Social Sciences Spain  MADRID 28/11/2023

A new study analyses how we choose friends at school

Similarity is not the key, according to this research which UC3M is taking part in

Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and Loyola University have discovered that personality does not seem to have much influence when it comes to choosing social friendships at school, which are based more on the closeness of our contacts, according to a study recently published in the journal PNAS.

 
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Environment Mexico  YUCATÁN 14/11/2023

Yucatán’s underwater caves host diverse microbial communities

New study constructs most extensive map yet of the cave system’s microbiome

With help from an experienced underwater cave-diving team, Northwestern University researchers have constructed the most complete map to date of the microbial communities living in the submerged labyrinths beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Although previous researchers have collected water and microbial samples from the cave entrances and easily accessible sinkholes, the Northwestern-led team reached the deep, dark passageways of unlit waters to better understand what can survive inside this unique underground realm.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 26/10/2023

New research reveals alarming privacy and security threats in Smart Homes

A group of researchers from several international universities and research centres analyze the local network interactions of IoT devices and mobile apps, and demonstrate that a variety of security and privacy threats exist

An international team of researchers, led by IMDEA Networks and Northeastern University in collaboration with NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, IMDEA Software, University of Calgary, and the International Computer Science Institute, has unveiled groundbreaking findings on the security and privacy challenges posed by the ever-growing prevalence of opaque and technically complex Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 04/10/2023

Cutting-edge European telecommunications research infrastructure unveiled with a node in Madrid

IMDEA Networks and UC3M are part of the Spanish node

IMDEA Networks and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have presented SLICES-ES, a European infrastructure for experimenting with future information and communications technologies that will be based in Madrid, most likely at the Madrid university’s facilities. This scientific instrument, which will become operational during 2024 and with some initial services already underway since October 2023, will be made available to the research community to carry out complex experiments in the area of digital sciences.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 28/09/2023

ChatGPT tackles controversial issues better than before: from bias to moderation

IMDEA Networks has led a study that concludes that although ChatGPT has more moderated than its predecessors, it still shows a certain libertarian bias in the socio-political sphere

New research conducted by IMDEA Networks Institute in collaboration with the University of Surrey, UPV, and King’s College London has shown that there is a general downward trend in the popular artificial intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT to take direct stances on controversial topics. Whether providing agreement or disagreement, or an affirmative or negative response. Now, although the study results show a moderation on the part of ChatGPT when it comes to addressing controversial issues, they warn that in the socio-political arena, it maintains a certain libertarian bias. However, in economic matters, it doesn’t present a clear left or right-leaning bias.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 31/07/2023

A study from QMUL and IMDEA Networks reveals how you behave on the Internet according to your income level

Those who live in wealthier neighborhoods tend to post more positive content and engage in discussions about crime more often than those who live in poorer neighborhoods

Researchers Vahid Ghafouri and Guillermo Suárez de Tangil from IMDEA Networks Institute have collaborated on a research led by Waleed Iqbal, Gareth Tyson, and Ignacio Castro from Queen Mary University of London that analyzes how real-world inequalities manifest themselves in social networks. In the paper “Lady and the Tramp Nextdoor: Online Manifestations of Real-World Inequalities in the Nextdoor Social Network,” presented at the ICWSM 2023 conference, it has been revealed that a person’s income level influences the type of content they share online.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 04/07/2023

'Edge to cloud continuum': the compute and storage infrastructure that will prevail over the next decade

IMDEA Networks researchers have participated in the project EDGEDATA-CM to integrate cloud computing, edge computing and fog computing, which will lead to more consistent and, above all, reliable data management

Technological innovations such as cloud computing, the internet of things, big data and WiFi networks have led to applications that were unimaginable a few decades ago and to an increase in the quality of life, an improvement in business decisions thanks to data analysis, etc. This has meant new computational paradigms, such as fog computing (‘fog computing’), edge computing (‘edge computing’), cloud computing and blockchain.

 
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Space Spain  MADRID 27/06/2023

A system has been designed to detect and estimate satellite manoeuvres more accurately

This development may help reduce the problem of space debris

Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Polytechnic University of Milan and the company GMV have developed a new methodology for detecting and estimating satellite manoeuvres that improves the operation of the systems currently in use. This development, which is already being tested in operational environments, may help reduce the problem of space debris.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 20/06/2023

MLEDGE: A sustainable initiative for the development of efficient networks and solutions in the Cloud and Federated Learning

The project will be fundamental for the development of Cloud infrastructures and machine learning/federated learning in Spain and for the promotion of national R&D&I

Data-driven decision-making driven by Machine Learning (ML) algorithms is changing the way society and the economy work, with a profound positive impact on our daily lives. For these solutions to be effective, data often has to be processed close to the end user and such data can be private and confidential.

 
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 19/06/2023

Scientists catch the suspect in long-term marine murder mystery

Murder mysteries may take decades to resolve, especially if they take place under the sea. The massive deaths of sea urchins in the Caribbean in the 1980’s is one of them

In the early 1980’s marine biologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama observed dead and dying sea urchins (Diadema antillarum) near the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal. They alerted other marine labs and dive shops across the region—by snail mail, because this was pre-internet—and it soon became evident that a massive sea urchin die-off was underway. The cause was never identified, but the impact was enormous, as around 90% of sea urchins in the Caribbean were killed.

 
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Environment Spain  MADRID 15/06/2023

“Butterfly chaos effect” discovered in swarms and herds of animals

Findings of UC3M and UCM mathematicians

Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) have discovered a phase shift between chaotic states that can appear in herds of animals and, in particular, in swarms of insects. This advance may help to better understand their behaviour or be applied to the study of the movement of cells or tumours.

 
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Technology Spain  MADRID 31/05/2023

IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks work to deploy in the Community of Madrid "MadQCI": Europe's largest quantum network

MADQuantum-CM is a project funded by the Community of Madrid, the Spanish State through the Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience, and the European Union through the NextGeneration EU funds

IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks Institutes participate together with six other partners (Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial, Centro Español de Metrología, Fundación Vithas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid) in the MADQuantum-CM project, funded by the Community of Madrid, the Spanish State through the Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience, and the European Union through the NextGeneration EU funds. The objective of the project is the expansion of MadQCI, the new quantum communications network of the Community of Madrid and the largest quantum network in Europe.

 
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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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