Academic Awards

Cybersecurity is an ever-evolving field and cannot be set up once and then forgotten. As data and applications move to the cloud, businesses can enjoy various benefits, but many struggle to protect their networks from constantly changing cyber threats. Ransomware attackers have recognized the value of targeting smaller organizations and tailored their attacks to exploit businesses that they believe will pay immediately, often supported by cyber insurance, rather than investing in defense measures. Tight security for data and resources is crucial for ensuring that business operations run smoothly and are not disrupted to the point of closure. However, how can small and medium-sized businesses achieve comprehensive security management and threat intelligence while on a budget? The solution lies in forming partnerships and alliances. Implementing shared threat intelligence across an alliance of cybersecurity experts creates a stronger security approach. Vendors can now offer integrated s...

The Gorringe seamount, located 200 kilometres off the Portuguese coast in the Atlantic Ocean, is the tallest underwater mountain in western Europe. Formed where the African and Eurasian tectonic plates converge, it sits at the confluence of multiple ocean currents, making it a magnet for marine life and a hotspot for biodiversity. With habitats ranging from shallow algal forests to cold-water corals, the Gorringe seamount is a unique and vital ecosystem, say scientists at the Oceano Azul Foundation, who recently undertook a scientific expedition to the region. Oceano Azul Foundation is an international marine conservation organisation based in Portugal, whose mission is to “create a unified movement of change towards ocean conservation”, through funding, education, ocean science and research. To find out more, New Scientist joined the last leg of its recent expedition to the Gorringe seamount. A collaboration with the Portuguese Navy and the (Institute for Conservation of Forests and ...

Hydropower is the largest source of clean energy in the world, generating more electricity than all other renewable energy resources combined. However, the global rate of hydropower expansion is falling, and the technology faces an existential threat in many parts of the world due to changing weather patterns associated with climate change. This could spell major trouble for global decarbonization efforts as net-zero scenarios rely on a strong continued role for hydropower with an ideal annual growth rate of around 4%. “In the last five?years the average growth rate was less than one-third of what is required, signaling a need for significantly stronger efforts, especially to streamline permitting and ensure project sustainability,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports. “Hydropower plants should be recognised as a reliable backbone of the clean power systems of the future and supported accordingly.” While hydropower remains an essential part of any net-zero scen...

U.S. technology leaders tap NVIDIA AI software to transform industries worldwide. AT&T, Lowe’s, University of Florida Among First Organizations Using NVIDIA NeMo Accenture, Deloitte, Quantiphi, SoftServe Tap NVIDIA NeMo, NIM Microservices and NIM Agent Blueprints to Create Custom Generative AI Agents for Clients Cloudera, DataStax, Google Cloud, NetApp, SAP, ServiceNow, Teradata Advance Data and AI Platforms With NIM NVIDIA AI Summit — NVIDIA today announced it is teaming with U.S. technology leaders to help organizations create custom AI applications and transform the world’s industries using the latest NVIDIA NIM™ Agent Blueprints and NVIDIA NeMo™ and NVIDIA NIM microservices. Across industries, organizations like AT&T, Lowe’s and the University of Florida are using the microservices to create their own data-driven AI flywheels to power custom generative AI applications. U.S. technology consulting leaders Accenture, Deloitte, Quantiphi and SoftServe are adopting NVIDIA NIM Ag...

An exoplanet has been discovered orbiting the nearest single star to Earth (apart from the Sun), only 6 light-years away. The nearest stars to our solar system are in the Alpha Centauri system at just 4.2 light-years away. This triple star system is in the Centaurus constellation. The closest exoplanets to Earth were discovered orbiting one of the Alpha Centauri stars, Proxima Centauri, in 2016. But the new exoplanet has been found orbiting Barnard’s star – the nearest lone star to our solar system. Barnard’s star has long been thought to be a prime candidate for the detection of Earth-like exoplanets. A false alarm in 2018 might have dashed hopes. But astronomers are a patient bunch. “Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” says Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, lead author of the Astronomy & Astrophysics paper announcing the planet’s discovery. The planet, Barnard b, is about ...

Supermassive black holes are some of the most impressive (and scary) objects in the universe – with masses around one billion times more than that of the Sun. And we know the’ve been around for a long time. In fact, astronomers have detected the extremely luminous compact sources that are located at the centres of galaxies, known as quasars (rapidly growing supermassive black holes), when the universe was less than 1 billion years old. Now our new study, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, has used observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to show that there were many more (much less luminous) black holes in the early universe than previous estimates had suggested. Excitingly, this can help us understand how they formed – and why many of them appear to be more massive than expected. Black holes grow by swallowing up material that surrounds them, in a process known as accretion. This produces tremendous amounts of radiation. The pressure from this radiation places a fundament...