A next wave of cancer treatments may combine immunotherapy and gene editing.
Category: economics – Page 216
Genetically enhancing our children could raise interest rates
Always a trickle down effect on things that improve or change. Just reconfirms and reminds us organically how everything is indeed connected.
Capital tends to have greater value the more skilled and educated the workforce. Anticipating genetically enhanced workers would cause firms to want to invest more now in new equipment and buildings. Many assets, such as real estate and intellectual property, become more valuable the richer a society and so expectations of a much higher economic growth rate would cause companies to spend more buying and developing these assets so that businesses, as well as governments, will wish to borrow more when they realize the potential of human genetic engineering.
Many individuals will reduce their savings rate in anticipation of a future richer society. Today, fear that Social Security won’t survive motivates many Americans to save, but this fear and so this incentive for saving would disappear once genetic engineering for intelligence proves feasible. Furthermore, many citizens would rationally expect future government benefits to senior citizens to increase in a world made richer by genetic engineering and this expectation would reduce the perceived need to save for retirement.
Since understanding the consequences of a smarter workforce will increase the desire to borrow but reduce the wish to save, real interest rates will have to go up. These higher rates will reduce incentives to borrow while increasing the willingness to save and so will restore equilibrium to money markets. Expect to see higher interest rates as soon as markets price in embryo selection and genetic engineering.
Ultrafast dynamics of semiconductor nanocrystals
Spectroscopy studies of charge transfer from cadmium selenide quantum dots to molecular nickel catalysts reveal unexpectedly fast electron transfer, enabling exceptional photocatalytic hydrogen production.
A key challenge facing the US is the harvesting, production, storage, and distribution of energy to support economic prosperity with responsible environmental management. Currently, fossil fuels provide more than 80% of the energy consumed in the US (even when significant increases in the use of alternative sources of energy in recent years are accounted for).1 For the US Department of Defense in particular, volatility in the price and availability of fossil fuels leads to significant short- and long-term financial, operational, and strategic risks.2 There is, therefore, clearly a need for new alternative sources of energy.
Aggressive, sparkplug-free gasoline auto engines with high efficiency
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories’ Combustion Research Facility are helping to develop sparkplug-free engines that will help meet ambitious automotive fuel economy targets of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
They are working on low-temperature gasoline combustion (LTGC) operating strategies for affordable, high-efficiency engines that will meet stringent air-quality standards.
Sandia researchers Isaac Ekoto and Benjamin Wolk said the goal of the LTGC project is an engine in which chemically controlled ignition initiates the combustion of dilute charge mixtures.
Silicon Valley’s Audacious Plan to Create a New Stock Exchange — By Ellen Huet and Brad Stone | Bloomberg
“Managers, hoping to avoid such jolts, spend too much time focusing on short-term performance. ”
India-US-China : US – Cyber And Bilateral Visits – Analysis
Boy; wait until next month with China’s Quantum Launch.
By Munish Sharma.
Cyber has been one of the key discussion items during both Prime Minister Modi’s just concluded visit to the United States and President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US some nine months back. After Xi’s visit, China and the US signed a Cyber Agreement in October 2015. India and the US will ink a cyber agreement in the next sixty days. Notwithstanding these similarities, the intent of and expectations from these two agreements are fundamentally different; the former is an attempt to manage insecurity and the latter is a quest for security. An analysis of the joint statements issued at the end of the Modi and Xi visits to the US highlights the contrasting differences in India and China’s bilateral ties with the United States in the cyber realm.
China : US – Cyber and State Visit
Xi Jinping’s state visit to the US took place in the shadow of a massive cyber-attack on the Office of Personnel Management (December 2014), which compromised the fingerprint records of 5.6 million people and Social Security numbers and addresses of around 21 million former and current government employees. 1 The US has been accusing China of theft of intellectual property targeted against its defence industries, private sector and key governmental functions; amounting to economic espionage. Accusations in this regard go back to 2004, when a series of coordinated attacks – dubbed as Titan Rain – targeted the computer networks of Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA. Cyber espionage featured in every high-level talk and security report.
Robots Threaten the Job Market, Warns India’s Central Bank Governor
India’s Central Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has cautioned that robots are replacing human workers at an alarming rate, especially in the manufacturing sector, which could create political turmoil in emerging economies like India and Vietnam.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) — Speaking at a book launching in Mumbai, Raghuram Rajan said:
“The emerging threat is: It is not the guy sitting in Bangalore but the robot next door which is going to take your job, and this creates enormous anxiety among the middle class. You can see this in the political dialogue that is taking place in the US as well as in the run-up to Brexit in Britain.”
China Plans Oceanic ‘Space Station’ in South China Sea
(Bloomberg) — China is speeding up efforts to design and build a manned deep-sea platform to help it hunt for minerals in the South China Sea, one that may also serve a military purpose in the disputed waters.
Such an oceanic “space station” would be located as much as 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) below the surface, according to a recent Science Ministry presentation viewed by Bloomberg. The project was mentioned in China’s current five-year economic plan released in March and ranked number two on a list of the top 100 science and technology priorities.
Authorities recently examined the implementation of the project and decided to accelerate the process, according to the presentation.