adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

Science

U of G Scientist Dr. Paul Hebert Honoured with Benjamin Franklin Medal

Published

 on

Dr. Paul Hebert, a distinguished University of Guelph evolutionary biologist who pioneered the field of DNA barcoding, has received the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Earth and Environmental Science for 2024.

Known as “the father of DNA barcoding,” Hebert receives the medal in recognition of groundbreaking work creating a technology that identifies species using a tiny segment of DNA, in the same way a barcode identifies a product at a supermarket.

The technology, which has helped make species identification faster, more accurate, and less expensive than previous methods, now underpins a global effort to catalogue all life on Earth.

The Franklin Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting science and innovation, has awarded Benjamin Franklin medals since 1824 to world-changing scientists, engineers, inventors, and industrialists. The medal is the oldest comprehensive science and technology award in the United States with past laureates including Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and both Marie and Pierre Curie.

Hebert is the fourth Canadian to receive the honour.

“It is thrilling to receive the 2024 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science,” Hebert said. “Importantly, this award endorses a planetary research program led by Canada that is providing humanity with the knowledge required to better insulate biodiversity from global change.”

Building the largest DNA bank for biodiversity

Hebert is the founder and CEO of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics

Hebert is the founder and CEO of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG) within the College of Biological Science at U of G. He has raised $160 million over the past 20 years to develop the infrastructure and to support the staff to advance its capacity to lead a major scientific program.

Reflecting this effort, the CBG is the world’s first digital biodiversity archive, housing the largest DNA bank for biodiversity, a library of more than 9 million images and sequences from more than 15 million specimens.

“It is very exciting to see one of our own honoured with one of the most prestigious awards in science,” said Dr. Charlotte Yates, U of G president and vice-chancellor. “From specialists in genomics such as Dr. Hebert, to experts in agriculture, engineering, One Health and more – our academic and research excellence reflects the breadth of our talent here at U of G. I am so grateful to work alongside truly world-class faculty every day.”

The technology Hebert conceived and developed has become a revolutionary identification system with far-reaching applications. It is allowing scientists to identify all species on the planet through the not-for-profit International Barcode of Life (iBOL) consortium, headquartered at the CBG. The consortium, of which Hebert is scientific director, unites more than 1,000 researchers in 41 countries with a shared mission to build the global DNA barcode reference library.

The project is set to become the largest biodiversity science project ever undertaken, with researchers using DNA barcoding to identify more species before 2030 than in the past 275 years using the traditional Linnaean taxonomic system.

“This award is a much-deserved recognition of Dr. Hebert’s completely transformative work. DNA barcoding technology has literally changed how we see and know life on Earth,” said Dr. Rene Van Acker, interim vice-president research. “He leads the world’s largest life sciences big data project and has created fundamental knowledge for all efforts to sustain and improve life.”

Largest biodiversity science project ever undertaken

a person leans over display cases of insect specimens pinned to foamboard
The Centre for Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph holds thousands of insect specimens

DNA barcoding has found uses in many applications, including pest and disease control, detecting food fraud, aiding resource management and supporting conservation programs.

Metabarcoding is an innovative approach that augments DNA barcoding by delving into the genetic makeup of entire ecosystems. Scientists can use metabarcoding to simultaneously identify multiple species in a single soil, water or air sample and compare them against a DNA reference library. This allows for a comprehensive understanding of ecological dynamics, aiding in biodiversity assessments, ecosystem monitoring and even tracking the spread of invasive species, or disease vectors.

Globally recognized for his work, Hebert is the only Canadian scientist to have received the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences (2018) and the MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity (2020).

Aside from his research contributions, Hebert has inspired and mentored many students. Over 30 years, he exposed nearly 1,000 undergraduate students to research through his field courses in the Canadian Arctic, Australia, and Jamaica.

He has also mentored 57 graduate students and 56 postdoctoral fellows as a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity. Reflecting his commitment to excellence and innovation, more than 40 of students now hold faculty positions, leaving an indelible mark on the scientific community.

“Dr. Hebert has provided many students, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, with unparalleled hands-on opportunities at the forefront of biodiversity, ecology, and evolutionary science,” said Dr. Mazyar Fallah, dean of the College of Biological Science.

“Through the CBG, our students learn innovative analytical and technical skills, positioning them as trailblazers in biodiversity research to improve life and secure bright futures in science.”

An award ceremony will take place April 18, 2024 at The Franklin Institute, a science museum in Philadelphia, where Hebert will be formally honoured.

Contact:

U of G Media Relations
media@uoguelph.ca

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

News

Here’s how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South

Published

 on

 

More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.

That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”

The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.

Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.

Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.

Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”

The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.

North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.

Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”

Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.

Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.

For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.

“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”

___

Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Source link

Continue Reading

Science

‘Big Sam’: Paleontologists unearth giant skull of Pachyrhinosaurus in Alberta

Published

 on

 

It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.

On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.

They call it “Big Sam.”

The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

It didn’t die alone.

“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.

She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”

“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.

The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.

The discovery was a long time coming.

The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.

“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.

When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”

“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.

Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.

About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.

Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.

“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.

“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”

The genders of the two adults are unknown.

Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.

The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.

She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.

“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.

“It’s pretty exciting.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

The ancient jar smashed by a 4-year-old is back on display at an Israeli museum after repair

Published

 on

 

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.

Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.

Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.

The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.

The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.

It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.

Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.

Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.

Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.

Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.

Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.

The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending