Lifeboat Foundation

Venezuela’s government is planning to move to a fully digital economy as hyperinflation has made worthless bolivar notes practically disappear, and dollarization expands through the local financial system.

The U.S. dollar has operated as an escape valve for Venezuela amid U.S. sanctions and collapsing oil revenues, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised interview with Telesur on Friday. He said 18.6% of all commercial transactions are in dollars, while 77.3% are carried out in bolivars with debit cards. Only 3.4% are paid with bolivar notes.

“They have a war against our physical currency. We are moving this year to a more profound digital economy, in expansion. I’ve set the goal of an economy that’s 100% digital,” Maduro said, adding that physical money will eventually disappear.

Scientists from Russia and Switzerland have probed into nanostructures covering the corneas of the eyes of small fruit flies. Investigating them the team learned how to produce the safe biodegradable nanocoating with antimicrobial, anti-reflective, and self-cleaning properties in a cost-effective and eco-friendly way. The protection coating might find applications in diverse areas of economics including medicine, nanoelectronics, automotive industry, and textile industry. The article describing these discoveries appears in Nature.

Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU, Russia) teamed up with colleagues from University of Geneva, The University of Lausanne, and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich for an interdisciplinary research project during which they were able to artificially reproduce the nanocoating of the corneas of fruit flies (Drosophila flies) naturally designed to protect the eyes of the insects from the smallest dust particles and shut off the reflection of light.

The craft of nanocoating meets demands in various fields of economics. It can wrap up any flat or three-dimensional structure, and, depending on the task, give it anti-reflective, antibacterial, and hydrophobic properties, including self-cleaning. The latter, for example, is a very important feature for expensive reusable overnight ortho-k lenses that correct the eyesight. Similar anti-reflective coatings are already known though created by more complex and costly methods. They are being used on the panels of computers, glasses, paintings in museums can be covered with them in order to exclude reflection and refraction of light.

Some 21 residents of a Bat Yam retirement home tested positive for the coronavirus after they were vaccinated but before they had developed antibodies, according to Ynet.

The other 150 residents of the home will be tested for the virus.

Health officials have stressed that the two-dose Pfizer vaccine regimen means that the vaccine is only fully effective about five weeks after the first dose. This means it could take until sometime in February for enough elderly and high-risk people to be vaccinated to help lower the spread of infection and start reopening the economy.

Continue reading “21 Residents of Retirement Home Get Coronavirus After Receiving Vaccine” »

In the not so distant future you could be making money from home by controlling robots, robots that are in another country. Or there will be products, such as a self driving Tesla car, that can go out and earn money on their own.

This video takes a look at the futuristic ways people will be earning money. From telepresence jobs and future business ideas, to new space businesses, and even how people will be storing their money — moving away from cash and credit cards to using chips that are in their bodies.

Continue reading “Making Money in a Futuristic World (Jobs and Future Business Ideas)” »

Is the author of the book Free To Choose Medicine: Better Drugs Sooner at Lower Cost; a book that offers a compelling argument for the freedom of every patient, guided by the advice of his or her doctor, to make informed decisions about the use of not-yet-FDA-approved therapeutic drugs, that are in late stages of clinical testing.

Mr. Madden is recently retired as a Managing Director of Credit Suisse/Holt after a career in money management and investment research that included the founding of Callard Madden & Associates. During his career, he developed the cash-flow return on investment (CFROI) valuation framework that is widely used today by money management firms worldwide.

Continue reading “Bart Madden — Free To Choose Medicine — Better Drugs, Sooner, at Lower Costs — Saving Lives” »

Cryptocurrency and direct democracy.

SpaceX recently sparked controversy after stating it would not recognise international law in outer space.

Continue reading “Elon Musk says Mars economy will run on cryptocurrency” »

😃 Well, at least fossil-fuel emissions went down.

Global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuel and industry are expected to drop by 7% in 2020, new analysis shows, as economies around the world feel the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns.

The latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) suggest that these emissions will clock in at 34bn tonnes of CO₂ (GtCO2) this year – a fall of 2.4GtCO2 compared to 2019.

Continue reading “Coronavirus causes ‘record fall’ in fossil-fuel emissions in 2020” »

Recording artist Akon has big plans for his upcoming smart city in Senegal. The new $6 billion development is called Akon City and will fulfill the star’s wish to provide a refuge for members of the African Diaspora both near and far. In addition to the 2000-acre resort, condos, and stadium, the metropolis is also planned to run on renewable energy and mainly use Akoin—the singer’s own cryptocurrency. After two years of planning and development, Akon has announced that they are breaking ground in 2021.

Akon believes that Africa, and his home of Senegal especially, is long overdue for economic investment. He is calling the forthcoming locale a “real-life Wakanda” and plans for it include a tech hub and “Senewood” to develop the film industry. Imagery by Bakri & Associates visualizes the unusual and futuristic forms that define the development and complement Akon’s forward-thinking choices.

This massive construction undertaking is geared towards stimulating the local economy and creating jobs for local workers. Many have praised this and are excited for the prospect of Akon City. But there are also some skeptics. Papa Massama Thiaw, a councilor and president of the youth commission for Ngueniene, shared that though many community members are optimistic, there is a lot of uncertainty. “The studies that were done were not in collaboration with the commune of Ngueniene,” he says. He also fears that jobs won’t be equally distributed. “I don’t want us to be just day laborers. We have to be among the managers.”

Google and its American internet peers are steadily amping up their investment in India, latching onto the only other country with a billion-plus population after getting shut out of China. From Amazon.com Inc. to Facebook Inc., they’re hoping to get in on the ground floor of what they envision as a smartphone and online commerce boom that could eventually create a market to rival the world’s No. 2 economy.

Google investments helped create India’s two youngest technology unicorns: a pair of startups that feed personalized news and entertainment to the world’s fastest-growing smartphone population.