It appears physicists in Japan have come up with a new one-way function that can be used for public-key encryption.  The difference here is that the new function can theoretically be used on future quantum based computers.  “Akinori Kawachi at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and a few buddies suggest that all is not lost for public key encryption. These guys have discovered a quantum problem that is hard to solve in one direction but easy to do in reverse. And they say this asymmetry could form the basis of a new kind of quantum public key encryption system.”  The advent on quantum based computing may trivially break current PKEA algorithms… so it’s good we have new quantum algorithms starting to be developed.  This is all very cool stuff.