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A first-of-its-kind project will use a swarm of small, independent submersibles to monitor, protect and provide data on offshore artificial reefs whose purpose is to attract new marine life in otherwise barren sections of sea, officials said Monday. The small, autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, hailed as the future of underwater surveillance will be equipped with sensors and high-definition cameras to give scientists at the Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute a clear picture on the effectiveness of their intricate artificial reefs designed and built using 3D printing. Made of an environmentally friendly cement mixture, the artificial reefs will be embedded with a docking station at which the AUVs can recharge and transmit collected data including video, said CMMI CEO Zakarias Siokouros. The advantage of the AUVs lies in their ability to loiter underwater for as long as a month at a time and provide a continuous flow of data while protecting the reefs by alerting scientists to any disturbance in protected waters from illegal fishing and encroaching boats. Scientists would, in turn, notify local authorities. A trial run of the project, dubbed EONIOS, is currently underway off Cyprus Ayia Napa marina. Scientists plan to place the artificial reefs in waters off Cyprus southern coastal town of Limassol at a depth of around 20 meters (66 feet) where sunlight can still reach the seabed. The reefs attract everything from vegetation to large fish and for waters off Cyprus where there isnt enough food for fish, we aim to create the appropriate environment to bring such fish there, Siokouros told The Associated Press following a demonstration of the AUVs’ capabilities at the Ayia Napa Marina. EONIOS is a partnership between the CMMI, AUV makers Arkeocean of France, Cypriot tech company SignalGeneriX and French consultancy company Lanego. Siokouros said the partnership aims to market EONIOS to other countries who would want to build up their fish stocks using artificial reefs. A key selling point for the AUVs is that they can provide surveillance, 3D data collection and area protection at a significant discount compared to tethered submersibles, said Arkeocean official Tamara Brizard. Our goal is to make a system under which six of our mini-drones can do the same work for the price of one conventional drone, Brizard said. Arkeocean AUVs can currently pack a maximum 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of sensors and other gear and can operate to a depth of 300 meters (984 feet) although newer versions are being designed to reach 3,000 meters (9,842 feet). The AUVs receive commands through an attached acoustic antenna and can pinpoint their location. Battery-powered thrusters make the AUVs very stealthy and nearly undetectable, Brizard said, making them extremely useful for defense purposes such as surveillance in restricted waters. The AUVs can operate anywhere in the world thanks to an Iridium satellite antenna. The AUVs can also use undersea currents to roam, extending battery life. Another application is in the energy field where the submersibles can be used to detect seismic activity for offshore oil and gas exploration as well as finding suitable areas on which to build offshore wind and solar farms, said Brizard. Menelaos Hadjicostis, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Elon Musk is in hot water with our Canadian neighbors to the north. A parliamentary petition with 200,000 signatures and climbing is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to revoke Musks Canadian citizenship and passport for threatening Canada’s sovereignty by engaging in activities that go against the national interest.” The British Columbia author Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canadas House of Commons, where it was sponsored by parliamentary member Charlie Angus over the weekend, as reported by the Canadian Press. Musk was born in South Africa, but obtained Canadian citizenship in 1989 through his mother, Maye Musk, who was born in Saskatchewan. The SpaceX CEO and current adviser to President Trump then went on to become a U.S. citizen in 2002. Like a growing number of Americans, many Canadians have had enough of Musk’s alliance with Trump and his extreme interference at the highest levels of American government. Canadians are also angered by the continued threats to slap high tariffs on goods from our longtime trading partner and ally, along with Trump’s outrageous calls to make Canada our 51st state. The petition, launched on February 20, only needed 500 signatures for presentation to the House of Commons to garner a formal government response. It calls on Trudeau to revoke Musks Canadian citizenship status and his Canadian passport “effective immediately.
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E-Commerce
Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit said last week hackers had stolen digital tokens worth around $1.5 billion, in what researchers called the biggest crypto heist of all time. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said the crypto was taken from a “cold wallet” – a digital wallet usually stored offline and so supposedly more secure – that was used for ether tokens. Blockchain research firm Elliptic said the hack was more than double the last-biggest crypto heist and “is almost certainly the single largest known theft of any kind in all time.” The crypto industry has suffered a series of thefts, prompting questions about the security of customer funds, with hacking hauls totalling more than $2 billion in 2024 – the fourth straight year where proceeds have topped more than $1 billion. Here are some of the other major thefts to have plagued the industry since bitcoin was born in 2008. Poly network Hackers stole around $610 million in August 2021 from Poly Network, a platform that facilitates peer-to-peer token transactions. The hackers behind the heist later returned nearly all of the stolen funds. The hack underscored vulnerabilities in the burgeoning decentralised finance – DeFi – sector, where users lend, borrow and save in digital tokens, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks and exchanges. Ronin Network Hackers stole cryptocurrency worth – at the time of the hack – around $540 million from a blockchain project linked to the popular online game Axie Infinity in March 2022. Ronin, a network that allows the transfer of crypto coins across different blockchains, said that hackers stole some 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD Coin tokens. Coincheck In January 2018, hackers stole cryptocurrency then worth around $530 million from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck. The thieves attacked one of Coincheck’s “hot wallet” – a digital folder stored online – to drain the funds, drawing attention to security at exchanges. South Korea’s intelligence agency said at the time that a North Korean hacking group may have been behind the heist. Mt. Gox In one of the earliest and most-high profile crypto hacks, bitcoin worth close to $500 million dollars was stolen from the Mt.Gox exchange in Tokyo – then the world’s biggest – between 2011 and 2014. Mt.Gox, which once handled 80% of the world’s bitcoin trade, filed for bankruptcy in early 2014 after the hack was revealed, with some 24,000 customers losing access to their funds. Wormhole DeFi site Wormhole was hit by a $320 million heist last month, with the hackers making off with 120,000 digital tokens connected to the second-largest cryptocurrency, ether. The crypto arm of Chicago-based Jump Trading, which had the year before acquired the developer behind Wormhole, later replaced the funds “to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop.” Tommy Reggiori Wilkes, Tom Wilson and Elizabeth Howcroft, Reuters
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E-Commerce
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