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Researchers have been studying chloride’s corrosive effects on various materials for decades. Now thanks to high-performance computers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), detailed models have been simulated to provide new insight on how chloride leads to corrosion on structrual metals, resulting in economic and environmental impacts.

Conducted by a team from Oregon State University’s (OSU) College of Engineering, a study discussing this newfound information was published in Materials Degradation, a Nature partner journal.

“Steels are the most widely used structural metals in the world and their corrosion has severe economic, environmental, and ,” said study co-author Burkan Isgor, an OSU civil and construction engineering professor. “Understanding the process of how protective passive films break down helps us custom design effective alloys and corrosion inhibitors that can increase the service life of structures that are exposed to chloride attacks.”

Venezuela’s government is planning to move to a fully digital economy as hyperinflation has made worthless bolivar notes practically disappear, and dollarization expands through the local financial system.

The U.S. dollar has operated as an escape valve for Venezuela amid U.S. sanctions and collapsing oil revenues, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised interview with Telesur on Friday. He said 18.6% of all commercial transactions are in dollars, while 77.3% are carried out in bolivars with debit cards. Only 3.4% are paid with bolivar notes.

“They have a war against our physical currency. We are moving this year to a more profound digital economy, in expansion. I’ve set the goal of an economy that’s 100% digital,” Maduro said, adding that physical money will eventually disappear.

Scientists from Russia and Switzerland have probed into nanostructures covering the corneas of the eyes of small fruit flies. Investigating them the team learned how to produce the safe biodegradable nanocoating with antimicrobial, anti-reflective, and self-cleaning properties in a cost-effective and eco-friendly way. The protection coating might find applications in diverse areas of economics including medicine, nanoelectronics, automotive industry, and textile industry. The article describing these discoveries appears in Nature.

Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU, Russia) teamed up with colleagues from University of Geneva, The University of Lausanne, and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich for an interdisciplinary research project during which they were able to artificially reproduce the nanocoating of the corneas of fruit flies (Drosophila flies) naturally designed to protect the eyes of the insects from the smallest dust particles and shut off the reflection of light.

The craft of nanocoating meets demands in various fields of economics. It can wrap up any flat or three-dimensional structure, and, depending on the task, give it anti-reflective, antibacterial, and hydrophobic properties, including self-cleaning. The latter, for example, is a very important feature for expensive reusable overnight ortho-k lenses that correct the eyesight. Similar anti-reflective coatings are already known though created by more complex and costly methods. They are being used on the panels of computers, glasses, paintings in museums can be covered with them in order to exclude reflection and refraction of light.

Some 21 residents of a Bat Yam retirement home tested positive for the coronavirus after they were vaccinated but before they had developed antibodies, according to Ynet.

The other 150 residents of the home will be tested for the virus.


Health officials have stressed that the two-dose Pfizer vaccine regimen means that the vaccine is only fully effective about five weeks after the first dose. This means it could take until sometime in February for enough elderly and high-risk people to be vaccinated to help lower the spread of infection and start reopening the economy.

Moreover, the risk of catching coronavirus after the first jab has been confirmed in that some 15000 patients who received the first dose of the vaccine were screened and 428 were confirmed positive for COVID-19 and some 12 people were hospitalized, according to reports. It is possible that some of them were exposed to the virus even before being vaccinated.

On Friday morning, Israel’s one millionth citizen was vaccinated against the novel coronavirus in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein.

In the not so distant future you could be making money from home by controlling robots, robots that are in another country. Or there will be products, such as a self driving Tesla car, that can go out and earn money on their own.

This video takes a look at the futuristic ways people will be earning money. From telepresence jobs and future business ideas, to new space businesses, and even how people will be storing their money — moving away from cash and credit cards to using chips that are in their bodies.

Elon Musk’s Book Recommendations + Others (Affiliate Links)
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: https://amzn.to/3kNFSyW
• Ignition: https://amzn.to/3i20BgN
• Benjamin Franklin: https://amzn.to/2G24eWX
• Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down https://amzn.to/36KGCRc.
• The Foundation: https://amzn.to/3i753dU
• Six Easy Pieces (Thinking Behind Physics): https://amzn.to/3mUvIP2

Video Links Mentioned in the Video.
• Elon Musk: The Scientist Behind the CEO

• Robots Cooking: The Restaurant of the Future.
https://youtu.be/zCaDJOGnkuo.

• Space Inc: The New Space Businesses and Tech.

Is the author of the book Free To Choose Medicine: Better Drugs Sooner at Lower Cost; a book that offers a compelling argument for the freedom of every patient, guided by the advice of his or her doctor, to make informed decisions about the use of not-yet-FDA-approved therapeutic drugs, that are in late stages of clinical testing.

Mr. Madden is recently retired as a Managing Director of Credit Suisse/Holt after a career in money management and investment research that included the founding of Callard Madden & Associates. During his career, he developed the cash-flow return on investment (CFROI) valuation framework that is widely used today by money management firms worldwide.

Mr. Madden is currently an independent researcher and a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). His research has focused on the themes of knowledge building and wealth creation being able to exist simultaneously in businesses, and these themes are represented in his various books including — Value Creation Principles: The Pragmatic Theory of the Firm Begins with Purpose and Ends with Sustainable Capitalism, Wealth Creation: A Systems Mindset for Building and Investing in Businesses for the Long Term, and Reconstructing Your Worldview: The Four Core Beliefs You Need to Solve Complex Business Problems.

Mr. Madden is a proponent of the application of systems thinking to public policy, and his work in public policy has resulted in the Free To Choose Medicine (http://freetochoosemedicine.com/) plan, which was originally developed in journal articles published in Regulation, Cancer Biotherapy & Radiopharmaceuticals, and Medical Hypotheses.

Mr. Madden is passionate about the passage of a Free To Choose Medicine Act which would be a defining moment for Americans giving control of medical decisions back to individual patients and their doctors.

😃 Well, at least fossil-fuel emissions went down.


Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel and industry are expected to drop by 7% in 2020, new analysis shows, as economies around the world feel the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns.

The latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) suggest that these emissions will clock in at 34bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) this year – a fall of 2.4GtCO2 compared to 2019.

This annual decline is the largest absolute drop in emissions ever recorded, the researchers say, and the largest relative fall since the second world war.

Recording artist Akon has big plans for his upcoming smart city in Senegal. The new $6 billion development is called Akon City and will fulfill the star’s wish to provide a refuge for members of the African Diaspora both near and far. In addition to the 2000-acre resort, condos, and stadium, the metropolis is also planned to run on renewable energy and mainly use Akoin—the singer’s own cryptocurrency. After two years of planning and development, Akon has announced that they are breaking ground in 2021.

Akon believes that Africa, and his home of Senegal especially, is long overdue for economic investment. He is calling the forthcoming locale a “real-life Wakanda” and plans for it include a tech hub and “Senewood” to develop the film industry. Imagery by Bakri & Associates visualizes the unusual and futuristic forms that define the development and complement Akon’s forward-thinking choices.

This massive construction undertaking is geared towards stimulating the local economy and creating jobs for local workers. Many have praised this and are excited for the prospect of Akon City. But there are also some skeptics. Papa Massama Thiaw, a councilor and president of the youth commission for Ngueniene, shared that though many community members are optimistic, there is a lot of uncertainty. “The studies that were done were not in collaboration with the commune of Ngueniene,” he says. He also fears that jobs won’t be equally distributed. “I don’t want us to be just day laborers. We have to be among the managers.”