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Category: economics – Page 190

Machines lace almost all social, political cultural and economic issues currently being discussed. Why, you ask? Clearly, because we live in a world that has all its modern economies and demographic trends pivoting around machines and factories at all scales.

We have reached the stage in the evolution of our civilization where we cannot fathom a day without the presence of machines or automated processes. Machines are not only used in sectors of manufacturing or agriculture but also in basic applications like healthcare, electronics and other areas of research. Although, machines of varying types had entered the industrial landscape long ago, technologies like nanotechnology, the Internet of Things, Big Data have altered the scenario in an unprecedented manner.

The fusion of nanotechnology with conventional mechanical concepts gives rise to the perception of ‘molecular machines’. Foreseen to be a stepping stone into nano-sized industrial revolution, these microscopic machines are molecules designed with movable parts that behave in a way that our regular machines operate in. A nano-scale motor that spins in a given direction in presence of directed heat and light would be an example of a molecular machine.

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The Estonian ministry of economic affairs and Startup Estonia have been selected to host the Startup Nations Summit in 2017; the event, organised annually by the Global Entrepreneurship Network, will continue to explore the rapidly-growing European startup hubs.

The key aim of the summit in 2017 is to explore how digital disruption is changing the world. It is an entrepreneurial highlight during the Estonian presidency of the EU Council, bringing together policymakers and entrepreneurs into a single eventful conference.

“Estonia is among the most forward-thinking governments in the world and we are happy to share our experiences in digital governance,” Liisa Oviir, the minister for entrepreneurship, said. “We are ready to immerse all policymakers in how digital technologies have made a huge difference for entrepreneurs in Estonia. We call startups to expect more from their governments, so they can start and scale faster.”

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Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has finalized a 25 million euro agreement that includes direct capital investment of 12 million euros and grants of 13 million euros from the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the banking institution Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI). The funding will accelerate the company’s technical advancements with the aim of launching the first commercial asteroid prospecting mission by 2020.

Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 6 is equipped with the first commercially licensed mid-wave infrared imager, an essential tool for detecting water on asteroids. Two spacecraft are completed and will test this technology on orbit. Planetary Resources’ President & CEO Chris Lewicki and Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider pictured with the Arkyd 6 in Planetary Resources’ clean room facility in Redmond, Washington.

Core hardware and software technologies developed at Planetary Resources were tested on orbit last year. The company’s next mission, now undergoing final testing, will validate the thermographic sensor that will precisely measure temperature differences of objects on Earth. When deployed on future commercial asteroid prospecting missions, the sensor will acquire key data related to the presence of water and water-bearing minerals on asteroids. Obtaining and using these key resources in space promises to fast-track the development of off-planet economic activities as the commercial industry continues to accelerate.

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Progress in real science is steady, follows proper methodology and respects engineering safety. We live in an amazing world where medical progress is advancing rapidly, sadly we also have those willing to jump the gun hawking unproven experimental therapies without sufficient data.

Unproven therapies and people jumping the gun to make a quick buck are a plague in the aging research field. Real science is slow and methodical but ultimately gets results that ensure safe therapies can be deployed in the healthcare arena. At Lifespan.io we are passionate about supporting the progress of science that is conducted properly.

“The life science community should embrace the discrediting of unproven therapies promoted without data for economic gain, and instead focus on the promise of research held to the highest standards.”

#aging #crowdfundthecure

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Worried about security for your bitcoin in the face of quantum computing? According to computer researchers, there’s no reason to be.

Source: https://hacked.com/breathe-easy-bitcoiners-quantum-computing…encryption

Quantum mech

Some people assume that once quantum computing comes along modern encryption technologies will be outpowered. But experts are starting to posit that hash functions and asymmetric encryption could defend not only against modern computers, but also against quantum attackers from the future.

Matthew Amy from Canada’s University of Waterloo proposes just this in a paper by the International Association of Cryptologic Research.

Amy, and researchers from Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, examined attacks against SHA-2 and SHA-3 with Grover’s algorithm.

Grover’s algorithm is a quantum algorithm that finds with high probability the input to black box functions that produce particular, and predictable, output values.

Grover’s algorithm could brute-force a 128-bit symmetric cryptographic key in roughly 264iterations,” Wikipedia states, “or a 256-bit key in roughly 2128 iterations. As a result, it is sometimes suggested that symmetric key lengths be doubled to protect against future quantum attacks.”

Researchers surmise SHA-256 and SHA3-256 need 2166 “logical qubit cycles” to break, and the paper suggests quantum papers pose little threat, though classical processors will need to manage them.

The paper notes: “The main difficulty is that the coherence time of physical qubits is finite. Noise in the physical system will eventually corrupt the state of any long computation,” the paper states. “Preserving the state of a logical qubit is an active process that requires periodic evaluation of an error detection and correction routine.”

With ASICs running at a few million hashes per second, it would take Grover’s algorithm 1032 years to crack SHA-256 or SHA3-256. That is longer than the universe has existed.

As The Register adds: “Even if you didn’t care about the circuit footprint and used a billion-hash-per-second Bitcoin-mining ASIC, the calculation still seems to be in the order of 1029 years.”

SHA-2 is the set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the National Security Agency (NSA), an intelligence branch of the US government under scrutiny for ubiquitous surveillance due to revelations released by Edward Snowden. SHA stands for “Secure Hash Algorithm.”

These hash functions represent mathematical operations run by digital means Cryptographic hash functions boast collision resistance, which means attackers cannot find two different input values that result in the same hash output. The SHA-2 family is comprised of altogether six hash functions with hash values that are 224, 256, 384 or 512 bits: SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, SHA-512/224, SHA-512/256.

SHA-256 and SHA-512 are novel hash functions computed with 32-bit and 64-bit words, respectively.

If humans were ever able to get their hands on just one asteroid, it would be a game-changer.

That’s because the value of many asteroids are measured in the quintillions of dollars, which makes the market for Earth’s annual production of raw metals – about $660 billion per year – look paltry in comparison.

The reality is that the Earth’s crust is saddled with uneconomic materials, while certain types of asteroids are almost pure metal. X-type asteroids, for example, are thought to be the remnants of large asteroids that were pulverized in collisions in which their dense, metallic cores got separated from the mantle.

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