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Blockchain Voting And More, Thanks To Crypto

Blockchain Voting And More, Thanks To Crypto

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Blockchain Voting

Bitcoin is far more useful than most people expect. See, we have been using the internet for decades now, but the idea that networks can have their own systems of security in place is only as recent as 2008, thanks to Bitcoin. A crucial element of Bitcoin is blockchain. It is forever tethered to Bitcoin, but its potential expands beyond cryptocurrency. Today, Blockchain is part of cloud storage, smart contracts, and healthcare in addition to other cryptocurrencies. With blockchain, you can even buy gold with bitcoin! However, one of the areas blockchain has the ability to make a big difference is in voting. Blockchain voting enables a true form of democracy by popular vote, and it costs less for the government in the long-run too!

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Blockchain Voting

What Is The Point of Blockchain? How Does it Work? Why Is It Not Private?

Blockchain is a crucial part of cryptocurrency that has incredible potential for more than digital currencies. It is coding originally created for Bitcoin.

A blockchain is a digital ledger, and it protects cryptocurrency from malicious tampering. The ledger is not stored, so it can’t be manipulated. It exists as “blocks” or boxes on a “chain” connected by millions of nodes 24/7 simultaneously. Basically, each block contains information that links it to the blocks around it on the chain. Nodes monitor this chain.

Blockchain is a public ledger, but not all the information on it is public. Basically, if you buy gold with Bitcoin, there will be a public record of a Bitcoin transaction. But, who did it, for what purpose, and the identity of the recipient is only visible to the participants of the transaction. So no one will know that you took the time to buy gold with bitcoin. It is public so that all the nodes can see the transaction and validate it accordingly.

So, once something is recorded by a blockchain, it is highly difficult to change it without raising suspicion. Because of encryption and decentralization, blockchain is verifiable and cannot be hacked. If something is tampered, the nodes will reject the tampered block. Trying to hack blockchain would require you to take control over at least 51% of the nodes all at once in addition to two other major, onerous tasks. Because the blockchain is ever-changing, even with a time delay, it is extremely unlikely that it can be effectively hacked.

How Can Elections Use Blockchain?

At first, blockchain voting made waves in 2017. Before this time, using the blockchain for voting was incredibly difficult. It was not anonymous and required a third party for security. Early applications included Blockchain Voting Machine, Follow My Vote, and TIVI. However, all these still used third parties to keep voters’ information private.

Then, in 2017, a PhD student from Newcastle University came forward with a proposal. Patrick McCorry created the Open Vote Network, which is a contract written in Solidity. To sum up, McCorry proposed using Ethereum, another cryptocurrency, to perform the task for security and privacy.

This early start to a private system of voting was created for a smaller scale. For example, the office could vote on where to have their holiday party. He explained to Coindesk:

“Everyone can cast their encrypted vote. And then at the end of the election, once all the votes have been cast, anyone, including observers, can simply add the encrypted votes together. It will cancel out all the random factors in the encryption and it will just reveal the final tally.”

Does Blockchain Voting Have Issues?

Early issues McCorry encountered working with the Open Vote Network centered around the platform not tallying the final vote unless 100% of the votes were in. Using blockchain voting for a presidential election was simply not feasible on this system, especially during an election as important as the one in 2020.

But, McCorry discovered that Ethereum and cryptography offered a solution. The system of blockchain voting would work in this way:

  • An administrator for the election would send Ethereum a “white list” of voters—those who are eligible to register to vote.
  • A voter can then register for the election, but they have to put down a deposit. Then they have a limited time to vote, or else they will lose their deposit.
  • After someone votes, their vote is encrypted then sent to Ethereum. When the votes are all in, or the time runs out, the election ends. Ethereum tallies the votes and keeps them private! The votes cannot be altered after submitting them or after the tally is computed.

His system wasn’t perfect, however. His approach relied on the idea that everyone in the pool of voters knows each other and can “pressure” others into remembering to vote for this reason. When there is a small base, that works. But it has been a few years, so can this cryptocurrency technology be used for a larger scale?

How Can Blockchain Voting Create a “True Democracy”?

Today, an application called Voatz successfully implemented blockchain voting on a large scale. The Michigan Democratic Party State Nominating Convention used Voatz with success this past August. During this time, more than 1,900 delegates participated in the virtual convention from August 29-30. They were able to nominate candidates for the state’s Supreme Court, state Board of Education, and boards for state universities.

Executive Director of the Michigan Democratic Party said:

“There were so many unique challenges with this year's convention because of the pandemic, but the Voatz platform eased many of our concerns.”

Basically, using the application allows people to vote through their phones through remote verification. This convention is the fourth time the Michigan Democratic Party used the blockchain voting system. Elections in West Virginia, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado also used Voatz with success.

However, certain drawbacks remain because there is a lack of transparency around data security. MIT pushed back on Voatz by pointing out the holes in its system that still leave security flimsy, inducing a spat between the two parties. The bugs MIT found inherently harm blockchain voting because the existing vote tallies can still be compromised. Nevertheless, the Utah Republican state convention in April 2020 used Voatz as well. They reported the system went off without a hitch and processed slightly over 90% of the registered delegate votes.

Will the 2020 Election Use Blockchain Voting?

Will blockchain voting be a part of the 2020 election? It does not appear to be applicable to a wide-scale vote as large as the presidential election. However, this is likely the start of a new system of encrypted voting that will be implemented in the coming years. Thanks to the blockchain, encryption is becoming more sophisticated and useful beyond cryptocurrency. However, it is possible that cryptocurrencies’ worth will dramatically increase if blockchain voting is successful. This is because people on a broader scale might learn to trust the security and see the potential for cryptocurrency to become a more generally accepted form of currency.

Where Can I Use Cryptocurrency? Can You Buy Gold with Bitcoin?

Blockchain Voting

Blockchain was born from Bitcoin, the is the first system to use blockchain on a large scale. Other cryptocurrencies utilize this system as well, such as a newer one called PAXG. PAXG is possible thanks to the Ethereum blockchain. It is a digital token that represents gold and can be traded for this physical safe-haven asset. Because it is backed by LBMA-accredited London Good Delivery gold, PAXG is less volatile than other cryptocurrencies. You can also trade in PAXG for physical gold anytime.

Blockchain Voting

There are other ways to attain gold if you use cryptocurrency.  If you aren’t ready to use a new form of cryptocurrency, you can buy gold with Bitcoin! Cryptocurrency is a very handy tool to add to your investments because it is becoming more accepted in countries outside of the US. This means that if it gains more traction, you can use Bitcoin when you travel instead of worrying about foreign fees or exchanging your fiat currency.

From using Bitcoin to pay for hotels or vouchers for Dunkin Donuts and real estate, the opportunities for blockchain and cryptocurrencies are endless. Satoshi Nakamoto saw the importance of blockchain back in 2007 and released it to the world in 2008. Today, if we don’t utilize blockchain technology, we will certainly be missing out on the future. Whether you want to buy gold with bitcoin or use blockchain voting, we are moving into a newer future that can improve the lives of millions.

The post Blockchain Voting And More, Thanks To Crypto appeared first on ValueWalk.

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Government

Mathematicians use AI to identify emerging COVID-19 variants

Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants…

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Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants and could help with other infections in the future.

Credit: source: https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23312

Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants and could help with other infections in the future.

The framework combines dimension reduction techniques and a new explainable clustering algorithm called CLASSIX, developed by mathematicians at The University of Manchester. This enables the quick identification of groups of viral genomes that might present a risk in the future from huge volumes of data.

The study, presented this week in the journal PNAS, could support traditional methods of tracking viral evolution, such as phylogenetic analysis, which currently require extensive manual curation.

Roberto Cahuantzi, a researcher at The University of Manchester and first and corresponding author of the paper, said: “Since the emergence of COVID-19, we have seen multiple waves of new variants, heightened transmissibility, evasion of immune responses, and increased severity of illness.

“Scientists are now intensifying efforts to pinpoint these worrying new variants, such as alpha, delta and omicron, at the earliest stages of their emergence. If we can find a way to do this quickly and efficiently, it will enable us to be more proactive in our response, such as tailored vaccine development and may even enable us to eliminate the variants before they become established.”

Like many other RNA viruses, COVID-19 has a high mutation rate and short time between generations meaning it evolves extremely rapidly. This means identifying new strains that are likely to be problematic in the future requires considerable effort.

Currently, there are almost 16 million sequences available on the GISAID database (the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data), which provides access to genomic data of influenza viruses.

Mapping the evolution and history of all COVID-19 genomes from this data is currently done using extremely large amounts of computer and human time.

The described method allows automation of such tasks. The researchers processed 5.7 million high-coverage sequences in only one to two days on a standard modern laptop; this would not be possible for existing methods, putting identification of concerning pathogen strains in the hands of more researchers due to reduced resource needs.

Thomas House, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at The University of Manchester, said: “The unprecedented amount of genetic data generated during the pandemic demands improvements to our methods to analyse it thoroughly. The data is continuing to grow rapidly but without showing a benefit to curating this data, there is a risk that it will be removed or deleted.

“We know that human expert time is limited, so our approach should not replace the work of humans all together but work alongside them to enable the job to be done much quicker and free our experts for other vital developments.”

The proposed method works by breaking down genetic sequences of the COVID-19 virus into smaller “words” (called 3-mers) represented as numbers by counting them. Then, it groups similar sequences together based on their word patterns using machine learning techniques.

Stefan Güttel, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, said: “The clustering algorithm CLASSIX we developed is much less computationally demanding than traditional methods and is fully explainable, meaning that it provides textual and visual explanations of the computed clusters.”

Roberto Cahuantzi added: “Our analysis serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating the potential use of machine learning methods as an alert tool for the early discovery of emerging major variants without relying on the need to generate phylogenies.

“Whilst phylogenetics remains the ‘gold standard’ for understanding the viral ancestry, these machine learning methods can accommodate several orders of magnitude more sequences than the current phylogenetic methods and at a low computational cost.”


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International

There will soon be one million seats on this popular Amtrak route

“More people are taking the train than ever before,” says Amtrak’s Executive Vice President.

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While the size of the United States makes it hard for it to compete with the inter-city train access available in places like Japan and many European countries, Amtrak trains are a very popular transportation option in certain pockets of the country — so much so that the country’s national railway company is expanding its Northeast Corridor by more than one million seats.

Related: This is what it's like to take a 19-hour train from New York to Chicago

Running from Boston all the way south to Washington, D.C., the route is one of the most popular as it passes through the most densely populated part of the country and serves as a commuter train for those who need to go between East Coast cities such as New York and Philadelphia for business.

Veronika Bondarenko captured this photo of New York’s Moynihan Train Hall. 

Veronika Bondarenko

Amtrak launches new routes, promises travelers ‘additional travel options’

Earlier this month, Amtrak announced that it was adding four additional Northeastern routes to its schedule — two more routes between New York’s Penn Station and Union Station in Washington, D.C. on the weekend, a new early-morning weekday route between New York and Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station and a weekend route between Philadelphia and Boston’s South Station.

More Travel:

According to Amtrak, these additions will increase Northeast Corridor’s service by 20% on the weekdays and 10% on the weekends for a total of one million additional seats when counted by how many will ride the corridor over the year.

“More people are taking the train than ever before and we’re proud to offer our customers additional travel options when they ride with us on the Northeast Regional,” Amtrak Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eliot Hamlisch said in a statement on the new routes. “The Northeast Regional gets you where you want to go comfortably, conveniently and sustainably as you breeze past traffic on I-95 for a more enjoyable travel experience.”

Here are some of the other Amtrak changes you can expect to see

Amtrak also said that, in the 2023 financial year, the Northeast Corridor had nearly 9.2 million riders — 8% more than it had pre-pandemic and a 29% increase from 2022. The higher demand, particularly during both off-peak hours and the time when many business travelers use to get to work, is pushing Amtrak to invest into this corridor in particular.

To reach more customers, Amtrak has also made several changes to both its routes and pricing system. In the fall of 2023, it introduced a type of new “Night Owl Fare” — if traveling during very late or very early hours, one can go between cities like New York and Philadelphia or Philadelphia and Washington. D.C. for $5 to $15.

As travel on the same routes during peak hours can reach as much as $300, this was a deliberate move to reach those who have the flexibility of time and might have otherwise preferred more affordable methods of transportation such as the bus. After seeing strong uptake, Amtrak added this type of fare to more Boston routes.

The largest distances, such as the ones between Boston and New York or New York and Washington, are available at the lowest rate for $20.

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International

The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife

Bird flu is decimating species already threatened by climate change and habitat loss.

I am a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases. When people ask me what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one – it’s just afflicting a great many species more than ours.

I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years.

This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston’s palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005.

How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region.

This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose.

This is how a newly discovered virus in Chinese poultry came to threaten so much of the world’s biodiversity.

H5N1 originated on a Chinese poultry farm in 1997. ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock

The first signs

Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Our analysis in 2006 showed that nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as “orders”) contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species.

We reasoned 20 years ago that the strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. We also showed that the list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened and that important habitats, such as Vietnam’s Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks.

Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats.

Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity.

Unfortunately, our warnings were correct.

A roving sickness

Two decades on, bird flu is killing species from the high Arctic to mainland Antarctica.

In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started.

Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now also confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears.

The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus.

Scientists haven’t managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. Research and continuous surveillance could tell us how adaptable it ultimately becomes, and whether it can jump to even more species. We know it can already infect humans – one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious.

At the crossroads

Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal.

Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again.

It’s not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia.

Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5.

Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile.

A colony of king penguins.
Remote penguin colonies are already threatened by climate change. AndreAnita/Shutterstock

How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks.

To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.

Diana Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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