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Category: government

I can see ads now with Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” playing in the background.

There’s no doubt India needs faster trains. The NDA government has set the ball rolling by launching the Gatimaan Express. Trials are on with the Spanish Talgo trains on the Delhi-Mumbai route and Japan has agreed to provide soft loans for the proposed Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. But, for achieving a one-time quantum jump in technology, the possibility of introducing the Hyperloop—Tesla’s Elon Musk’s concept of moving people and goods at high speeds in capsules within tubes using powerful magnets—could be a game-changer. Going by current speeds, Hyperloop can crunch a one-way Delhi-Mumbai trip to just one hour. The advantages are numerous—much faster travel, limited land acquisition and lower building cost that could lead to cheaper travel.

It is still early days as far as Hyperloop is concerned. Two companies, Hyperloop Technologies and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, are in talks with 10 countries including China and India for introduction.

India’sinfrastructural issues could find faster resolution with Hyperloop’s faster build-out compared to the bullet train where land acquisition could be a problem. India is considering various options to speed up the Railways—this is one that the government should look at closely, given the technological leap-frogging it provides in high-speed connectivity between cities.

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August 19th, 2016 – Creative Peptides, a professional supplier of peptides manufacturing upon academic, clinical, commercial and government laboratories in diverse applications, has released its efficient Glycopeptide Synthesis service, to help speed up the advance in solid phase methods.

Nowadays, glycopeptides have played a pivotal role in a myriad of organisms and systems, such as biology, physiology, medicine, bioengineering and technology, etc. As is known, synthetic glycopeptides are able to offer an unique frontier for research in glycobiology and proteomics as well as for drug discovery & development, drug delivery & targeting, diagnostics development and biotechnological applications, which also promotes the development of modern biomarker discovery process.

Based on rapid achievements in peptides research, increasing number of scientists are trying to discover more effective methods in modern scientific research, such as deslorelin acetate, aviptadil acetate, Chimeric Peptides, and so on. Technically, the Glycan chains of glycopeptides are involved in numerous biological recognition events, including protein folding, cell-cell communication and adhesion, cell growth and differentiation, as well as bacterial and viral infection. Actually, a framework of probing human implicit intentions for the purpose of augmented cognition has been described at Creative Peptides in recent days, which helps more and more people gain new insights in peptide application.

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With this week’s overload of news flashes about the Quantum Satellite launch, I restrained from publishing too much repeat news on the launch. However, I came across an excellent article from NASAspaceflight.com that provides additional and good details about some of the initial “publically known” experiments that are to be conducted by the Chinese.

Of course, as with any government agency, not all information is shared.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/08/long-march-2d-quantum-communications-satellite/

The Chinese have launched the first satellite that can achieve quantum communications between space and Earth. The launch of the Quantum Science Satellite – called Mozi – took place at 17:40 UTC on Monday using a Long March-2D (Chang Zheng-2D) launch vehicle from the 603 Launch Pad of the LC43 complex at the Jiuquan space center. Chinese Launch: The new satellite is dedicated to quantum science experiments. The Quantum Space Satellite, (or Quantum Experiments at Space Scale) will test the phenomena of quantum entanglement.

Operated by the China Academy of Sciences, this 500 kg satellite – announced as the name “Mozi” in honor of a fifth century BC Chinese scientist – contains a quantum key communicator, quantum entanglement emitter, entanglement source, processing unit, and a laser communicator.

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QUESS will relay transmissions between two ground stations (one in China, and the other in Europe) transmitting quantum keys.

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Spaceflight venture Moon Express wants to be the first private company ever to land on the Moon in 2017 — and now the company has been granted approval by the United States government to launch to the lunar surface. It’s the first time the government has granted regulatory approval for a private mission beyond Earth orbit. And Moon Express came very close to being denied permission to go.

No regulatory framework currently exists for a commercial space missions to another world. Lawmakers are working on a permanent solution, but it likely won’t be ready in time for Moon Express’ 2017 mission. So the company came up with its own temporary framework — a regulatory patch — that the US government could use to oversee the company’s mission. And after a meeting between the Federal Aviation Administration, the White House, and the State Department, Moon Express has been given the approval it needs to launch to the Moon.

So far, commercial companies have mostly just launched satellites into space; all specialized private missions, like launching cargo to the space station, have been overseen by NASA. That means Moon Express could be the first private company to land on the Moon, as well as the company that travels the farthest away from our planet.

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Excellent write up on QUESS; and yesterday we saw that the first set of code was transmitted successfully which means so far success. However, many are asking when will the US respond about our own efforts around our own efforts of a Quantum satellite and our own progress around improving the net infrastructure to ensure we’re not a sitting duck for government backed hackers. Granted we have been operating for many years a version of a Quantum Internet at Los Alamos; however, we need to expand and accelerate the efforts around the Quantum Internet restructuring.

In mid August China launched “QUESS” (Quantum Experiments at Space Scale), a new type of satellite that it hopes will be capable of “quantum communications” which is supposed to be hack-proof, through the use of “quantum entanglement”. This allows the operator to ensure that no one else is listening to your communications by reliably distributing keys that are then used for encryption in order to be absolutely sure that there is no one in the middle intercepting that information.

According the Chinese scientists involved in the project, quantum encryption is secure against any kind of computing power because information encoded in a quantum particle is destroyed as soon as it is measured. (According to Tibor Molnar a scientist at the University of Sydney), the only way to ‘observe’ a photon is to have it interact with (a) an electron, or (b) an electromagnetic field. Either of these interactions will cause the photon to “decohere” – i.e., interfere with it in a way that will be apparent to the intended recipient.

Gregoir Ribordy, co-founder of Geneva-based quantum cryptography firm ID Quantique, likened it to sending a message written on a soap bubble. “If someone tries to intercept it when it’s being transmitted, by touching it, they make it burst.”

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This is why tech must never leave their eye off their companies, innovation, and future; unlike China many in big tech have become bogged down in US Politics, etc. instead of their own competitive landscape something that many industry leaders learned many decades ago. Granted, you must always be concern over regulations, etc.; however, some in tech went further than that by acting in some cases like they’re running for office meanwhile their competitors flourish and don’t bother themselves with background noise.

As the old saying goes “never mix politics and religion in the work place” and this is why. Now, both China and Russia are challenging US tech like never before because of tech’s own distractions outside their companies. And, yes some may say it is tied to the S. China Sea; however, that is just one of many excuses which is not the real reason behind the drop of Apple, Uber, etc. Frankly China is showing the world they are serious in their own commitment to dominate tech taking the title from the US. I suggest companies wake up and focus on what they do best which is tech not government politics. Want to be a politician then please resign and run for government office; and let others who are passionate about tech run tech.

The Chinese government has launched a $30bn venture capital fund aimed at upgrading technology in the country’s ailing industrial sector, a move reminiscent of Singapore’s state investment playbook. Led by big banks and government holding companies.

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This is why tech must never leave their eye off their companies, innovation, and future; unlike China many in big tech have become bogged down in US Politics, etc. instead of their own competitive landscape something that many industry leaders learned many decades ago. Granted, you must always be concern over regulations, etc.; however, some in tech went further than that by acting in some cases like they’re running for office meanwhile their competitors flourish and don’t bother themselves with background noise.

As the old saying goes “never mix politics and religion in the work place” and this is why. Now, both China and Russia are challenging US tech like never before because of tech’s own distractions outside their companies. And, yes some may say it is tied to the S. China Sea; however, that is just one of many excuses which is not the real reason behind the drop of Apple, Uber, etc. Frankly China is showing the world they are serious in their own commitment to dominate tech taking the title from the US. I suggest companies wake up and focus on what they do best which is tech not government politics. Want to be a politician then please resign and run for government office ad let others who are passionate about tech run tech.

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times Tech Reporter, weighs in on Apple’s latest investments in China, his outlook for the iPhone and Berkshire Hathaway increasing their stake in the tech giant.

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One more of these; we may see government step in at the consumer’s urging.

Nobody was killed or even injured. But a minor accident involving a Tesla Model S running on Autopilot in China is again raising questions about exactly how the feature works.

The electric car company said Wednesday that it is investigating the Aug. 2 incident. The driver’s Tesla sideswiped a Volkswagen that was parked halfway in the lane of a busy Beijing highway. The company said Autopilot was engaged and the driver was not holding the steering wheel.

But the driver, Luo Zhen, claimed he was misled by Tesla. He told the Reuters news agency that Tesla salespeople described Autopilot as a “self-driving” system. On a test drive, he said “the demonstrator took his hands off the steering wheel and took his feet off the accelerator and the brake.”

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messenger-bot-white-house

“Sending a letter to the White House is getting a digital upgrade … In addition to accepting hand-written missives by postal mail and emails, the public can now send a note to President Obama via Facebook.”

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Hmmm.

With the advent of CRISPR genetic engineering technology, humanity is on the cusp of an evolutionary revolution. We now possess the technology to modify our own genetic code (DNA). In a few more years, it will become more reliable, less expensive, and more available.

That is, of course, assuming that governments don’t outright ban the technology. We all know how successful government prohibition of technology or medical procedures (not very) has been, but that isn’t to say they can’t cause untold suffering in the meantime. How?

Assume for a moment that CRISPR (or its future technological offspring) allows us to modify our DNA to eliminate a specific disease that, if treated traditionally, would result in years of suffering or even death. It would be absolutely immoral for governments to withhold this technology in such a case. They would be directly causing human suffering.

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