>>12237641

"Two initial pilots will launch in 2018. The first will be led by Alliance partner iRespond, and will be conducted in close partnership with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The pilot will offer blockchain-based digital identification, linked to individual users through iris recognition, for refugees accessing the IRC’s services in the Mae La Camp in Thailand. Initially, these digital identities will enable the recipients to access improved, consistent healthcare within the camp through an accurate and secure electronic medical record. In the future, the same system may electronically document both educational attainment and professional skills to aid with employment opportunities.

The second 2018 pilot project will be led by Everest working in close partnership with The Indonesian National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K) in the office of the Vice President of the Government of Indonesia. The pilot will facilitate the transfer of liquid propane gas (LPG) subsidies by delivering them to a biometrically validated digital wallet over a transparent and low cost blockchain. The goal of the pilot is to modernize delivery, reduce financial leakage, and enable banking services through financial inclusion. Addressing the current problems of delivery inefficiencies and lack of transparency will provide economically disadvantaged individuals greater access to energy subsidies.

Future pilots projects, currently in development, will include vaccination delivery and childhood health records, increased financial inclusion through the provision of a verifiable credit history, refugee resettlement, humanitarian passports, among other use cases. In order to ensure continued implementation of these high-impact digital identity projects, the ID2020 Alliance continues to raise a pool of funds and channel those funds towards high-impact programs that meet our core technical and ethical criteria. By driving this type of coordinated approach, on both the technical level and by providing sustainable financing for interoperable identity systems, our operating and governance model supports both our initial pilot phase, currently in progress, and scaled-up implementation beyond 2020."

"Collaborations & Partnerships

ID2020’s current partners include Accenture and Microsoft on the private sector side, and FHI360, Gavi, Hyperledger, iRespond, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Simprints, UNHCR, and UN-ICC on the public sector end. Alliance partners each come to the table with their own relevant and essential expertise. Microsoft, for example, alone manages 1 billion digital identities, while UNHCR has a international legal mandate to protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people."

https://www.oecd-opsi.org/innovations/id2020-alliance/

http://archive.is/GPvpM

>>12237752

Liquid Computing

"Imagine a computer, suspended in a flask of liquid, which assembles itself when the liquid is poured onto a desktop. Sound like science fiction? Hyman professor of chemistry Charles Lieber is making it happen in his laboratory, where researchers have already created tiny logic circuits and memorythe two main components of a computerin just this manner. And these circuits are tiny, just a few atoms across"

further in the article…

"Hence, Lieber is now working on a "proof of concept" for the National Cancer Institute that will demonstrate the use of nanowire sensors for early detection of prostate cancer. In principle, he says, you could design a centimeter-square chip to detect a billion things simultaneously, even variations in an individual's DNA. An undergraduate student of his is taking this idea even further, and working to create a biological computing interface."

Interesting but very scary IMO in what could be, or rather, has been… done with this technology. The article, in case you missed it, was published in 2001.

https://harvardmagazine.com/2001/11/liquid-computing.html

http://archive.is/vK0JX

Virus-sized Transistors

"Imagine being able to signal an immune cell to generate antibodies that would fight bacteria or even cancer. That fictional possibility is now a step closer to reality with the development of a bio-compatible transistor the size of a virus. Hyman professor of chemistry Charles Lieber and his colleagues used nanowires to create a transistor so small that it can be used to enter and probe cells without disrupting the intracellular machinery. These nanoscale semiconductor switches could even be used to enable two-way communication with individual cells."

"Tests of the device indicate that it could be used not only to measure activity within neurons, heart cells, and muscle fibers, for example, but also to measure two distinct signals within a single cell simultaneously–perhaps even the workings of intracellular organelles, the functional units within cells that generate energy, fold proteins, process sugars, and perform other critical functions. (When those processes stop working, the breakdown can lead to diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, or Tay-Sachs.) And because a transistor also allows the application of a voltage pulse, such devices might one day provide hybrid biological-digital computation, or deep-brain stimulation for Parkinson’s patients, or serve as an interface for a prosthetic that requires information processing at the point where it attaches to its owner.

“Digital electronics are so powerful that they dominate our daily lives,” Lieber points out. “When scaled down, the difference between digital and living systems blurs, so that you have an opportunity to do things that sound like science fiction–things that people have only dreamed about.”

https://harvardmagazine.com/2011/01/virus-sized-transistors

http://archive.is/tN5AR