economic
sector in the vast majority of countries around the
world.”
Global mortality study
Another new report, summarised in the British health
publication Lancet (13 th December), makes an interesting
companion piece to Global Trends 2030. Published 13th
December, Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, from
a health research organisation financed by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington,
examined global mortality patterns over the past 20 years.
Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed
to the report, which measured disease and mortality for
populations in more than 180 countries.
A dramatic shift was identified: infant mortality declined by
more than half between 1990 and 2010; and malnutrition –
the No 1 risk factor in 1990 for death and years of life lost
– has fallen to eighth place. But, while developing countries
made big strides (the average age at death in Brazil and
Paraguay, for example, rose to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in
1970), the United States stagnated.
Between 1990 and 2010, American women registered
the smallest gains in life expectancy of women in all other
high-income countries. The two years of life they gained
were fewer than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years,
and in Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow
increase dropped American women to 36th place in the
report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from No 22
in 1990.
Also on 13th December the World Health Organization
issued a statement saying that, while some of the estimates
in the Global Burden report are similar to those reached
by United Nations agencies, others differ substantially.
WHO cautioned that all comprehensive estimates of global
mortality must rely heavily on statistical modelling because
only 34 countries – representing about 15 per cent of the
world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data.
Dorothy Fabian – Features Editor