These massive waves used to be the stuff of legend
Once dismissed as a maritime myth, rogue waves are now being recorded in Canadian waters more than ever. A network of AI-powered buoys off the coast of B.C. is capturing these giants in real time. Johanna Wagstaffe meets the engineer developing new tools to understand — and maybe one day forecast — their chaotic nature.
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Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
Can Microsoft Join the $4 Trillion Club in 2025?
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had a market capitalization of $3.695 trillion as of Friday morning. That means its stock only needs to climb by another 8.3% for the company to become the founding member of the $4 trillion club, which I think is a very strong possibility by the end of 2025 (although Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) with its $3.835 trillion market cap could get there first). Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the primary driver of Microsoft's increasing value over the last couple of years. The company is approaching this lucrative opportunity from several different angles, and it has already become an industry leader in the software and cloud segments. Here's why AI could be Microsoft's ticket to a $4 trillion valuation this year. Microsoft has a diverse AI product portfolio Microsoft has invested around $14 billion in ChatGPT creator OpenAI since 2019, and it has combined the start-up's industry-leading AI models with its own to create the Copilot virtual assistant. Copilot is accessible for free in some of Microsoft's flagship software (like Windows, Edge, and Bing), but it's also available as a paid tool in several products, like the following: 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint): Enterprises can add Copilot for an additional monthly subscription fee to boost the productivity of their employees. In the fiscal 2025 third quarter (ended March 31), Microsoft said the number of organizations using Copilot for 365 tripled year over year to the hundreds of thousands. Copilot Studio: This platform allows enterprises to create custom AI agents and deploy them into the software applications they use each day to boost productivity, and it already has over 230,000 customers. Dragon Copilot: This is a solution for the healthcare industry, which can autonomously transcribe conversations between doctors and their patients, rapidly generate referral letters, and even summarize diagnosis evidence to help improve outcomes. But Copilot isn't the only revenue-generating AI product in Microsoft's portfolio because the company operates one of the world's largest cloud computing platforms called Azure, which now offers a suite of AI products and services under the Azure AI banner. Azure AI leases state-of-the-art data center infrastructure to businesses, which is fitted with the latest AI chips from suppliers like Nvidia. It also offers access to ready-made large language models (LLMs) from the likes of OpenAI, which developers can use to accelerate their AI software projects. AI is quickly becoming the driving force behind Azure Azure is often the fastest-growing part of Microsoft's entire organization, but it might have lost that title recently if not for Azure AI. A little less than two years ago, Azure AI accounted for just five percentage points of Azure's quarterly revenue growth. In the recent fiscal 2025 third quarter, it represented 16 percentage points, meaning it accounted for almost half of Azure's overall growth. The contribution from Azure AI is likely to increase further from here because Microsoft CFO Amy Hood says the segment has a staggering $315 billion order backlog from AI customers who are waiting for more data center capacity to come online. Microsoft is building more data centers as fast as it can, and it opened new ones in 10 different countries during the last quarter alone. In fact, the company is on track to have spent over $80 billion building AI infrastructure during fiscal 2025, which ends on June 30. Management's guidance suggests that the figure is likely to grow in fiscal 2026, which isn't a surprise, given the size of the opportunity ahead. Can Microsoft join the $4 trillion club in 2025? Based on Microsoft's trailing 12-month earnings per share (EPS), its stock is trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 38.2. That's 14% higher than its five-year average of 33.4, which suggests investors are willing to pay a premium for the stock at the moment: Data by YCharts. Microsoft's fiscal year 2026 begins on July 1, and Wall Street's consensus estimate (provided by Yahoo! Finance) suggests the company could deliver $15.14 in EPS, which would represent growth of over 13%. That places its stock at a forward P/E ratio of 32.6. That means Microsoft stock would have to climb by around 17% over the next 12 months in order to maintain its current P/E ratio of 38.2, which is a fair assumption given the strength of its AI business. If the company delivers strong earnings during the first two quarters of fiscal 2026 (which fall in calendar year 2025), then investors might start pricing in the full-year result early -- especially considering that the stock market is a forward-looking machine. In other words, it's possible Microsoft stock will deliver the majority of that 17% in potential upside in the next six months or so. Remember, it only needs a gain of 8.3% for the company's valuation to hit $4 trillion, so it could certainly achieve the milestone before 2025 is over. Should you invest $1,000 in Microsoft right now? Before you buy stock in Microsoft, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Microsoft wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $704,676!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $950,198!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to175%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
N.B. Museum set to add 1st rare owl specimen found in the province in over 100 years
The New Brunswick Museum is set to add a rare great grey owl to its extensive bird collection in July. This owl will become the first specimen of its kind found in New Brunswick to be held at a Canadian museum in over 100 years, according to Greg Jongsma, the museum's acting curator of the zoology department. Jongsma said the department is excited for the new bird specimen. He believes this addition will be a great resource for scientific research globally, adding to their collection of 13,000 bird species, the largest in Atlantic Canada. "As sad as this is, the loss of this individual's life, this great grey owl, it's of tremendous value to the museum and the research community," said Jongsma. "Because this is one of the first specimens for New Brunswick, [and] it's certainly the first specimen from New Brunswick in any Canadian collections." The great grey owl is one of the largest owls in North America in terms of height. The bird is often found in northern areas and it usually migrates down southern latitudes when there's a lack of food supply, which are often rodents for these birds. According to Jongsma, the owl is considered a rare bird in the province because New Brunswick is too far away from these owls' natural habitat, explaining that they will often find prey closer to their habitats. The New Brunswick museum only knows of nine confirmed sightings of the bird, according to records vetted by the New Brunswick Bird Committee, an organization created in 1992 and sponsored by the museum to come up with an official bird list for the province. The committee, in collaboration with the museum, maintains the official bird list by screening and acting on reports of potential new species, ensuring accuracy. Jim Wilson, previous chair of the committee, said in an emailed statement that the owl joining the museum is considered to be the ninth great grey owl that has reached New Brunswick "for certain" in the past 125 years. According to Wilson there are two other existing specimens that were collected in the province in the late 1890s. The collectors were not recorded, so the museum has little information on how these owls were discovered, and both specimens currently reside in American museums. One can be found in the American Museum of Natural History and the other in the Field Museum in Chicago. The owl joining the New Brunswick Museum was found this past April in Lakeside near Hampton, with a hip and eye injury due to being struck by a car. The bird was put under the care of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, who identified her as a female, and attempted to rehabilitate the owl, who was in overall good condition besides the injuries it sustained. According to the AWI director Pam Novak, joint injuries can be fatal for birds who need their leg strength to hunt like the great grey, which needs to be able to pounce over snow to catch their prey. However, due to the overall good health of the bird, the institute decided to operate. "We knew we were up against a low prognosis of this going well, but knowing she was in good condition we said 'let's give this a try,' because maybe something might be different with this particular case," said Novak. Despite the surgery being a success, the recovery of the owl wasn't. Novak explained that the owl struggled to regain strength and muscle tone in the injured leg, even with her hip joint being realigned. Taking into consideration the owl's deteriorating condition and her quality of life with an unusable leg, the institute decided to humanely euthanize the bird in June. Novak said this was a hard decision to make as they were hoping to release the owl back in the wild, and track her movement to figure out the owl's flying patterns in order to do further research on the species in the province. "It would have been really interesting to see if she can continue the story of where she came from," said Novak. "Would she go back or would she stay in this area trying to establish a territory? "Unfortunately those are questions we are not going to be able to get." However, Novak believes the owl's death wasn't in vain. She agreed with Jongsma and said that the bird's transfer to the museum would facilitate crucial research on its species for both the museum and other researchers around the world. "There's a lot that can be told from just them being able to analyze some of the tissue samples, some of the DNA ... there's a lot of opportunity for further research into the species itself," said Novak. Jongsma intends to retrieve the owl in early July. The owl will provide samples to study the owl's genetic diversity, population trends, or distributional shifts. For Jongsma the addition of the owl will not only be valuable to understand the species within a New Brunswick context but also for the scientific community overall. "It's an exciting rare occurrence to have this great grey owl specimen from New Brunswick, but it's now become a part of a larger collection that [is] greater than the sum of its parts," he said. "[It's] all together where the value really comes out for research and understanding life on our planet."
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Islanders are being asked to help track the rare smooth greensnake this summer
Social Sharing If you spot a smooth greensnake in the wild on Prince Edward Island this summer, the province's Forests, Fish and Wildlife Division wants to hear from you. Officials are hoping to gather data on the elusive reptile, which is considered the rarest snake on the Island. The smooth greensnake is harmless and typically lives in grassy fields, in open woodlands and on the edges of wetlands. But little is known about its population or whether it's at risk on P.E.I., said Julie-Lynn Zahavich, a forest conservation specialist with the province, given that the species has never been formally studied on the Island. "Knowing where the species are and what habitat they're using is the first step to being able to help conserve a species. So it's really important that we figure out those key puzzle pieces that we can put things together," Zahavich told CBC's Island Morning. "In the future, if things change — you know, with climate change or if insect populations go down — we'll be able to know what we had before, so that we know if we've lost the species, we can act on that." Bright green and hard to miss Zahavich said the smooth greensnake is about 30 to 50 centimetres long and, as the name suggests, has a vivid green back. Its underside or belly is typically whitish or yellowish. It's also the only egg-laying snake on the Island. The other two commonly seen species, the garter snake and the red-bellied snake, give birth to live young. The smooth greensnake is easy to distinguish from those two species. Garter snakes are larger and can be more than a metre long, and have a brown or grey back with stripes. Red-bellied snakes have a dark back and a vibrant red belly. Though the smooth greensnake may bite if it feels threatened, Zahavich said it is not venomous. "They're very small, and the bite is not going to hurt you," she said. How Islanders can help Zahavich said the division is hoping Islanders can help gather data on the species by snapping a photo if they happen to see one of the snakes. "Make note of the habitat that they're using... whether you're on a lawn or near a wetland or an open woodland," she said. People are also being asked to use their phone to get the GPS co-ordinates of the location or check Google Maps for a sense of where they were when they saw the snake. Photos and location information can be submitted to the Forests, Fish and Wildlife Division via Facebook, by email or by phone. Submissions are being accepted throughout the summer, when the snakes are active. Knowing where the species are and what habitat they're using is the first step to being able to help conserve a species. — Julie-Lynn Zahavich, forest conservation specialist The division is also interested in hearing about historic sightings. "If you remember seeing them as a kid or many years ago, we'd also love to hear about that," Zahavich said. As well, Islanders can upload photos and sightings to the iNaturalist app, which helps researchers gather data for scientific and conservation purposes. Zahavich said her team is monitoring the platform for smooth greensnake sightings on P.E.I. While public reports are key, Zahavich said her team is also doing its own monitoring. Next year, they hope to expand their efforts across more parts of the province and potentially work with watershed groups and other organizations that can help track down more sightings of the reptiles.
