(Press-News.org)
Abu Dhabi, UAE, July 25, 2024: NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Associate Professor of Biology Shady Amin has received a grant of more than USD 500,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). He will lead a project that is aimed at elevating the understanding and awareness of the essential role played by diatoms, the tiny microalgae that can live in oceans or in symbiosis with endangered marine animal hosts like whales, dolphins, dugongs, and manatees and play a fundamental role in maintaining Earth’s delicate ecosystem.
Diatoms are microalgae that produce as much as a fifth of Earth's oxygen from carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and support fisheries in coastal zones. One group of diatoms lives on the skin of marine animals and enables their survival by fighting off skin infections. These are unique from diatoms that live in seawater in that they largely cannot survive without their animal host. Because of this, these skin-dwelling diatoms are endangered like their hosts; if the hosts go extinct, the diversity of these diatoms – and their oxygen-producing capability – will also be lost.
In the NSF-funded project, titled “Standing on the shoulders of giants: Phylogeny, systematics, and adaptation of marine epizoic diatoms to endangered megafaunal hosts,” Professor Amin’s team will sample the skin of marine animals in various facilities in Florida, Texas, and Abu Dhabi to catalog the diversity of the diatoms they host. In doing so, they will seek to better understand how these microalgae survive on their host's skin, how they move from one host to another and why, and how they benefit the host.
As part of this research effort, Professor Amin and his team will collaborate with the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi and the Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) - Abu Dhabi to sample the skin of dugongs. Abu Dhabi has the second largest population of these marine mammals in the world. The skin of this close relative of the manatee has never been sampled, so gaining an understanding of its skin microbiome – including the presence of diatoms – will be an important advancement.
Finally, Professor Amin and his research team will collaborate with NYUAD Film Studies Professor and the Director of the Lab of Experimental Cinema Alexis Gambis to produce a three-part film series about diatoms and their importance to our planet’s ecosystem.
“Most people are unaware of the fascinating and truly essential role diatoms play in sustaining life on our planet,” said Professor Amin, who is also NYU Global Network Associate Professor of Biology and Principal Investigator at NYUAD’s Marine Microbiomics Lab. “Through this exciting project, we aim to not only elevate our understanding of how diatoms help protect some of Earth’s most endangered animals but also educate the public about how these tiny microalgae literally make Earth habitable.”
Professor Amin is a biological oceanographer and marine chemist who uses biological and chemical tools to address fundamental questions about the role microbiomes play in the adaptation and evolution of marine hosts, such as microalgae, corals, and cetaceans. In addition, Professor Amin is involved in a consortium of NYU PIs who are establishing an environmental monitoring system across the Abu Dhabi coast to collect data that will help prediction of harmful algal blooms and other environmental phenomena.
ENDS
About NYU Abu Dhabi
www.nyuad.nyu.edu
NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. Times Higher Education ranks NYU among the top 30 universities in the world, making NYU Abu Dhabi the highest-ranked university in the UAE and MENA region. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly selective undergraduate curriculum across the disciplines with a world center for advanced research and scholarship. The university enables its students in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and arts to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s high-achieving students have come from over 120 countries and speak over 100 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents.
END
MIAMI, FLORIDA (July 25, 2024) – Three junior faculty members at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, have been named K12 2024 Faculty Scholars. They bring to 16 the number of junior faculty who have joined Sylvester’s prestigious K12 Calabresi Clinical Oncology Research Career Development Program since its inception in 2018. The program awards recipients with resources to pursue independent research careers in clinical and translational cancer research.
The K12 2024 Faculty Scholars ...
American Geophysical Union
25 July 2024
AGU Release No. 24-28
For Immediate Release
This press release is available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/climate-change-will-bring-more-turbulence-to-flights-in-the-northern-hemisphere/
Climate change will bring more turbulence to flights in the Northern Hemisphere
Disruptive clear air turbulence is predicted to increase over most northern mid-latitude regions
AGU press contact:
Liza Lester, +1 (202) 777-7494, news@agu.org (UTC-5 hours)
Contact information for the researchers:
Mohamed ...
CLEVELAND—In our increasingly interconnected world, the ongoing risk of communicable health conditions to human life demands organized and equitable public health efforts to combat known and emerging local and global health threats.
But how best to tackle such critical needs and balance individual autonomy with preventing public harm? How should we care for those who take care of us? How can we advance research and regain the trust of historically marginalized groups? What role should the United States play in the world’s healthcare plans?
These and other issues will be discussed this fall at Case Western Reserve University’s ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 25, 12:10 P.M. MDT
CONTACT: Camille Jewell
cjewell@vancomm.com or 202-248-5460
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Despite thrombectomy’s high success rate in saving the lives of stroke patients, Medicare is paying lower rates over time for the procedure, according to research presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 21st Annual Meeting.
Three studies, “The Price of Progress — Evaluating Medicare’s Valuation of Stroke Treatment,” “Fiscal Clots in the Stream of Stroke Care: The Mechanical Thrombectomy Reimbursement Dilemma,” ...
A case definition of market-driven epidemics (MDEs) could help address critical barriers to timely, effective prevention and mitigation, according to a study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS Global Public Health by Jonathan Quick from Duke University School of Medicine, U.S., and colleagues.
The misuse and overconsumption of certain consumer products have become major global risk factors for premature deaths at all ages, with their total costs in trillions of dollars. Progress in reducing such deaths has been difficult, slow, and too often unsuccessful. To address this challenge, ...
Instant buyers, also known as iBuyers, rapidly buy and sell homes using automated models to set prices. These companies, such as Opendoor and Offerpad, can turn around cash offers in a matter of hours, and they’ve captured more than 5% of the real estate market in some U.S. cities.
Since new tech often replicates or exacerbates existing societal biases, University of Washington researchers wanted to investigate how iBuyers have affected the well-documented racial bias in home appraisals — particularly bias against Black homeowners.
The ...
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an array that assesses methylation levels of genes located in imprint control regions (ICRs) within the human genome. The array represents a cost-effective, efficient method for exploring potential links between environmental exposures and epigenetic dysregulation during the early developmental origins of diseases and behavioral disorders.
ICRs regulate the expression of imprinted genes – genes where only one parental copy of the gene is active, while the other copy is silenced early in development. Imprinted genes are of special interest to epidemiologists, geneticists, and toxicologists who study the connections ...
July 25, 2024 — For patients with cervical radiculopathy, posterior foraminotomy provides outcomes comparable to those of the more commonly performed anterior cervical discectomy, reports a randomized clinical trial in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
"[O]ur findings provide Level-I evidence that posterior surgery is noninferior to anterior surgery with regard to the clinical outcome, with follow-up of two years," according to the new research by Nádia F. Simões de Souza, MD, and Anne E. H. Broekema, MD, ...
When we form a new memory, the brain undergoes physical and functional changes known collectively as a “memory trace”. A memory trace represents the specific patterns of activity and structural modifications of neurons that occur when a memory is formed and later recalled.
But how does the brain “decide” which neurons will be involved in a memory trace? Studies have suggested that the inherent excitability of neurons plays a role, but the currently accepted view of learning has neglected to look inside the command ...
University of Sydney researchers are proposing a new way to curb industrial emissions, by tapping into the “atomic intelligence” of liquid metals to deliver greener and more sustainable chemical reactions.
Despite global efforts towards renewable energy and electrification, chemical production accounts for approximately 10-15 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. More than 10 percent of the world’s total energy is used in chemical factories, with these numbers rising.
This is due to the large amounts of energy required to cause ...