Concordium Blockchain, COBRA, Aarhus University, the Alexandra Institute, and the IT University in Greenland have been given DKK 3.6 million (by DIREC) to research a blockchain-based online voting system for Greenland.

What Is Blockchain & Why Might It Be Good For A Voting System? 

Blockchain is an incorruptible peer-to-peer network (a kind of ledger) that allows multiple parties to transfer information/value in a secure and transparent way. Blockchain’s co-founder Nic Carey described Blockchain as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify.” Blockchain is the technology upon which cryptocurrencies are built and is used to provide forgery-proof records of steps in supply chains and provenance.

It is the reliable, secure, and incorruptible qualities which may make blockchain suitable as the core technology of an online voting system.

How Would Blockchain Be Used In This System? 

Bas Spitters, associate professor at Aarhus University and researcher at Concordium Blockchain Research Center Aarhus, has said that for Greenland’s voting system “Blockchains can be used as a private and secure bulletin board” to help check that votes have been registered correctly.

Investigating 

The researchers working on the online Blockchain-based voting system particularly want to investigate whether it could be scaled-up for large elections, and whether the protocols used to verify the votes are secure and inaccessible to outsiders. Also, the researchers are investigating whether the system can be designed to give voters the opportunity to identify themselves at the same time that their private information is protected.

Why An Online System Anyway? 

As highlighted by Concordium’s CTO, Kåre Kjelstrøm “In Greenland, where enormous distances make it difficult for people to cast their vote, an online solution could potentially increase voter participation.” 

Carsten Schürmann, professor at the IT University and Principal Investigator on the project believes that Greenland is an ideal place for a trial of an online election system because of its “limited population and great distances”. 

Challenges To Online Elections 

Kåre Kjelstrøm believes that, up until now, online elections have not been possible in a number of countries due to “distrust and a lack of regulation of ready and secure solutions.” 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The enormous distances which have historically reduced voter participation in Greenland’s elections prompted a law change there (2020) which has given the green light to exploring how an online voting system could work. Blockchain’s effectiveness at accurately recording steps in a supply chain and provenance plus the fact that it is incorruptible and secure have already proven very useful to many businesses in different sectors.

A voting system, where trust, security, and accuracy are required may, therefore, be something that could really benefit from the use of Blockchain technology. Wider participation could more accurately represent the views of Greenland using a system that can be trusted. If the research is successful, this kind of system could be rolled out to other countries with similar geographical challenges, but also could become the future way of voting in many countries, taking account of how many people in developed countries now do many things online, remotely, and for whom this type of system would be more convenient.

A reliable online system could also reduce the costs and complications of traditional, in-person voting, if the challenge of verification of identity could be tackled effectively.

The ‘Powerfoyle’ mini, screen printable solar cells produced by Swedish startup Exeger could be a breakthrough in providing a renewable, sustainable, potentially endless power source for all kinds of gadgets and devices.

What Is ‘Powerfoyle’? 

Powerfoyle is a flexible solar cell that can be screen-printed into strips. Powerfoyle incorporates a special coloured dye which absorbs the light from any angle under any light conditions, indoors or outdoors, and acts just like an artificial photosynthesis. These mini solar cells, therefore, turn light into energy, and can be incorporated into any kind of gadget or device, giving it a potentially endless, independent power source. Powerfoyle is silicon-free and, unlike other types of solar cells, its fully active surface means that, even in partial light exposure, it still works.

Printable 

It’s reported to take only 23 seconds to manufacture approximately 100 to 200 cells in one run using high-speed screen printers. The cells can be printed into any type or form and can be produced in sizes ranging from 15cm² to 500cm². The printed solar cells can easily be shipped to partner companies along with instructions of how to incorporate them into products.

Products 

Examples of the kinds of products into which the Powerfoyle solar cells have and could be incorporated include headphones, portable speakers, remote controls, helmets, vests, hearing protection for smart workplaces, and IoT devices such as trackers and sensors.

Others 

Other organisations are also manufacturing printable, flexible, lightweight solar cells, including CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Australia, and the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI).

Disadvantages? 

Disadvantages of some of the printable solar cells currently being produced could include efficiency challenges through not using silicone, the amount of time that the technology could take to reach the mass market, and the technology possibly being short-lived, although improvements could be rapid.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation?

Thinking about the vast number of IoT devices and gadgets that could benefit from having their own renewable, potentially endless power source built-in gives some idea if the scope of this type of revolutionary product. The fact that the solar cells can be any shape and size, can be printed in quantity quickly at low cost, and installed at low cost gives it real commercial potential. Also, the fact that it would reduce demand on base-load power from the grid and could get around energy policy inertia in some countries show its huge green potential. These cells could, therefore, be used across multiple industries and sectors and represent a low-cost, high value way to help towards achieving environmental targets as well as meeting the practical power needs of products in an innovative way.

Researchers at cyber security company SOCRadar have reported finding sensitive data belonging to thousands of Microsoft customers on a on a misconfigured public server.

The researchers have reported that the data includes over 335,000 emails, 133,000 projects, and that 548,000 exposed users and could be the most significant B2B data leak in the recent history of cyber security. Microsoft, however, has commented that “SOCRadar has greatly exaggerated the scope of this issue” and that its own investigation “found no indication customer accounts or systems were compromised.”

That said, Microsoft has commented that it is “directly notifying impacted customers,” and that if other Microsoft customers have not yet received a Message Centre communication, they should assume that the investigation has not identified an impact to their organisation.

If you’ve ever given your Gmail address for access to any third-party website, app, or game, there’s a way check which apps you’ve given access to, clean up any apps you no longer use, and keep your account safe. Here’s how:

– Go to myaccount.google.com.

– Click on ‘Security’.

– Scroll down to ‘third-party apps with account access’ and click on the ‘Manage third-party access’ link.

– View the list of apps and remove access to those you no longer need.

Dr Brett Kagan, of Cortical Labs, claims not only to have grown the first ”sentient” lab-grown mini-brain in a dish, but also that it can play vintage 1970s video game’ Pong’… albeit badly.

What?? 

Believe it or not, as explained in the ‘Neuron’ journal, Dr Kagan and his team claim to have lab-grown a ‘DishBrain’ system, made up of human or rodent neural networks (brain cells), and hooked them up with a computer using electrodes. As if this wasn’t unusual enough, Dr Kagan’s team then used the electrodes and recording to embed the mini lab-grown brain “in a simulated game-world” which was designed to mimic the arcade game ‘Pong.’

What Happened? 

It only took the DishBrain around 5 minutes to learn to play the Pong video game, although it often missed the ball with the paddle, nevertheless its success rate appeared to be greater than could be expected from random chance. During the game, the mini lab-grown brain produced its own electrical activity, and generally expended less energy as the game progressed. However, the mini-brain expended more energy and recalibrated itself each time the game restarted and it needed to be ready for the ball to come from a new random point. The mini-brain essentially displayed “synthetic biological intelligence” by showing that it could self-organise activity in a goal-directed way in response to sparse sensory information about the consequences of its actions, i.e. it was able to learn without being taught.

What Does This Show? 

With this experiment, Dr Kagan’s team say that they have:

– “Demonstrated that a single layer of in vitro cortical neurons can self-organize activity to display intelligent and sentient behaviour when embodied in a simulated game-world.” 

– Provided a promising demonstration of a synthetic biological intelligence (SBI) system that learns over time in a systematic manner directed by input.

– Provided the long sought-after capability for a visualised model of learning, where the actual computations being performed by biological neuronal networks (BNNs) can be assessed.

What Benefits Could This Bring? 

Being able to harness the superior computational power of living neurons to create synthetic biological intelligence could provide a brilliant new way to test treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like as Alzheimer’s. Also, a DishBrain could provide a safe way to test the effects of different substances on human brains.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The successful creation and testing of the DishBrain has given some important insights and glimpses of how this method could be expanded in future to not just provide possible medical breakthroughs and cures, but also provide a way to actually link living cells and computers together. Although it has a feeling of science fiction about it, and care needs to be taken not to develop a kind of sentient being, harnessing the power of the two elements together holds the promise of innovations which could be used in multiple industries. A system grown in a dish from a few cells that learns without being taught could be powerful tool for testing, R&D, in health, and in a host of other situations. Although not the first DishBrain ever developed, this experiment is an exciting step that has demonstrated results that could perhaps lead towards a technological way of solving complex and long-running problems.