Sources: Cristobal secures extension with Miami
Mario Cristobal agreed to a long-term contract extension with Miami after leading the Hurricanes to the College Football Playoff title game last season. The team lost that championship game to Indiana.
These bizarre new beetles look so stretchy scientists named them Luffy
A newly discovered beetle genus with unusually long, slender mandibles and antennae was named Luffy after the stretchy One Piece character. The insects' extended body parts resembled the manga hero's rubber-like ability to elongate his body.
Scientists went looking for giant trees in Taiwan and found a lost world
Researchers discovered an 84.1-meter Taiwania fir in Taiwan's remote mountains, the tallest known tree in East Asia. Using LiDAR mapping and field expeditions, they identified dense clusters of giant trees in carbon-rich ancient forests previously unknown to science.
NAB Tests AI Agents in Plan to Deploy Tech to Banking Customers
NAB's technology chief announced the bank will soon test security and operational guardrails for an agentic AI platform. The country's largest lenders are seeking to deploy this technology more widely to banking customers.
Paymentus Revenue Surges as Businesses Seek to Deliver Smooth Billing Experiences
Bill payment solution provider Paymentus achieved record revenue in the second quarter as service providers prioritized improving customer billing experiences. The company's CEO cited upcoming research findings during an earnings call on August 3 regarding the importance of billing and payment experiences to customer loyalty.
BBVA call centre staff develop and deploy AI agents to speed up response times
BBVA's contact centre staff in Italy and Germany developed AI assistants that reduced average handling time for common customer inquiries by over 15%. The assistants address questions about products, services, and general procedures at the bank's fully digital operations.
Qwen3.8-Max arrives with a bold claim: it outperforms GPT-5.6 Sol Max and Fable 5 on agentic computer use
Alibaba's Qwen team released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model that scores 86.1 on the OSWorld-Verified benchmark, outperforming GPT-5.6 Sol Max at 83.2 and Fable 5 at 85.0. The company plans to release open weights for Qwen3.8-Max next week alongside Qwen3.8-27B.
Mechanical shortcut' rapidly carries organic particles into the deep ocean
A mechanical process rapidly transports organic particles from the surface to the deep ocean, helping capture atmospheric carbon and store it on the seabed. Researchers can now measure this mechanism across depths from the surface to the ocean floor.
Four labs find experimental differences can undermine AI catalyst predictions
Four research labs discovered that experimental variations can significantly reduce the accuracy of AI models predicting which catalysts work best for converting carbon dioxide into fuel. The findings show that AI predictions depend heavily on consistent, high-quality input data, similar to how chatbot performance relies on training data quality.
Asana's AI agents share memory across your company — but not your secrets
Asana built an AI agent operating system called Agentic Work Management that allows agents to share memory across teams while maintaining data security. The system runs on the Work Graph, an 18-year-old database architecture organizing information through tasks, projects, portfolios, and company goals in a hierarchical structure.
AI Voice Agents Take Over the Retail Sales Floor
Voice agents based on models like OpenAI's GPT-Realtime can now conduct real sales conversations and ask probing questions to adapt to shopper needs. Previously, retailers used website chatbots for two years that could answer specific questions but could not complete sales transactions.
EXL Completes iMerit Acquisition to Expand Its End-to-End Enterprise AI Capabilities
EXL completed its acquisition of AI data specialist iMerit for up to $310 million, consisting of $170 million upfront and up to $140 million in earnouts. The transaction combines the two companies' capabilities in enterprise artificial intelligence, with earnout payments tied to milestones over two years.
Forest floors reveal overlooked seed dispersers: Slugs, beetles and crabs spread viable seeds
Tiny ground-dwelling invertebrates including slugs, beetles, and crabs function as seed dispersers and spread viable seeds, according to a review from the University of Hong Kong. This finding challenges traditional assumptions that focused primarily on birds and mammals as the main agents of seed dispersal in forests.
A DeepMind exec finally said what the trillion-dollar AI spend is for: machines that improve themselves.
Machines capable of recursive self-improvement represent the target of trillion-dollar AI spending, according to DeepMind's chief strategy officer. Jasjeet Sekhon made this argument at a UC Berkeley summit, framing the investment as a bet on systems that can enhance their own capabilities.
Bringing it all into focus—computational microscope captures 25.2 billion pixels per second across a wide field of view
Researchers developed a computational microscope that captures 25.2 billion pixels per second while maintaining a wide field of view and high resolution. The system overcomes the traditional trade-off between speed, field of view, and resolution that has limited microscope design.
The danger isn’t the AI model. It’s the agent acting on its own, and Zenity raised $125m to watch it.
AI agents operating independently pose greater risks than the models themselves, prompting Zenity to raise $125 million to monitor agent actions. The Israeli startup focuses on securing what autonomous agents do once deployed within company systems.
Discarded rice husks capture toxic dyes, offering a reusable water filter
Rice husks, a byproduct of rice processing, can capture toxic dyes from water, offering a reusable filtration material. The world generates 300 billion pounds of rice husk waste annually, which could be repurposed for this water treatment application.
DeFi Protocol Aave Plans Orderly Exit from Low-Activity Markets and Chains, Potentially Impacting Nearly $100M in Assets
Aave plans to phase out support for underused asset reserves and exit several smaller blockchain networks, potentially affecting nearly $100 million in assets. The orderly exit initiative was announced by founder Stani Kulechov as part of a broader strategy.
Earnings Show Banks Chasing Mid-Market With Payments Platforms
Banks are repositioning payments and treasury technologies as more than basic infrastructure to attract mid-market clients. These platforms now emphasize capabilities for moving money, managing liquidity, and connecting corporate systems beyond their traditional background role.
Citi Recruits Bank of America Vet Rohan Sen Amid Investment Banking Hiring Spree
Citi hired Rohan Sen from Bank of America to lead technology services sector coverage in investment banking. Sen spent 11 years at Bank of America as a managing director in its technology investment banking group.
AI models atom movement to predict solid-state reaction pathways, including impurities, in minutes
An AI model predicts solid-state reaction pathways by tracking atom movement through materials in minutes, accounting for impurities for the first time. Developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the approach offers practical guidance for optimizing recipes when manufacturing advanced materials.
Smart bioink shields delicate neural cells during precision 3D printing
A smart bioink has been developed that protects neural cells from damage during 3D printing by reducing the mechanical stress from nozzle extrusion. The bioink allows delicate brain tissue cells to survive the printing process and maintain structural integrity through the printer nozzle.
US FAA certifies Boeing 737 MAX 7 in win for planemaker
The FAA approved Boeing's 737 MAX 7, the smallest variant of the best-selling aircraft, after years of waiting. The certification allows Boeing to sell this particular model to customers.
Underground fungal networks come into 3D view without disturbing plant roots
Researchers developed a method to visualize mycorrhizal fungal networks in three dimensions without disturbing plant roots. The technique allows study of these underground symbiotic structures in their natural state for the first time.
Rubin Observatory opens a deep window on a famous cosmic field
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first LSST Camera image showing hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies in the COSMOS field. The image and accompanying catalog are now available for scientific research and analysis.
Pollen movement tracked from ground to sky with new modeling method
Researchers developed a new methodology to track and forecast pollen dispersal from genetically engineered switchgrass at ground and atmospheric levels. The study, published in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, established an accurate system for measuring how airborne pollen moves once it leaves crops.
A startup that lets AI hack your own network just tripled to $2bn, days after AI models hacked networks for real.
Horizon3 raised $250 million in Series E funding, tripling its valuation to over $2 billion from $650 million a year prior. The company develops AI that penetration tests networks by simulating attacks to identify security vulnerabilities.
Tesla whistleblower describes dangerous understaffing while testing Full Self-Driving in Houston
A former Tesla manager oversaw 38 vehicle operators across three shifts while testing Full Self-Driving in Houston, a ratio the lawsuit claims violated safety standards. Medrano alleges Tesla created dangerous conditions by rapidly scaling operations without sufficient safety oversight for the test fleet.
Forget em dashes: A viral report on AI-generated writing has surprising new clues
The Economist analyzed 1.2 million words across 55,940 sentences from AI models and human writers, finding that em dashes are not reliable indicators of AI-generated text. The study compared articles from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok against pieces from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and novels published between 1950 and 2022.
An AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb merger could create a cancer-drug giant, but analysts call it ‘odd’
A potential merger between AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb would combine two major pharmaceutical companies, with AstraZeneca shares declining while Bristol Myers Squibb's stock rose Monday on deal reports. Analysts have questioned the strategic rationale for combining these two cancer-focused drug makers.