‘Online voting isn’t ready for high-stakes elections’

Online voting is often considered a way to improve voter turnout and security. But according to Dr Steve Kremer of the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, computer scientists have got a long way to go before they make it a viable alternative to pencils and paper.

He is researching ways of making e-voting secure under a project called SPOOC.

Why would we want to vote online?

‘In many countries, participation in elections has gone down in recent years. There is a hope that online voting could revive this, because voters wouldn’t have to go to a polling station. Young people in particular do everything now via the internet. They could get an email, and vote immediately from home – it would be more convenient.

‘But online voting is not a simple replacement for traditional voting. There are various possibilities, advantages and shortcomings, and those are what I’m studying.’ […]

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Blockchain could democratise banking, music – but at what cost?

Few technologies have the potential to disrupt old institutions as much as blockchain – a system that maintains records on huge networks of individual computers. As with any new technology, it could be used for social good – such as supporting people who are priced-out of the current bank accounts – but the big challenge is how to limit its unintended consequences.

At its heart, blockchain is a list of ‘blocks’ of digital information – any information – that is not stored in one place, but copied to computers in numerous different places. In principle, information stored in this way is accessible to anyone, and is also harder to corrupt, because corruption would need to occur simultaneously in a majority of the identical copies.

The most famous application of blockchain is bitcoin, a completely virtual currency that sidelines all banks and governments. In 10 years bitcoin’s value has gone from almost zero to thousands of euros – although in the past year or so it has been in decline. […]

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Extreme extratropical cyclones could triple in number by century-end

Unmitigated climate change will cause substantial increases in large-scale rainfall events in Europe and North America, according to researchers from the UK.

The analysis suggests that policy makers could need to develop new management strategies “to take into account the changing frequency and intensity of these events”, says Matt Hawcroft of the University of Exeter, UK.

Warmer climates are expected to deliver precipitation extremes of greater frequency and intensity. Precipitation intensity is a product of the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, which describes how much more water the atmosphere can hold as its temperature increases. But the relation is a simple scale that gives little indication where new intense precipitation will occur. […]

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Strength of Arctic halocline indicates climate change

Researchers in the US and Canada have proposed a new indicator to chart the progress of climate change, based on the strength of the Arctic “halocline”.

The indicator describes how easy it is for the colder, fresher, surface waters of the Arctic to mix with the warmer, saltier waters below. It’s linked to the loss of Arctic sea ice, according to the researchers.

“We live in times of big changes in the Arctic, and the change of halocline strength plays one of the key roles,” says Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, US. “We cannot paint a complete picture of Arctic changes without knowledge of changes in its parts.” […]

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Importing maize stabilizes prices at home

Importing maize helps stabilize domestic food prices and could help tackle cost increases resulting from rising yield variabilities due to climate change, researchers in the US have found.

Data from 27 net-importers of maize across Africa, Asia and Latin America since the turn of the millennium indicate that the variability in maize price could rise by 10% by mid-century due to climate-induced supply shocks. But this rise could be offset by a 10% boost in those nations’ ratio of imports to total consumption.

“International markets act as a source of stability rather than a source of risk,” says Bowen Chen of Kansas State University, US. “This is at least the case for maize.” […]

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Data centres risk spiralling energy costs

Data centres will need to implement new efficiency measures to prevent their electricity usage spiralling in the next decade, researchers in the US report.

Data centres have only been able to stabilize their electricity usage over the past decade – despite rapidly increasing demand – because of efficiency improvements, particularly the shift from small to large facilities, the team found. But such efficiency improvements will not be enough for future energy stability.

“A lot of the efficiency gains [in] data centres so far have come from correcting some pretty egregious energy wasting practices – things like allowing cold and hot air to mix together, or continuing to run servers that aren’t actually doing anything useful,” says Arman Shehabi at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US. “Once [these have been corrected], the potential for improvement slows down. We’re not there yet, but … it’s not too far away.” […]

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How scarce is fresh US groundwater?

Fresh groundwater is less abundant in the US than previously thought, with some regions having reserves that extend less than 300 m deep, an analysis has shown.

In the south-west US, fresh groundwater extends to more than 1000 metres below ground, whereas in certain regions of the east, and in the semi-arid High Plains of the central US, fresh supplies range to just tens of metres deep, potentially threatening future agriculture, the analysis shows.

On average, the transition from freshwater to deeper brackish water occurs at about 550 metres, but according to Grant Ferguson of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, that is still far less than the 1000–2000 m typically assumed. […]

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Is ozone less deadly than we thought?

Global premature mortality due to respiratory problems from ozone exposure is up to 60% lower than previously thought, researchers in the US and the UK have found.

The result comes from an analysis of ground-based data, rather than exposure estimates from computer models.

“I would certainly classify [the result] as good news,” says Karl Seltzer of Duke University, US. “The estimated health burden is still high, but not as high.”[…]

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Massachusetts carbon tax ‘would save 340 lives’

A carbon tax on fuel used in transport, buildings and industry in Massachusetts, US, would save 340 lives over 23 years from reduced air pollution, according to an analysis by researchers in the US.

The tax analysed by the researchers, which is based on several proposals in the Massachusetts legislature, would have dual climate and health benefits, cutting carbon emissions by 33 million metric tons while simultaneously curbing air pollutants.

“Climate policies, even at the state or local level, can have substantial, basically immediate, and local benefits to health,” says Jonathan Buonocore at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US. “By improving air quality, these policies can especially protect children, the elderly, and others that are more vulnerable to air pollution.” […]

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The something inside nothing

Far from being empty, the vacuum of space could be brimming with mysterious virtual particles. We now have a machine powerful enough to tear it apart and see

IMAGINE a place far from here, deep in the emptiness of space. This point is light years from Earth, vastly distant from any nebula, star or lonely atom. We have many words for what you would find in such a place: a void, a vacuum, a lacuna. In fact, this nothingness is a sea of activity.

According to quantum theory, empty space is filled with virtual particles. They are always there, keeping reality ticking over smoothly. They are also completely undetectable – unless, that is, you have an incredibly powerful searchlight. “Usually when people talk about a vacuum, they mean something that’s empty,” says theorist Mattias Marklund at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. “But a laser can show you the vacuum’s secrets.”

To expose virtual particles, to transform them into something tangible, takes one serious laser. But that is exactly what physicists are putting the finishing touches to in Romania. Switched on for the first time a few months ago, this machine could not only reveal the truth about empty space, but also teach us about another big mystery: dark energy, the unknown entity accelerating the expansion of the cosmos. It is time to rip nothingness apart and see what is inside. […]

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