Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: energy

More on China’s race on Space. Last Tuesday, China launched the 1st Quantum Satellite. In 2017, China is planning to be the dominant force in mining of Space. First stop — mining the dark side of the moon. Given China’s own history with environmental pollution plus mining’s damaging effects to the environment when not properly managed; etc. one must ponder how will space and Earth itself be impacted by such mining.

Before this decade is out, humanity will go where it’s never gone before: the far side of the moon. This dark side — forever facing away from us — has long been a mystery. No human-made object has ever touched its surface. The mission will be a marvel of engineering. It will involve a rocket that weighs hundreds of tons (traveling almost 250,000 miles), a robot lander, and an unmanned lunar rover that will use sensors, cameras, and an infrared spectrometer to uncover billion-year-old secrets from the soil. The mission also might scout the moon’s supply of helium-3 — a promising material for fusion energy. And the nation planting its starry flag on this historic trip will be the People’s Republic of China.

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Energy efficient IoT — proven to reduce energy usage by 50% via new technique for compressing the computations of encryption and decryption operations known as Galois field arithmetic operations.

Our research group has discovered a new technique for compressing the computations of encryption and decryption operations known as Galois field arithmetic operations, and has succeeded in developing the world’s most efficient Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cryptographic processing circuit, whose energy consumption is reduced by more than 50% of the current level. With this achievement, it has become possible to include encryption technology in information and communication technology (ICT) devices that have tight energy constraints, greatly enhancing the safety of the next-generation Internet of Things (IoT). This result was announced on August 19, 2016 during the Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems 2016 (CHES 2016) hosted by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) in Santa Barbara, USA.

It is currently very common to exchange important personal or financial information over the Internet through ICT devices. Cryptographic techniques are used inside these devices to protect important information. In next-generation networks such as the IoT, which has attracted attention in recent years, it is expected that myriad devices will be connected to the network. Hence, it will be necessary to have built-in encryption technology in these connected devices to prevent malicious attacks. However, many battery or cell-driven devices with tight energy constraints are also included in the IoT and running energy-consuming encryption processes on these is a big challenge. One of the most widely used international standard encryption methods is AES. Since this is used in areas such as wireless LANs, it is very important for practical reasons to design energy-saving AES cryptographic processing.

Tohoku University and the NEC Corporation have been collaborating on research and development since 2013 with the purpose of improving the safety of ICT devices. In particular, they aim to build a system that will allow the new IoT services to be enjoyed with confidence. This will be done by developing technology that embeds encryption in small devices and sensors for the first time. This research and development is being carried out as part of the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) program No. 25240006 “Development of formal design technology for VLSI data path based on the Galois field computations.” (Research representative: Naofumi HOMMA, Tohoku University).

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Baidu is a fixture of online life in China, but it wants to become a global power. Can one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence researchers help it challenge Silicon Valley’s biggest companies?

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Audi has designed an active suspension system called eROT, which allows the electromechanical dampers to store the energy from bumps and potholes for use in the car. It also makes the ride far smoother, adapting the car to the road.

The automotive industry’s ‘green revolution’ hopes to make electric vehicles far more efficient. Every bit of force under the hood should be used to its maximum potential. That why you have concepts such as regenerative braking, which return some of the energy used in braking back into the system.

But Audi is looking at tapping another roadway staple: potholes. It has created a system called eROT, an active suspension system that stores the energy when a driver hit potholes, bumps, and other forces that induce kinetic energy on a car.

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The environmental group, WWF Scotland, confirmed that on August 7, 2016, wind power alone generated 106% of Scotland’s electricity needs for the single day. This shows that with more development, renewables are capable of eventually replacing fossil fuels.

We have been harnessing the wind’s energy for hundreds of years. Traditionally, it has been used to pump water or grind grains with the help of windmills. But recently, windmill’s modern equivalent, the wind turbine, has just achieved an incredible feat—generating 106% of an entire nation’s electricity needs in just one day.

Data analysis from the environmental group, WWF Scotland, has confirmed that on August 7, 2016, wind turbines in Scotland pumped 39,545 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity into the National Grid, while the nation’s total consumption stood at 37,202 MWh—which was 2,000 MWh over than what the nation consumed.

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solidbatteri

“Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a lithium-ion battery made entirely of solid material: it contains neither liquids nor gels. The battery cannot ignite, even at very high temperatures, giving it a safety advantage over conventional batteries. In addition, they allow new forms of battery design.”

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