Discovery to display: FAU unveils the ‘Art of Science’ winners
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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 8-Nov-2025 06:11 ET (8-Nov-2025 11:11 GMT/UTC)
FAU’s “Art of Science” contest turns research into stunning visual stories. The top image, “First Selfie … Cephie,” shows an octopus seemingly posing for a camera, showcasing its incredible dexterity. Other top winners are the “Sea Turtle Beginning,” capturing embryonic development inside an egg, and “Journey to Space,” a high-altitude balloon bursting nearly 100,000 feet above Earth. The contest celebrates creativity across science, art, and the community, revealing the hidden beauty and wonder of discovery.
New research has confirmed that West Coast transient killer whales who live between British Columbia and California are two distinct subpopulations: inner and outer coast transients.
Based on 16 years of data from more than 2,200 encounters, the study published in PLOS One challenges previous assumptions about this group of mammal-eating killer whales.
“I've been thinking about this possibility for 15 years,” says first author Josh McInnes, who conducted the research as part of his masters at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). “Now our findings show the West Coast transients are two distinct groups, split along an east-west divide. They eat different things, hunt in different areas and very rarely spend time with each other.”
A new record of Arctic sea-ice coverage – informed by the slow and steady sedimentation of cosmic dust on the sea floor – reveals that ancient ice waxed and waned with atmospheric warming, not ocean heat, over the last 300,000 years. The findings provide rare insights into how modern melting in the region could reshape the Arctic’s nutrient balance and biological productivity. The Arctic is warming more rapidly than any other region on Earth, driving a precipitous decline in sea ice coverage. This loss not only affects the region’s marine ecosystems and coastal communities, but it also has far-reaching implications on global climate and economics. However, predicting when the Arctic Ocean will become perennially ice-free remains uncertain due in large part to the general lack of long-term sea ice records and the fact that the processes controlling ice loss are not fully understood.
To address this gap and measure the abundance of sea ice over the past 300,000 years, Frank Pavia and colleagues developed a new geochemical technique using two naturally occurring isotopes – extraterrestrial helium-3 (3HeET) and thorium-230 (230Thxs,0) – preserved in Arctic Ocean sediments. Under ice-free conditions, both isotopes settle onto the seafloor at steady, predictable rates, but they originate from very different sources. Helium-3 arrives from space, delivered uniformly to Earth’s surface by a constant influx of cosmic dust particles. In contrast, thorium-231 is produced consistently within the ocean as dissolved uranium decays. During open water conditions, both isotopes accumulate together. However, during periods of sea-ice cover, the deposition of helium-3 is blocked, altering the ratio of the two isotopes accumulating on the sea floor. Pavia et al. use the ratio of these two isotopes in Arctic sediment cores to measure when and where ocean surface was covered by ice in the past. The record shows that during the last ice age, the central Arctic Ocean remained covered by sea ice year-round. As the Arctic began to warm ~15,000 years ago, ice started to retreat, leading to mostly seasonal sea ice during the warm early Holocene. Later, as the global climate cooled again, sea-ice cover expanded once more. According to the authors, these changes were driven mostly by atmospheric warming, rather than ocean temperatures, challenging assumptions that oceanic inflows of warm water dominated past Arctic sea-ice extent. What’s more, Pavia et al. found that sea ice variation was closely coupled with biological nutrient use, suggesting that as sea ice retreats, surface productivity increases. These findings indicate that future reductions in Arctic sea ice are likely to enhance biological nutrient consumption, with implications for long-term marine productivity in a warming Arctic Ocean.
The grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will enable researchers to study dry-season prey concentrations in the Florida Everglades. The project will collect and analyze data on aquatic prey and habitat conditions to reveal the key factors driving wading bird nesting success. By identifying when and where prey concentrate during the dry season, the research will fill a critical knowledge gap, guiding restoration under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and supporting strategies to protect the Everglades’ iconic wildlife.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa published today in Nature Communications is the first of its kind to show that waste discharged from deep-sea mining operations in the Pacific’s biodiverse Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) could disrupt marine life in the midwater “twilight zone” — a vital region 200-1,500 meters below sea level that supports vast communities of zooplankton, tiny animals that serve as the ocean’s basic food building blocks. Specifically, it finds that 53% of all zooplankton and 60% of micronekton, which feed on zooplankton, would be impacted by the discharge, which could ultimately impact predators higher up on the food web.