From dentistry to sex trade, entrepreneurs catch Bitcoin bug!

Agencies
December 26, 2017

New Delhi, Dec 26: It is not only investors who have caught the Bitcoin bug lured by a crazy surge in prices, but also many Indians who are seeing a business potential in cryptocurrencies and rushing to set up companies to cash in on this craze.

At least a dozen companies, including some in past few weeks, have been registered in various parts of the country with 'Bitcoin' as part of their names while many more such applications are pending before the Registrars of Companies.

The numbers are even higher for the companies with the word 'crypto' in their names, while several others have sought to become more innovative by adding various prefixes to the word 'coin', including those proposing Indian versions like 'IndiCoin' and 'BharatCoin'. There is also a 'SwachhCoin'!

The mad rush -- of entrepreneurs and investors -- seems to be continuing despite repeated regulatory warnings about Bitcoins and their various alternatives operating in a totally unregulated domain and the possible money laundering and terror financing risks associated with such cryptocurrencies.

Various regulators and enforcement agencies are already actively looking into this Bitcoin craze and searches were conducted recently by tax authorities at several places where they are believed to have collected details about lakhs of 'investors' who could be trading on 'Bitcoin exchanges'.

There are concerns that many operators might be running 'e-ponzi' schemes or illicit money-pooling pyramid activities in the name of virtual currencies. Some bogus ones have already been unearthed and are facing police action.

As the regulators and the government departments continue with their probes, which officials at these agencies also described as their efforts to 'understand' this new phenomenon, the entrepreneurs seem to be undeterred by any risk factors and expect good business to come by and they are from various parts of the country -- from Ghaziabad to Kanpur to Darjeeling to Jaipur to Delhi to Ahmedabad to Mumbai.

The RoC filings made by such companies show diverse business activities they propose to undertake -- One has listed 'retail trade/repair of personal and household goods', another claims to be in financial intermediary business, while one also claims to promote 'investigative journalism'.

There are also those offering 'crypto coins' exclusively for dentistry across the world with the promise of removing middlemen-type costs and easier insurance claims! Then, there are also those proposing 'sex coins' for discreet payments for adult entertainment and in sex trade.

A number of new entities have been set up under the LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) model while many others are being set up as privately-held companies. Several officials from the auditing and accountancy fields also said many listed companies are looking into changes in their names and 'articles of association' to include 'Bitcoin' or other cryptocurrencies to join the bandwagon.

There are several entities operating only in the digital world by setting up websites or 'online exchanges' while others have gone in for registering their companies or LLPs.

As per the RoC data, the registered entities include Bitcoin Bazaar, Bitcoin Exchange, Bitcoin Finconsultants, Bitcoin India Software Services, Bitcoin Services India, Bitcoiners India, Bitcoins India and Bit Coin Infotech.

There are others like Crypto Advisors, Crypto Futuristic Trades, Crypto Infotech, Crypto IT Services, Crypto Labs, Crypto Mining, Crypto Yo Coin India, CryptoCoin Solutions and CryptoMudra Digital Services. Further business details of these entities could be ascertained, as most of them have been set up recently, but have been meeting necessary compliances.

While Bitcoin was created as a cryptocurrency in 2009, by an unidentified person using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto, its popularity has grown manifold in recent months with its per unit price soaring to close to USD 20,000 (over Rs 10 lakh) earlier this month. However, the price has been swinging wildly and last week itself, it fell by almost half to about USD 10,000, only to again rebound to the near USD 15,000 level.

It was launched with a promise of lower transaction fees than traditional payment methods with a decentralised authority unlike the government-issued currencies in various countries. At present, Bitcoins command a market cap of over USD 240 billion while more than 16 million units are said to be in circulation. The maximum supply is pegged at 21 million.

It is the anonymity of Bitcoins, minted through complex computer algorithms, that has made them so famous, but has also increased the risks. These are stored in digital wallets, in the cloud or on the user's computers.

The popularity of Bitcoin has given rise to several other such cryptocurrencies globally even as several entities and exchanges have gone bust with huge losses for many. No such currency has yet got legal tender status from any central bank or government in the world, but is still being accepted, mostly for online trades and even for ordering pizza.

These 'coins' are minted and traded with the use of blockchain technology, which uses cryptography for security of exchanges and providing a decentralised 'digital ledger' of transactions for all on the network to see.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology algorithm for managing digital cash without any central administrator and users remain unaware about each other. One blockchain network typically has thousands of nodes and a transaction is verified only after a majority of nodes reach consensus.

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Agencies
July 4,2020

The Mars Colour Camera (MCC) onboard ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission has captured the image of Phobos, the closest and biggest moon of Mars.

The image was taken on July 1 when MOM was about 7,200 km from Mars and 4,200 km from Phobos.

"Spatial resolution of the image is 210 m.

This is a composite image generated from 6 MCC frames and has been color corrected," ISRO said in an update along with the image.

Phobos is largely believed to be made up of carbonaceous chondrites.

According to ISRO, "the violent phase that Phobos has encountered is seen in the large section gouged out from a past collision (Stickney crater) and bouncing ejecta."

"Stickney, the largest crater on Phobos along with the other craters (Shklovsky, Roche & Grildrig) are also seen in this image," it said.

The mission also known as Mangalyaan was initially meant to last six months, but subsequently ISRO had said it had enough fuel for it to last "many years."

The country had on September 24, 2014 successfully placed the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft in orbit around the red planet, in its very first attempt, thus breaking into an elite club.

ISRO had launched the spacecraft on its nine-month- long odyssey on a homegrown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 5, 2013.

It had escaped the earth's gravitational field on December 1, 2013.

The Rs 450-crore MOM mission aims at studying the Martian surface and mineral composition as well as scan its atmosphere for methane (an indicator of life on Mars).

The Mars Orbiter has five scientific instruments - Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer

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Agencies
June 8,2020

Washington DC, Jun 8: Astronomers acting on a hunch have likely resolved a mystery about young, still-forming stars and regions rich in organic molecules closely surrounding some of them.

They used the National Science Foundation's Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to reveal one such region that previously had eluded detection and that revelation answered a longstanding question.

The regions around the young protostars contain complex organic molecules which can further combine into prebiotic molecules that are the first steps on the road to life.

The regions, dubbed "hot corinos" by astronomers, are typically about the size of our solar system and are much warmer than their surroundings, though still quite cold by terrestrial standards.

The first hot corino was discovered in 2003 and only about a dozen have been found so far. Most of these are in binary systems, with two protostars forming simultaneously.

Astronomers have been puzzled by the fact that, in some of these binary systems, they found evidence for a hot corino around one of the protostars but not the other.

"Since the two stars are forming from the same molecular cloud and at the same time, it seemed strange that one would be surrounded by a dense region of complex organic molecules and the other wouldn't," said Cecilia Ceccarelli, of the Institute for Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics at the University of Grenoble (IPAG) in France.

The complex organic molecules were found by detecting specific radio frequencies, called spectral lines, emitted by the molecules. Those characteristic radio frequencies serve as "fingerprints" to identify the chemicals.

The astronomers noted that all the chemicals found in hot corinos had been found by detecting these "fingerprints" at radio frequencies corresponding to wavelengths of only a few millimetres.

"We know that dust blocks those wavelengths, so we decided to look for evidence of these chemicals at longer wavelengths that can easily pass through dust," said Claire Chandler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and principal investigator on the project.

"It struck us that dust might be what was preventing us from detecting the molecules in one of the twin protostars," added Chandler.

The astronomers used the VLA to observe a pair of protostars called IRAS 4A, in a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years from Earth. They observed the pair at wavelengths of centimetres.

At those wavelengths, they sought radio emissions from methanol, CH3OH (wood alcohol, not for drinking). This was a pair in which one protostar clearly had a hot corino and the other did not, as seen using the much shorter wavelengths.

The result confirmed their hunch. "With the VLA, both protostars showed strong evidence of methanol surrounding them. This means that both protostars have hot corinos. The reason we did not see the one at shorter wavelengths was because of dust," said Marta de Simone, a graduate student at IPAG who led the data analysis for this object.

The astronomers cautioned that while both hot corinos now are known to contain methanol, there still may be some chemical differences between them. That, they said, can be settled by looking for other molecules at wavelengths not obscured by dust.

"This result tells us that using centimetre radio wavelengths is necessary to properly study hot corinos," Claudio Codella of Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Florence, Italy, said.

"In the future, planned new telescopes such as the next-generation VLA and SKA, will be very important to understanding these objects," added Codella.

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Agencies
January 4,2020

Washington D.C: One of the greatest spectacles of modern art is still thriving in the Australian outback as confirmed by satellite imagery of NASA. The Marree Man is a massive geoglyph depicting an aboriginal hunter, that spans over 2.6 miles in the Southern Australian region.

Discovered by a pilot in 1998, its origin still remains a mystery even to this date.

The Marree Man was given a new lease of life in 2016 when a group of people from the neighboring town of Marree plowed its lines to avert its fading due to erosion.

After NASA shared the image of the art-work that was taken in June, the efforts of the good samaritans turned out to be a total success, reported CNN Travel.

The restoration team believes that the refurbished Marree Man would last longer than its original version.

According to NASA, "They [the team] created wind grooves, designed to trap water and encourage the growth of vegetation. They hope that eventually, the man will turn green."

In a previous article, CNN reported that an entrepreneur by the name of Dick Smith took upon himself to unravel the geoglyph's mystery in 2016. His team combed through all the available evidence but couldn't find anything conclusive.

In 2018 he even offered a 5,000 Australian dollar reward for anyone who knows the identity of its creator.

Nobody turned up with an answer but it was speculated that unknown artist lives in Alice Springs or even might be an American.

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