ST Telemedia Global Data Centres’ groundbreaking AI-ready data centers, superior customer services, and robust sustainability initiatives drive digital transformation across the Asia-Pacific.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Frost & Sullivan recently researched the data center services industry and, based on its findings, recognizes ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) with the 2024 APAC Company of the Year Award for its strategic growth initiatives in the data center services industry. STT GDC is a leading provider of data center services, offering state-of-the-art AI-ready data centers, and secure, scalable and sustainable solutions to drive digital transformation and economic growth across Asia-Pacific.

STT GDC has demonstrated strong commitment, operational excellence and innovation. The company’s data centers are engineered to support the demanding workloads of today’s digital economy, featuring advanced cooling systems optimized for the escalating demand for high-performance computing across various sectors. Robust multi-layered security measures with a hardened physical perimeter, controlled access, and 24/7 surveillance safeguard non-stop operations.

STT GDC has made significant strides in sustainability, focusing on energy efficiency, water conservation, and waste reduction. The company’s initiatives include exploring innovative cooling technologies to reduce energy consumption for accelerated computing workloads, trialing the use of AI in optimizing the cooling environment and proof-of-concept projects to test the use of low-carbon energy sources. These efforts demonstrate STT GDC’s dedication to reducing its environmental footprint while maintaining high operational efficiency.

“As one of the fastest-growing data center providers, STT GDC is becoming a cornerstone of the digital ecosystem that connects the region. The company’s capabilities include data centers, support services, digital infrastructure, colocation, and connectivity,” said Nishchal Khorana, ICT vice president at Frost & Sullivan.

STT GDC’s expansion across APAC shows its strategic vision and execution. The company has over 95 operational and under-development data centers across key markets, including Singapore, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. This extensive network of facilities ensures that STT GDC can meet the growing demand for advanced computing capabilities in rapidly digitalizing economies.

STT GDC regularly collaborates with other companies to advance technology and enhance its capabilities through various pilot projects. A notable project is the clean hydrogen energy proof-of-concept developed with Linde Gas and YTL PowerSeraya, which explores using clean hydrogen to power data centers in Singapore, potentially transforming energy usage in the industry. Another collaboration with PTT Digital harnesses cold energy by using regasified liquefied natural gas to generate electricity and chilled water to cool data centers, significantly reducing energy consumption and operational costs.

“These projects exemplify STT GDC’s relentless commitment to technological innovation and sustainability. By continuously pushing the boundaries of what is possible, STT GDC is setting high standards in the data center industry, demonstrating its dedication to a sustainable digital future,” noted Khorana.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents a Company of the Year award to the organization that demonstrates excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation in its field. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies, and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in various regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analyses, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, megatrends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:
Tarini Singh
P: +91- 9953764546
E: Tarini.Singh@frost.com 

About STT GDC
ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) is one of the fastest-growing data centre providers with a global platform serving as a cornerstone of the digital ecosystem that helps the world to connect. Powering a sustainable digital future, STT GDC operates across Singapore, the UK, Germany, India, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, providing businesses an exceptional foundation that is built for their growth anywhere. For more information, visit https://www.sttelemediagdc.com/ 

For media queries, kindly contact:
Chow Yi
T +65 6808 4205
E yi.chow@sttelemediagdc.com

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

SMU’s rise up the CSRankings reinforces the past rankings that have put SMU on the world map for software engineering research

SINGAPORE, Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Singapore Management University (SMU) has risen to #2 in Software Engineering for 2023 – up two places from the previous year in the influential CSRankings. CSRankings is a metrics-based ranking of top Computer Science (CS) institutions around the world, which evaluates academics by their publications at top research conferences in a CS field. It is a key resource for graduate students globally to evaluate schools and find active researchers in Computer Science.

SMU is the only university from Singapore to be ranked among the top 10 in CSRankings 2023 list, and it is home to the country’s only research centre dedicated to Software Engineering: the Centre for Research in Intelligent Software Engineering (RISE). This achievement reflects SMU’s world-class research capabilities in Software Engineering.

Nanjing University holds the top spot in the CSRankings 2023 list, followed by other notable institutions, including Sun Yat-Sen University (#3), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (#4), the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (both tied at #5), Carnegie Mellon University (#7), Fudan University and Peking University (tied at #7), and Concordia University (#10).

This latest ranking reinforces many past rankings that put SMU on the world map for software engineering research. For example, the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) study, ‘A bibliometric assessment of software engineering themes, scholars and institutions (2013–2020)‘ (Volume 180, Oct 2021), which considered publications in high-quality journals and conferences, puts SMU #5 worldwide in the league of the University of California (#1), Carnegie Mellon University (#2), Nanjing University (#3) and Microsoft Research (#4).

Significance of CSRankings

CSRankings stands out among popular rankings as it focuses on specialised fields within Computer Science. It is regularly updated and based on publications in top-tier conferences, with metrics weighted by the number of authors. This transparency ensures that the rankings reflect the real impact of research within each field. In Computer Science, top-tier conferences are highly competitive, with low acceptance rates, and the full research papers presented are often of similar length to journal publications.  

SMU Software Engineering faculty members published many highly innovative works at the 45th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2023) and 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2023) – which are the two key Software Engineering conferences tracked by CSRankings. Their papers report novel automated solutions and deep insights realised from software engineering research at SMU. The research covers many topics ranging from software development, software testing, software security, software architecture, and developer collaboration. The solutions addressed different kinds of software systems ranging from conventional software to industrial control systems, video games, and deep learning systems.  

Engaging in world-class research

Professor David Lo, the OUB Chair Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Centre of Research in Intelligent Software Engineering (RISE) said: “We are very happy to contribute to the advancement of software engineering research and practice, and excited to share our findings with the world via our research papers and presentations at key conferences. This excellent ranking outcome is only possible with the hard work of everyone at RISE, the strong support from SMU and its School of Computing and Information Systems, and the collaborations with our partners from universities and companies in Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, Luxembourg, the United States, and Canada.”

SMU’s Vice Provost (Research) Prof Archan Misra said that this improved ranking shows “the rigour, relevance and global reputation of our research across a wide range of software engineering topics.”

“My software engineering colleagues, as part of RISE,” he noted, “have engaged in world-class academic research with excellent publication records, resulting in several distinguished influential paper awards and recognised through many leadership roles in the software engineering academic community.”

“Equally importantly, via translational projects executed in partnership with public agencies, this research generates significant societal impact and contributes to the security of Singapore’s digital applications and services,” he added. “Their work is instrumental in establishing the university’s research strengths at the intersection of social sciences, management and computing.”

About Singapore Management University

Established in 2000, Singapore Management University (SMU) is recognised for its disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research that addresses issues of global relevance, impacting business, government, and society. Its distinctive education, incorporating innovative experiential learning, aims to nurture global citizens, entrepreneurs and change agents. With more than 13,000 students, SMU offers a wide range of bachelors, masters and PhD degree programmes in the disciplinary areas associated with six of its eight schools – Accountancy, Business, Computing, Economics, Law and Social Sciences. Its seventh school, the SMU College of Integrative Studies, offers degree programmes in deep, integrative interdisciplinary education. The College of Graduate Research Studies, SMU’s eighth school, enhances integration and interdisciplinarity across the various SMU postgraduate research programmes that will enable students to gain a holistic learning experience and well-grounded approach to their research.  SMU also offers a growing number of executive development and continuing education programmes. Through its city campus, SMU focuses on making meaningful impact on Singapore and beyond through its partnerships with industry, policy makers and academic institutions. https://www.smu.edu.sg/

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SOURCE Singapore Management University

KANAZAWA, Japan, Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Researchers at Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University, demonstrate how morphogens combined with cell adhesion can generate tissue domains with a sharp boundary in an in vitro model system.

Figure 1   https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/Toda_Fig.-1.jpg
Caption Figure 1:    How does the morphogen gradient regulate multicellular patterning?

Recent advances that have enabled the growth of tissue cultures into organoids and embryoids have heightened interest as to how tissue growth is controlled during the natural processes of embryo development. It is known that the diffusion of signaling molecules called morphogens directs patterned tissue growth but what has been harder to understand is how the gradient of morphogens from this diffusion can lead to sharply defined domains in the resulting tissue (Fig. 1). Now Satoshi Toda at Kanazawa University NanoLSI (currently Osaka University, Institute for Protein Research), alongside Kosuke Mizuno at NanoLSI and Tsuyoshi Hirashima at the National University of Singapore, demonstrate a simple model system – SYnthetic Morphogen system for Pattern Logic Exploration using 3D spheroids (SYMPLE3D) – that sheds light on the process.

Various previous studies have looked at the role of morphogens and cell adhesion during tissue growth separately. However, the researchers noted a couple of recent studies indicating how a morphogen involved in neural tube patterning controls expression of a family of adhesion proteins called cadherins to form sharply defined structures. Prompted by these insights, they devised their model system to investigate the interplay between morphogens and cadherins. They highlight how in vivo morphogens induce numerous changes in cellular properties simultaneously, making it hard to disentangle what is going on. For this reason, as they highlight in the discussion of their report, “SYMPLE3D provides a new synthetic biology approach for mechanistically studying tissue patterning and engineering organoid structures.”

SYMPLE3D uses two types of cells – one, the GFP secretors, which secrete GFP and express P-cadherin forming what they describe as “GFP-secreting organizer spheroids”. The other is a GFP receiver cell, initially engineered to express a synthetic receptor called “synNotch” that recognizes GFP and induces mCherry reporter – “imC cells” (Fig. 2A).

The first stage looked at the result of co-culturing the GFP secretors and receiver cells. They found that although the imC cells did capture the secreted GFP resulting in a GFP gradient, the resulting gradient contained ectopically active cells – expression of the high-level mCherry reporter in an inappropriate position of the gradient (Fig. 2B, upper panel). To deal with the issue of ectopically active cells, Mizuno and Toda engineered GFP receiver cells to induce mCherry-fused E-cadherin, a cell adhesion molecule. To their surprise, a uniformly activated tissue domain with sharp boundary emerged instead of a gradient between the secretor and receiver cells (Fig. 2B, lower panel).

Figure 2: https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/Toda_Fig.-2.jpg
Caption Figure 2.  Tissue domain formation through the coupling of morphogen signals and cell adhesion. (A) SYnthetic Morphogen system for Pattern Logic Exploration using 3D spheroids (SYMPLE3D). (B) mCherry (upper panel) or Ecad-mCherry (lower panel) was induced in response to the GFP gradient.

The sharp boundary was also robust to changes in growth conditions. Since the addition of a single factor, E-cadherin, caused a significant change in the pattern, they then focused on the mechanism of the pattern formation process with a combination of molecular gradient and E-cadherin in their model system. 

By monitoring the real time process of tissue growth, they were able to identify activated GFP receiver cells engineered to induce mCherry-fused E-cadherin were initially scattered but aggregated over the course of time. Ectopically active cells were then gradually absorbed into this active domain resulting in a sharp cut off between the mCherry positive and negative domains. They also note “an intriguing aspect” of their synthetic tissue domain, in that across the active domain the distribution of induced E-cadherin-mCherry was uniformly high, whereas GFP was distributed with a gradient. Here, they revealed a key feature of E-cadherin for the synthetic tissue domain formation. They analyzed the behavior of cells that express various levels of E-cadherin in response to different amounts of GFP and found that the behavior was the same whether the cells induced low or high levels of E-cadherin. Furthermore, they showed that cells that induced more than a certain amount of E-cadherin were able to mix with each other and form a single cell population, regardless of the expression level. Therefore, the mixing of cells that induced different levels of E-cadherin within the GFP gradient allowed the cells to receive GFP uniformly and thus the expression level of E-cadherin became evenly high in the synthetic tissue domain (Fig. 3). A simple mathematical model, developed by Hirashima, based on cell movement governed by differential adhesion energy supported their experimental observations. “Our findings suggest the possibility of programming a new tissue domain with sharp boundaries in organoids by combining synthetic morphogens with cell adhesion control,” they conclude in their report.

Figure 3: https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/Toda_Fig.-3.jpg
Caption Figure 3.  The pattern formation mechanism where morphogen signals and cadherin expression cooperate to generate tissue domains with a sharp boundary.

Note about the contributions of Kosuke Mizuno to research at the NanoLSI

Kosuke Mizuno, a second-year doctoral student in the Nano Life Science Program, has made notable contributions to NanoLSI research. He was awarded the NanoLSI Transdisciplinary Research Grant for FY2023 and FY2024.

Glossary

Morphogen

A signaling molecule that controls cell fate decision dependently on its local concentration to regulate morphogenesis. Morphogens are secreted from source cells, diffuse within tissues and form a concentration gradient that works as positional information for cell differentiation. Representative morphogens include Wnt, BMP, Shh, and retinoic acid.

Cadherins

Cadherins are a family of transmembrane proteins that facilitate cell to cell adhesion. Mizuno, Hirashima and Toda use E-cadherin and P-cadherin in the current study, which belong to the classical cadherin family. Cadherins primarily bind to each other via their homophilic extracellular domains. However, cadherins also have an intracellular domain, which binds to adaptor proteins connected to actin cytoskeletons and contributes to tissue compaction and cell sorting.

Synthetic Notch receptor (synNotch)

Notch is a signal transduction receptor. When the extracellular domain of Notch receptor binds to its ligand Delta, Notch transmembrane region is cleaved, leading to the translocation of Notch intracellular domain into the nucleus to regulate the expression of target genes. The synNotch receptor is a modified version of Notch receptor, in which the extracellular domain of Notch is replaced by an antibody or nanobody and the intracellular domain by an artificial transcription factor. Using synNotch receptors, researchers can design what ligand molecule cells recognize and what target genes cells express in response, which enables manipulation of cell-cell communications.

Reference

Kosuke Mizuno, Tsuyoshi Hirashima, Satoshi Toda. Robust tissue pattern formation by coupling morphogen signal and cell adhesion EMBO Reports. 2024.
DOI：10.1038/s44319-024-00261-z
URL： https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44319-024-00261-z 

Funding

This research was supported by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) PRESTO (JPMJPR2147), Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (20K15828, 21H05291, 21H05290), Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) (22bm0704048h0003), Senri Life Science Foundation, Kato Memorial Bioscience Foundation, Kao Foundation, Yoshida Scholarship Foundation, and the Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore.

Contact

Fujiko Imanaga (Ms)
Project Planning and Outreach
NanoLSI Administration Office, Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI)
Kanazawa University
Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan
Email: nanolsi-office@adm.kanazawa-u.ac.jp
Tel: +81 (76) 234-4555

About Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University

Understanding nanoscale mechanisms of life phenomena by exploring “uncharted nano-realms”.

Cells are the basic units of almost all life forms. We are developing nanoprobe technologies that allow direct imaging, analysis, and manipulation of the behavior and dynamics of important macromolecules in living organisms, such as proteins and nucleic acids, at the surface and interior of cells. We aim at acquiring a fundamental understanding of the various life phenomena at the nanoscale.

https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/en/

About the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI)

The WPI program was launched in 2007 by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to foster globally visible research centers boasting the highest standards and outstanding research environments. Numbering more than a dozen and operating at institutions throughout the country, these centers are given a high degree of autonomy, allowing them to engage in innovative modes of management and research. The program is administered by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

See the latest research news from the centers at the WPI News Portal: https://www.eurekalert.org/newsportal/WPI

Main WPI program site: www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-toplevel

About Kanazawa University

As the leading comprehensive university on the Sea of Japan coast, Kanazawa University has contributed greatly to higher education and academic research in Japan since it was founded in 1949. The University has three colleges and 17 schools offering courses in subjects that include medicine, computer engineering, and humanities.

The University is located on the coast of the Sea of Japan in Kanazawa – a city rich in history and culture. The city of Kanazawa has a highly respected intellectual profile since the time of the fiefdom (1598-1867). Kanazawa University is divided into two main campuses: Kakuma and Takaramachi for its approximately 10,200 students including 600 from overseas.

http://www.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/en/

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