The robot fish developed by CIRTESU-UJI and tested in PortCastelló receives the national award for best work in marine automation

It stands out for its ability to deploy and retrieve sensors in the marine environment and includes a network analysis system for fish farms inside

Universitat Jaume I

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The Research Centre in Robotics and Underwater Technologies (CIRTESU) at the Universitat Jaume I conducted this week, at the PortCastelló facilities, wireless communication tests between a surface robot and the award-winning robot fish, recognized as the best work in marine automation nationwide during the Spanish Automation Committee conference held in early September in Cartagena.

The jury particularly valued the combination of advanced mechatronic design and the integration of different systems, which make the robot fish a leading research and aquatic environment inspection platform, tested in real experiments both in the CIRTESU pool and in the waters of the Port of Castelló. With this recognition, the UJI consolidates the research excellence of its teams and projects its impact on sustainable applications in the aquaculture sector.

According to CIRTESU researcher Raúl Marín, “It is essential for us to carry out cyclic and gradual research, first in university facilities and then in a realistic environment, like the Port of Castelló, where the collaboration of the Port Authority staff has been key to achieving the progress made.”

The robot fish stands out for its ability to deploy and retrieve sensors in the marine environment. Its features include biomimetic fins, an umbilical communication system, and an auxiliary sonar system. It also incorporates a visual inspection system specifically designed for internal analysis of fish farm nets, an approach that opens new possibilities to improve maintenance and sustainability in aquaculture.

“This technology,” says Raúl Marín, “will decisively contribute to improving the safety and welfare of animals in fish farming, as it provides leading and sustainable solutions for the future of aquaculture. Our future work will focus on new robotic advances that enable net repair, within the framework of research projects and CIRTESU’s strategic line.”

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Credit: Universitat Jaume I of Castellón

The Research Centre in Robotics and Underwater Technologies (CIRTESU) at the Universitat Jaume I conducted this week, at the PortCastelló facilities, wireless communication tests between a surface robot and the award-winning robot fish, recognized as the best work in marine automation nationwide during the Spanish Automation Committee conference held in early September in Cartagena.

The jury particularly valued the combination of advanced mechatronic design and the integration of different systems, which make the robot fish a leading research and aquatic environment inspection platform, tested in real experiments both in the CIRTESU pool and in the waters of the Port of Castelló. With this recognition, the UJI consolidates the research excellence of its teams and projects its impact on sustainable applications in the aquaculture sector.

According to CIRTESU researcher Raúl Marín, “It is essential for us to carry out cyclic and gradual research, first in university facilities and then in a realistic environment, like the Port of Castelló, where the collaboration of the Port Authority staff has been key to achieving the progress made.”

The robot fish stands out for its ability to deploy and retrieve sensors in the marine environment. Its features include biomimetic fins, an umbilical communication system, and an auxiliary sonar system. It also incorporates a visual inspection system specifically designed for internal analysis of fish farm nets, an approach that opens new possibilities to improve maintenance and sustainability in aquaculture.

“This technology,” says Raúl Marín, “will decisively contribute to improving the safety and welfare of animals in fish farming, as it provides leading and sustainable solutions for the future of aquaculture. Our future work will focus on new robotic advances that enable net repair, within the framework of research projects and CIRTESU’s strategic line.”

The President of the Port Authority, Rubén Ibáñez, highlighted that “the tests we conduct every two months in collaboration with CIRTESU-UJI reinforce the Port of Castelló’s strategy as an innovation and experimentation hub for more efficient, sustainable, and safe infrastructure.”

The work has been carried out at the IRS Lab (CIRTESU), Interactive Robotic Systems Lab, also known as the Submarine Robotics Group at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, within the Department of Engineering and Computer Science. The research is part of the doctoral thesis of Andrea Pino Jarque, supervised by María Rosario Vidal and Raúl Marín Prades, and coordinated by Professor Pedro J. Sanz Valero.

The experimental tests were made possible thanks to the support of the Port of Castelló and, in particular, the R&D Department. Special mention goes to Max Puig Sariñena, a graduate from the first class of the Degree in Robotics Intelligence at the Universitat Jaume I, who conducted underwater communication experiments as part of his final degree project under the supervision of Professor Juan Echagüe Guardiola.

PortCastelló and the UJI signed a collaboration agreement in July 2024, granting the port authority’s facilities to the research centre as an isolated environment for conducting experimental tests of technology developed in various publicly funded research projects. The agreement also facilitates raising the Technology Readiness Level, a measure describing the maturity of a developing technology, and addressing new challenges thanks to access to the marine environment.

Awarded article: https://revistas.udc.es/index.php/JA_CEA/article/view/12247

Pathogenic yeast strains found in urban air but not along the coast

American Chemical Society

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Air samples collected using this device, shown overlooking the South China Sea, lacked the pathogens found in air from an urban area of Hong Kong.

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Credit: Yolanda Wang, adapted from Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2025, DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.5c00795

As city dwellers may know, escaping to the beach can provide a much-needed change of scenery or a mental reset. Historically, some doctors even prescribed trips to the sea to treat diseases. And now, research published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters provides another reason to visit the coast. A pilot study found that urban air contained pathogenic strains of Candida yeast that were absent in coastal air samples, revealing a potential transmission method.

Candida yeasts are a group of common microbes that exist harmlessly on people’s skin and in the lining of internal organs. Yet in certain conditions, they can overgrow and cause vaginal yeast infections or oral thrush. These infections are known to spread through direct contact or bodily fluids. However, previous research found Candida DNA in the air, suggesting that the yeast is capable of airborne transmission. So, Ling Nathanael Jin and colleagues looked for infectious strains of live Candida in urban and coastal air samples.

The researchers collected air samples in Hong Kong and in a nearby less populated location overlooking the South China Sea once a month for an entire year. In 12 of the urban air samples, they found three species of Candida classified by the World Health Organization as fungal pathogens: C. albicans, C. parapsilosis, and C. tropicalis. Conversely, the samples collected at the coastal site did not have detectable levels of Candida. This difference between the locations suggested to the researchers that the airborne yeast has industrial or urban origins, such as wastewater treatment plants.

Additionally, a few of the urban air samples contained pathogenic Candida species that are resistant to common anti-fungal drugs. The researchers say that overuse of anti-fungal drugs, pollutants such as heavy metals in urban environments, or rising air temperatures may contribute to this resistance. Finally, the genetic makeup of one of these airborne Candida strains was closely related to samples previously taken from Candida-infected individuals, suggesting that the airborne strains could be infectious.

The researchers say that this work challenges the long-standing assumption that Candida is primarily transmitted through direct contact, instead presenting it as an emerging airborne pathogen. However, more studies are needed to investigate where urban Candida originates and to understand exactly how infectious these airborne particles may be.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Presidential Young Scholar Scheme, the Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development Joint Research Fund, the Research Centre for Nature-based Urban Infrastructure Solutions, and HuaJun Metal Products (Hong Kong) Co. Limited.

The paper’s abstract will be available on Oct. 1 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.5c00795

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Registered journalists can subscribe to the ACS journalist news portal on EurekAlert! to access embargoed and public science press releases. For media inquiries, contact newsroom@acs.org.

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology Letters

DOI

10.1021/acs.estlett.5c00795 

Article Title

Public Health Implications of Airborne Candida: Viability, Drug Resistance, and Genetic Links to Clinical Strains

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2025

 

What does Nicaea mean for relations with Judaism and Islam?

Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics"

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Poster of the international conference "The Confession of the Council of Nicaea - Part II"

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Credit: Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’

Organised jointly by the University of Münster and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, an international conference in Mid-October will focus on the Council of Nicaea 1,700 years ago and its ecumenical, interreligious and intercultural significance. ‘The creed established by the first ecumenical council in history is still of fundamental importance to the Catholic Church, as well as to Orthodox and most Protestant churches today. Nicaea has raised complex questions from an interreligious perspective, especially with regard to Jewish-Christian and Christian-Islamic relations – it is these question that the interdisciplinary conference will address’, says Professor of Dogmatics Michael Seewald from Münster, who is organising the conference together with Philipp G. Renczes SJ, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the Gregorian University. ‘While the first part of the conference in Rome in February focused on historical, philological and philosophical questions, the second part in Münster will see researchers from nine countries discuss Nicaea’s impact on the internal diversity of Christianity, as well on its relations with Judaism and Islam’.

The conference from 15 to 17 October 2025 will feature researchers from the fields of theology, philosophy, history, Jewish studies and Islamic studies, including the Secretary General of the International Theological Commission, Piero Coda (Italy), Jewish studies scholar Alfred Bodenheimer (Switzerland), Islamic studies scholar Nadine Abbas (Lebanon), Anglican theologian Ben Quash (Great Britain), Protestant theologian Friederike Nüssel from Heidelberg, and French philosopher of religion Vincent Holzer. Entitled ‘The Confession of the Council of Nicaea: History and Theology’, the two-part conference combines new research on the Council as a political event with research from the perspective of systematic theology.

Transcultural, ecumenical and interreligious questions concerning Nicaea

A dispute over the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ divided the young Christian Church in the Roman Empire, which is why Emperor Constantine convened the largest assembly of bishops up to that point in Nicaea, now Iznik in Turkey, in 325. The Council set out to establish a binding creed that would settle the dispute and bring about unity. As Seewald explains, the assembly ruled that Jesus Christ was ‘of the same substance as God the Father’ and thus in the fullest sense God. The conference in Münster will examine how the creed has been interpreted in Christianity, including in Protestant and Anglican contexts, and what intercultural and postcolonial issues it raises with regard to non-European cultures where Christianity took root. Research will also be presented on how the Nicene Creed was and is read from a Jewish and Islamic perspective. ‘The idea that God has a son who is equal to him in all things and is therefore himself God – this is unacceptable from both a Jewish and an Islamic perspective. The conference will therefore seek to clarify how the Council of Nicaea situates Christianity within monotheism and what the other two major monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, have to say about this’. The current Pope Leo XIV announced in May that he would travel to Iznik and Istanbul in November for the ecumenical commemoration of Nicaea. His predecessor, Pope Francis, who died in April, had also intended to travel to Turkey and had invited the participants of the Nicaea conference to a personal discussion on 1 March 2025. The meeting had to be cancelled, though, due to his illness.

‘What church members actually believe today is a different matter’

As for the cooperation between the Pontifical Gregorian University, which is run by the Jesuit Order, and the theology department at the state university in Münster, Michael Seewald says: ‘Italian theology is alive and marked by a deep interest in history and a joy in theological-speculative thinking. We have similar areas of interest in Münster’. Both institutions, the Gregoriana and the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Münster, have a long tradition in the history of theology and dogma, and address contemporary questions of faith in various regional, linguistic and cultural contexts. The Gregoriana is renowned worldwide for Catholic theology, while the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Münster is the largest theological faculty at a state university in the world. The multilingual conference in the Castle’s aula magna is organised by the University of Münster’s Chair of Dogmatics and History of Dogma and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’.

On the significance of the Council for people today, Seewald says: ‘The major Christian churches all recognise the Nicene Creed with some later additions. But what the members of these churches actually believe is a different matter. Most believers today cannot be mapped onto the theological landscape of the 4th century. While the conflicting groups at that time agreed that Jesus Christ was not merely a simple human being, many Christians today believe that Jesus was a remarkable person who was only (and perhaps exaggeratedly) deified retrospectively’. This view only began to have an impact on Christian theology in the 18th century. ‘The theology of the ancient church, on the other hand, cultivated a Christology that was highly developed speculatively’. (vvm/tec)

Programme Two-part international conference ‘The Confession of the Council of Nicaea: History and Theology’ Part II 15 to 17 October 2025 in Münster http://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/religion_und_politik/aktuelles/flyer_the_confession_of_the_council_of_nicaea_web.pdf

AI-powered oil spill prediction system improves accuracy by up to 25%, with significant potential to enhance emergency response.

A new study significantly improves oil spill trajectory predictions by integrating artificial intelligence with traditional numerical ocean models.

CMCC Foundation - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change

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Key Findings

• Breakthrough technology combines traditional physics-based modelling with artificial intelligence to improve oil spill trajectory predictions significantly.

• Significant accuracy gains achieve up to 20% more precision in matching satellite observations and 25% more accuracy in tracking oil slick position.

• Real-world validation successfully demonstrated on the 2021 Baniyas oil spill in Syria, where over 12,000 cubic meters of oil entered the Mediterranean

• A transferable framework that can be adapted to other environmental forecasting systems facing similar uncertainty challenges.  

 

Oil spills can be among the most devastating environmental disasters, with the potential to severely damage marine ecosystems, disrupt coastal communities, and impose lasting economic damage. Traditional numerical models, such as MEDSLIK-II, simulate the movement and transformation of oil particles in seawater, but their accuracy has been limited by dependence on expert judgment for tuning critical physical parameters. This manual calibration process, while informed by experience, is not always able to capture the complexity and variability of real-world ocean and atmospheric conditions.

The new study, published in the journal Ecological Informatics, “Improving oil slick trajectory simulations with Bayesian optimization”, addresses this challenge by introducing Bayesian optimization – an artificial intelligence (AI) technique that automatically learns from satellite observations to adjust the model's physical parameters. A hybrid approach that is able to combine the reliability of physics-based modelling with the efficiency and adaptability of AI.

"This work represents a significant step forward in narrowing the gap between traditional numerical ocean modelling and AI methodologies, showing that hybrid solutions can effectively harness the strengths of both worlds," explains CMCC and Columbia University researcher, and lead author of the study Gabriele Accarino. "By coupling the Bayesian optimization framework with the widely used community MEDSLIK-II oil spill model and satellite-based observations, we have introduced a prototype for next-generation operational forecasting systems."

Real-world applications

"Oil spills have serious impacts on ecosystems and human activities, and predicting their evolution is crucial for effective interventions," notes CMCC researcher and co-author of the study Marco De Carlo. "Traditional numerical models are useful but rely on manually chosen parameters, which can introduce uncertainty. Rather than replacing physics, our hybrid approach complements it, enhancing the realism and reliability of simulations, and performing well even with sparse data.”

The effectiveness of the hybrid approach was validated by the research team, using the 2021 Baniyas oil spill incident in Syria, where more than 12,000 cubic meters of oil entered the Mediterranean Sea. The results obtained in this application demonstrated remarkable improvements in forecasting accuracy: spatial accuracy increased by up to 20% in matching satellite observations of the oil slick's shape and spread; position tracking improved by up to 25% compared to standard model predictions; and the overall skill score (which compares spatial distributions of oil spill against a ground truth such as satellite observations) improved from 7.97% to 20.66% on average compared to control simulations.

These improvements were consistent across multiple time steps, particularly during periods of increased drift variability, demonstrating the method's effectiveness in dynamic environmental conditions. This comes with significant benefits for emergency response services during oil spill incidents, as more accurate trajectory forecasts enable authorities to deploy response efforts more effectively, potentially preventing further damage to marine ecosystems.

Another important advantage is that the trained machine learning model helps speed up the numerical model by efficiently calibrating its parameters, allowing faster analyses and scenario testing.

 “It can also update in real time as new observations arrive, and the framework is transferable and relocatable, allowing it to be applied to different geographic areas or other contexts, such as atmospheric or oceanic modeling,” continues De Carlo. “This makes it not only a research tool, but also a practical solution for operational uses, supporting rapid decision-making during environmental emergencies.”

"As an oceanographer specializing in marine pollution simulations, I know that the modeller's experience is crucial for the successful representation of events such as oil spill leakages," says CMCC researcher and co-author of the study Igor Ruiz Atake. "The more one knows about the area of interest and the simulation tool, the better the results will be. Our interdisciplinary team at CMCC has developed this new approach that automatically searches for the optimal tuning parameters of the oil spill model. The results we obtained still need to be tested on other real spill events. However, from our findings, we expect it to save time that experts can use to gain a deeper understanding of the event as a whole, instead of spending time on the technicalities of the problem. In marine emergencies, time is of the essence. " 

Beyond oil spill response

This innovative framework also offers significant potential for adaptation in other environmental forecasting systems that face similar challenges of uncertainty and limited observations. For example, the approach could also be applied in atmospheric and general ocean circulation models, potentially reducing long-standing modeling biases and improving the representation of small-scale physical processes.

“In this sense, the study not only introduces a novel technical contribution but also points toward a paradigm shift in environmental forecasting, where physics-informed AI becomes a cornerstone of operational risk management and climate resilience strategies,” says Accarino.

As climate change continues to alter ocean and atmospheric conditions, innovative approaches like this AI-enhanced modeling system become increasingly crucial for protecting marine environments and coastal communities from environmental disasters.

The study's findings demonstrate that the integration of artificial intelligence with traditional environmental modeling can deliver practical improvements that benefit both scientific understanding and real-world emergency response capabilities.

The simulations used in the study were conducted with CMCC's JUNO Hybrid Cluster, one of Europe's most advanced computing facilities for climate and environmental research. CMCC researchers led the design of the optimization workflow, integrated the machine learning components, and validated the results against satellite data.

 

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Journal

Ecological Informatics

DOI

10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103368 

Method of Research

Case study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Improving oil slick trajectory simulations with Bayesian optimization