Does ocean acidification alter fish behavior? Fraud allegations create a sea of doubt
May. 6, 2021 , 2:00 PM
When Philip Munday discussed his research on ocean acidification with more than 70 colleagues and students in a December 2020 Zoom meeting, he wasn’t just giving a confident overview of a decade’s worth of science. Munday, a marine ecologist at James Cook University (JCU), Townsville, was speaking to defend his scientific legacy.
Munday has co-authored more than 250 papers and drawn scores of aspiring scientists to Townsville, a mecca of marine biology on Australia’s northeastern coast. He is best known for pioneering work on the effects of the oceans’ changing chemistry on fish, part of it carried out with Danielle Dixson, a U.S. biologist who obtained her Ph.D. under Munday’s supervision in 2012 and has since become a successful lab head at the University of Delaware (UD), Lewes.
MoHE revises list of ‘recognised’ varsities SHARE
By Zainab Al Nasseri MUSCAT: Dec. 25: The Ministry of Higher Education has updated on its website the list of “recommended institutions” for those planning to study abroad. The Ministry made the announcement after a meeting of the Accreditation of non-Omani Educational Institutions and Qualifications Equivalency Committee. The website contains the list of accredited universities and colleges. It said it will not be held responsible for any degrees obtained from unaccredited institutions.
The meeting recognised the following varsities in Portugal. They are: University of Lisbon, University of Porto, University of Minho, University of Coimbra, University of Aveiro, New University of Lisbon, University of Evora, Catholic University of Portugal, University of the Algarve, Polytechnic Institute of Oporto, University of the Azores, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Polytechnic Institute of Setubal, Polytechnic
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Norway’s stave churches are a sight to behold. Built on staves (large wooden posts) and with a distinctive roof, they’re now almost unique in the world. But these churches are more than a tourist attraction: they tell a tale of a time when the country switched from Norse beliefs to Christianity.
Heddal Stave Church (Creative Commons).
It seems somewhat surprising, given their traditional way of life, that Vikings embraced Christianity so thoroughly. But around a thousand years ago, the shift was already taking hold.
The oldest stave churches still standing today (that we know of, at least) are dated to the 1100s, but earlier churches are also known. Catholics preferred stone for their churches, and Vikings also built some wooden churches but stave churches were the norm. They didn’t use any nails, just wood, and the inside was often decorated with dragons or other mythical animals.
Rich Diet Marks Messenger RNA Molecules for Breakdown in an Ancient Conserved Mechanism
May 3, 2021
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Caenorhabditis elegans, reveals.
The findings of this collaborative study by scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) are published in an article titled, “Splice site m
Cell.
Methylation of RNA is essential. Earlier studies show without RNA methylation mice die at an early embryonic stage.
In this study, the laboratories of Ramesh Pillai, PhD, and Florian Steiner, PhD, professors in the department of molecular biology at the UNIGE Faculty of Science, showed for the first time that methylation at the end of the intron of a particular gene (S-adenosylmethionine synthetase or SAM synthetase), blocks the splicing machinery the process that removes unnecessary noncoding sequences (introns) from the gene, leaving only the protein-coding sequences (exons) in a mature messenger RNA.
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In 1732, the crew of a German whaling ship peered out at an extraordinary sight. Great plumes of ash were rising from the strange, uninhabited island of Jan Mayen an isolated sliver of land between northern Norway and Greenland. What the whalers saw was the eruption of Beerenberg, a cataclysmic volcanic event that reshaped Jan Mayen and caused a small population of Arctic char, a salmon-like fish, to get cut off from the ocean.
The fish and their descendants have been stuck in Nordlaguna, a tiny lake on Jan Mayen, ever since. For 300 years, this population of thousands of Arctic char has had to cope with confinement and go to extreme lengths just to survive.