A University of Arizona-led team of astronomers has created a detailed, three-dimensional image of a dying hypergiant star. The team, led by UArizona researchers Ambesh Singh and Lucy Ziurys, traced the distribution, directions and velocities of a variety of molecules surrounding a red hypergiant star known as VY Canis Majoris.

Their findings, which they presented on June 13 at the 240th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California, offer insights, at an unprecedented scale, into the processes that accompany the death of giant stars.

The work was done with collaborators Robert Humphreys from the University of Minnesota and Anita Richards from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Extreme supergiant stars known as hypergiants are very rare, with only a few known to exist in the Milky Way. Examples include Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation Orion, and NML Cygni, also known as V1489 Cygni, in the constellation Cygnus.

Unlike stars with lower masses – which are more likely to puff up once they enter the red giant phase but generally retain a spherical shape – hypergiants tend to experience substantial, sporadic mass loss events that form complex, highly irregular structures composed of arcs, clumps and knots.

Located about 3,009 light-years from Earth, VY Canis Majoris – or VY CMa, for short – is a pulsating variable star in the slightly southern constellation of Canis Major. Spanning anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 astronomical units (with 1 AU being the average distance between Earth and the sun) VY CMa is possibly the most massive star in the Milky Way, according to Ziurys.

“Think of it as Betelgeuse on steroids,” said Ziurys, a Regents Professor with joint appointments in UArizona Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Steward Observatory, both part of the College of Science. “It is much larger, much more massive and undergoes violent mass eruptions every 200 years or so.”

The team chose to study VY CMa because it is one of the best examples of these types of stars.

“We are particularly interested in what hypergiant stars do at end of their lives,” said Singh, a fourth-year doctoral student in Ziurys’ lab. “People used to think these massive stars simply evolve into supernovae explosions, but we are no longer sure about that.”

“If that were the case, we should see many more supernovae explosions across the sky,” Ziurys added. “We now think they might quietly collapse into black holes, but we don’t know which ones end their lives like that, or why that happens and how.”

Previous imaging of VY CMa with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and spectroscopy showed the presence of distinct arcs and other clumps and knots, many extending thousands of AU from the central star.

In Search of Details on the Deaths of Rare Giant Stars

To uncover more details of the processes by which hypergiant stars end their lives, the team set out to trace certain molecules around the hypergiant and map them to preexisting images of the dust, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“Nobody has been able to make a complete image of this star,” Ziurys said, explaining that her team set out to understand the mechanisms by which the star sheds mass, which appear to be different from those of smaller stars entering their red giant phase at the end of their lives.

“You don’t see this nice, symmetrical mass loss, but rather convection cells that blow through the star’s photosphere like giant bullets and eject mass in different directions,” Ziurys said. “These are analogous to the coronal arcs seen in the sun, but a billion times larger.”

The team used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile to trace a variety of molecules in material ejected from the stellar surface. While some observations are still in progress, preliminary maps of sulfur oxide, sulfur dioxide, silicon oxide, phosphorous oxide and sodium chloride were obtained. From these data, the group constructed an image of the gl...

NFT’s are becoming more popular and are being used in a variety of interesting ways. One company that is doing interesting things with NFT’s is Creaticles, the NFT requests marketplace matching users with artists. Ronan talks to Jonathan Chen, their Head of Operations about what they are doing and more.

Jonathan talks about his background, what Creaticles does, Creaticles mission, Creaticles contests and Creaticles been selected as one of eight of the most promising projects in CoinList’s Seed batch for Fall 2021. Jonathan also talks about Creaticles’ partnership with Fantom, and the recently announced charity NFT contest in aid of Top 7 for Ukraine.

More about Creaticles:

Their platform allows anyone to source custom NFTs through ‘Creaticles contests’, using a Request for Proposal (RFP) model, in which users submit an NFT idea request to the platform’s roster of verified artists, who are remunerated for their work in ETH and other cryptocurrencies.

They were also selected as one of eight of the most promising projects in CoinList’s Seed batch for Fall 2021, out of a field of over 500 crypto projects, and recently announced a partnership with Fantom.

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On this Podcast, Diana Paiva is joined by David Boles, CEO of climatemoney, a banking app that allows customers to automatically know the carbon footprint of their purchases and lifestyle emissions. He explains the purpose of climatemoney and the change they are making to fight against climate change. David Boles also talks about blockchain in the environment and talks about climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

Helping people to limit their carbon footprint David Boles

David Boles is the CEO of the Climatemoney Fintech, climatemoney. A graduate of UCD’s Civil and Environmental Engineering programme, he was honoured in 2018 for his work on carbon mitigation in the multipoint emission sectors. David’s innovative approach to emission reduction programmes, expressed via the startup climatemoney lays out a pathway to achieving net-zero emissions beyond political soundbites of pledges and targets set.

My first podcast ever went live on the Irish Tech news.#climatechange #climateaction #climatecrisis #climatesolution #tech #podcast #FridaysForFuture #ClimateEmergency

David Boles (@boles400) June 18, 2022

ClimateMoney, empowering your money for climate action

By you for everyone. We’re just the mechanism.

Time. We haven’t much left. The app to build a sustainable future.

About Diana Paiva

Diana is currently interning with Irish Tech News. She graduated from Birkbeck University, with a degree in modern languages and she is currently doing a master’s in Journalism at the University of Roehampton. She has an interest in technology, fashion, and the environment. Starting her master’s in journalism made her realise that she has a passion to report and write people’s stories. After graduation, her main priority is to find a job in communications or public relations. Diana Paiva is active on social media platforms, including Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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More about Irish Tech News

Irish Tech News are Ireland’s No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland’s No.1 Tech Podcast too.

You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here:

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Imagine a truck that only emits water vapour, produces its own electricity on board and has a range of up to 1 000 km. It’s possible with fuel cells powered by hydrogen, and Volvo Trucks has started to test vehicles using this new technology.

To decarbonize transport, Volvo Trucks already today offers battery-electric trucks and trucks that run on renewable fuels, such as biogas.

In the second half of this decade, a third CO2-neutral option will be added to its product portfolio – fuel cell electric trucks powered by hydrogen.

“We have been developing this technology for some years now, and it feels great to see the first trucks successfully running on the test track. The combination of battery-electric and fuel cell electric will enable our customers to completely eliminate CO2 exhaust emissions from their trucks, no matter transport assignments,” says Roger Alm, President of Volvo Trucks.

The fuel cell electric trucks will have an operational range comparable to many diesel trucks – up to 1000 km – and a refuelling time of fewer than 15 minutes. The total weight can be around 65 tons or even higher, and the two fuel cells have the capacity to generate 300 kW of electricity onboard.

Customer pilots will start a few years from now and commercialization is planned for the latter part of this decade.

“Hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric trucks will be especially suitable for long distances and heavy, energy-demanding assignments. They could also be an option in countries where battery charging possibilities are limited,” says Roger Alm.

Generates its own electricity

A fuel cell generates its own electricity from the hydrogen onboard instead of being charged from an external source. The only byproduct emitted is water vapour.

Fuel cells delivered by cell centric

The fuel cells will be supplied by cell centric – the joint venture between the Volvo Group and Daimler Truck AG. Cellcentric will build one of Europe’s largest series production facilities for fuel cells, specially developed for heavy vehicles.

More green hydrogen needed

Fuel cell technology is still in an early phase of development and there are many benefits with the new technology, but also some challenges ahead. One of them is a large-scale supply of green hydrogen. Another is the fact that refuelling infrastructure for heavy vehicles is yet to be developed.

“We expect the supply of green hydrogen to increase significantly during the next couple of years since many industries will depend on it to reduce CO2. However, we cannot wait to decarbonize transport, we are already running late.

So, my clear message to all transport companies is to start the journey today with battery-electric, biogas and the other options available. The fuel cell trucks will then be an important complement for longer and heavier transports in a few years from now”, says Roger Alm.

The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) has chosen the island of Ireland for the first time as the destination for its 34th Annual Conference, entitled ‘Neart Le Chéile: Strength Together’ in the Convention Centre, Dublin, from June 26 to July 1, 2022.

Over 1,000 people from six continents will participate, as the not-for-profit aims to deliver worldwide coordination and cooperation among computer security and incident response teams.

From Tonga to Tanzania, Greece to Guatemala, Australia to America, the participants from nearly 80 countries are the leading lights in their field. Governments, academia, and businesses, all have a critical agenda as cyber security issues continue to rapidly increase worldwide, and global coordination is now vital to make the internet safe for everyone.

Google’s Maddie Stone delves into the unknown during the conference, focusing on 0-day exploits used in the wild. A security researcher on Google Project Zero, she will disclose crucial insights and learnings from previously detected 0-day attacks – which occur when a cyber attacker abuses a vulnerability that was totally unknown – to help delegates defend organisations and society in future incidents.

The five-day event will explore various themes with contributors from industry and academia, from notable organisations such as the World Economic Forum, National Police Agency from Japan, Amnesty International, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity.

Other notable discussions on the agenda include the preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Games, analysis of the SolarWinds supply chain compromise, and lessons learned from supporting national responses to COVID-19.

Brian Honan, CEO, BH Consulting and FIRST Annual Conference Programme Chair, commented: “Dublin, and Ireland, is a perfect setting to host leading experts in this area with the cyber security sector on a significant growth trajectory on the island.

The recent State of Cyber Security Sector in Ireland 2022 report states that by 2030 the industry will be worth €2.5 bn GVA – an increase of €1.4 bn from 2021 – employing over 17,000 people.

“This conference is critical for the global community of incident responders and security teams. After two years of pandemic uncertainty, we can all come together in person once more to tackle cyber security issues in a united fashion to create a fix and ensure organisations can continue to operate with limited disruption.

Our theme, ‘Neart Le Chéile: Strength Together’, is exactly how we, as experts, will beat the criminals and keep people safe from cyber security attacks going forward.”

Chris Gibson, CEO, FIRST added: “The conference program this year is both intuitive and timely, with our keynoters’ covering topics across the full spectrum of computer security – from the practical to the emotional.

“As a membership organisation, we work to ensure that our Annual Conference brings as much value as possible. Over the five days, our goal is to inspire and empower participants to take new thinking and tools back with them to their everyday roles as they continue to defend people across the globe against cyber-attacks.”

Cyber specialists must work together to tackle online crime, as many instances do not occur in isolation, or just in one geographical area.

FIRST provides a unique platform for everyone to unite and work towards a safer cyber community for all.

At the FIRST Conference participants will share goals, ideas, and information on how to improve global computer security, with delegates learning the latest security strategies in incident management, increasing their knowledge and technical insight about security problems and solutions, and gaining insights into analysing network vulnerabilities.

Alongside numerous talks and panel discussions, the conference also features Lightning Talks, a Vendor Showcase and Exhibits, and networking opportunities. The full program can be a...

In 2021, the European Commission (EC) announced the “Path to the Digital Decade,” a vision for Europe’s digital transformation by 2030, which is divided into four areas—skills, infrastructures, government, and business—with key metrics to challenge and monitor progress.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) shares the EC’s vision for Europe’s digital transformation, and we commissioned Public First to undertake the “Unlocking Europe’s Digital Potential” study to understand how we can work together to help Europe unlock its digital ambitions.

According to Public First’s report, the Digital Decade could unlock over 2.8 trillion euros in gross value added (GVA), the measure of the value of goods and services produced in the region’s economy, which is equivalent to nearly 21% of the European Union’s (EU) current economy.

Digital transformation for EU growth

The study highlights that 55% of the estimated GVA gain depends on cloud computing. Cloud computing refers to the on-demand delivery of information technology (IT) resources on the internet. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining data centres and servers, organizations can access computing power, storage, databases, and other services on the cloud on an as-needed basis.

With cloud computing, AWS manages and maintains the technology infrastructure, achieving the highest levels of security, privacy, and resilience for businesses.

The potential 2.8 trillion euros in GVA comprises 1.3 trillion euros the EU is already on course to achieve plus a further 1.5 trillion euros if digital progress is accelerated. If progress isn’t accelerated, the EU will achieve only 45% of the potential GVA of the Digital Decade. At the current rate of progress, achieving the EU’s full digital target will take until 2040, an extra 10 years.

Unlocking this value requires private and public sectors to join forces to accelerate the uptake and adoption of digital skills and technologies, such as cloud technologies. AWS, with its cloud expertise and action to help 29 million people globally grow their technical skills with free cloud computing skills training by 2025, supports the EU’s ambitions.

The EU is making good progress towards some of its Digital Decade targets. For example, it’s on track to meet its aim of doubling the number of “unicorns,” privately held startups valued at over $1 billion, by 2030. The EU is also making progress towards digitizing 100% of core public services and is likely to meet its gigabit for everyone and 5G everywhere target for internet connectivity.

These successes must be replicated across all of the EU’s Digital Decade targets. Accelerating progress requires a collective focus across public and private sectors on digital adoption, skills development, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and digital government.

Accelerating digital transformation

In 2021, the EU had over 200 unicorns, double the level in 2017, and the number is on track to double again by 2030. However, many European companies have not yet adopted existing technologies, including the cloud. Digitizing the overall economy would boost growth by 20%, which is 8.5 times the value of growing the EU’s tech sector. The report also estimates the following:

Few European companies have adopted foundational technologies such as the cloud (26%), artificial intelligence (AI) (25%), and big data (14%).

By using services based on the cloud, e.g., customer relationship management (CRM), companies can boost business productivity by 10–25%.

If EU businesses accelerate their adoption of cloud, AI, and big data by 10%, they would add 370 billion euros in GVA to the EU economy, an amount larger than the EU’s financial services industry.

Many businesses surveyed were unaware of the benefits of digital technology. Governments can play a crucial role, particularly for small businesses, in providing training and support to address this.

Closing the skills gap

While a majority of Europeans possess basic digital skills, significant differenc...

Good things tend to come in 3’s: the first Techstars Demo Day in Ireland, the first chain-agnostic web3 accelerator at Techstars, and the first Techstars accelerator program run from Ireland.

On the evening of Thursday, June 30th, the founders of the nine startups forming the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator Class of 2022 will pitch live on stage in Dublin.

The Demo Day audience at the Button Factory venue in Dublin will include investors, Techstars mentors and the wider Irish startup and web3 communities. As web3 is both global and virtual, we will also Livestream the event globally via YouTube.

We are fortunate to have an extremely high-calibre group of founders building blockchain technology and tokenization protocols driving toward our decentralized future.

Of the nine startups, three are native to Ireland, an additional two have set up Irish entities, and the remaining four hail from the UK, Australia, Singapore and the US. The Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator is a hybrid in-person and remote program enabling borderless acceleration, and we’re delighted to have all of the teams join us in Dublin for the last two weeks of the program.

During the 13-week mentorship-driven accelerator program led by Pete Townsend and Hugh McGirr, the startups worked alongside entrepreneurs, advisors, operators and experts in web3 from both the Launchpool and Techstars networks, sharpening their business models, gaining valuable web3 knowledge and insights, and refining their pitches to potential investors.

Special thanks go out to the 100+ mentors, in-residence experts, masterclass presenters, our partners Launchpool and Alphabit, and all who supported our startups throughout the 13-week program.

If you can’t make it to the in-person event, we will also be hosting a Livestream of the event on YouTube.

To learn more about the nine startups pitching, please visit their websites below:

We catch up with Nick Cote, founder of Marsbase to learn about his promising solution to the challenges of liquidity by creating a new way to access it. We ask him why now, why his team has the ability to make this work, and what impact the current state of the market will have on this project. Nick was also recently at recent high profile crypto events in Texas and NYC and we discuss his take on current trends and opportunities to watch out for.

Solving the challenges of liquidity, Nick Cote, Marsbase

Nick Cote (CEO) – Nick has been entrenched in the crypto space since 2012, joining the 1Broker / 1Fox team in 2013 and growing the CFD / to over 100,000 users. In 2015, he started and currently manages a primarily institutional-focused OTC network for digital assets.

See all their relevant links and more information here ->

More about Marsbase

Marsbase is the first decentralized secondary market, a defi OTC desk. We’ve built this as an infrastructure project, we believe that we’ve created a new alternative source of liquidity by concentrating liquidity of large orders in one place and becoming the platform for OTC in crypto.

Our platform works through bid auction deals and discount model orders – this type of functionality perfectly covers our niche.

Additionally, we are moving towards becoming the first compliant marketplace of unvested tokens and equity.

Marsbase Mission

-trading without slippage price

-Decentralized OTC deals

-Available for whales & retail investors

-Best coin offers with discount prices

-Full ERC-20 coin range

Marsbase opens access to 2 types of OTC trades with a choice of 150 currency pairs, as well as a launchpad for projects with vesting and the ability to resell vesting tokens.

We have combined all this in a single marketplace for all market participants, lowering the threshold for entering OTC deals literally to satoshi and providing tools for managing the reputation.

Moreover, the MBASE native OTC token of the Marsbase platform, as well as staking and farming will make your trading experience as profitable as possible. You will be able to receive cashback from your transactions and instantly calculate the profit from transactions on Marsbase.

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More about Irish Tech News

Irish Tech News are Ireland’s No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland’s No.1 Tech Podcast too.

You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here:

If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at [email protected] now to discuss.

Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at [email protected] now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience.

You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

On June 30th, Dell Technologies will host the latest event in their Transformation Made Real Series focused on the theme of ‘Making Your Business Cyber Resilient’.

As business leaders look back over the last two years, it’s clear there has been a seismic shift in how organisations perceive technology and its role in shaping a do-anything-from-anywhere economy.

However, with new technologies shaping a data-driven economy, there is a growing need for businesses to place cyber resilience at the heart of their digital transformation journey. After all, success in a digital economy relies on the ability of businesses to secure data and maintain trust in their IT systems.

To truly thrive in the digital era, leaders must focus not only on the power of new technologies to transform their business but also on the importance of putting in place measures to mitigate against, respond to and recover from the growing threat of cyber-attacks.

With cyber-attacks occurring every 11 seconds globally, what steps can Irish businesses take to strengthen their cyber resilience and ensure they can continue transforming at speed in the months ahead?

Connected and The Business Post, in association with Dell Technologies, will host a Transformation Made Real hybrid event on Thursday, 30 June.

The hybrid event will reveal the growing focus on cybersecurity amongst Irish business leaders. With the cyber risk front of mind for everyone right now, speakers will map out the steps leaders can take to make their business cyber resilient.

Speakers will include Jason Ward, Vice-President and Managing Director and Tom Digan, Cyber Security Director, both of Dell Technologies Ireland. Further members of the panel will be announced in the coming days.

To register, visit:/

A-NFT Ecosystem

The decentralised cloud is here.

The Quasa NFT ecosystem is made up of a large number of diverse storage providers and developers. This creates a robust and reliable service.

Now IPFS users can reliably store their data with QUASA – a world of applications and use-cases stored, served, and powered by crypto.

QUASA combines with IPFS, a peer-to-peer distributed network protocol, to make a more efficient and secure web free from corporate control. Content addressing and cryptographic storage proofs verify data is being stored correctly and securely over time.

In the QUASA NFT ecosystem, all active NFTs (A-NFT) are available in real-time.

A-NFTs are always available regardless of the blockchains they are created on and NFT marketplaces.

Quasa Blockchain

QUASA is the starting point for the growth and coordination of the Quasa Chain blockchain. The Quasa Chain is built on a secure, scalable, and reliable blockchain designed so that anyone can build on it, and billions of people can depend on it.

The Quasa Chain is the technological backbone of the payment system, operated by a network of validator nodes.

The software that implements the blockchain is open-source — designed so that anyone can build on it — and is able to scale so that billions of people can depend on it for their financial needs.

The Quasa Blockchain implements the Clique and Quasa Byzantine Fault Tolerant 2.0 (QuasaBFT 2.0) consensus protocol.

Byzantine fault tolerance is the ability of a blockchain network to function correctly and reach consensus despite nodes failing or propagating incorrect information to peers.

As part of the QuasaBFT protocol, approved accounts, known as validators (signers for Clique), validate transactions and blocks. Validators take turns creating the next block. Before inserting the block onto the chain, a super-majority (greater than 66%) of validators must first sign the block.

Existing validators propose and vote to add or remove validators. Adding or removing a validator requires a majority vote (greater than 50%) of validators.

The number of validators is sufficient to ensure decentralisation. Each validator registers and manages the transactions of its users.

The Quasa network is a large community of developers and users all coming together to collaborate and build something greater than themselves.

The Mission

The QUASA active NTFs (A-NTFs) ecosystem is built to enable open, instant, and low-cost access to blockchain services.

Discover the world of decentralised applications in a whole new way with QUASA NFT.

What are Active NFTs?

Active NFTs are NFTs in which their life cycle, all events, documents and history have been added using smart contracts. We call this process “certification”. Moreover, it provides the NFT realm with more accessibility as it allows you to add and authenticate the author, owner of the NFT, and link the physical asset to the NFT.

Active NFTs provide loads of benefits such as:

Full NFT life cycle certification including all events and history;

Associating a Physical Object with an NFT;

Copyright and property rights protection for owners;

Transition from passive traditional NFTs to active A-NFTs;

Decentralised A-NFT signing by experts or the community on the blockchain.

As such, they have the potential to influence several aspects of the entire market positively. For example, A-NFTs make it possible for investors to purchase more sought-after and valuable (certified) NFTs; meanwhile, it also provides a larger market for potential sellers.

NFTs aren’t just digital pieces of art. They are layered mechanisms for proving ownership, access, rights, and more.

Active NFTs (A-NFTs) Empower Physical Items

Active NFTs authenticate physical assets and represent them in virtual spaces with a unique active NFT (A-NFT).

Now anyone can present objects, works of art, objects they own, and even their beloved pet in virtual spaces and metaverses with proof of ownership of these physical objects and the A-NFT...