Wibrazz
"Blindness keeps you from things, deafness keeps you from people" (Helen Keller) Wibrazz is a communication tool that can be placed inside sportswear. Two versions have been developed. The simpler one allows hearing-impaired footballers to compete in the league with other athletes. The referee is given an additional device to give a signal when he blows his whistle. The hearing-impaired footballer then senses the signal from the device he is wearing and knows that he must pay attention to the referee. The complex version speeds up communication between the coach and the players during training sessions. It allows the coach to send simple messages to his players using his smart device. The athlete senses the signal from the device and acts on what has been previously discussed (e.g. a long signal means, "Everyone come to me!") With over 70 million deaf people worldwide, and 2-4 out of 1000 people in the United States who are functionally deaf, this can affect an individual's mental and physical well-being, and it is therefore a pressing issue to provide these athletes with the means to develop their talents in a traditional team environment. In addition to the organisations within countries, the ICSD is present on the international stage. Their importance is demonstrated by the fact that the 2023 Deaf Football World Cup featured teams from countries such as the United States, Germany, England and Japan.
Quantitative environmental DNA metabarcoding for the enumeration of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.)
Understanding species abundance is critical to managing and conserving planetary biodiversity. Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) are keystone species of cultural, economic, and ecological importance in Alaska and especially Southwest Alaska. Traditional methods of enumerating salmon such as weirs and visual surveys are often costly, time-intensive, and reliant on taxonomic expertise. Environmental DNA (eDNA), which identifies and quantifies species based on DNA they shed in their habitats, is a potential cost- and time- saving alternative. The relative ease of collecting eDNA samples also enables citizen scientist involvement, expanding research coverage. Currently, more research is required to define eDNA’s potential and limits. This project investigates whether quantitative eDNA metabarcoding can accurately quantify the abundances of six fish species: the five Pacific salmon species plus rainbow trout. Water samples were collected from eight creeks in the Wood River watershed of Southwest Alaska. eDNA metabarcoding and subsequent bioinformatics processing produced a read count for each species. These were compared to visual survey counts, taken to be the true counts for the purposes of this study. Data analyses showed a positive, linear relationship between visual survey count and eDNA count for sockeye salmon. The regressions were significant for both the early (p = 0.089) and late (p = 0.030) sampling dates when 𝛼 = 0.10. eDNA detections of non-sockeye species generally corresponded to visual survey observations of species presence or absence. Overall, the results of this study support eDNA’s potential to be an alternative or supplement to standard methods for the enumeration of fish species.
Development of Electrical Shielding system for auto dust removal for solar PV modules
Currently, Large-scale solar PV systems installations are taking place in the desert environment and space to harness abundant solar energy effectively. Dust accumulation on the surface of photovoltaic panels (PV) is the most stignant problem for photovoltaic panels, as dust deposition reduces PV problem energy generation efficiency significantly. Thus, the removal of dust from the PV panels has become very important to increase the rate of energy efficiency by the PV panels. The dust particles could be reduced using traditional dust cleaning techniques. But, in the harsh and hostile desert environment, these approaches which requires a lot of water, complicated mechanical instruments, enormous logistics, and personnel. Electrodynamic dust shielding (EDS) system has been developed at our laboratory to remove dust particles from the surface of the PV panels. The EDS system has been successfully tested for dust mitigation. The unique features of our EDS System is that it is cost effective, easy to install and no manpower required as it is an unmanned system. The design and construction of a single-phase electrodynamic dust repulsion device built locally in KSA is demonstrated in this study. This work showed that the optimized electrode design and electrical parameters, such as AC source voltage and frequency, maximized the EDS system's dust mitigation effectiveness. A perfect balance was achieved between the geometrical and electrical parameters of the EDS system, resulting in a dust removal efficiency of up to 92±1 ℅.
Whose feather is that? A cross-views between a naturalist and a molecular biologist
Identifyingthespeciesorsexofabirdbasedonafeatherfoundinnatureisoftenchallenging,evenwith the help of reference books. However, determining the presence of a rare species in a habitat using an indirectpresenceindicator,suchasafeather,canhelpinimplementingspecificmeasuresforpreserving the species. The aim of this study is to investigate whether DNAgenotyping is better than specialized books when identifying bird feathers. Toanswerthisquestion,Icollectedfeathersinthewildand,withthehelpoftwobooks,triedtoidentify theirspeciesandsex.Then,assistedbyDrGwenaëlJacob(UNIFR),Iisolatedtwogenesinnineselected feathers. The investigated genes were the CHD gene for sexing and the COI gene for species identification.Todothis,theDNAwasfirstextractedfromthefeathers,purified,andamplifiedbyPCR. Subsequently,anelectrophoresis wasperformedtosexthe samples andcheckthatthe PCRamplification hadworkedproperly.Finally,thesamplesweresequencedbytheMicrosynthlaboratory(St-Gall),and the obtained sequences were entered into the NCBI database. Acomparisonoftheresultsobtainedwitheachofthetwodifferentmethodsshowsthattheidentification with specialized books was fairly successful. 56% of the species identification made with the books were indeed confirmed by genotyping. DNAanalysis provided a different result only for feather #16. However,33%ofgeneticidentificationfailed,eitherduetogeneticmaterialqualityorlaboratoryerrors. Asitwaspossibletoidentifythesexofonlyonesample(feather#14)withthebooks,itwasnotpossible tomakeatruecomparisonofthetwoapproaches.However,asgeneticsexingworkedwell(onefailure, feather #28), it can be inferred that genetic sexing is more effective than using books. This work demonstrated that DNAis not infallible and that sometimes books are equally effective in identifyingbirdspeciesfromafeather.However,insexingbird,DNAremainsmoreefficient.Thus,one can conclude that DNAgenotyping is not superior but rather complementary to specialized books for identifying bird feathers.