Word: digit
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...Digit...
Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque is a sprawling research establishment best known for its work on highly secret defense projects, including nuclear weaponry. Last week Sandia exploded a different sort of bombshell. Its mathematicians announced that they had factored a 69-digit number, the largest ever to be subjected to such numerical dissection. Their triumph is more than an intellectual exercise. It could have far-flung repercussions for national security. As anyone who has ever passed through intermediate algebra knows (or once knew), factoring means breaking a number into its smallest whole-number multiplicands greater than 1. For example...
...initials of its three inventors), it employs difficult-to-factor multidigit numbers to encode secrets and keep them secure. These include electronic funds transfers and military messages. By factoring the numbers, the codes can be broken. When RSA was first proposed, its inventors suggested using 80-digit numbers on the assumption that they were too big to be factored. Obviously, with researchers at Sandia closing in on ever larger numbers, even RSA could eventually fall to the code breakers...
Perhaps the most intractable problem Alfonsin faces, however, is the Argentine economy. The nation's $40 billion foreign debt has pushed it to the brink of international default, while at home Argentines luffer under triple-digit inflation and 15% unemployment. The new government's economic plans are a closely guarded secret, but initial measures are expected to include price controls and selective cuts in spending. Alfonsin's ability to restore a semblance of order to Argentina's tattered economy may be the most imporant barometer of his success...
...even more drastic change. Finance Minister Aridor, the paper said, was preparing a plan under which the Israeli economy would be linked to the U.S. dollar. Everything, including wages, prices, pensions and interest, would be expressed in dollars, thereby eliminating the indexing that has fueled Israel's triple-digit inflation rate...