KAUST, NEOM Unveil World's Largest Coral Restoration Project

KCRI is the world's largest coral restoration project, aiming to restore reefs worldwide. SPA
KCRI is the world's largest coral restoration project, aiming to restore reefs worldwide. SPA
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KAUST, NEOM Unveil World's Largest Coral Restoration Project

KCRI is the world's largest coral restoration project, aiming to restore reefs worldwide. SPA
KCRI is the world's largest coral restoration project, aiming to restore reefs worldwide. SPA

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in collaboration with NEOM, has started working on the first nursery of the KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI), a statement from KAUST said on Thursday.

According to the statement, KCRI is the world's largest coral restoration project, aiming to restore reefs worldwide. The primary nursery is already operational, and a second facility is being developed, both located in the Red Sea.

KCRI is funded by KAUST, a world-class graduate research university in Saudi Arabia, which was recently ranked as the number one Arab University by Times Higher Education.

The newly built nursery, on the coast of NEOM in northwest Saudi Arabia, will transform coral restoration efforts with a production capacity of 40,000 corals annually. Functioning as a pioneering pilot facility, researchers will leverage it as the blueprint for large-scale coral restoration initiatives.

Most importantly, this facility serves as a precursor to a more ambitious project: the world's largest and most advanced land-based coral nursery. This nursery, located at the same site, is an advanced coral nursery that will boast a ten-fold larger capacity to nurture 400,000 corals annually. With construction quickly progressing, the project is anticipated to reach completion by December 2025.

Home to 25% of known marine species despite covering less than 1% of the sea floor, coral reefs are the bedrock of numerous marine ecosystems. "This is one reason why scientists are so concerned about the rising rate of mass bleaching events, with experts estimating up to 90% of global coral reefs will experience severe heat stress on an annually by 2050," the statement said. With the frequency of such events on the rise, solutions for coral recovery will be "crucial for a healthy ocean.”

In alignment with Saudi Vision 2030 and its efforts to bolster marine conservation, this major initiative leverages KAUST's research into marine ecosystems and serves as a platform for trialing innovative restoration methods. Set on a 100-hectare site; the initiative will deploy 2 million coral fragments, marking a significant step in conservation efforts.

According to the statement, KCRI aligns with KAUST's overarching strategy, showcasing its dedication to catalyzing positive societal and global outcomes.

Beyond environmental restoration, the project offers educational benefits, further reinforcing its alignment with the broader strategic goals outlined in Vision 2030.

"Recent events provide a stark reminder of the global crisis that coral reefs face. Our ambition is, therefore, to pioneer a pathway to upscale from the current labor-intensive restoration efforts to industrial-scale processes required to reverse the current rate of coral reef degradation,” said KAUST President Prof. Tony Chan.

“As a significant output of KAUST's new strategy, the university is contributing the world-leading expertise of our faculty, who are working on technologies to bring this vision to fruition."

NEOM's CEO, Nadhmi Al-Nasr, said the initiative demonstrates NEOM's dedication to sustainability and finding innovative solutions for global environmental challenges.

NEOM, as a "pioneer in sustainable development" recognizes the importance of reviving coral reefs in partnership with KAUST. Through their longstanding collaboration, they aim to raise awareness about the significance of coral reefs as crucial marine environmental systems and emphasize the need to preserve them for future generations.



A Stroke Survivor Speaks Again with the Help of an Experimental Brain-Computer Implant

The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. (Getty Images)
The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. (Getty Images)
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A Stroke Survivor Speaks Again with the Help of an Experimental Brain-Computer Implant

The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. (Getty Images)
The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. (Getty Images)

Scientists have developed a device that can translate thoughts about speech into spoken words in real time.

Although it’s still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak.

A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldn’t speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial.

It "converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences," said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Other brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for speech typically have a slight delay between thoughts of sentences and computerized verbalization. Such delays can disrupt the natural flow of conversation, potentially leading to miscommunication and frustration, researchers said.

This is "a pretty big advance in our field," said Jonathan Brumberg of the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, who was not part of the study.

A team in California recorded the woman’s brain activity using electrodes while she spoke sentences silently in her brain. The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. They trained an AI model that translates neural activity into units of sound.

It works similarly to existing systems used to transcribe meetings or phone calls in real time, said Anumanchipalli, of the University of California, Berkeley.

The implant itself sits on the speech center of the brain so that it’s listening in, and those signals are translated to pieces of speech that make up sentences. It’s a "streaming approach," Anumanchipalli said, with each 80-millisecond chunk of speech – about half a syllable – sent into a recorder.

"It’s not waiting for a sentence to finish," Anumanchipalli said. "It’s processing it on the fly."

Decoding speech that quickly has the potential to keep up with the fast pace of natural speech, said Brumberg. The use of voice samples, he added, "would be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech."

Though the work was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, Anumanchipalli said it wasn't affected by recent NIH research cuts. More research is needed before the technology is ready for wide use, but with "sustained investments," it could be available to patients within a decade, he said.