Author Archives: Pakinam Amer

Empowering women scientists in MENA

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Funded by the Islamic Development Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an international center for agriculture is promising to lay the ground work for a women empowerment initiative aimed at scientists, reportedly the first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) launched the design phase of the Young Arab Women Scientists Leadership Programme, dubbed Tamkeen (literally meaning empowerment in Arabic) this month.

Nature Middle East speaks to Setta Tutundjian, director of partnerships and knowledge management at ICBA, about the potential of this gender-specific science programme.

NME: How will your programme empower women involved in scientific research across the Middle East?

Setta Tutundjian: The objective of the Tamkeen program is to encourage young Arab women scientists to pursue a life-long career within the field of scientific research and development. The programme also aims to help women scientists interested in pursuing leadership positions to acquire the skills necessary to assume such leadership position within research institutes across the region.

The programme will develop  leadership and soft skills among participants in key areas such as negotiation, human resource management, science writing, proposal writing, planning, presentation, mentoring, deeper understanding of self-esteem and so on.

We expect this to be achieved through a careful mix of classroom training, online training, coaching and mentoring.

NME: You’re still designing the programme, correct?

ST: Yes. And a critical part of this phase includes conducting focus group discussions and interviews with young women scientists to fully understand the challenges and opportunities they currently face within their careers, as well as to hear from them on the elements of an ideal leadership program that can help them address some of the challenges they face. We want to build a program primarily based around their needs and aspirations.

NME: By identifying the barriers and challenges, do you mean that you plan to launch country-specific investigations into how women are faring in the research and development field?

ST: Besides focus group discussions and interviews with the women, the design phase will also include an assessment of current academic programmes on offer in the region and whether these programmes cater to leadership development among graduates. There will also be an assessment of regional and international capacity building programmes to leverage learning and best practices.

During the coming months, a gender expert, a leadership expert and an expert in training activities will gather to prepare modules and produce a detailed framework of the leadership programme incorporating the results of the various assessments.

NME: I can imagine that women in a country like Egypt would be facing starkly different challenges than, say, the women of the United Arab Emirates …

ST: We do have a unique understanding of the region and the differences that exist between the different countries, specifically when it comes to research and development. Our focus group sessions will be divided among three sub-regions (the Gulf, the Levant and North Africa) in order to cater to the differences among the regions and target countries.

NME: How do you plan to measure progress?

ST: Measuring short-term results will include references to quantity and quality of workshops, participant feedback, network reach and similar metrics. Measuring long-terms results and impact will consider the number of women leaders over time in research institutions in the region, and the increase in number of scientific publications of women scientists.

Beating cancer with smarter use of radiation?

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This is a guest post by Nature Middle East writer Hebah Salama.

Cancers infect different tissues, and so they manifest differently, in various types, and require different treatments or sometimes a combination of treatments. Throw in variability among patients as a factor, and it’s even more complicated. It’s the reason why numerous studies are carried out every year to try and gauge the most effective therapy for different cancer types.

Now, researchers from Sudan and Lebanon specializing in medical physics and biochemistry have collaborated together on one such study. Their research deals with cancer cases in children, specifically analyzing the effect of different single radiation doses of X-rays on Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) – a malignant tumor involving skeletal muscle tissue.

Radiation, one of the most commonly used methods of cancer treatment, is known to cause damage in both healthy and cancerous tissue. It’s what sparked the known risk-benefit-ratio debate on whether the benefits from radiation therapy outweigh the harms. Scientists often discuss the different methods in which radiation can be used while keeping its side-effects to a minimum. As well, new technologies that provide high accuracy in dose delivery have been invented for this purpose; sparing healthy cells.

In this study, the scientists treated cultured RMS cells in vitro (outside of the human body) with therapeutic X-rays. The cells have shown to be resistant to radiation. Additionally, and depending on the radiation dosages, many of the treated cells have repaired from the X-rays’ radiation damage.

The scientists use this study to demonstrate that efforts put into studying tumors’ and healthy tissues’ biological responses to radiation based on tumor type should be stepped up. The more accurate the data provided about these types of responses, the better the outcome of patient treatment is.

“The advancement in technology should be met with more scientific research,” says Alexander Fadul lead researcher.

He adds that more patient oriented studies are certainly needed to determine the different parameters of radiation.

Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia, in Arabic

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Scientists from Qatar and the United States have managed to validate an Arabic version of the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS) among patients with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenics commonly show both depressive and negative symptoms that can affect the prognosis and course of their treatment. Negative symptoms are disabling symptoms that have a major impact on the quality of life of patients, more so than positive symptoms, which are thought patterns and behaviors that patients acquire after they become ill.

Tests such as CDSS are designed to distinguish between depression, and negative symptoms that are distinctive of schizophrenia.

These tests are not diagnostic per se, “but they are mainly there to asses the severity of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia and the possible associated depressive symptoms (using CDSS),” explains Hassen Al-Amin, professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and corresponding author of the study that validated the psychiatric test.

“They are significant because they can help us know how sick these patients are and also to monitor how they are responding to treatment with time,” he says.

These types of tests have been used worldwide and their validity is established.

In order to make them work for Arab populations, experts and researchers had to translate the material thoroughly and decide the appropriate cultural equivalents in Arabic. “We then test the Arabic versions with Arab patients with schizophrenia and compare them with those obtained internationally to make sure that we have a valid scale that is culturally acceptable also,” says Al-Amin.

UAE’s green city grabs the attention of international researchers

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Masdar city, in the heart of the Gulf desert, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, has no light switches or water taps. In Masdar, movement sensors control lighting and water in order to cut down electricity and water consumption by nearly half. The city is touted by the UAE as possibly “one of the world’s most sustainable eco-cities.”

And now University of Birmingham researchers are presenting it as a model to teach the UK and the world about saving energy and resources, contrasting it with energy systems in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

They analyzed the differences and similarities between Masdar, founded very recently in 2008 against an urban environment, and Birmingham, a well-established post-industrial city that has evolved over 400 years. “Masdar City benefits from starting from a blank slate, whereas Birmingham has existing processes, procedures and an ageing infrastructure to negotiate,” according to the researchers.

Masdar is primarily powered by Shams 1, one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the Middle East, and it houses the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, which carries out renewable energy research.

“We compared two very different cities – both aspiring to be ‘low-carbon’. Masdar has started well by building low-rise, energy-efficient buildings with smart metering,” says lead author Susan Lee, from the department of civil engineering. “Data from such buildings can help to change people’s behaviour and help develop more energy-efficient new and retrofitted UK buildings. The UAE is a hot and arid place; experience gained in Masdar will help us plan here in the UK for projected hotter summers, with more frequent heatwaves, particularly in cities, as the climate changes.”

Birmingham, says the researcher, has a few things to teach Masdar as well, including how the city adapted to new energy requirements. Lee believes that Masdar can also benefit from her university’s research into hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

Can garlic-derived creams cure cutaneous leishmanisis?

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A few months after a flesh-eating disease has resurfaced in the Middle East, a research team from Saudi Arabia and Egypt has released a new study which claims that allicin, a sulfur compound found in garlic, can hold the key to a cure.

Leishmaniasis is a protozoal parasitic disease spread by the bite of certain types of sandflies. From cutaneous lesions to fatal visceral infections, the parasite is vicious, but now these scientists are saying that the compound that is derived from the oldest medicinal plant and a cream based on it can heal cutaneous leishmaniasis in mice.

The study published in PLOS One says that at a concentration of 50 micromoles of allicin put a stopper on the growth of Leishmania parasites. Topical application of allicin cream have successfully reduced lesion sizes.

The scientists studied the toxic effects of allicin on the liver and kidney, but they discovered no significant differences in their biochemical analysis between the control and treated groups.

The potential cure’s promise lies in the fact that it overcomes the disease’s drug resistance, according to the study.

Detecting deadly foodborne pathogens on the spot

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Researchers from Saudi Arabia and Jordan have invented a cheap sensor that can detect foodborne pathogens within minutes and which can be used by anyone.

The sensor can detect, among other pathogens, Listeria monocytogenes, a notoriously harmful pathogen that has caused numerous infections worldwide and whose inspection and detection efforts exhaust billions of dollars every year, says a new study published in Biosensors & Bioelectronics.

The sensor itself is made of magnetic nanoparticles. It can detect minute traces or serial dilutions of Listeria in milk and meat, as the study demonstrates. “The sensor’s performance is superior in terms of its simplicity, cost and speed,” says researcher Mohammed Zourob, the study’s corresponding author.

Zourob adds that the sensor can be used by non-skilled personnel to check the food contamination; food manufacturers, stores, distributors and even laypersons can use it.

The biosensor changes color from black to yellow in less a minute time when it detects Listeria. Zourob’s team has also developed sensors that can detect other food pathogens such as Escherichia  coli, Salmonella, Shigella flexnerii and Staphylococcus aureus.

Genomes of stone-age woman carry farming tales

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Zagros Mountains harbor a site with evidence for an ancient economy.

Zagros Mountains harbor a site with evidence for an ancient economy. {credit}JTB MEDIA CREATION, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo{/credit}

The sequencing of the first genome of an early stone-age woman from Ganj Dareh, in the Iranian Zagros Mountains, can give us a glimpse into the world’s first farming efforts and the evolution of an activity that has profoundly affected human societies.

The international team of scientists, including a researcher from King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, has been studying an archaeological site in Zagros – a site with early evidence for an economy of a population of pastoralists, primarily based on goat herding, some 10,000 years ago.

This population has evidently occupied the area for two to three centuries.

Their findings suggest that Western Iran was inhabited by a population genetically similar to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus, but distinct from the new stone-age Anatolian people who later brought food production into Europe.

The inhabitants of Ganj Dareh made little direct genetic contribution to modern European populations, suggesting those of the Central Zagros were somewhat isolated from other populations of the Fertile Crescent.

Archaeobotanical evidence remains limited, according to the study published in Scientific Reports yesterday, but the evidence present gives us an idea into what crops were common: for instance two-row barley with no evidence for wheat or rye.

This probably means that the overall economy was at a much earlier stage in the development of cereal agriculture than that found in the Levant, Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamian basin.

The Throes of AIDS

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Aids and drug testing equipment. Syringe. Paperwork. Graph. Blood. Coloured liquid. Sample. Medical research. Measurements. Charts. Cure. Treatment. Thermometer. Instruments.

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As scientists, press, leaders and activists meet at the 21st International AIDS conference in Durban, the Middle East and North Africa region remains embroiled in its own fight against HIV/AIDS.

The odds are stacked against this region, solidly among those groups where infections are increasing – an issue that the conference at Durban is expected to mount concerns about, among others. In addition to discussing the state of the epidemic worldwide, and in high-risk areas, the conference will address the fact that HIV/AIDS is plateauing or peaking in several countries, plus the level of jeopardy this entails.

In this region, 80% of people living with HIV/AIDS are not aware they’re carrying the virus, 85% of those in progressive stages of infection are not receiving treatments and deaths due to AIDS have increased 176%, according to reports from UNAIDS and WHO. There are not enough national strategic plans to tackle the problem and access to life-saving medications remains limited.

Stigma is partly to blame, according to Navid Madani, senior scientist in the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Globally, growing resistance to the antiretroviral drugs used against HIV is the most serious issue facing plans to end the endemic, according to the WHO’s opening statement to Durban’s conference this morning.

Finding preventive measures and a vaccine-antiviral combination that might bring us closer to a cure are underway. In fact only this week, a new study in Science provides insights into the workings of new HIV drugs and into how the virus becomes resistant. Scientists can use these to scrutinize structures insides irregular viruses like HIV to understand the molecular underpinnings of the virus in order to come up with new drug designs.

But finding new drugs is an expensive affair, as meanwhile funding for HIV has been dropping.

Back in the Middle East and North Africa, the extent of the HIV epidemic is undeniable, and governments – some reluctantly and others readily – are beginning to understand there’s a problem in need of curbing.

Just as pivotal to halting the spread is the culture of HIV-related practices, the shame surrounding the virus, the inequality cited by many in terms of medication access and the outdated fears about the prognosis for those infected. The burden falls on scientists, policymakers, healthcare workers and even at-risk communities to try and change the status quo.

Historic genetic ‘picture’ of Arabian camel revealed

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Camels blogpost

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An analysis of the ancient and modern DNA of the single-humped ‘Arabian’ camel or dromedary reveals how human societies have influenced the animal’s genetic diversity.

Long-distance and back-and-forth movements in ancient camel caravan routes are one way this has happened.

The camels have long been a source of food and transport for desert communities, and a vital resource in trade and agriculture in hot, arid regions. That’s why the scientists responsible for this study believe that in the context of climate change and advancing desert landscapes, scrutinizing dromedary’s biology, reproduction and adaptation to hostile terrain has acquired a new level of importance.

“The dromedary has out-performed all other domesticated mammals, including the donkey, in arid environments and continues to provide essential commodities to millions of people living in marginal agro-ecological areas,” says lead author Faisal Almathen from the Department of Veterinary Health and Animal Husbandry at King Faisal University.

“There is very little defined population structure in modern dromedaries. We believe this is a consequence of cross-continental back and forth movements along historic trading routes,” he adds. “Our results point to extensive gene flow which affects all regions except East Africa where dromedary populations have remained relatively isolated.”

For this study, the researchers collected and analysed genetic information from a sample of 1,083 living dromedaries from 21 countries across the world. The team also examined ancient DNA sequences from bone samples from early-domesticated dromedaries from 400-1870 AD and wild ones from 5,000-1,000 BC.

The international team of scientists was led by geneticists from The University of Nottingham, the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia. The research itself is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA.

The ancient refuge of southern Arabia

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It seems that southern Arabia has provided shelter to people, 20,000 years earlier, following an ice age that made much of the Earth uninhabitable, according to new evidence provided by University of Huddersfield researchers this week.

Once the Ice Age receded, the Red Sea plains of what we know now as southern Arabia in addition to the far side of the Bab el-Mandeb strait and the Horn of Africa were among glacial sanctuaries where people were able to cluster and survive.

This has been hypothesized before by scientists but never confirmed until this study.

It defies what was commonly thought of Arabia; that humans did not settle there in large numbers until the development of agriculture, roughly 10,000 years earlier.

Analyzing mitochondrial DNA for a lineage that’s common in Arabia and the horn of Africa, the researchers discovered that the lineage, named R0a, is more ancient than what was thought.

The ancient gene flow infiltrated the horn, well before the spread of agriculture into that region. It seeped into the rest of the Middle East (present day Iran, Pakistan and India) and other territories, like Europe through the movement of people and the development of trading networks.

The study mapping human dispersals, post the Ice Age, and deep ancestry was published in Scientific Reports. The DNA analyzed was extracted from living people, since to date this couldn’t be recovered from prehistoric remains. So the scientists had to rely on modern diversity to draw conclusions about the history of the DNA lineage.