By Christoph Mutz, Senior Automotive Product Marketing Manager, Western Digital
The automotive industry is going through profound changes as connected vehicles become the norm. With every technological development, innovation and smart addition to the vehicle, each car becomes in itself, a server on wheels. From increasingly centralised architecture, to in-depth infotainment consoles, the sheer amount of data cars now create presents challenges when it comes to the car’s storage requirements.
While urban infrastructure and the development of edge data centres will be key to the eventual success of connected and autonomous transport, the need for on-board data storage has never been more prevalent. There are current on-board flash storage solutions such as the embedded Multi-Media Chips interface (eMMC), but the need for higher performance to transfer data to and from the systems in the car requires a faster interface. To help manage the sharp rise in fast data, the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) interface offers a suitable solution for the next generation of vehicles. But what are the benefits of flash storage, and how is the technology solving the industry’s challenges?
Changing automotive architectures and the impact on data
Automotive architectures are changing dramatically, from dispersed control units to one centralized system in a car. Previously, an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) had a specific function according to its use case. These ECUs eventually became connected to each other, but the networks still acted independently of one another. With gateways, it is now possible to achieve coordinated cross-network communication, enabling the handling of increasingly complex, data rich-tasks. Furthermore, in merging the individual ECUs into domain controllers (DCU), providing the ability to handle many demanding tasks at once, the architecture now can evolve even further. For the software, it means that in addition to the computing algorithms such as those used in artificial intelligence (AI), it also affects the operating system with its virtualisation techniques like the use of hypervisors.
Therefore, the evolution of the architecture is now having an impact on important components in processors and flash storage. Regarding flash, the required ever-higher storage capacities can be supported by NAND flash technology. The unique requirements of the industry must also be considered, with the advanced algorithms increasing the need for NAND flash with its ability to provide very high capacity at very low cost in automotive applications.
How UFS is solving on-board storage challenges
UFS has emerged as the first choice for high data throughput, with shorter write and read sequences, in conjunction with high capacity storage. Originally developed for mobile devices, UFS offers next-generation vehicles the benefits derived from its development and optimization in mobile radio technology, a field that is subject to high technical demands, and the processing of large amounts of data. Alongside the benefits of high-level data throughput and storage capacity, UFS provides the opportunity for an industry standard platform. The standardisation consortium JEDEC, continues to drive the development of UFS Technology, with UFS 4.0 expected in 2022 and further versions set to follow.
With flash providing clear benefits in an automotive setting, the question now resides in how much storage the connected car needs, and which applications require the most space?With its large amount of map data, navigation has been the main application creating a large demand for flash memory in recent years. Currently, navigation and all the elements that inform the driver and make up ‘infotainment’ are the main beneficiaries of large storage capacities using up to 256 GB of flash in certain vehicles. With higher resolutions needed for automated driving and 3D mapping data, as well as other information at the driver’s fingertips on the dashboard, this is only set to continue to grow with up to one terabyte (1TB) per car expected by 2025. UFS, with its faster interface, offers a much snappier transport of such large amounts of data, significantly improving the user experience.
Christoph Mutz, Senior Automotive Product Marketing Manager, Western Digital
The technology behind flash storage and its benefits
The most critical features of NAND flash memory in cars are reliability, write endurance and data retention. A wide variety of factors can strongly influence the latter, for example the way in which data is written from the application to the flash, which has a strong impact on its lifetime. This is because small data packages stored at arbitrary addresses place a greater load on the flash than large amounts of information that is saved all at once.
Innovations within UFS storage are allowing flash to be protected from intensive operations. Flash technology can now enable read-intensive and write-intensive applications to run on separate partitions, made possible by ‘smart partitioning’. Partitions configured as a Single Level Cell (SLC) structure are particularly suitable for write-intensive programs. Here, the flash is reduced to a third of the capacity of the Triple Level Cell (TLC) structure, but the number of write cycles is many times higher. Read-intensive programs can then use the partition with the TLC structure, providing the full storage capacity and extending the service life within UFS memory significantly.
With data now imperative to the functioning of connected vehicles, the reliability of data storage is essential to the car’s overall safety. UFS innovations now allow for a detailed recording of the write or read events, making it possible to analyse the read-write behavior of the application and determine if it is at risk of distressing the flash due to unbalanced workloads. It can do this by recording ‘events’, or the individual data throughputs, based on the “UFS Protocol Information Units” (UPIU). After careful analysis of this data, insights into the write/read behavior of the system can be gained and interpreted, protecting the performance of the flash, and significantly extending the reliability and security of the data.
Driving collaboration between OEMs and storage manufacturers
3D NAND technology has primarily established itself in automotive electronics with the ability to create higher flash capacities. With this, the technology can scale and meet the future demand from automotive applications for increasingly large memories. With larger capacities, fewer flash modules are needed. This means they can then be installed in central locations reducing the hardware costs that would have been incurred if they were installed in a distributed manner.
The changes in the electrical-electronic (E/E) architecture of cars in recent years will only accelerate. As mentioned, the formerly numerous Electronic Control Units (ECUs) are networked with many of the vehicle’s parts; and the concentration into ever larger Domain Control Units (DCUs) is in full swing. Future architectures will undoubtedly bring further innovations and with the stronger role of software, this means that large automotive companies will be increasingly looking for suitable processors and flash components. Therefore, closer communication between OEMs and the flash manufacturers is soon to be of paramount importance to the future of the connected car, providing the opportunity to find the optimal use of processors and memories, minimising the failure probabilities and increasing the service life.
In five years, cars will not only provide extreme comfort and entertainment but will also turn into an office and even a classroom, according to DE-CIX International CEO Ivo Ivanov. He calls this development the “fifth screen” entering our lives.
Consider yourself a fleet driver of a big company. You need to complete a delivery on time and get stuck in the traffic jam. In today’s world this may prove to be a difficult situation to resolve. But in a few years’ time, all around the world, cars using the digital infrastructure provided by Internet Exchanges (IXs) will be able to deal with any situation. Your state of the art navigation system will guide you to the shortest route or you will simply deliver all the necessary updates to other fleet cars in your radius so they will be able to help you.
The example above represents only one development out of thousands which smart cars will offer to us in the near future. With an environment fed with thousands of sensors, a “Closed User Group” (CUG) for controlling the data journey, and mini data centers at every other intersection the digital experience cars will offer to us will significantly increase.
DE-CIX International CEO Ivo Ivanov simply defines future smart cars as “a smart digital device on wheels.” With the ongoing developments in technology, including 5G, Ivanov believes that smart cars will turn into the fifth screen in our lives, providing any kind of information and entertainment, thus totally changing our experience on the road.
I had the chance to ask Mr Ivanov about the current and future developments in IX technology and what challenges and opportunities will emerge through it. Ivanov thinks the biggest challenges will be faced in developing the necessary technologies and also plugging every hole against cyber attacks. On the other hand, with super fast real-time connection with minimum latency, the quality of our lives will improve dramatically.
Mr. Ivanov explained how will this happen, by answering the following questions:
What will be the impact of ICT technology in the automotive sector?
IXs will play a role in the automobile industry firstly when it comes to the cloud connectivity of different applications into the car, but even more in serving the in and outbound data of the car in a Closed User Group approach. If, as they all desire nowadays, an automotive company wants to create excellent digital services in the car – aside from autonomous driving, so, for instance excellent entertainment systems – this requires the highest performance possible. Reliable delivery of the applications, high quality audio and video without any outages, is what the companies want to achieve. Therefore, the car has to be very well interconnected with application providers.
This can be Microsoft, for instance. By using an IX, interruptions occurring between the car manufacturer’s network and applications like Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Teams can be minimized almost completely. IXs play a crucial role at this point by providing a direct interconnection to the access network and the application networks to which the car is connected. So, a CEO sitting in the backseat of a car which is fully digitalized and connected can enjoy the best quality of video conferencing. Also, the driver can use the best navigation technology available and other passengers can use information and entertainment systems they wish to use. That’s all about performance and latency. So, IXs deliver reliable, highly secure and efficient technology to automotive companies to access these applications delivered into the car.
From maintenance data to navigation and infotainment: The data journey of the digital car involves many different kinds of data that need to be sent to or received from a range of service providers and suppliers.
Can we say that smart cars are turning into offices?
I believe that today’s smart cars have already partly turned into offices, and this will be even more the case in the future. I am looking at this from a different perspective, and define cars as a smart digital device on wheels. It’s a digital engine on wheels and the so-called fifth screen as some have referred to it. The reason why I call it the “fifth screen” is because it replaces the living room and the office and it is also a huge engine producing data. The information gathered by thousands of sensors are not only displayed in the car, but this data creates a multi-billion-dollar industry including outside of the car. You can think about data relevant to traffic management, commercial industries, healthcare, insurance, finance and so on. A very simple example for the limitless list of stakeholders is municipalities, which are extremely interested in the administration of their cities. They want to know the quality of the streets, what causes damage, and how this damage can be fixed and the quality improved. This is something that the cars today can deliver as a real-time information.
What kind of data interaction will occur between cars in the future?
The car will become a very powerful engine and a marketplace for data – data that is very important for the future of the automotive industry and represents a future of growth. Because alongside to the engine, the nice design, and also the physical parameters of the cars, an automotive company today is at the same time a digital mobility company today. The ambition is to create the best possible experience for the driver and the other passengers in the car. And today, the experience of digital services can’t be great if those services don’t work properly. Except the specialized racing cars and the like, we can’t imagine a normal car today not providing the comfort of digitalization that we already enjoy in the rest of our lives. I’m talking about systems which allow us to focus better on the road and traffic conditions to find the best route out of a traffic jam. Also providing the best entertainment and infotainment systems to passengers. There are already prototypes for the next steps in automotive services and systems which are very impressive. For instance, the windows of the car can be used to provide details of the environment the car is in. Even architecture or history lessons can for example be provided while driving through historical and important areas, and so on. All of this will influence the way a car is used and digitalization will become one of the most important factors for consumers when it comes to purchasing a car. This is something the automotive companies know and they want to gather digital assets to be put inside the car. And they can’t do this if they can’t control the data journey.
The data journey is the data entering and exiting the car, and what is done with it. Think about thousands of sensors producing data. As of today, 70% of the data produced by a car is real-time in-car data, involving the core car systems. Added to this, the remaining 30% is made up of 20% car-to-cloud data, which is related to a lot of real-time applications, 5% car-to-car data in live traffic situations, and 5% car-to-environment, which represents the interaction between the sensors and the traffic systems and so on.
When we look at this 30% of the data, we see that it is, firstly, extremely quality sensitive and also extremely security sensitive. As we all can imagine, this data has to be exchanged in a 100% reliable and secure manner, so the real-time performance of different applications and tools can work as desired.
Would it be possible to provide total privacy for consumers?
This is a job of all of us, all the stakeholders included in this business. It starts with a car manufacturer and also entails application providers, but infrastructure providers also have a part to play in this industry. The concept of the Closed User Group (CUG), as I mentioned in the beginning, perfectly fits into this type of requirement. Why? Because it is a controlled virtual environment, where the owner of the CUG – in this case, the automotive company – can make sure that all the policies needed are implemented to ensure compliance. These can be security, privacy and further other requirements stipulated by the company itself or by regulators and other stakeholders. These policies can be controlled and monitored in this environment and every single participant who is invited to this Closed User Group and exchanges data with the cars – for example, streaming services, data analytics companies and cloud services – are obliged to comply with these policies. So, on the one hand, it becomes extremely manageable in terms of compliance. On the other hand, it is highly secure. Because, in this CUG, the interconnection between the network of the car company and the networks which deliver data to or receive data from the car is direct. There’s no intermediary in between. And the more the exchange of direct data is, the better the control over it is. Also, the risk of manipulation by an anonymous party will be dramatically reduced. Of course, there is no such thing as absolute security, but automotive manufacturers need to get as close as possibel. And this concept is extremely secure, as it is massively reduces the risk of DDoS attacks because of the direct exchange of data. It also allows the tracking of the data flow and mitigation of any possible lags in a very reliable manner.
Multiple layers of security: The secure ecosystem of a DE-CIX Closed User Group is further enhanced by additional security services, ensuring the best protection for the digital car and its users.
Are smart cars ready to prevent any kind of cyber attack?
This is an extremely important question and also an extremely important area of discussion, because we can all imagine what kind of risks can be related to a situation where a criminal can hijack the car, steal the identity of the driver, and even take control over the car. The car can be literally used as a weapon in the hands of terrorists or criminals. To avoid this, secure infrastructure becomes extremely relevant and the infrastructure I’m talking about, the Closed User Group in the automotive industry, is a very important tool to gain control of security-related systems. Because of the direct interconnection and the private and isolated environment, attacks like IP hijacking or DDoS can be isolated and mediated. In fact, criminal intent on performing such an attack generally want to remain anonymous. In a CUG, there’s no anonymous party. So, this will allow the owner of the CUG, in this case the car company, to perfectly control the data buyers and data suppliers. Having said this, because of the closed environment, it is extremely hard for criminals to hijack the car and steal the driver’s identity or take over the control of the car. And of course, next to this, the manufacturers in the automotive industry are extremely sensitive about security and there are more and more measures to be put in place to make sure that even in the very theoretical case where these systems did not perform, they must make sure that they have a Plan B solution in order to stop the car and avoid any accident and damage.
How does the Blackholing technology work?
Blackholing is a very effective tool to prevent any damage caused by the DDoS attacks. The Blackholing logic has been installed in every DE-CIX platform and location. It identifies anomalies in the traffic volume which are not related to the normal parametrics and in this case digitally trashes it into a “blackhole”, while the pipes and the networks stay open for the normal and real traffic and the congestion can be avoided. The DDoS traffic which aims to disrupt the data flow or significantly damage the system is not effective against Blackholing and disappears in a blackhole.
What are the challenges and opportunities of IX technology?
The main challenge first of all, is the entire process of digitalization – which we take as one of the major paths of innovation now and in the years ahead of us. To make sure that the experience of digital services will be available, interconnection is one of the biggest challenges. As we all know, a car is to be driven. In this case, digital services need to be performed even in the rural areas, outside the cities, where the infrastructure is not yet sufficiently rolled-out to enable these services. This is one of the main challenges for different stakeholders involved in this industry. As DE-CIX, we have already created a platform which will allow us to build exchanges close to highways junctions and 5G cell towers, to make sure that localized interconnection between the application networks and the car access networks can take place as locally as possible in a radius of around 80 to maximum 100 kilometres. This infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges in our eyes, and also in the eyes of the car manufacturers, when it comes to digital services.
When we look at the opportunities, they are unlimited. This can create a wave of innovation and a wave of creation of very helpful services to improve the efficiency of the way we drive safely. I think this is one of the main opportunities the entire value chain of the stakeholders have in our hands. Through the digitalization of infrastructure we can offer the safest and the best experience ever.
How do you see the development process in technology and adaptation of 5G?
Let me start with the last element in your question. The reaction is not as fast as probably the desire for innovation and progress. We have to increase the speed of 5G deployment because enabling this technology almost everywhere will allow us to enjoy the Internet of Things (IoT) in a way it should be enjoyed. Because that’s what 5G is all about. The mediation of different data streams from the IoT devices. When you look at the parts and sensors of the cars they are actually IoT devices. And having this technology everywhere will dramatically increase the efficiency of data management in a very intelligent way. 5G is extremely important for our use of digital technology everywhere and not only in our living rooms. EIXDE-CIX has realized the importance of 5G in its edge interconnection triangle. The DE-CIX edge internonnection triangle consists of 5G technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and the last element is localization of the infrastructure on site. This gives us the ability to use devices and applications regardless of where we are.
What is the development process you want to accomplish until 2025?
As DE-CIX, by 2025 ECIXwe desire to be involved with and partner more telecommunications players worldwide. Also, to get involved in the creation of new hubs. We already achieved this for instance in Southern Europe, creating interconnection hubs in Madrid, Marseille, Lisbon and Palermo. Of course, together with our data center partners, cablehave succeeded in supporting the trends in traffic distribution, which are definitely trends about creating new hubs. One focus is regions which have not been served locally in the past years – continents like Africa, South America, remote areas in India, Southeast Asia and rural areas in the US, for example. Our vision is to provide reliable, flexible, affordable solutions not only to big hubs, as we do today in New York, Madrid and İstanbul, but also in rural areas where the so-called edge interconnection needs to be built out and small relevant hubs will start to appear. There is a good reason for this: The closer the applications are to the users, the better the experience. So data centers are needed at the local level where applications and different services, like cloud computing, are hosted for local users, and we would be involved in interconnecting these applications and resources to the Internet access network as locally as possible. This is our ambition for the next 5 years. So in 2025, we want to be present on all continents with our platforms to make sure that different economies will benefit from better infrastructure. And as I love to say, better infrastructure creates a better digital service experience. And this better experience is our key to a better life today. Because if people don’t have access to these services they’re simply disadvantaged – and we want to close this gap.
What will be the main development in smart cars in the coming five years?
I believe digitalization in every part in the car will be the main driver. In 2025, we will experience extremely smart cars which will be supporting our daily lives with comfort and entertainment.
How will a consumer best benefit from the technologies of DE-CIX?
Using applications in the office or from home – applications such as CRM, ERP or simply email and video conferencing, with team members requiring 100% mobility – with the best performance possible as a result of the lowest latency. As we see in our industry, every millisecond counts: We say latency is the new currency! At DE-CIX we have had great success in improving latency to Microsoft 356, for example, which our solution can reduce from 70 milliseconds to under 10 milliseconds. And this leads to an incredible increase in the performance of those systems for the people in offices, regardless of where they are. And the company can save resources that would otherwise have been used for troubleshooting and maintenance. Another example is from the gaming industry. We all know that gaming companies are sensitive about latency, especially when it comes to online real-time gaming. For gaming companies, on the one hand, and on the other hand for the Internet access networks, connecting to DE-CIX means that we can make sure the gaming application is delivered along the fastest and the most efficient path possible. So the player using a smart device at home or underway, even in the car, can experience great gaming. The traffic exchange between the gaming company no matter whether it’s on the gaming console or in cloud, and the Internet service operator – which brings the data the last mile to the users – enables this experience.
Do you have a message for the tech world?
We are entering a new era in digitalization everywhere and our ambition is to support this with our services, and we have a wish that goes out to all the different stakeholders involved in digital infrastructure. We invite all of our partners around the globe, data centers and network operators to collaborate, in order to bring the best Internet infrastructure to everyone, everywhere.
Industries worldwide are entering into a new era of digitalization, everywhere, for everything, making performance, resilience, and security in network connections business-critical. An increasing number of enterprises from segments like healthcare, finance, retail, logistics, and automotive have been discovering the benefits of connecting with their digital value chain via an Internet Exchange, reports Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX International.
In the digital world, performance, resilience, and security in network connections are business-critical. Enterprises need the fastest reaction times and the highest resilience, which together improve the performance and the reliability of applications and services. Furthermore, in the increasingly complex world of digital business – where companies exchange data with one another for the provision of digital services and applications across national borders and regulatory regions, in a platform economy – it is crucial to reduce the complexity of the relationships and ensure that partners comply with policy and legal requirements. Finally, the highest level of security on the data transmission and the network is indispensable. To guarantee great performance and the highest level of security possible, enterprises from all verticals require that their network is directly and redundantly connected to the required application and content networks. Doing this via a highly secure, high-performance Internet Exchange (IX) means that the demand for resilience, security, and fast reaction times can be fulfilled in a simplified manner and – backed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – guaranteed.
While Internet Exchanges have traditionally been seen as locations where telecommunications companies (carriers), Internet service providers, content networks, and content delivery networks interconnect to exchange data, we are now seeing an increasing number of participants joining from other industry segments, like healthcare, finance, retail, logistics, and of course, automotive. As an early adopter, the automotive industry has already started reaping the benefits of interconnection over IXs. This is because the digital car is a prime example of a digital product – one where the manufacturers simply cannot afford to cut corners on the performance, resilience, or security of their networks. The efficacy and the privacy of their connections to other networks to exchange data are paramount to the provisioning of the many services and features that make the digital car what it is, and any lapses will impact strongly and immediately on the reputation of the car brand.
Joining the platform economy
At the same time, industries worldwide are entering into a new era of digitalization; everywhere, for everything, and for everyone. This requires rethinking and restructuring business models. Digital business models based on the platform economy are now offering distinct competitive advantages for globally acting enterprises, which take them beyond the capabilities of traditional industrial setups. New players are now presenting a clear competitive challenge – for example, in the area of autonomous driving and car applications – to the traditional automotive sector. Therefore, car manufacturers are needing to shore up their space in the platform economy and interconnect with their suppliers, service providers, and customers in new and optimized ways in order to control the data journey of their cars.
By choosing an IX platform that already has an established and vibrant ecosystem of diverse kinds of networks, a car manufacturer can position itself right on the spot, where the digital economy is already playing out and where the future is being molded. The chances are high that the networks the car maker needs to interconnect with are already participating in these ecosystems. An IX enables direct interconnection between these parties, using the very efficient principle of one-to-many or many-to-many, and aggregating the traffic instead of using multiple bilaterals. Beyond this, if the automotive manufacturer creates its own closed and secure private ecosystem within the existing IX environment, the geographical distance to the other networks – and thus the reaction time (latency) – is minimized, resilience is ensured, and the car maker is rewarded with a substantial boost in the security of its networks, and, therefore, of its data. This can be further enhanced by additional security solutions provided by the Internet Exchange operator. The result is that the automotive manufacturer can have the best of all worlds when it comes to connectivity – high- performance, reliable, and secure interconnection to enhance and protect their digital products and to satisfy and protect their customers. Creating interconnection ecosystems for industries – the digital car as a model The digital car is a digital ecosystem entailing a huge variety of types of data. This includes data relating to physical safety and the physical conditions on the road, data for improving traffic management, data on the status and maintenance of the car, data on the provisioning of infotainment and entertainment and other services according to personalized preferences, and the list goes on.
We see three overriding challenges that car makers are confronted with in dealing with the exchange of these many different types of data with many different partners and service providers.
Firstly, there is the provision of services and features smoothly and with fast reaction times (this is dependent on the performance and reliability of the connectivity to other networks). Secondly, there is the fulfillment of compliance requirements for multiple regions around the globe where the car may be sold or driven (leading to high levels of legal and regulatory complexity, increasing exponentially with the number of networks and service providers involved). Finally, there is the security of the network in order to ensure that neither the identity of the driver nor that of the car itself can be abused and that the car is protected from hijacking or any form of unauthorized manipulation.
Previously, the approach for automotive manufacturers was a best-effort solution involving Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and IP transit (upstream), with no end-to-end control of the traffic flows between the car and the networks wanting to deliver data to or receive data from the car. This solution creates a range of challenges for the networks: The more intermediates between two networks, the higher the latency, the greater the risk of performance and security issues, and the more complex compliance becomes – because if you do not control the data value chain, you cannot control any of this.
But at the same time, there’s also no need to go throwing the baby out with the bath water or reinventing the wheel: Existing MPLS and IP transit solutions can be enriched and complemented with interconnection services via an Internet Exchange, offering additional redundancy along with capitalizing on the ecosystem around the IX to ensure the optimization of performance and resilience, as well as increasing security.
With the central challenges – performance/reliability, complexity/compliance, and security – in mind, it is clear that choosing the best interconnection solution is crucial to the long-term market positioning of the car manufacturer.
Ivo A. Ivanov – DE-CIX International CEO’su
How connectivity issues can impact brand reputation
Let’s look firstly at performance and reliability. Whether a chauffeured businessperson is attending video conferences on the road, a salesperson needs to be well connected to business applications when underway on business; whether a harried car owner is further delayed by the slow reaction of their car door to their mobile phone key, or the children in the back seat want to stream games or videos on a long drive, even – in the not-too-distant future – that the car itself becomes the complete fifth screen; all of these scenarios (and the many more digital services that automotive manufacturers are dreaming up for the comfort and delight of their customers and passengers) require a very strong, reliable, and high-performance connectivity infrastructure behind them. If the connectivity performance is poor and digital services cannot be consumed as expected, the responsibility for such failings will land squarely on the shoulders of the car maker, with the accusation that their digital products are not properly connected.
Interconnecting with partners via an Internet Exchange enables aggregation in an improved latency to the location of the car, and therefore with improved stability and reaction times. Because at an IX, automotive networks are enabled to meet in the most direct and shortest way with all the data suppliers and buyers that are currently important to them – as well as those that in the future are likely to become important. With a direct interconnect, coupled with a closed user group (CUG) specifically designed for enterprise interconnection, the connection on the network side can be ideally optimized, reducing latency to the other provider networks and data centers involved and significantly improving the performance of digital services and applications within the digital car.
The automotive manufacturer as custodian of personal privacy
Secondly, the topic of compliance, in particular with – but not limited to – data protection, has become a serious headache for many a car maker. There is just so much sensitive data in a digital car. The sensor system in the closed environment of the digital car has the capacity to ascertain information about the driver’s state of health, emotional state, concentration capacity, behavior behind the wheel, even the driver’s state of inebriation – in a nutshell, the fundamental character and physical condition of this person. But beyond this, with the aid of artificial intelligence, the car’s sensors can pick up other insights into the behavior of not only the driver but also passengers: the location of the vehicle, destinations of travel and any stopovers, the identity of passengers, the identity of communication partners, and so on. This is highly sensitive information, which concerns the core of our fundamental rights. Thus, the digital car – and, as a result, the car maker – becomes the custodian of personal privacy.
Alongside this is the need to protect the intellectual property of the car manufacturer in the sharing of data with partners along the data value chain. As a result, clear contractual relationships and agreements between business partners are a necessary, but increasingly complex, undertaking. Controlling compliance through connecting individually to each partner network and forging individual bilateral relationships – as has been done in the past in the automotive industry – is not a future-oriented approach for the digital car. Such a solution does not scale well to larger ecosystems involving a greater number of players wishing to interconnect intelligently. Bearing in mind the hundreds – potentially thousands – of organizations around the world delivering data to and/or receiving data generated by the digital car, the result of this approach is literally thousands of bilateral interconnections and relationships – something that nobody can efficiently manage.
Overcoming the complexity of global compliance needs
There’s another way to deal with this challenge: If an Internet Exchange operator provides the automotive manufacturer with a closed, secure, and private interconnection environment in the form of a closed user group (CUG) in which policies for compliance requirements are enabled, then fulfillment of these policies can function as a prerequisite for all the participants of the group, and this can be efficiently controlled. This can even be undertaken per market, per regulatory region, even at a federal or state level.
Multiple adjacent CUGs can be owned and operated by the car maker to take care of conflicting regulations while always maintaining its own company policies. For example, a manufacturer could set up three separate CUGs in the digital hub Frankfurt (capitalizing on the proximity of the dense ecosystem of networks there), with one corresponding to EU law, one to UK law, and a third according to the compliance requirements in the USA. Equally, a set of adjacent CUGs could be set up on an IX platform in any of the world’s strong digital hubs – like New York to serve the North American regulatory environment, Madrid to serve Southern Europe, and Mumbai to serve the Indian subcontinent. By locating the CUG within the region it serves, getting closer to the ground where the car is on the road, performance and reliability can clearly also be optimized. While the topic of sensitive data paints a particularly vivid picture of the compliance issue, compliance is not only about data protection. There are countries with different regulatory requirements for cloud concentration risk mediation plans, others with different security requirements as to data transmission, data reception, and data sharing. There are industry-specific regulations for individual sectors, such as the automotive and finance industries. All this could then be implemented according to the needs of the enterprise that owns the CUG.
Mitigating the risk of malicious third parties lurking under the cover of anonymity The issue of security is even more critical. One of the most highly charged threat scenarios for the digital car is the potential theft of the identity of the driver (that a crime could be committed in the guise of an innocent car owner) or of the car itself as an IoT device (that the car could be hijacked, manipulated technically, or in the worst case even weaponized). What can be done to mitigate this risk? The approach of the closed environment offered by a CUG, being very direct and close to the action, means that security can be substantially improved. This is possible, firstly, because of the direct interconnection of the networks. The fewer intermediary transporters there are between the automotive network and the network of the legitimate data supplier/recipient, the fewer possibilities there are for anonymous third parties to lurk in the shadows. The reason for this is anchored in the logic of direct interconnection, also known as “peering”. By peering at an IX – and especially within a closed and private environment on the IX platform – it is possible to know exactly which network is sending traffic and which is receiving it, therefore disallowing anonymity among the networks or any lack of transparency as to the traffic source and destination.
In contrast, this is not possible with IP transit, the traditional approach to automotive connectivity. With IP transit, the car manufacturer’s only option is to place its traffic into the hands of a transit provider, who, in turn, announces the packet requests back to the global Internet – to a variety of recipients and senders that the car maker does not and cannot know. The risk entailed in this anonymity is that criminals can hide behind it.
Connecting partners – the digital car of the future is a network on wheels If, instead, data is sent to an automotive manufacturer network via a secure closed user group on an IX platform, then the manufacturer knows exactly which network has sent it. This network is known, the connection having been checked using BGP and Layer 2 validation instruments, meaning that the risk of hijack or a DDoS attack originating from this network is much lower – because this network cannot hide or mask its identity.
On top of this, if the Internet Exchange operator is able to provide additional security mechanisms to reduce the danger of route hijacks, to prevent IP hijacking, and to protect networks from DDoS attacks, then the digital car and its ecosystem are well protected against the most significant risks of the Wild West of the open Internet. In this way, the already secure filtering logic of a closed peering user group is further enhanced through additional security tools specifically developed to protect networks.
As we have seen, many of the challenges faced by car manufacturers in implementing connectivity for the digital car can be solved using the logic of secure interconnection within a vibrant digital ecosystem, via an Internet Exchange like DE-CIX – home to the largest neutral ecosystems in the world. Directly interconnecting with partners, using the very efficient principle of one-to-many or many-to-many and controlling for compliance, we see one clean environment – a secure, private, and simplified platform – where the automotive network can interconnect with all the participants in the data value chain. Locating this exclusive, closed environment within a secure, resilient, neutral, and high-performance Internet Exchange means that the participants can interact in a single protected and highly efficient environment. In this way, automotive manufacturers can prepare for the bright future of the digital car, the network on wheels. This same logic – of interconnection with partners for a smooth and safe data journey – applies just as well to other transport sectors, like airlines and logistics suppliers. But it also applies to all industries entering the platform economy – banks, e-health system operators, the hospitality sector, e-manufacturing with its global supply chains, and many more in future. Closed, secure, and private interconnection environments offer everyone the chance to grow and develop their digital business models with security and resilience baked in.
Haliç, in Europe, is known as the golden horn . This name comes from the Greek myths.
Zeus one of the many gods in Olympus falls in love with the king of Agros’es daughter İo . Hera the wife of Zeus becomes furious and turns İo into a cow and she puts a fly into her head . And that’s how the legend starts. Plus, this is the same legend that created Bosporus. When İo tries to run from the fly she breaks the ground and then the ground fills with water . And like that Halic takes the name Bosporus (meaning the cow passage). İo finally comes to Halic and stays there. A baby girl is born on a hill. She is called Keros short for Keroessa which means ” horn”. This name is given to the place we now know as Halic. Because the land is seen as sacred people also started calling it ”the golden horn”.
Halic was always known as the Golden Horn in the middle ages. Some historians think that the reason for Halic being really rich is because there was a lot of trade so that’s why its called the Golden Horn. Like how the Nil gives life to Mesopotamia Halic gives life to Istanbul. To be in control of a place like Halic is like to be in control of the world’s whole trade system.
Here you can see our team interviewing the leader of Galata Rowing Club at the Golden Horn coast.
What did we do?
In the year of 1911 when industries started to develop in Turkey some machines started to appear in the shores of Halic mostly using electric and cole to work these constructs harmed the air . After that more and more factories and workplaces started to appear thus making Halic dirty.
İn the other hand there are a lot of domestic waste centers that connect to Halic. People who live in Halic get disturbed by the smell of all the waste.
Every year 263.000 m3 of dirt fills Halic. Basically, Halic got full of dirt. The place that was clean suddenly turned into a cesspool.
Ecological Lessons for a Fair City
The first known intervention to this situation was in 1940. We used cleaning boats to clean the Halic mud. The collected mud gets transported to the Marmara Sea. By 1994, the Golden Horn had become a political problem awaiting a critical solution.
Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in 1994 the environmental management company (ISTAC) with more than 40 researchers started a project called the golden horn. We found the sources that has been polluting the golden horn by tacking 20 samples of the water and from the mud. We then proceeded to find ways to get rid of the pollution. We found ways to get rid of the mud or evaluate it. For the first time in turkey they made a mud dam. The solids in the mud stays in the dam while the mud goes in and returns as clean water to the golden horn. The mud that is stored in the dam area today has become one of Turkey’s largest entertainment centers (Istanbul Vialand theme park). Everyday 11million cubic meters of clean and fresh water from Bosphorus enters the golden horn. As a result of the prevention of waste water, it was observed that algae formed at the place where the streams connect to the golden horn. When a contaminated water environment is cleaned the formation of algae is a sign that life has started. Now there are 48 kinds of fish that live in the gulf of golden horn. It has become one of the wetlands where migratory birds lodge and you can even do watersports. This project in the golden horn was deemed worthy of first prize in the metropolis awards given by the world metropolitan municipality union in 2002, considering their efforts to revitalize the historical environment on the shores of the golden horn.
Being a metropolitan city after the 21. Century
For the past 15 years Golden Horn has been expanding. In order to preserve the beauties of our Istanbul has two seas, which passes through the Bosphorus and has the Golden Horn, it cleans the sea, undersea and beaches. Where 16million people live and where about 50milllion tourists come and go. Knows how important the water is. They scan 515 meters of ground by 83 different points. ISTAC finds the waste and sends it to recycling companies. And ISTAC ensures that this method is sustainable. 5 million square meters of sea surface is cleaned with sea surface cleaning boats (DYT), which are completely developed with domestic production. Water pollution problems are effective first at the local level, then at the regional level and then at the global level. Basically, water is our past and our future. TAKE CARE OF WATER.
Heritage of Humanity
The heritage of humanity actually lays in the trash. The reason for that is that plastic can stay in nature for hundreds of years, İt’s one of the biggest reasons for environmental pollution. Every year the human population leaves about 300 million tons of plastic in nature. It is very important that these plastics get recycled. This is a picture I took in the deep forest. Instead of a tree do you think it better for a car to leave its mark in the forest?
The Danger Facing Us
The rising heat, the contagious diseases, trees getting cut, ice melting and the destruction that comes with. Here is a quick summary of what’s going to happen to us and this is going to happen faster than we think. In the history of the earth if we think about more than half of the carbon that was released in the last 30 years this would happen to us in one generation. And to prevent this we have one generation.
At the beginning of the 15th century, the whole world was known as Asia, Europe, the explored shores of Africa and India. For the Europeans who never left their soil and satisfied their every need from China, there was nothing across the Atlantic. Whoever wanted to sail towards that direction were believed to enter boiling waters or swallowed by the ocean. For the cartographers of the era, the best thing to do is to draw the earth with imagination, labelling the other side of the ocean as “unreachable” and fill that area on the map with imaginary islands.
Christians appeared as successful traders and farmers who were obsessed with wars and feasts. The enjoyed living the life at it is and never looked for an adventure. As long as there were enough wars and food for them, exploring the rest of the world and finding out how it looked and it hid was pointless. During the 1,500 years exploited by ignorance and harsh authority of the church, Crusaders represented a huge obstacle in the way of scientific developments of Europe. In the year 391, they encountered the famous library which was built by Alexander The Great and contained thousands of papyrus gathered from the four corners of the world. They burned it to the ground along with the city, thus destroying knowledge of thousands of years. One of the masterpieces among the thousands which could help humanity to open the doors of a golden age was Ptolemy’s world map, belonging to 1st and 2nd ages.
Fleet of Cheng Ho.
Again, in the 15h century, China has succeeded in collapsing the Turkish states by inside jobs and managed to get rid of them at last. With a population exceeding 100 million and owning an enormous naval power, China quickly became the strongest trading country in the known world. By the order of the then emperor, a sailor going by the name Cheng Ho mustered a 37.000 strong fleet consisting of 317 ships and started to explore the world. Cheng Ho, managed to explore the whole shores of China, along with the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, thus expanding China’s trade routes even more. Ho even had the chance to go further and reach Europe by going around Africa.
The admiral ship of Cheng Ho’s fleet was 135 metres long. Santa Maria, which carried Christof Colombus to the shores of San Salvador in 1492, was only 27 metres long. By 1405, China controlled almost all of the known routes and didn’t feel the desire to explore the rest of the world, believing they had all they already wanted. Thus, the Chinese stayed in their lands too. On the other hand, by the best struck of luck, a copy of Ptolemy’s book, “Geography” was found and immediately translated into Latin.
Christians, who burned the whole knowledge of the world in 391, found out that it is round in the year 1406…
World map of Ptolemy.
The Smell of Spice Disrupted the Sleep of Europeans
The deliberately corrupted holy book of the Crusaders placed Jerusalem at the centre of the world. That is why, between the years 1095 and 1271, in total 12 Crusades took place. In the era of the Crusades, Christians finally manage to broke free of the authority of the church and realized the riches the world has to offer. Yet, trading was still a huge challenge.
Europeans adored eating meat. The meat was enjoyed the most with wine and spices. The only source of the spice of Europe in the middle ages was Egypt and other Muslim countries. The spice trade, on the other hand, was in the hands of two Italian cities, Venetia and Genova. But the price they asked for spice was so high, in some parts of Europe the flavouring was even used as a form of money. One who couldn’t afford those prices had to wait the caravans coming from the Silk and Spice Roads, through İstanbul (Constantinople).
Venetia by Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis.
There must have been a way to reach spice and other goods more easily! This way was sitting on a route travelling around the known shores of Africa and reaching Europe. But, how was it to be explored?
Pessimism is one thing. But for an ultimate change of history, only one person with a different perspective was enough. This person was the Portuguese King Henry (who is also known in history as sailor Henry). Henry was interested in mathematics and astronomy, was not filling the voids in reality by completing the missing information in the Bible but prying on them with curiosity. According to him, a solution must be reached step by step, with utter care. Henry was going to use this approach to go beyond the known shores of Africa and explore the mysteries waiting there.
King Henry, capturing Ceuta.
Europe Wakes Up
In the middle ages, Christianity aimed to declare the whole (known) world as Christian. Therefore, kings leading the Crusader armies had to wear elegant clothes and looked charismatic. Henry, who started the invasion of Africa at the age of 21 by capturing the modern-day Moroccan city Ceuta sitting across Gibraltar, looked like a truly Christian king with his colourful clothes made of the highest quality of silk.
The last emperor of Byzantine, Constantine too, was wearing elegant clothes when he fell to the swords of Janissaries, at the walls of Constantinople. It was not until the next day, he was recognized among the pile of the dead by his fancy eagle sewn royal purple shoes…
After capturing Ceuta, Henry’s eyes were dazzled with the riches of the East. The city was full of marvellous riches of the world. Among the trophies, there were gold, silver, Indian silk, sacs full of cinnamon, pepper, gillyflower and ginger. After the fall of the city, Muslims immediately ceased trade with Ceuta. But for Henry, who was trying to find the route to the source of all these riches, reaching the Red Sea was a must. This route was going down along the unexplored shores of Africa and no one knew where it led to. The area which was called “The Green Sea of Darkness” by Muslims, was the place where the Christians believed to have boiling waters.
Caravel.
The Key of Breakthrough: The Caravel
While Henry was busy with his thoughts, two young sailors names John Gonçalves and Tristan Vaz, asked for a job. Henry sent the two adventurers to explore the shores of Africa. Gonçalves and Vaz, along with their friend Bartholomew Perestrelo, passed Canarian Islands and found the island of Porto Santo. But due to the pregnant rabbit Perestrelo brought along with him, the island came under the control of not humans but rabbits.
Leaving the island to the rabbits for good, Gonçalves and Vaz started a new journey under the order of Henry. This time, they explored the Madeira Islands. After these successes, Henry called the most famous geographer of the time, Master Jaime to his court. The king wanted a ship, which would explore the unknown shores in a few voyages. With taking advantage of the works of Jaime, Henry designed the ship which would be a breakthrough in the history of exploration: Caravel. Only 21 metres long, Caravel carried just 21 crew. To have good manoeuvrability and travel long distances, it had three triangular sails.
In the years between 1421-33, Caravel led the Portuguese sailors to reach the tipping point called Cape Bojador, to the west of Sahara Desert but could not go further. When the storms struck the sailors at that point, beliefs of encountering demons, yellow hurricanes and boiling waters were pushing the caravels back. But Henry had another virtue: Patience. He encouraged his sailors to go further. In 1434, the most expected thing happened and a young sailor by the name of Gil Eanes managed to turn around Cape Bojador. On the opposite of what was expected, none of the ships caught fire or sunk to the bottom of the ocean amid boiling waters. In the following years, Eanes managed to go 240 kilometres further. On the other hand, the Portuguese public was observing these futile attempts to explore Africa pointless while Henry was not spending any effort in bringing spices and silk to the country.
Henry helped his sailors to overcome their fears.
A New Invention: Slave Trade
In 1441, the brother of John Gonçalves, Antam was ordered by Henry to bring “whatever he finds” from Africa. So he came back with gold powder, ox skin, oyster eggs and 10 Africans. Henry, becoming the first known European to taste oyster eggs, said it was delicious. But, the main interest of the people was not the oyster eggs but the African slaves. To diminish the gap in the Portuguese working force, they started to force these half-naked “inferior” people, whose tongue was unknown to work.
Routes taken by Portuguese sailors.
In the other voyage came back 165 slaves, followed by 235 in the following one. After years of struggle for explorations, Portuguese sailors didn’t even manage to reach the tip of the continent but found the most interesting thing the looked for Slaves. In a short time, slaves were in such high demand, that a new form of trading emerged. Ships bound to Africa started to return with not goods but full of African women, children and men. The obsession of comfort and greed would soon turn slavery a routine of life in Europe.
In 1453, the course of history has changed dramatically. 23-year-old Sultan Mehmet captured Constantinople and not only changed the trade routes leading to Europe but the future of the world. It took only 54 days for the young Sultan to breach the strongest walls of the known world and capture the city. Europe was in total shock. Fatih closed the gates of the Silk and Spice roads and ended the routes lasted for centuries. Now, it was inevitable for the Europeans to explore the routes leading to India.
Old trading routes.
The Beginning of the Sad Demise of The Red Skins
Following the 7 years of the fall of the Constantinople, Henry added 3,218 kilometres to the world map with his never-ending intelligence, courage and patience. The desire explorations fueled by him emerged again after it was unavoidable to find a way to end the bottleneck in trade routes. Bartholomew Diaz, who was assigned by King Alfonso, the successor of Henry, was to reach to the tip of Africa. But the man to follow him, Christof Colombus, let alone India was to achieve the most feared voyage and cross the Atlantic, and to reach Cuba.
Santa Maria.
Confused, Colobus called the native people “Indians” because he thought he was in India. From the first moment, the luck of these people took a wrong turn. In the years to come, Red Skins were to be butchered by the greed of Europeans, lost all of their treasures and lands.
Hail Greed!
With the start of the 16th century, Silk and Spice Roads start to lose their fame even more, while unlimited riches poured to Europe from the Americas. It was this moment, that Europeans finally started to move out of their continent and migrated to the new colonies established in the new world. They didn’t forget to take the African slaves among with them. After Fatih sealed the doors of the old world, the greed of the old continent unleashed itself in the new world as invasions, sackings and never-ending lust for treasures.
After the American Independence War, the US states divided into two as industrial and farming cultures. In the south, 4 out of the 9 million population were black slaves. Black people finally gained their freedom after the devastating war between the Rebels and the Yankees. Or did they? On the opposite, their suffering continued for decades as thew were constantly insulted and forced to work in the years of capitalisms awakening.
Today, in many African countries children start to work at the age of 4. Leading companies of the world employ thousands of children workers. Foxconn, which acts as the assembly line of worlds most valuable company Apple, is a good example. Today, we only serve to consumption where humanity has almost lost all of its ambition to explore new things like Henry did centuries ago.
The routes of Colombus.
This article was originally published on DijitalX TR by Müfit Yılmaz Gökmen.
What is the memory limit for the human brain? Is there a physical limit to the information we can hold inside our heads?
Professor of Psychology Paul Reber from Northwestern University provides the answer: Even though there should be a physical limit to the number of memories we can have, the overall capacity of the brain is quite high. It’s so large that you really don’t need to worry about reaching the storage limit one day.
The human brain consists of almost one billion neurons. Each of the neurons connects to around other 1.000 neurons, resulting in more than 1 trillion connections. If every neuron was responsible for only one memory than storage usage would become a problem. Physically, you may have a few Gigabyte’s of space like an iPod or a USB flash drive. But the neurons converge and simultaneously help to create many memories. Gathering of neurons also increases the memory storage capacity significantly as it reaches almost 2,5 petabyte (2,5 million gigabytes). As a comparison, if you consider your brain as a digital recording device of a TV, it could hold up to 3 millions of hours of a TV show. To store this amount of TV show, the television had to be turned on for 300 years.
It is still not so easy to accurately calculate the eventual storage capacity for memories. The first obstacle in the way is not knowing how to measure the scale of memory. Second, some memories contain more detail than others and use more space. Therefore the brain pushes aside the insignificant ones and opens up more space for the important ones. Additionally, our brain doesn’t even bother to remember some memories in the first place.
This mechanism helps our brain to keep pace with the new experiences. So, here comes the question: If human life span expands significantly one day, will our brains able to hold centuries of memories?
For Reber, it is not possible to come up with an answer to this question now as he says, “Ask me a 100 years later.”
This article originally published on DijitalX TR page by Ezgi Atayay.
The human population is increasing without losing haste even during the times of the coronavirus pandemic. As the land for farming is shrinking and the population needed to feed is rising, humanity must provide an innovative solution to its critical problem. Fertilizer industry appears to be the key as it will be the main ingredient used to increase the production of existing farming lands.
The fertilizer industry saw a growth of %1,3. in 2017-18 and then experienced a drop in 2018-19 period as global supplies went down to 190 million tons. This slight decline is explained by factors as low international prices for crops; unfavourable weather in important agricultural countries like the US and Australia; currency depreciation in fertilizer importing countries including Turkey and Pakistan; the impact of political tensions on global trade and more efficient use of fertilizers, especially in developed countries.
According to the IFA Executive Summary Fertilizer Outlook 2019-2023 report, demand forecast for years following 2020/21 is %1,2. By the end of 2023, the demand is expected to reach 204 million tons.
The undernourished population reached 925 million in 2010 and people suffering from health problems due to malnutrition will continue to rise if innovative solutions won’t be supported globally to increase food output. To provide food security biotechnological developments and better crop management must be put in place to boost food production (Stewart&Roberts, 2011). In the years to come the importance of inorganic fertilizer will become more significant as the farming lands in South Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America will be forced to increase their output.
Not only the developing world is concerned about the rising global population. Among the vast plans to counter global warming by focusing on renewable energy and meeting the increasing energy demand, another major issue for the European Union (EU) is amplify crop production. In 2018, the European fertilizer industry set a vision for 2030, announcing that “the industry will be at the crossroads between nutrition and energy.” To further distance itself from the carbon-based practices, the EU is aiming to create a green industrial base which would provide a continuous agricultural production, according to Jacob Hansen, Director General of Fertilisers Europe.
Unsplash.
Make Way for Precision Farming
The trend seen in the transformation of farms in Europe can be observed in Belgium. According to the government statistics bureau, Statbel, the number of farms in Belgium decreased %70 in the last 40 years. On the other hand, the land used for farming and agricultural operations increased three times.
While an average farm in Flanders occupied 8,4 hectares of land in 1980 on average, it reached 26,7 hectares in 2019. In Vallonia, these numbers went from 20,7 hectares to 57,6 hectares during the same period. As the farms got smaller, they became mainly family businesses as the employment rate decreased due to the new technologies introduced over the years. Increased farmland bolstered the number of cattle and therefore dairy product and meat production.
The United Nations (UN) expects the world population to reach 9,2 billion in 2050. While it will take decades to set proper colonies on the Moon and Mars and start transferring some of the world’s population to these new worlds, we will need fertilizer more than ever. Today, commercial fertilizer is responsible for 40 to 60 percent of global food production. Developing countries are changing their diets towards more meat while cereal consumption is increasing. New food solutions like artificial meat, offshore algae and seafood farms are offering options to consumers in developed countries who are distancing themselves from traditional food. Developing countries meanwhile are trying to close the gap between developed countries in crop production. This inevitably requires these countries to seek biotechnology advances, better food management and improved infrastructures.
Smart fertilizer and precision farming will be the emerging technologies in the 2020s as the world will seek a precise solution to solve the food demand problem. With slow-release fertilizers technology, the distribution of ammonia, urea and other necessary substances to generate nitrogen will become more efficient. Next step will aim at decreasing the number of greenhouse gases produced during fertilizers. This issue has been greatly eliminated with the environment-friendly production facilities.
Eventual step for the coming years will be integrating the new biotechnologies with smart farming, which represent the sustainable production of agricultural products with the help of AI. Increased efficiency in fertilizer production is an essential step towards a secure food industry. With the help of new technologies and continuous investment in research and development, our world will not trouble feeding itself in the coming decades.
References:
Stewart, W.M. & Roberts, T.L.. (2012). Food Security and the Role of Fertilizer in Supporting it. Procedia Engineering. 46. 76–82. 10.1016/j.proeng.2012.09.448.
Last week, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their Covid-19 vaccine proves to be %90 efficient in clinical tests, which immediately boosted the confidence against the global fight against Covid-19. After the announcement, even the aviation industry gained some hope for the coming months as the bookings jumped in the following days. Further, shares of Air France-KLM jumped %27 after the announcement of Pfizer.
More good news followed with the beginning of this week when biotech company Moderna announced yet even a higher efficiency rate for its Covid-19 vaccine, at %94,5. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than three dozens of vaccines currently being developed against the novel coronavirus. Vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna are currently at phase 3 of the clinical test, the last step before the official confirmation. According to Pfizer, the vaccine has been tested on 43.500 people so far, and Moderna’ on 30.000.
After a hellish 2020, where more than a million people died and tens of millions forced to live under strict rules to prevent more deaths, 2021 surely looks more promising. But there comes a crucial question: Who will get his hands on the Covid-19 vaccines?
Billions of Doses for Developed Countries
Months before the pivotal announcement of Pfizer, many developed countries and the European Union (EU) acted fast to be the first to get their hands on the Covid-19 vaccines. European Commission continues negotiations with several biotech and pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca of Britain and Sanofi of France. After the critical developments of the last week, now most of the eyes turned towards Pfizer.
Pfizer and BioNTech are planning to produce 1,3 billion doses of their vaccine until the end of 2021. The treatment costs 40 dollars and requires two injections per person. Many rich countries have already requested millions of doses of the vaccine, even though it has not been officially accepted as a treatment. It is likely that sooner or later some vaccines will be pushed into mass production under “the urgent need of treatment” against coronavirus. So, rich countries will have acquired billions of these vaccines. What will the poor countries do?
Trudie Lang, director of the Global Health Network at Oxford University thinks that an ethical dilemma may arise in the coming months. Because “all the world needs the two doses of treatment produced by Pfizer.”
WHO has realized the demand problem months ago and came up with the establishment of Covax, an initiative which will be responsible for assuring fair distribution among countries. Covax is made up of governments, scientific organizations, private companies and public organizations. Pfizer is not among Covax but already expressed its intention to supply the required amounts the world needs.
Is Fair Distribution Possible?
According to Rachel Silverman, who is in charge od Center for Global Development, most of the doses of the Covid-19 vaccines won’t end up in the hands of poor countries. As she told AFP, more than 1,1 billion doses of the promising vaccines have already been bought by rich countries. She thinks that through certain members of Covax, including Great Britain and Japan, some of the vaccine supplies may be sent to poorer countries, regarding the agreements made by these countries.
On the other hand, the United States, which is not a member of Covax, secured more than 600 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines. It is not known if the policy of using the vaccines will change with the Biden government.
“We must prevent rich countries from getting all the vaccines”, says Benjamin Schreiber, who is coordinating the funds of United Nations (UN) for children in Unicef. He thinks that the distribution must be set according to the epidemiological status of countries if ethics will stand during this process.
How Many Will Die If Ethics Won’t Rule?
Northeastern University in the US has made simulations regarding a fair or unfair distribution. In their research, two scenarios were put forward. First, 50 rich countries grab 2 billion doses of the vaccines. In the second, the vaccines are distributed to the countries regarding their population, not their richness.
In the first scenario, the global death rate is decreased by only %33. In second, however, it is possible to lower the death rate by %61.
Comes The Issue of Trust
The challenge of distribution is not the only problem laying between the life-saving vaccine (hopefully) and the poor countries. One other major issue will be logistics.
Developed with the state of art technology, Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is highly sensitive: It needs to be stored in -70 Celcius. Unfortunately, most of the refrigerators in hospitals globally can store up to -20 degrees. Rachel Silverman puts down another important note: Pfizer and certain governments are preparing a protocol regarding the vaccine for months. But it doesn’t include low or middle-income countries…
“It is hard but not impossible,” she says when talking about distributing the vaccine to the globe. But, important investments must take place to secure the successful logistics of the vaccines.
Eventually, several Covid-19 vaccines may appear in the pharmaceuticals industry in the coming months. Yet again, another issue will arise according to WHO: The trust of the people towards the vaccine.
Belgium government, for instance, declared that it will distribute the vaccine for free and it won’t be mandatory. Nevertheless, Belgium hopes to vaccinate more than 8 million of its citizens (%70 of the total population).
Not surprisingly, social media will be showered with countless conspiracy theories and misinformed faked news. It will be critical to distribute accurate information locally and internationally, the WHO says. So, it won’t only be a matter of distributing vaccines but also the facts come with it.
Bacteria or microbes are living organisms that consists of only one cell. They can live in various environments. These environments include oceans, glacials, oil and some other different places and materials. There are several interactions between bacteria and humans, and the number of these interactions is increasing day by day thanks to advancing technology.
Bacteria can harm people, or they can create an interaction that named as mutualism. Mutualism involves two sides which benefit from this interaction. Bacteria can create not only mutualistic interactions but also some other different interactions.
Cell Structure of a Bacteria:
As I stated at the beginning, bacteria is a living organism that consists of only one cell. These single-celled organisms are called prokaryote. Bacteria do not have a core. Therefore, DNA exists on cytoplasm disorderly. There is no membrane organelle in bacteria. That’s why they do not contain chloroplasts and mitochondria. As a result, they sustain their energy requirement by carrying out various ways.
Bacteria which sustain energy by carrying out respiration without oxygen are called anaerobic bacteria. Besides, bacteria that create energy by carrying out respiration with oxygen are called aerobic bacteria. Some other types of bacteria are called temporary anaerobic and aerobic. As a direct result of their small size and noncomplex evolution, the genetics of bacteria can change easily. Hence, they can be used for diverse purposes.
Bacteria have plasmids that let them manage to gain some different and useful abilities. A plasmid can be described as a small, extrachromosomal DNA molecule within a cell that is physically separated from chromosomal DNA and can replicate independently. Artificial plasmids can be used for recombinant DNA technology and molecule cloning. Recombinant DNA technology can be described as cutting DNA by using some different genetic technologies and putting together with some other DNA molecules. As a result, DNA gains various abilities. These abilities make recombinant DNA technology rather important.
Where are the bacteria used?
Water Treatment: Biological water treatment is one the most common way for water processing. Bacteria expedite the water treatment process in small areas such as water treatment facilities. Moreover, carrying out this process in these areas is better than carrying out in a natural lake or river for several reasons. Generally, anaerobic bacteria takes place in this process as pumps that contain oxygen are needed. This makes the process more cost-effective.
As a result of this process, sewers which seen as total garbage and useless generates energy and also gets purified. Furthermore, bacteria such as ”Geobacter” and ”Shewanella” produce electron by consuming sludges in water. Also, methanogenic bacteria transform the CO2 into methane gas. Through the burning of this gas, energy is produced. Finally, Matthew Silver states that dairy products’ wastes contribute to a high amount of energy.
Producing Renewable Energy Resources: Bacteria are used to produce biofuel, and biofuel is one of the most common renewable energy resources. Professor Nigel Scrutton from The University of Manchester and his colleagues modified Fibroblast Activation Protein(FAP) in bacteria, and they have succeeded in producing propane gas that can be used for fuel in various ways by fermentation and some other ways. Thus, it is believed that bacteria will be a key factor to produce renewable energy in the future. Scientists try to reduce the cost of this biofuel process, and it seems that this method will be used with a lower cost in the future.
Cleaning Up Oil Pollution: Scientists go on searchings about finding the perfect bacteria for cleaning up oil pollution. In different parts of the world that contain oil contamination, oil-consuming bacteria has been detected. Bacteria are injected into the land in an artificial intervention method, but there is a problem in this method. The problem is these bacteria will compete with each other. Moreover, several nutrients given to the bacteria that have been injected into the land to evolve more efficiently, and this process is called ”biostimulation”. It is known that bacteria not only coordinate with the environment but also evolve so rapidly. That’s why it is rather likely that bacteria that exist in an area polluted with oil will evolve to feed on oil.
Food Production: It can be said that photosynthesis is the main food source, and some type of bacteria carry out photosynthesis. These bacteria are called photosynthetic, and they carry out photosynthesis by using chlorophyll pigment. They produce food in this way, but we’ll talk about some different types of food production in that essay. Bacteria which is fed with hydrogen transform CO2 into the proteins that are a food source for humans. In other words, we can produce food from the air by using these bacteria. Furthermore, scientists know that plants transform CO2 that exists in the air into the food, and they carry out this process by doing photosynthesis, but they did not gain this ability in the evolutionary process. They created a mutualist relation between bacteria that can do photosynthesis. As a direct result of this relationship, they have connected. Food production by using bacteria seems a great way to solve not only ongoing but also possible future nutrient problems.
Cleaning Of Plastic Pollution: I have already said that bacteria not only coordinate with the environment but also evolve so rapidly. That situation is the same for bacteria that fed with plastic. Some bacteria that fed with plastic have been found and scientists try to enhance their efficiency. It is quite likely that great results will be achieved in the future by modifying the enzyme that consumes plastic. Plastic is a substance that dissolves in nature for a very long time and pollutes our nature. That’s why this research white hope for nature.
Bacteria are also used for some different reasons thanks to their ability of rapid evolution and coordination. Bacteria that feed on greenhouse gases affect the climate, while bacteria that live in the human gut benefit by establishing a mutualistic relationship with humans. Moreover, there is a great number of benefits using bacteria for cancer treatment. It seems that bacteria are the main factor in the future, and they will solve our ongoing problems. Scientists find out a new ability of bacteria every day, and it is outstanding for the science world.
An article appeared on Nature magazine in April 2018 stunned China: Japan discovered 16 billion tonnes of rare minerals in its waters. According to the paper, the minerals found can supply the world’s demand for hundreds of years. In detail, there are yttrium enough for 780 years, dysprosium for 730 years, europium for 620 years and terbium for 420 years.
The underwater treasure chest sits offshore of Minamitori Island, located 1,850 kilometres southwest of Tokyo. While this area belongs to Japan’s maritime borders, the rights of the minerals belong to the island dwellers.
Analyst Jack Lifton described the discovery “as a game-changer” as the political disagreement among the maritime borders has grown between China and Japan since the tension over the Pacific islands in 2014. Following the crisis, China increased the quota 10%, which spiked the rare mineral prices but resumed the export of rare minerals to Japan after the World Trade Organization (WTO) interfered. In the long term, China’s domination in the rare mineral market faces a considerable threat as its share of the market has fallen to 68% in 2020 from 90% in 2011.
“We need to find a cheaper way to reach these minerals,” says Yutaro Takaya, who took part in the Nature study. Takaya points out the major issue faced by all the countries who desire to reach deep-sea minerals. China is still far behind in the technology needed to mine deep-sea minerals compared to Japan. Therefore, if Japan manages to reach the chest box buried deep in the Pacific before China does it in the Yellow Sea, its dominance on the market will encounter a significant threat. Additionally, the US is hoping to decrease its supply from China as rare minerals were found in a mountain called Round Top, which sits at the east of El Paso.
Rare minerals are used in various products such as smartphone batteries and electric automobiles. These elements occupy the bottom second line of the Periodic Table and represent 17 metallic elements in total.
China Has A Long Way To Go
Japan detected vast amounts of rare minerals before and has started to develop technologies to reach these minerals a long time ago. In 2011, the team of scientists led by Yasuhiro Kato of the University of Tokyo found the rare minerals in sea mud at 78 different locations again in Minami-Torishima island according to Nature Geoscience. The minerals sit between 3,500 to 6.000 metres of depths of the ocean in large volumes clustered together. “Just one square kilometre of the deposits would provide one-fifth of the current global consumption,” said Takaya in the time of the discovery.
Japan is conducting deep-sea sample collecting tests in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). During one dive, a deep-sea observing vessel spends more than 200 minutes to reach 6,000 metres of depth. In long term, it is estimated that Japan needs 3,500 tons of rare minerals daily to supply its industry. The first step may be a 30 cm wide pipe which will operate 10 hours a day to bring around 350 tons of minerals to the surface.
China is dedicating too much time and investment in its future sea mining operations. According to Liu Feng, secretary-general of the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association (COMRA), China is in the process of developing the state of the art technology required to mine minerals from the ocean bed. Most importantly, he underlines the geographical area China has, which is the largest as the country secured five contracts regarding deep-sea exploration.
Feng says there are some countries more developed in deep-sea exploration than China, including Germany, Japan and Belgium. All these countries have successfully launched mining tests on the deep-sea floor between 2,000 and 6,000 meters deep. In contrast, China only managed to reach 500 metres of depth in its deep-sea mining tests. China has to develop its weak industry first and then proceed with its plans to mine the seabed. Fengs also mentions the complex systematic coordination requirements for the wide-scale seabed mining operations. Nonetheless, China goes further in testing its deep-sea mining capability and goes under depths of 1,000 meters in 2020.
Pixabay.
Shall We Focus On Mining Asteroids?
Japan was exporting 30% of the rare minerals from Asian countries other than China by late 2017. The country is determined to get out of China’s shadow in obtaining rare earth minerals and will surely go on exploring new seabeds and invest in deep-sea mining technology. China currently holds the processing technology in its hands but it may also not last too long.
US and Australia signed an agreement in November 2019 and in January US signed another with Canada, to secure rare earth elements (REEs). Chicago-NY based MP Materials acquired the Mountain Pass mine sits on the border of California and Nevada, where today 15% of the global supply of REEs are produced. The mined elements are sent to China for processing but MP Materials is planning to open its own in 2022.
Some defend the idea that humanity shall only focus on the deeply buried sources and shall stop spending money on new space exploration markets such as asteroid mining and water-extracting from the surface of planetary bodies. For some, the solution of survival only resides within the Earth, for others we must go to the Moon and Mars and asteroids to extract their resources to further expand the borders of civilization and protect Earth from dying.
Focusing on Earth seems like an easier option. Especially when there are billions of tons of REEs waiting to be mined. On the other hand, the space is full of cosmic treasure chests which contain minerals equal to a few Earths. The best example is 16 Psyche.
200 kilometres wide, the asteroid contains minerals equal to 74 times of the whole world’s economy… NASA has already begun a space exploration mission to reach the asteroid in 2030. The mission, called Lucy, will cost NASA 450 million dollars. If the US manages to land AI-powered mining spacecraft on the asteroid in the following decades, the budget spent on the exploration will be a matter of laughter.
Critics don’t have the chance to show Psyche 16 as a distraction from the real-world issues. The space rock covered with heavy metals was first discovered in 1852. So, where the minerals are the civilization goes.
