WEEKLY BUSINESS ROUNDUP
The state of Financial markets & Economies, Weekly Charts, Business Trends & Statistics
Stocks fell for a fourth straight day in the U.S markets, with the benchmark S&P 500 index finishing its worst week since February. Similarly, Dow had its worst weekly decline since October, down 3.5% following Friday’s more than 500 point loss. Selling pressure in the Equities got magnified by investors worried over more signs that borrowing costs could be going up sooner than expected. This could eventually lead to the stifling of economic growth as the central bank tries to fend off higher inflation by raising interest rates.
The drop in equities was broad-based, with shares of industrial, energy, consumer…
BIOTECH BREAKTHROUGH
A new tool developed by researchers solves the problem of previewing data files on the DNA storage
As we head towards a completely digitized future, the insatiable demand for data storage grows bigger every day — By 2025, the amount of data generated each day is expected to reach 463 exabytes globally. In the race between data and storage, we need new avenues which can store these copious amounts of data safely for a longer duration than some of the current storage solutions. Scientists have figured that just one gram of DNA has the capacity to store 215 million GB of data. …
CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING
Lower exchange activity may be aligning with the market trying to find a new level, apparent from the price action in BTC & ETH
The weeks-old bearish trend seems to be taking a pause in Bitcoin and the associated cryptos, the sideways consolidation in the premier digital currency appears to have eased off the decline in prices, at least for now. Musk’s flamboyant tweeting about Bitcoin continues as the most recent one said that Tesla would consider accepting Bitcoin as payment for its cars as long as there is confirmation of 50% clean energy usage by miners.
Despite BTC gaining 10% in the wake of this latest tweet, crypto proponents are losing patience with Musk’s ON-again, OFF-again relationship with Bitcoin. In another important but…
CYBERSECURITY BULLETIN
RaaS is becoming an effective tool for cybercriminals who want a piece of the cyber-extortion action
Cybercrime groups like Maze and Netwalker have pioneered this business model. The demand for ransomware as a service (RaaS) is so high that 15 new ransomware affiliate schemes appeared during 2020, including Thanos, Avaddon, SunCrypt, and many others. Cybersecurity company Group-IB has outlined in a recent report, that almost two-thirds of ransomware attacks analyzed during 2020 came from cybercriminals operating on a RaaS model.
This year alone has seen a number of high-profile attacks — causing gas shortages on the U.S East Coast, interfering with hospital networks, and even disrupting Americans’ burger supply chains. In the majority of these cases…
MARKET MOVERS
We live in strange times, where influencers from different walks of life can make or break markets
We have seen it all this year — from an army of amateur traders on the social media platform Reddit breaking the hedge fund managers to Elon Musk’s love-hate relationship with premier digital currency Bitcoin on Twitter (causing massive price swings) to the most recent snub by World-renowned soccer player Christiana Ronaldo towards Coca-cola. I think this is a new phenomenon which we are going to see play out more in the future.
Many of the critics of Bitcoin have been quick to criticize the fact that something as fragile as the crypto giant whose price is at the whim…
COVID-19 GENETIC LINK
Researchers demonstrate that the gene, HLA-DRB1*04:01, is found three times as often in people who are asymptomatic
After a grim spring of 2021, the world is beginning to emerge from the worst pandemic in a century —well, at least partially. Countries that have been able to vaccinate their populations faster than other regions are seeing light at the end of the tunnel, as cases trickle down in these jurisdictions. Having said that, many countries are still struggling to get a handle on the viral disease which infected over 176 million & caused in excess of 3.8 million fatalities. Roughly 2.4 billion doses of vaccines have been administered so far.
COSMIC MYSTERY
Lasting about 200 days, the episode saw the ‘blinking giant’ star lose 97% of its luminosity before returning to its full brightness
Deep space is a wondrous place and it never ceases to amaze us with every new discovery. And the one we are going to talk about today is no exception. Observed back in 2012, the strange event has now been recorded in detail. An international team of astronomers from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, the University of Hertfordshire, the University of Warsaw in Poland, and Universidad Andres Bello in Chile collaborated on this study.
Researchers believe that the star dubbed VVV-WIT-08 may belong to a new class of ‘blinking giant’ binary star system, where a giant star is…
FUTURE TECH
Among other exciting functions, the digital fabric can collect, store & process information using a trained neural network
We are taking a huge stride towards a multidimensional digital future. An example of this is the clothes we wear — whose basic function is to keep us warm in winters and cool in summer. But MIT researchers have now made a significant breakthrough by developing the first fiber with digital capabilities, which is able to sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt. Scientists involved in this breakthrough have been working at this for a decade.
The field of smart textiles is one brimming with exciting possibilities. Stretchable batteries made out of fabric & ‘Wearable…
WEEKLY BUSINESS ROUNDUP
The state of Financial markets & Economies, Weekly Charts, Business Trends & Statistics
Investors shrugged off the report showing that U.S inflation could rise 5% — its fastest rate since 2008. U.S stocks overcame earlier losses on Friday to pick up steam towards the close, with S&P 500 barely notching a new record high. The bigger story, however, was that Nasdaq continued to outperform, rising nearly 2% on the week, making it four straight weeks of gains for that index. U.S. Treasury yields had their worst week of declines in a year, which may have something to do with these new record highs we are finally seeing in the S&P 500.
Despite this…
NANO ENERGY
New research in Nano Energy introduces revolutionary scalable material that senses and powers itself
Sensors form an integral part of the everyday systems — used in touch-sensitive elevator buttons to medical implants and things as big as bridges. The ability of these devices to detect events or changes in their environment and send the information to other electronics avoids minor problems from becoming big headaches. Their usefulness can thus be termed as both cost-saving and life-saving.
To better address the shortcomings of the current class of sensors used in various systems, the Intelligent Structural Monitoring and Response Testing (iSMaRT) Lab at the University of Pittsburgh have come up with a new design for a…
Faisal Khan
A devout futurist keeping a keen eye on the latest in Emerging Tech, Global Economy, Space, Science, Cryptocurrencies & more
