All of the world’s shallow coral reefs have been digitally mapped, thanks to a three-year project combining two million satellite images, enormous amounts of field data and University of Queensland-developed mapping techniques.

The Allen Coral Atlas project has officially launched its high-resolution maps of the world’s reefs which, together with the Atlas’s coral monitoring tool launched in May, will revolutionise reef management.

The project is an international research collaboration led by Arizona State University in partnership with UQ, Planet Ltd, National Geographic and Vulcan Inc.

UQ’s Remote Sensing Research Centre researcher Dr Chris Roelfsema said the digital atlas is a comprehensive and continually updated tool, perfect for scientists, policy makers and planners.

“To manage environmental assets like the world’s reefs, you need to know what’s happening at any given time,” Dr Roelfsema said.

“The Allen Coral Atlas provides maps that accurately describe the composition and extent of our reefs globally, and at a level of detail not seen before.

“These maps are connecting people with the data they need to save our reefs – it’s momentous.”

The Allen Coral Atlas, now available online, has been a global effort with UQ scientists playing the leading role in gathering verification data, developing and implementing the mapping approach for the world’s coral reefs.

“The verification and mapping approaches we’ve developed are based on 20 years of experience UQ has in combining reef knowledge, field data and earth observation processes to map and monitor coral reefs,” Dr Roelfsema said.

“This work combined 450 field data sets from global collaborators with machine learning and automated contextual-editing approaches, which helps us achieve the highest spatial and thematic resolution of coral reefs anyone has ever seen.”

The data is needed now more than ever, with models predicting 70 to 90 per cent of coral reefs will be lost by 2050, because of warming, polluted and acidic oceans.

Professor Greg Asner, Director of Arizona State University’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science and Managing Director of the Atlas project, said he was thrilled to announce the platform.

“It is a gratifying milestone after years of dedicated non-stop teamwork to bring this global map to fruition,” Dr Asner said.

“But the true value of the work will come when coral conservationists are able to better protect coral reefs based on the high-resolution maps and monitoring system.

“We must double down and use this tool as we work to save coral reefs from the impacts of our climate crisis and other threats.”

The Allen Coral Atlas is named for the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, and founder of Vulcan Inc.

The official collaborative press-release for the Allen Coral Atlas, along with images, video and other digital assets is available here.

A history of UQ’s involvement in the project is available here.

The University of Queensland has climbed to its best global position yet in the respected Times Higher Education University World Rankings.

UQ jumped eight places from last year’s ranking to sit at equal 54^th in the world, and moved up to equal second place in Australia.

Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Deborah Terry said the result was exceptional given the intensely competitive higher education environment along with the pressures associated with a pandemic.

“To enhance our standing on a global stage is exciting and reflects the commitment of our exceptional academic, research and professional staff,” Professor Terry said.

“We continue to face the current challenges head on while maintaining our focus on high impact research and cultivating the critical thinking capabilities of our students to help them become the experts of tomorrow.”

The University improved in the key performance indicators – teaching, research, international outlook and industry income – with the latter achieving the largest increase from a score of 81.0 to 86.2.

Professor Terry said the result sent a clear message to Australia and around the world that UQ pursued ambitious industry partners looking to innovate.

“Strong collaboration is at the heart of UQ’s research efforts,” Professor Terry said.

“This is highlighted by the number of UQ projects funded under the ARC Linkage Projects scheme which support collaborative research that genuinely make a difference.

“UQ was also one of the first universities to establish a commercialisation arm – UniQuest ­is now Australia’s leading technology transfer company.”

Media: UQ Communications, communications@uq.edu.au, 07 3346 7890.

A little more than twenty years ago, eliminating cervical cancer would have seemed an impossible dream, but now the achievable goal of halting the disease worldwide is the focus of a feature documentary film.

Conquering Cancer stars cervical cancer pioneer Professor Ian Frazer, who co-developed the life-saving Gardasil vaccine with UQ colleague, the late Dr Jian Zhou.

“The film spreads the message that cervical cancer is a curable disease which women around the world still suffer from,” Professor Frazer said.

“It’s been filmed to portray an accurate and honest point of view, but it’s also a platform to launch people into action.

“What can we do to save the lives of an estimated 62 million women around the world?”

The tagline to Conquering Cancer is ‘The fight to eliminate cervical cancer – everywhere’, and presents perspectives from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe.

One of the most powerful voices belongs to Zambian Ministry of Health Assistant Director (Cancer) Dr Sharon Kapambwe.

“Conquering cancer means a world where women are empowered to do other things, not succumbing to a disease,” Dr Kapambwe said.

“They are able to give their full potential to their families and nation.”

Others in the film reflect on how hearing the words ‘cervical cancer’ previously formed an automatic equivalency with the word ‘death’ in their mind, but that no longer needs be the case.

Among the stories featured in Conquering Cancer is that of Australian woman Kirsty Browne, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer at age 26.

She became one of the first Australian women to deliver a baby after having her cervix removed.

The Queensland premiere screening of Conquering Cancer will take place at Elizabeth Street Picture Theatre in Brisbane on Wednesday 1 September at 6.45pm.

A limited number of tickets to the premiere are still available, with $5 from each ticket going to the Translational Research Institute (TRI) Foundation.

Professor Frazer is Ambassador and Chair to the TRI Foundation, as well as holding affiliations with UQ Faculty of Medicine, UQ Diamantina Institute and the Institute for Molecular Biosciences.

Professor Frazer is one of the executive producers of Conquering Cancer, which is directed by Mike Hill, hosted by Sue Collins and produced by Australian-based Moonshine Agency.

A preview trailer of the documentary is available on YouTube.

Image above: film crew shooting overlay with Professor Ian Frazer in a lab.

Media: Shelley Templeman, UQ Communications, s.templeman@uq.edu.au, 07 3443 8042.

Australia’s largest flying reptile has been uncovered, a pterosaur with an estimated seven-metre wingspan that soared like a dragon above the ancient, vast inland sea once covering much of outback Queensland.

University of Queensland PhD candidate Tim Richards, from the Dinosaur Lab in UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, led a research team that analysed a fossil of the creature’s jaw, discovered on Wanamara Country, near Richmond in North West Queensland.

“It’s the closest thing we have to a real-life dragon,” Mr Richards said.

“The new pterosaur, which we named Thapunngaka shawi, would have been a fearsome beast, with a spear-like mouth and a wingspan around seven metres.

“It was essentially just a skull with a long neck, bolted on a pair of long wings.

“This thing would have been quite savage.

“It would have cast a great shadow over some quivering little dinosaurs who wouldn’t have heard them coming until it was too late.”

Mr Richards said the skull alone would have been just over one metre long, containing around 40 teeth, perfectly suited to grasping the large predatory fishes known to inhabit Queensland’s no-longer-existent Eromanga Sea.

“Even though pterosaurs could fly, they were nothing like birds, or even bats,” he said.

“Pterosaurs were a successful and diverse group of reptiles – the very first back-boned animals to take a stab at powered flight.”

The new species belonged to a group of pterosaurs known as anhanguerians, which inhabited every continent during the latter part of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Being perfectly adapted to powered flight, pterosaurs had thin-walled and relatively hollow bones.

Given these adaptations their fossilised remains are rare and often poorly preserved.

“It’s quite amazing fossils of these animals exist at all,” Mr Richards said.

“By world standards, the Australian pterosaur record is poor, but the discovery of Thapunngaka contributes greatly to our understanding of Australian pterosaur diversity.”

It is only the third species of anhanguerian pterosaur known from Australia, with all three species hailing from western Queensland.

Dr Steve Salisbury, co-author on the paper and Mr Richard’s PhD supervisor, said what was particularly striking about this new species of anhanguerian was the massive size of the bony crest on its lower jaw, which it presumably had on the upper jaw as well.

“These crests probably played a role in the flight dynamics of these creatures, and hopefully future research will deliver more definitive answers,” Dr Salisbury said.

The fossil was found in a quarry just northwest of Richmond in June 2011 by Len Shaw, a local fossicker who has been ‘scratching around’ in the area for decades.

The name of the new species honours the First Nations peoples of the Richmond area where the fossil was found, incorporating words from the now-extinct language of the Wanamara Nation.

“The genus name, Thapunngaka, incorporates thapun [ta-boon] and ngaka [nga-ga], the Wanamara words for ‘spear’ and ‘mouth’, respectively,” Dr Salisbury said.

“The species name, shawi, honours the fossil’s discoverer Len Shaw, so the name means ‘Shaw’s spear mouth’.”

The fossil of Thapunngaka shawi is on display at Kronosaurus Korner in Richmond.

Image above left: University of Queensland PhD candidate Tim Richards.

The research has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2021.1946068).

A potential improved treatment for two of the leading causes of blindness – age and diabetes-related eye problems – has been demonstrated in research involving a University of Queensland expert.

Professor Di Yu of the UQ Diamantina Institute collaborated with scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Chaoyang Hospital to address an issue affecting approximately 450 million people worldwide.

“There is a high prevalence of ocular neovascular disease, with 415 million people at risk of loss of sight through diabetes, and as many as 50 million with age-related macular degeneration,” Professor Yu said.

“With an aging population, the number of cases of age-related macular degeneration is expected to increase as much as five-fold by 2040.

“At the moment, ocular neovascular diseases are treated by a method that suppresses a particular growth factor for vessels, but between 40 and 60 per cent of patients do not respond well.

“Those who do not respond well might exude fluids, have unresolved or new bleeding, thickening or scarring of tissue, or fail to recover functional vision.

“In our study of a novel treatment in animals, volumes of lesions were reduced by 95 per cent.”

The current treatment for these diseases is delivered via an injection in the eyeball.

However, Professor Yu and his collaborators are pioneering a more complex nanodrug which not only delivers an antibody, but simultaneously combats inflammation and identified side effects.

“The efficacy was superb,” Professor Yu said.

“The new design allows the nanodrug to concentrate on lesions and deliver lasting benefits.

“With the impressive results, further developments are now underway to translate it into a new therapy.

“This new approach will hopefully benefit a large number of patients with age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy by improving eyesight and preventing blindness.”

Professor Yu’s research has been published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00764-3).

Media: Professor Di Yu, di.yu@uq.edu.au , +61 (0)7 3443 6954; UQ Communications, med.media@uq.edu.au, +61 (0)7 3365 5118, +61 (0)448 410 364.