Technology Spain  MADRID 10/03/2023

New technology for capturing hyperspectral images patented

Developed by UC3M researchers

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has patented a new system for capturing hyperspectral images (those capable of collecting information across the entire electromagnetic spectrum), which can operate in real time and provides a higher resolution than any other existing technology. This development could mean a breakthrough for scientific and industrial applications related to chemical analysis.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 28/02/2023

A study analyses fake interaction services on social media

Researchers from UC3M and IMDEA Networks have detected that the cheapest rates include buying direct traffic to a website, getting "likes" on Instagram or views on multimedia platforms

A study by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and IMDEA Networks analyses fake interaction services on social media. In addition to cataloguing the fraudulent ecosystem of “likes”, views, followers or online visits, the study points out the economic models that sustain it and the high level of personalisation that these services offer.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 14/12/2022

An IMDEA Networks research team has won the first EIT Jumpstarter award with the business idea LiFi4Food

LiFi4Food provides solutions for digital and precision agriculture, addressing the challenge of food scarcity by promoting its production in high-tech agri-food facilities

An IMDEA Networks research team has won first prize in the food category of the competitive European EIT Jumpstarter program for its business idea LiFi4Food, which seeks to provide solutions for digital and precision agriculture. The prize valued at €10,000 is earmarked for the creation of this revolutionary startup. The grand final took place in Krakow (Poland) on November 29, where PhD students Javier Talavante and Dayrene Frómeta attended on behalf of the group.

  
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Technology Spain  ESPAÑA 25/10/2022

IMDEA Networks researchers create an algorithm that maximizes IoT sensor inference accuracy using edge computing

The results of the study can be very useful for machine learning applications that need fast and accurate inference on end devices

We are in a fascinating era where even low-resource devices, such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, can use deep learning algorithms to tackle complex problems such as image classification or natural language processing (the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with giving computers the ability to understand spoken and written language in the same way as humans). However, deep learning in IoT sensors may not be able to guarantee quality of service (QoS) requirements such as inference accuracy and latency. With the exponential growth of data collected by billions of IoT devices, the need has arisen to shift to a distributed model in which some of the computing occurs at the edge of the network (edge computing), closer to where the data is created, rather than sending it to the cloud for processing and storage.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 10/10/2022

Mobile network data, an efficient method for assessing the spread of epidemics

IMDEA Networks research team conducts the first work studying mobile data to detect COVID-19 hospitalizations and create risk maps

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 forced governments around the world to take measures to prevent its spread among the population and, thus, reduce the number of fatalities as a result of the virus. A few months later, as mobility restrictions and confinements were gradually lifted, states decided to launch tracking apps that citizens could download to their cell phones to find out if nearby contacts were infected with COVID. However, for these apps to be truly effective they require a large number of people to have them installed on their devices, and they also involve certain privacy risks.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 26/09/2022

Setchain, the application that multiplies by a thousand the number of transactions per minute in any blockchain

Researchers from IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks develop an application capable of substantially increasing the number of transactions per minute in blockchains

Researchers Margarita Capretto, Martin Ceresa (IMDEA Software), Antonio Fernández Anta (IMDEA Networks), Antonio Russo (IMDEA Networks) and César Sánchez (IMDEA Software) present Setchain, a new data structure that improves the scalability of blockchains, allowing a greater number of transactions per block, which leads to a reduction in risk and costs for users, at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain.

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 27/07/2022

As the ocean heats up hungrier predators take control

Marine predation intensifies in warmer waters; could reshape ocean communities as climate changes

A hotter ocean is a hungrier ocean—at least as far as fish predators are concerned. In a new field study published online June 9 in Science, Smithsonian scientists discovered predator impacts in the Atlantic and Pacific peak at higher temperatures. The effects cascade down to transform other life in the ocean, potentially disrupting balances that have existed for millennia.

  
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Health Portugal  PORTUGAL 25/07/2022

Low sugar: A trade-off to starve malaria parasites

A new study revealed an important and unexpected defense strategy against malaria

A new study led by Miguel Soares’ group at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) and published in the prestigious journal Cell Metabolism, revealed an important and unexpected defense strategy against malaria, one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world. This response limits the extent of inflammation and organ damage, while decreasing the virulence of the malaria parasite. But everything comes at a cost.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 04/07/2022

Up to 90% of governmental websites include cookies of third-party trackers

An international team including researchers from IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks participated in a study that highlights the need to strengthen user privacy

Researchers Matthias Götze (TU Berlin), Srdjan Matic (IMDEA Software), Costas Iordanou (Cyprus University of Technology), Georgios Smaragdakis (TU Delft), and Nikolaos Laoutaris (IMDEA Networks) have presented at the ‘Web Science Conference’ the paper: “Measuring Web Cookies in Governmental Websites”, in which they investigate governmental websites of G20 countries and evaluate to what extent visits to these sites are tracked by third parties.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 28/06/2022

New mobile traffic data provides a first quantitative evaluation of the 'digital usage gap'

Researchers at IMDEA Networks Institute have carried out a new study to improve our understanding of how information technology utilization can be a factor of social inequality

IMDEA Networks researchers have taken a new step in their studies on the incidence of the ‘digital divide’, after the work published in January, together with the University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) and Orange Innovation, on the so-called “usage gap”, which refers to how individuals belonging to different social classes, due to diverse digital skills, have contrasting capability to benefit from novel technologies and, therefore, from the services that those technologies enable. This is an emerging cause of social inequality, in the face of which research is striving to provide better understanding and to provide directions for solutions.

  
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Environment Ecuador  GALÁPAGOS 24/05/2022

Just keep swimming … silky sharks are setting records

Tracking silky sharks has revealed them to be swift swimmers. But they’re also one of the most heavily fished sharks globally. Will expanded marine protection in the Tropical Eastern Pacific go far enough to protect these long-distance swimmers?

Shark satellite tagging carried out by scientists from the Guy Harvey Research Institute, the SOSF Shark Research Center, the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galápagos National Park Directorate is shining a light on the travels of vulnerable silky sharks across the Tropical Eastern Pacific. The expansion of marine protected areas here goes some way to protecting silkies during their migrations, but new tracking data reveal that more must be done to save them from extinction.

  
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Social Sciences Panama  PANAMÁ 24/05/2022

New interactive map of indigenous fishing practices around the pacific rim

Dedicated to “the Ancestors who stewarded the ocean” an interactive story map created by the Pacific Sea Garden Collective reawakens traditional ways of harvesting food from the sea from Panama to Australia to the Pacific Northwest

For thousands of years indigenous peoples have invented ingenious, often strikingly beautiful ways to harvest marine resources that, in combination with their belief systems, prevented overharvesting. But today, commercial fisheries and skyrocketing human populations are driving the future of resources from the sea toward a dangerous tipping point. Inspired by marine biologist Daniel Pauly, a group of indigenous knowledge holders and community members, scientists and artists led by Anne Salomon, a Simon Fraser University professor, formed the Pacific Sea Garden Collective and created an elegantly simple interactive map to share traditional ways that people interacted with the sea, hoping to inspire a more sustainable future.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 06/05/2022

Key to post-stroke survival: data and algorithms to improve the quality of life of stroke victims

Researchers at IMDEA Networks Institute collaborate with Brown University, through the European MAESTRO project, to improve survival rates after a stroke

According to the study ‘The impact of stroke in Europe’, by King’s College for the European Stroke Alliance, between 2015 and 2035 there will be a 34% increase in the number of cases in Europe (up to 819,771). And in Spain, more than 100,000 people suffer from it (50% have disabling sequelae or die). Therefore, if prevention is fundamental, rehabilitation becomes a decisive factor in survival and quality of life.

  
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Space Chile  ATACAMA 26/04/2022

Scientists find elusive gas hiding in plain sight

The discovery of turbulent, compact gas in otherwise dormant galaxies gives researchers one more clue to solving the mystery of how galaxies in particular live, evolve and die

Scientists discover that post-starburst galaxies condense their gas rather than expelling it, begging the question: what’s keeping them from forming stars? Post-starburst galaxies were previously thought to scatter all of their gas and dust—the fuel required for creating new stars—in violent energy bursts and at extraordinary speed. New data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals that these galaxies don’t scatter all of their star-forming fuel. Instead, these dormant galaxies hold onto and compress large amounts of highly-concentrated, turbulent gas after their supposed end. But contrary to expectation, they’re not using it to form stars.

  
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Health Portugal  PORTUGAL 22/04/2022
#CovidNewsDiCYT

How fast does the COVID-19 virus change?

Researchers quantify, for the first time, the mutations generated in a single infection with SARS-CoV-2

The Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) and the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) are the first to quantify and to characterize the mutations that can be generated by SARS-CoV-2 when it infects cells. The experimental data provides valuable information to understand how the virus evolves in the human population and for the development of antiviral strategies.

  
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Space Chile  ATACAMA 30/03/2022

Hey DUDE: mysterious death of carbon star plays out like six-ring circus

V Hya is a carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star located approximately 1,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra

Scientists studying V Hydrae (V Hya) have witnessed the star’s mysterious death throes in unprecedented detail. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the team discovered six slowly-expanding rings and two hourglass-shaped structures caused by the high-speed ejection of matter out into space. The results of the study are published in The Astrophysical Journal.

  
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Technology Portugal  PORTUGAL 25/03/2022

Facebook analysis to prevent epilepsy-related deaths

Emotion and stress cues hidden in posts might serve as early warnings of unexpected death

A group of researchers demonstrate that social media could be used to detect behaviors preceding Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP), the leading cause of death in people with uncontrolled epileptic seizures. The findings published in Epilepsy & Behavior reveal that the activity of epilepsy patients in social media increased before their sudden death. These changes in digital behavior could be used as early-warning signals to put preventive interventions for SUDEP into practice, possibly avoiding death.

  
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Social Sciences Spain  ESPAÑA 18/03/2022

An archaeological investigation analyses peasant life in Roman Spain

A research project delves into the life of peasant settlements based on the archaeological findings discovered in the Community of Madrid

The archaeology of the Roman period has traditionally been focused on monumental aspects, but very little is known about what the daily life of peasantry was like. An investigation by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) delves into the life of peasant settlements based on the archaeological findings discovered in the Community of Madrid, in the numerous rescue excavations that were carried out during the real estate bubble period.

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 17/03/2022

A decade of deep-reef exploration in the Greater Caribbean

The use of submersibles exponentially increased recorded diversity of islands’ deep-reef fish faunas

The mysteries of underwater life have long been a source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers, and marine biologists. But scientists interested in understanding the biological diversity of the oceans are often limited by the relatively shallow depths accessible via scuba diving. Small research submersibles, while expensive, allow for the exploration of much deeper waters. A new paper co-authored by researchers at the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the University of Washington and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras describes the important contribution of submersibles to increasing our knowledge about the diversity of deep-reef fishes in the Greater Caribbean.

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 04/03/2022

Smelly ocelot habitats may scare off seed-dispersing rodents

An experiment in Panama’s Parque Natural Metropolitano and Gamboa revealed that agoutis were less likely to disperse and pilfer seeds in sites where ferocious felines roam

When going through stressful situations, some people lose their appetite. Similarly, animals that are scared for their lives tend to eat less. In nature, this behavioral change could have downstream effects. Dumas Galvez, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) wondered how fear of predation could influence the consumption patterns of important seed dispersers such as the Central American agouti, a rodent that loves munching on the seeds of Attalea butyracea, a tropical palm tree also known as corozo, palma real o palma de vino.

  
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