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It’s too early to call it a miracle cure, but if the conclusions from a recent Phase 1 trial for a new drug called EXO-C24 are backed up in subsequent trials, we might have the first true breakthrough therapy for COVID-19. That’s in addition to coronavirus vaccines, of course, which will help prevent severe COVID-19 cases and deaths, and even reduce the spread of the illness. But while vaccines can give the immune system a heads-up to the threat it might have to deal with — the real virus — they have a few limitations. First of all, they don’t work on infected people. Secondly, vaccine supply is still limited and vaccinations aren’t available to anybody who might want one. Then there’s the threat of coronavirus mutations that might reduce vaccines’ effect on the virus and extend the pandemic.

Quantum Encryption, Privacy Preservation, And Blockchains — Dr. Vipul Goyal, NTT Ltd. Cryptography & Information Security Labs


Dr Vipul Goyal is a senior scientist at NTT Research (a division of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, a telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.) and an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where he is part of the Crypto group, the theory group, a core faculty at CyLab (CMU security and privacy institute) and the faculty advisor of CMU Blockchain Group.

Previously, Dr. Goyal was a researcher in the Cryptography and Complexity group at Microsoft Research, India.

Renewable energy is now the cheapest energy on the planet. Countries all over the globe are rapidly converting from destructive and limited fossil fuels to wind turbines, solar power and even more creative options, including the UK which is now powered more by renewables than other sources.

Despite being one of the best sources of renewable energy, wind turbines have received significant pushback from opposition that claims they kill native bird populations. It is a valid criticism – research has shown collisions with turbine blades do kill birds, albeit at a fraction of the rate fossil-fueled power plants do.

In an attempt to minimize the ecological impact of wind turbines, a new smart camera system developed by IdentiFlight detects the presence of birds, identifies if they are endangered, and shuts down the spinning blades before impact. According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, deploying a curtailment system near a wind turbine site led to a decrease in Eagle fatalities of 82 percent, suggesting the camera systems could have a drastic effect on saving protected bird species.