Long ago, one great ocean flowed between North and South America. When the narrow Isthmus of Panama joined the continents about 3 million years ago, it also separated the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean. If this took place millions of years earlier, as recently asserted by some, the implications for both land and sea life would be revolutionary. Aaron O'Dea, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and colleagues writing in Science Advances firmly set the date at 2.8 million years ago.

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The Grolier Codex, an ancient document that is among the rarest books in the world, has been regarded with skepticism since it was reportedly unearthed by looters from a cave in Chiapas, Mexico, in the 1960s.

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A new study suggests that abandoned farmland is widespread in Europe and that not all land that has been abandoned is unsuitable for farming. Understanding how abandoned farmland is distributed may be important for making land management decisions – for instance, recultivation versus reversion to forest.

A recent study has highlighted the potential of one form of solar power, Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), to make a significant contribution to meeting future electricity demands from renewable sources in Europe.

Motivating homeowners to carry out energy-efficient refurbishments remains a significant challenge for policymakers. New research from Germany has called for more government incentives and better communication strategies to ensure homeowners are aware of the advantages of making energy saving changes to their homes.

Phytoplankton are essential to marine food webs and fisheries. However, a new study indicates that their levels have declined in the North Atlantic since the beginning of the 19th century. This coincides with weakening ocean-circulation patterns, partly caused by melting ice caps. If the melting continues, the study warns of a dramatic fall in North Atlantic plankton levels that could have cascading effects across marine food webs, reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon and threatening the supply of seafood for humans.

Plastic debris is a serious environmental concern, as a physical pollutant as well as a chemical pollutant when it breaks down in the marine environment. A new study has now shown that plastics can also concentrate other pollutants, with significantly higher concentrations of toxic pollutants adhering to soft, rubbery plastics, rather than hard, glassy plastics.

Recycling has significant environmental benefits and is key to a circular economy. The EU has set a goal for Member States to recycle 50% of their municipal waste by 2020 and plans to set a 65% target for 2030, although progress towards this goal is variable. This study assessed a waste separation scheme in Malta, a Member State with traditionally low levels of recycling. Even though mixed waste was collected more frequently and for free, residents contributed to the voluntary recycling scheme, with participation increasing over time. This study provides useful insights for developing voluntary policy approaches.

Concern is growing around the issue of energy efficiency in data centres (DC) as more and more data are saved, processed, and transferred to facilitate myriad digital services worldwide. Utilising waste heat from DCs as heating for nearby districts may be a potential solution if technical and knowledge barriers are overcome, suggests this Finnish study, which identified key obstacles to this concept and possible methods of implementation.

Construction of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants – electricity generation which concentrates sunlight to generate heat – can have a range of negative effects on wildlife, but these effects are short lived, new research has found. Once in use, CSP plants can even have some positive effects, reducing soil erosion, for instance.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes offer direct payments for communities and individuals in exchange for conserving areas of land reserved for conservation for their environmental qualities. The results of an Ecuadorian study highlight key aspects for designing successful PES schemes and demonstrate how investments associated with PES can also benefit poor communities.

Wetland management needs to consider the role wetlands play in supporting livelihoods and wellbeing as well as more traditional conservation goals, according to UK researchers. Such a ‘human-centric’ approach, would link hydrological conservation to societal benefits, including clean water, food production, flood protection and improved human health.

Researchers have developed a new approach for identifying regions that are most suitable for expanding ecosystem services. This could be used to help inform spatial planning decisions. By modelling ecosystem services’ opportunity costs in relation to agricultural revenue, the study provides a map of suitable areas of ecosystem service expansion in Eastern Europe.

An economic analysis of 14 common categories of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) has highlighted the economic value of bringing e-waste streams into the circular economy. The overall worth is calculated as €2.15 billion to European markets, with a potential rise to €3.67 billion as volumes increase.

A tax of €0.05–0.27 per kilogram (kg) of fertiliser could help to limit French farmers’ use of fertiliser, which is driven by the high rapeseed prices resulting from biofuels policy, according to new economics research. This, in turn, may limit fertilisers’ environmental impacts, such as water pollution, the study’s authors suggest.

A mobile-centric approach and the emergence of new digital platforms fuelling greater adoption of e-commerce has driven reach and growth of MakeMyTrip, the online travel company said in a presentation to investors.

BT Cloud Contact Offers customers a complete contact center solution including in built omni-channel, embedded IVR, and an inbuilt customer relationship system as standard.

Contact centres may have poor reputations but they should be seen as a strategic resource, says Nicola Millard, BT’s in-house futurist

A recent study has considered 21st century changes in shipping access through the Arctic Ocean along three potential new routes linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As the sea ice melts, it is possible that high-strength vessels will be able to sail directly through the North Pole by the end of the century, its results indicate.

Scientists have modelled the potential benefits of decentralised flood protection (DFP) in Central Europe and conclude that it could be a significant step towards natural flood management in the EU.

A new study from Spain has explored economic degrowth (the scaling back of economic models based on growth) in the water sector and indicates that rainwater harvesting and reclaimed water use are most aligned to degrowth principles.

A new study has compared the water governance and management systems of nearly 30 river basins around the world. Results indicated that governance systems with distributed political power and good co-ordination help to implement the principles of good governance in water management practice, and to adopt more advanced climate change adaptation policies.

Reusing waste water for non-drinking uses in decentralised plumbing networks may improve the efficiency of water supply in urban areas, a new study has found. Modelling this approach in San Francisco, researchers found that, depending on the local geography, a decentralised water supply could lead to energy savings and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from water treatment of around 30%. Improvements in emerging water-treatment technologies are likely to lead to further savings, which could help increase the efficiency of urban water supply.

Domestic water saving is important — not only to address water scarcity and drought, but also to save energy and tackle climate change. Water-management strategies are needed to prevent these shortages, and include incentives to change consumers’ behaviour concerning water use. This study examines the design of a behaviour-change system and a linked incentive model to stimulate a sustainable change in water-consumption behaviour.

Cybercriminals are unleashing a surprisingly high volume of new threats in this short period of time to take advantage of inadvertent security gaps as organizations are in a rush to ensure business continuity.

“Create a separate user profile with minimal privileges for work-only use. Close all work-related windows, applications, files, and documents when not in use. Do not use work email addresses to sign up for unauthorised, free tools. Grant access to your employees to corporate network only though a company-approved VPN with multi-factor authentication,” the advisory states.

"Accenture has no professional relationship with Unacademy, and any implication or assertion otherwise is erroneous. Accenture has suffered no data breach or loss of any records or client information as a result of this incident," Accenture said in a statement.

With the microblogging site emerging as a key platform for information dissemination, many central banks are active on Twitter, especially in these times of economic uncertainties amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The alliance aims to help clients provide enterprise end users with exceptional data control across multiple data sources.

With the expiry of additional ad-hoc incentive for January-March, the benefit for mobile phone makers under the Merchandise Export Incentives Scheme (MEIS) has fallen back to 2% from 4% even though the scheme has been extended to December 31.

With the help of VoIP calling facility, call centres can continue to serve their customers efficiently and not leave them stranded waiting for service.

The emergence of new business environment in the wake of Covid-19 is expected to boost cloud services and digitisation as companies overhaul their digital infrastructure to deal with new ways of working, they said.

"Accenture has no professional relationship with Unacademy, and any implication or assertion otherwise is erroneous. Accenture has suffered no data breach or loss of any records or client information as a result of this incident," Accenture said in a statement.

Modular data centres are attractive options to power next-gen applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), industrial process control and smart cities. Radical edge computing possibilities are on offer.

India has been recording unprecedented growth in data and this requires that service providers, like Airtel, increase the number of data centers, the telecom gear maker said.

The new center takes the total number of Customer Support Centres of Excellence to ten, five of which are based in Asia.

Amazon is beefing up its data centre infrastructure and cloud services business in India as the clamour around data localisation grows louder everyday.

The data centre market, currently pegged at around $4 billion, is likely to grow to $7 billion by 2020 or 2022, say industry players.

The new construction will add to Google’s existing data-centre complex in Hamina on the south coast of Finland.

These proposed regulations overlap and in some cases even contradict, and these issues have been flagged by global companies such as Google and IBM.

From big businesses to real estate companies to global technology firms, everybody is talking of setting up data centres or of making aggressive expansions. Priyanka Sangani delineates the new trend.

While Edge data centers will be providing an array of services independently, a more centralized data center can be backing them up with cloud services and analytics.

This expansion adds up to 15 data centres under STT GDC India’s ownership and management, and increases the power capacity to more than 90 megawatt of critical IT load across eight cities, further strengthening its market-leading position, said the company.

The company’s data centers are currently located in Singapore. “We don’t have a stated plan yet but we may look at opening an Indian data centre to be closer to customers in India. Some customers prefer local presence,” said Nikhil Arora, managing director, GoDaddy India.

With close to 450 million Internet users, India is already the largest market for companies like Facebook in terms of users.

The investment follows a Rs1,715 crore infusion into Amazon’s payments and wholesale arms last month.

Demand has increased by nearly eight times. Requests for virtualisation and cloud infra have also resulted in a surge

The emergence of new business environment in the wake of Covid-19 is expected to boost cloud services and digitisation as companies overhaul their digital infrastructure to deal with new ways of working, they said.

Changes in the timing of biological events in plants, such as flowering, observed in recent decades are in response to ongoing climate change, according to recent research from Spain. These results can be used to improve modelling of the effects of future climate change on plants and crops in the region.