Sounds of Mars and comfortable life in Krasnodar: Trends Digest No. 15

While science consolidates the forces of humanity in the orbit of Mars, public trust in business, media and government is falling everywhere. There are more and more super-rich people in our country, but now there is no poverty in China

Topics of the week

• Mystery of the Red Planet

Now there is definitely life on Mars – mechanical: NASA’s robotic apparatus worth $ 2,7 billion has safely descended to the surface of the planet. The Perseverance rover is called the most ambitious interplanetary mission of earthlings. This is far from the first attempt to find an answer to the question of whether there was life on Mars, but the equipment of a modern rover has unprecedented capabilities. The car-sized device has high-precision cameras, laser devices for analyzing the chemical composition of the soil, and a rock drilling rig. The built-in laboratory, scientists hope, will be able to reveal traces of microorganisms that may have existed when there was water on Mars.

Perseverance demonstrated some of its capabilities already in the process of descent – the device transmitted the first high-quality media files to Earth. From the landing of the rover, it turned out to be a real show. Attentive viewers even considered the riddle of engineers. On the parachute of the rover, the GPS coordinates of the mission headquarters and the phrase of Theodore Roosevelt were encrypted: “Decide on great deeds.”

The descending rover has already been photographed from orbit by other vehicles – the American Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Russian-European Trace Gas Orbiter. The Chinese Tianwen-1 will be able to land on Mars in the next three months.

While the rover from orbit is mapping the surface of Mars. On February 9, the first Arab interplanetary apparatus “Al-Amal” (“Hope”), created in the UAE, joined the equipment flying over the planet.

• Geopolitics vaccine prophylaxis

Scientists and doctors are concerned about the unfair and uneven distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine around the world. According to Gavin Yami, director of the Center for the Study of the Impact of Policy on Global Health at Duke University, 130 countries with a population of 2,5 billion people have not yet begun vaccination. Only 16% of the world’s population lives in high-income regions, but these countries have purchased more than half of all doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Residents of developed countries, even at an objectively lower risk, will, on average, get vaccinated earlier than many health workers in developing countries. According to Yami, this situation prolongs the pandemic. In an attempt to strike a balance in the distribution of drugs between rich and poor countries, the COVAX initiative has emerged, in fact a global “pool” of purchases. As a result, richer countries can collectively donate part of their vaccine supply to poorer countries. 190 countries have joined the initiative, but so far most purchases are still made bypassing COVAX.

Researchers are talking about vaccine nationalism, estimating that as poor countries’ limited access to coronavirus prevention could end up costing the global economy up to $9 trillion. And half of the costs will fall on the budgets of rich countries. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus blames them for competing with COVAX in making deals with vaccine manufacturers. But on February 24, Ghanaian doctors received the first batch of vaccines from COVAX – 600 thousand doses of the British drug AstraZeneca, produced in India. In total, WHO expects to distribute 2 billion doses of the vaccine through COVAX in 2021, primarily in African countries.

Another term that has appeared in the press recently is vaccine diplomacy. They refer to attempts to use vaccine supplies to resolve regional conflicts. Israel has said it will supply the Moderna vaccine to its allies. According to The New York Times, they most likely include the Czech Republic, Honduras, Hungary, Guatemala and other countries that act in the interests of the Israeli government. Earlier, Israel promised even the Syrian government tens of thousands of doses in exchange for an Israeli detained in Syria. China and India have donated thousands of doses of the vaccine to neighboring countries. And the United Arab Emirates provided assistance to Egypt with the supply of the vaccine.

Research of the week

• Edelman Consulting Company 2021 Trust Barometer Annual Report

The COVID-19 pandemic provoked a drop in confidence in the two largest economies in the world: the United States (from 53% to 48%) and China (from 90% to 72%).

Trust in all news sources hit record lows. Social networks and personal blogs became anti-leaders: 35% and 41% of the audience, respectively, trust their information.

The level of trust has dropped critically in relation to business leaders. 22% of respondents in France and only 18% in Japan have no doubts about the decisions of the CEO.

Nevertheless, business has become the most reliable social institution with a trust level of 61%. For public organizations, this figure is at the level of 57%, for authorities – 53%, for the media – 51%.

• How COVID-19 is transforming labor markets around the world

McKinsey analysts assessed the long-term impact of the pandemic on labor markets in eight countries: China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US. The researchers looked at more than 800 occupations.

Analysts predict that the pandemic will have a greater impact on those specialties where people interact most actively face to face: in the fields of medicine, personal services, recreation and travel. The least affected by the transformation will be those who work in manufacturing, construction sites, farms and other open spaces. In China and India, such specialists account for 35-55% of the labor market.

McKinsey has calculated that 20-25% of the working population in developed countries can work from home three to five days a week without losing productivity. In this case, the amount of work performed remotely will increase four to five times than before the pandemic.

Previously, due to automation, most often employed in the manufacturing industry and representatives of some office specialties with an average level of wages were left without work. Low-paid and high-paid specialists were in demand. Due to the pandemic, demand is only expected to grow for skilled workers with above-average wages. Those who worked for low wages will have to change their profession or improve their skills in order not to be left without a job.

Weekly Rating

The five most comfortable and affordable cities in our country according to the Institute of Territorial Planning “Urbanika”:

Urbanists analyzed the performance of the 100 largest cities in our country. The most affordable life is in Surgut, Murmansk and Tyumen. The most comfortable are Krasnodar, Tyumen and Samara. For an apartment of 40 sq. m in Krasnodar, you need to postpone the average salary of 4,1 years, in Surgut – 3,2 years, in Moscow and St. Petersburg – about eight years.

Week numbers

• Over the past eight years, China has invested $250 billion to fight poverty

For rural areas, China’s official poverty threshold has been set at an annual per capita income of less than 4000 yuan ($620). This is about $1,69 per day compared to the World Bank’s global benchmark of $1,9 per day.

• Global debt reaches $281 trillion and will continue to rise in 2021

The global economy has never been more in debt than after a year of fighting COVID-19. Global debt has reached an all-time high – more than 355% of the total GDP of all countries.

• By 2025, there will be 29% more super-rich people in our country

The number of our countries with a fortune of more than $30 million in four years will exceed 10,3 thousand people. At the same time, according to Knight Frank, in 2020 the number of super-rich citizens in Greece (to 678 people), Portugal (to 841 people) and the United Arab Emirates (to 1305 people) decreased by almost a third.

News of the week

• Belarusian pharmacists have received the technology for the production of the Russian coronavirus vaccine.
• SoftBank will buy shares from WeWork founder Adam Neumann for $500 million ahead of the company’s $10 billion valuation.
• Amnesty International human rights activists, due to statements made 15 years ago, have ceased to consider Alexei Navalny a prisoner of conscience.
• YouTube has introduced a parental control feature for teen accounts.
• Scientists from our country and Armenia have developed the first “smart vision” algorithm for autonomous drones.
• European climate scientists and IT specialists are building a highly accurate digital Earth model to predict climate change.
• The administration of the Novosibirsk region will completely abandon paper workflow for a month.

Food will be delivered without plastic waste

Canada has launched the first food delivery service without single-use packaging. The Fresh Prep project in Vancouver brings food in special Zero Waste Kit containers. The delivery service does not charge an additional fee for containers that the consumer can use repeatedly. In a large container, the products are laid out (and some are already cut and ready to eat) in smaller containers. The consumer can return the empty container and reusable cooler bag at the next order or call a courier free of charge to pick up the excess container. To launch the Zero Waste Kit, Fresh Prep raised over $2020 million in funding in 5,5.

Facebook post by freshprep.ca

What to see

Inspired by a tweet from climate researcher Megan Thompson-Munson, IT professional Joshua Tauberer created an interactive space to simulate a drifting iceberg. The conditional image of the sea horizon line can be supplemented with an arbitrary closed figure. It will assume such a position in space, as if it were a drifting iceberg.

NASA’s Mars rover has transmitted breathtaking footage of its landing in Jezero Crater. The US space agency received the video a few days later. The official video combines footage from the mission control center and from several cameras of the device. Therefore, you can see how the parachute opens above the apparatus and how the base of Perseverance approaches the surface of the planet.

What to listen

NASA released the audio recorded by the Perseverance spacecraft on the surface of Mars on February 20. There are no scientifically useful data in the sounds themselves, and it is rather difficult for an inexperienced listener to catch them. But the equipment proved its performance: the microphone attached to the rover survived the descent to the surface of the planet and picked up the sound of the wind in the Jezero crater. And now earthlings have not only photos and videos from Mars, but also an audio recording from the Red Planet.

The authors of the podcast “Mom, I’m in a startup” spoke with the chief engineer of the operator of stratospheric flights. Today, anyone can send, for example, their video camera to a height of 150 km. Every day on the territory of our country hundreds of balloons are sent into the stratosphere. Denis Efremov, General Director of the Stratonavtika project, tells who and how builds a business behind the ozone layer.

What to read

• Longread from the author of the Republic project Kristina Rudich about how different countries of the world create a digital economy.

In the first part, the author analyzes the experience of the United States, our country and some European countries. In the second, we are talking about the development of the digital ecosystem in the countries of Asia and the Middle East.

• An excerpt from Think Like Elon Musk. And other simple strategies for taking a giant leap in work and life.”

Former rocket scientist Ozan Varol argues that astronautics and rocket science is not only a high-tech industry, but also a specific way of thinking. He invites readers to use in their daily lives the same strategies that help develop space technology. As role models, Varol cites Elon Musk, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein and other iconic personalities whose ideas drive progress on a cosmic scale.

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