New ocean research alliance to boost national collaboration

University of British Columbia

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The Pacific Marine Science Alliance Society (PMSA) has announced a three-year agreement with the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR) designed to strengthen national ocean research collaboration across Canada’s three coasts. 

UBC is one of five member universities of the PMSA, which owns and operates the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, and works to advance marine and coastal research, education and sustainability.  

The new partnership, backed by $300,000 in funding from PMSA and MEOPAR, will help researchers better collaborate at regional, national and international levels to address crucial research challenges, including climate resilience, marine hazard prediction and sustainable ocean resource use. The collaboration will also prioritize Indigenous-led stewardship, student mobility and new international research partnerships. 

“Our oceans are facing grave threats, including rising temperatures, acidification, deoxygenation and biodiversity loss. We all rely on these marine ecosystems, whether for our livelihoods, our food, our climate or for the very oxygen we breathe,” said PMSA board member Dr. Philippe Tortell, professor in the UBC department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences. “This new partnership will enable researchers at the five PMSA-member universities to work together with colleagues across Canada and across the world, developing new approaches to understanding our changing oceans, and innovative solutions to the marine sustainability challenges of today and into the future.” 

As well as expanding training and travel opportunities for students and researchers across Canada, the partnership will develop international research partnerships with Chile, France and beyond, increasing access to ocean research infrastructure and data to support informed decision-making, and advancing climate resilience and coastal community adaptation through new monitoring, prediction and knowledge-mobilization tools. 

“Canada has the longest coastline in the world and we must use this advantage to improve the economic and environmental prospects of the country,” said Dr. David Turpin, PMSA chair. “By partnering with MEOPAR, we will expand our impact nationally and internationally, and build the research, innovation and teaching programs needed to support the next generation of students, scientists and engineers seeking to unlock the ocean's potential for the benefit of all Canadians.” 

The collaboration aims to connect and coordinate Canada’s ocean research efforts from coast to coast to coast, said MEOPAR executive director Dr. Jamie Snook. “By working closely with the Pacific Marine Science Alliance Society, we are not only building new capacity in western Canada but also strengthening national and international partnerships that will help keep Canada strategic and impactful in the critical work of ocean research and management. Together with PMSA, we are laying the groundwork for unprecedented collaboration, transformative research and innovation that will benefit coastal communities, the blue economy and our ocean.” 

 

Tayac receives funding for community engagement project

George Mason University

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Gabrielle Tayac, Associate Professor, History and Art History, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), received funding for the project: “INCL: Indigenous America 250 Community Engagement PHASE 2.”

This project supports Interpretation and Education for the Indigenous America 250 HRS, a collection of programs and initiatives focused on providing interpretation and education about Indigenous American history and culture.

Tayac will identify five sites for optimal interpretation and educational products in line with the data sovereignty findings. She will review materials produced in Phase 1 reports in consultation with National Park Service officials and partners. Appropriate Tribal knowledge holders and museologists with interpretive experience who have been in consultation on the project will convene in one on-site session to produce an interpretive plan, engage in one follow-up in person or virtual interpretive plan review session, and one final review session on the interpretive plan. Based on the co-curatorial work and reviews, five interpretive educational products will be prototyped for site implementation.

Tayac received $231,181 from the National Park Service for this project. Funding began in Aug. 2025 and will end in late Dec. 2027.

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ABOUT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

George Mason University is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls more than 40,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity, and commitment to accessibility. In 2023, the university launched Mason Now: Power the Possible, a one-billion-dollar comprehensive campaign to support student success, research, innovation, community, and stewardship. Learn more at gmu.edu.

SPACE/COSMOS

Physicists uncork a message in a bottle from another star

Auburn University team detects water’s ultraviolet fingerprint in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

Auburn University Department of Physics

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image: 

NASA’s Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during two visits in July and August 2025. The panels show visible-light (left) and ultraviolet (right) images, where the faint glow of hydroxyl (OH) traces water vapor escaping from the comet. Each image combines dozens of short, three-minute exposures, painstakingly stacked to reach total integration times of about 42 minutes in visible light and 2.3 hours in ultraviolet. Swift’s vantage point above Earth’s atmosphere allowed astronomers to detect these ultraviolet emissions that are normally invisible from the ground.

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Credit: Dennis Bodewits, Auburn University

(Auburn, AL) For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted between the stars—like a sealed bottle cast into the cosmic ocean. This summer, that bottle finally washed ashore in our solar system and was designated 3I/ATLAS, only the third known interstellar comet. When Auburn University scientists pointed NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory toward it, they made a remarkable find: the first detection of hydroxyl (OH) gas from this object, a chemical fingerprint of water. Swift’s space-based telescope could spot the faint ultraviolet glow that ground observatories can’t see—because, high above Earth’s atmosphere, it captures light that never reaches the Earth’s surface.

Detecting water—through its ultraviolet by-product, hydroxyl—is a major breakthrough for understanding how interstellar comets evolve. In solar-system comets, water is the yardstick by which scientists measure their overall activity and track how sunlight drives the release of other gases. It’s the chemical benchmark that anchors every comparison of volatile ices in a comet’s nucleus. Finding the same signal in an interstellar object means that, for the first time, astronomers can begin to place 3I/ATLAS on the same scale used to study native solar-system comets—a step toward comparing the chemistry of planetary systems across the galaxy.

What makes 3I/ATLAS remarkable is where this water activity occurs. The Swift observations detected OH when the comet was nearly three times farther from the Sun than Earth—well beyond the region where water ice on a comet’s surface can easily sublimate—and measured a water-loss rate of about 40 kilograms per second—roughly the output of a fire hose running at full blast. At those distances, most solar-system comets remain quiet. The strong ultraviolet signal from ATLAS suggests that something else is at work: perhaps sunlight is heating small icy grains released from the nucleus, allowing them to vaporize and feed the surrounding cloud of gas. Such extended sources of water have been seen only in a handful of distant comets and point to complex, layered ices that preserve clues to how these objects formed.

Each interstellar comet discovered so far has revealed a different side of planetary chemistry beyond our Sun. Together, they demonstrate that the building blocks of comets—and the volatile ices that shape them—can vary dramatically from one star system to another. These differences hint at how diverse planet-forming environments can be, and how processes like temperature, radiation, and composition sculpt the materials that ultimately seed planets and, potentially, life.

Catching that whisper of ultraviolet light from 3I/ATLAS was a technical triumph in itself. NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory carries a modest 30-centimeter telescope, but in orbit above Earth’s atmosphere it can see ultraviolet wavelengths that are almost completely absorbed before reaching the ground. Free from the sky’s glare and air’s interference, Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope achieves the sensitivity of a 4-meter-class ground telescope for these wavelengths. Its rapid-targeting capability allowed the Auburn team to observe the comet within weeks of discovery—long before it grew too faint or too close to the Sun to study from space.

“When we detect water—or even its faint ultraviolet echo, OH—from an interstellar comet, we’re reading a note from another planetary system,” said Dennis Bodewits, professor of physics at Auburn. “It tells us that the ingredients for life’s chemistry are not unique to our own.”

“Every interstellar comet so far has been a surprise,” added Zexi Xing, postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. “‘Oumuamua was dry, Borisov was rich in carbon monoxide, and now ATLAS is giving up water at a distance where we didn’t expect it. Each one is rewriting what we thought we knew about how planets and comets form around stars.”

3I/ATLAS has now faded from view but will become observable again after mid-November, offering another chance to track how its activity evolves as it approaches the Sun. The current detection of OH, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides the first clear evidence that the comet is releasing water at large heliocentric distances. It also shows how a small space-based telescope, free from Earth’s atmospheric absorption, can reveal faint ultraviolet signals that link this visitor to the wider family of comets—and to the planetary systems from which they are born.

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About Auburn Physics
The Department of Physics in Auburn University’s College of Sciences and Mathematics investigates the universe at every scale, from the tiniest particles to the vastness of space. Faculty and students push the frontiers of discovery by simulating the mechanics of life at the molecular level and capturing the fleeting visit of a comet from another star. Auburn prepares the next generation of scientists to ask bold questions and make historic discoveries. The department is currently accepting pre-applications for its Ph.D. program in Physics until December 1, 2025, for students beginning in Fall 2026. If you are interested in joining a leading research community and pursuing a Physics Ph.D. at a top R1 university, check it out and apply today.

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Journal

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI

10.3847/2041-8213/ae08ab 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Water Production Rates of the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS

 

The world’s snow leopards are very similar genetically. That doesn’t bode well for their future

Stanford University

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A snow leopard from Ladakh, India.

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Credit: Koustubh Sharma

There are relatively few snow leopards in the world, and it has likely been that way for a long time, a new study indicates. This situation increases their risk of extinction in a changing environment.

The Stanford-led research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found very low genetic diversity among the elusive big cats, who have an estimated population of less than 8,000. They are also highly specialized to their habitat in the arid, mountainous regions of 12 Asian countries, including Russia, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Tibet.

“Snow leopards live in these really untouched areas, unlike other big cat species, which have suffered from human impact already,” said first author Katie Solari, a research scientist in biology in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “They don’t have many individuals. They don’t have much genetic diversity. Snow leopards are just not well situated to deal with changes that are likely coming their way.”

Genetic insights on rarely seen snow leopard
The findings also indicate that snow leopards developed low genetic diversity from having a small, stable population over a long period of time. In contrast, other big cat species, such as the cheetah and Florida panther, are believed to have experienced population crashes, what geneticists call a “bottleneck,” that led to their low genetic diversity.

Prior to this research, not much was known about snow leopard genetics. Only four had ever been fully sequenced. This study brings that number to 41, including 35 wild snow leopards and six from zoos around the world.

Achieving that number required years of work and an extensive collaboration with researchers and wildlife officials from 11 countries, all contributing snow leopard blood and tissue samples for analysis at Stanford.

Solari, working with Stanford biologist Dmitri Petrov and colleagues, found evidence that snow leopards not only had low genetic diversity, but also a significantly lower “homozygous load” – meaning that when leopards inherited genes from each parent, there are fewer instances of them having duplicate copies of potentially harmful mutations.

This suggests that over time, snow leopards had a periodic purging of bad mutations in their population: If a negative trait surfaced, those individuals died before reproducing or their progeny were less successful. This purging, facilitated by historic inbreeding, allowed the snow leopard population to remain relatively healthy even at their small numbers.

When other big cats, such as cheetahs, which once had very large populations, went through a bottleneck, they lost numbers and genetic diversity rapidly. Then, it was harder for them to thrive as more negative mutations were passed down among fewer individuals. Scientists believe cheetahs went through two population bottlenecks that led to their low genetic diversity today and many associated problems, including lower reproductive success and increased disease susceptibility.

Even though snow leopards have been resilient as a small population, that does not mean they will withstand future challenges.

“Because their habitat is so inhospitable, human population growth didn’t really affect snow leopards very much, but climate change will,” said Petrov, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “Humans don’t need to show up in their mountains to build or start agriculture. The climate changes, and it affects everyone and everything, even in such remote areas.”

Future challenges
While this study greatly expands genetic knowledge of snow leopards, more research is needed. The team is currently working on analyzing samples from more snow leopards to get a better sense of the population across its entire geographic range.

The researchers have also used this data to develop a genetic test for feces that will allow scientists to learn a lot about wild snow leopards without the need to trap or sedate them. This technology was developed at the Program for Conservation Genomics, founded and led by Petrov. The program applies genetic methods typically used for humans and model research organisms in labs to wildlife to better understand and protect their populations.

This knowledge will inform conservation efforts for snow leopards, which are considered a keystone species in their region. They primarily prey on mountain ungulates, such as the blue sheep of Tibet and the Siberian ibex, as well as smaller mammals, including the pika. The loss of the leopards would indicate the decline of the whole ecosystem, Petrov said.

“If their habitat starts degrading, then snow leopards might go extinct fairly easily, simply because there’s just not much ecological space for them and the total population is so small,” he said.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2502584122 

Article Title

Exceedingly Low Genetic Diversity in Snow Leopards Due to Persistently Small Population Size

Article Publication Date

7-Oct-2025

Snow leopard_walking_mongolia [VIDEO] 

snow leopard drinking [VIDEO] 

A snow leopard in Ladakh, India. 

Credit

Koustubh Sharma

Snow leopard in the south Gobi, Mongolia.

 

Credit

Snow Leopard Trust and Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation