5^th World Conference on Climate Change October 4-6, 2018 Park Inn by Radisson, London, UK

Biography:

Volker M Arlt has an international profile of research in Environmental Carcinogenesis and Toxicology evidenced by over 180 articles published in high-ranked international journals within the field of research. His expertise is firmly rooted in Molecular Carcinogenesis as well as Genetic and Environmental Toxicology. He is Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Genetic Toxicology at King’s College London and based at the Department of Analytical, Environmental and Forensic Sciences within the School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences. He also belongs to the MRC-PHE Centre for Environmental & Health. He is a European Registered Toxicologist.          

Abstract:

Biography:

Jean-Claude Gascard is a Physical Oceanographer specializing in Deep Ocean Convection and Polar Oceanography. He started his observations in the Mediterranean Sea in the 1970s leading to his Doctorate Degree in 1977, then in the Labrador Sea and in the Greenland Sea in the 90s when he published a paper in Nature about Sub-mesoscale Coherent Vortex (SCV) generated during deep ocean convection. This is a major element of the thermohaline ocean circulation mechanism often called the great conveyor belt. His first Arctic expedition was in 1983–1984 during the MIZEX experiment in Fram Strait. He led large European projects in the Arctic during the International Polar Year: the DAMOCLES project from 2005 to 2010 and more recently the ACCESS project (2011-2015) a multidisciplinary Arctic project for understanding the impacts of the Arctic climate change on the economy and the society. He has published more than 100 papers and edited four books.

Abstract:

The Arctic sea ice extent and thickness has declined by 50% over the past 40 years and consequently the ice volume which is a by-product of both Arctic sea ice extent and thickness has declined by 75% during summer. This is a huge change among all the elements contributing to Earth’s climate change. To understand and to explain this situation and to find out about its origin, it is essential to look at winter, in addition to summer conditions. Based on freezing degree days (FDD) accumulating all over the freezing season each year, starting in September and ending in May the following year, we are able to demonstrate that the decline in Arctic sea ice over the past 40 years is largely due to milder winters and the lack of freezing in winter. Sea ice newly formed during each winter is not able to balance the Arctic sea ice melting during the summer season even if there are more new ice formed due to a larger ice free ocean undergoing freezing every year. During the past two years, we registered a sharp drop of more than 10 cm of sea ice thickness compared to the previous year indicating the phenomenon we just described as accelerating. This is mainly due to warm air masses and warm oceanic waters advected from the South to the Arctic Ocean. Based on these results, it is highly probable and almost inevitable that Arctic sea ice will disappear in summer within the coming 10 years with large consequences for the Earth’s climate in the Northern Hemisphere and also globally. We are already experiencing frequent cold air outbreaks at mid latitudes as well as heat waves propagating up to the North Pole as described recently (February 25, 2018) by the weather previsionist (Etienne Kapikian) from Meteo-France.

Recent Publications

1. Gascard J-C, Riemann-Campe K, Gerdes R, Schyberg H, Randriamampianina R, et al. (2018) Future sea iceconditions and weather forecasts in the Arctic: implications for Arctic shipping. AMBIO 46:355–367.

2. Gascard J-C, et al. (2015) General introduction to the DAMOCLES special issue. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 15:5377–5379.

3. Bourgain P, Gascard J-C, Shi J and Zhao J (2013) Large scale temperature and salinity changes in the upper Canadian Basin of the Arctic Ocean at a time of a drastic Arctic oscillation inversion. Ocean Sciences 9:447–460.

4. Bourgain P and Gascard J-C (2012) The Atlantic and Pacific waters variability in the Arctic Ocean from 1997 to 2008. Geophysical Research Letters 39.

5. Bourgain P and Gascard J-C (2011) The Arctic Ocean halocline and its interannual variability from 1997 to 2008. Deep Sea Research I 58:745–756.

Biography:

Sujata Law did her PhD in Stem Cell Biology from the University of Calcutta and Postdoctoral studies in the field of Signal Transduction from Bose Institute, Kolkata. She is in the Faculty of Stem Cell Biology in the Department of Biochemistry & Medical Biotechnology at Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine a hundred years old government institution in Kolkata, India. She has teaching experience in the field of Physiology, Signal Transduction, Cell Culture and Tissue Engineering, Haematology, Stem Cells, Cellular Immunology, Cell Biology, and aspects of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at postgraduate level and received many research projects as Principal Investigator from various government scientific organizations like CSIR, ICMR, DST, DBT, etc. She has 57 publications in various international and national reputed journals and has guided many PhD students and delivered invited talks in India and abroad.

Abstract:

Multiple health hazards and fatalities from the widespread use of pesticides have been reported by the WHO. Developing countries primarily dependent on agriculture for their economies such as India, Bangladesh and Thailand are especially reliant on these chemicals. Consequentially, public health has been on a decline and there is a lacuna of knowledge about the effect of pesticide exposure on bone marrow haematopoietic system. The on-field scenario was mimicked in murine model to explore the consequences of chronic pesticide exposure. In the present work, we have developed an agricultural pesticide formulation (fungicide, organophosphate and pyrethroid) induced bone marrow aplasia mouse model to recapitulate the human aplastic anemia like condition in the laboratory to study the aplastic hematopoietic microenvironment in the light of Hh-GLI signaling pathway. Our study has unfolded the fact that chronic pesticide exposure caused downregulation of intrasignaling feedback of PATCH1 and GLI1 by inhibiting the SMO internalization and upregulating downstream negative regulators SU(FU), PKC-δ and βTrCP. Upregulation of negative regulators not only hampers the execution of the hedgehog signaling but also cripples the autocrine-paracrine crosstalk in between bone marrow primitive compartment and stromal compartment. Simultaneously, individual pesticide versus hedgehog signaling study revealed that hexaconazole disrupted hematopoietic hedgehog signaling activation by inhibiting SMO and facilitating PKC-δ expression. Contrarily, chloropyrifos increased the cytoplasmic sequestration and degradation of GLI1 by upregulating SU(FU) and βTrCP sequentially. Whereas, cypermethrin mediated antagonization of the hedgehog signaling was circumvented by non-canonical activation of GLI1. However, such marrow degenerative condition can be compensated by the recombinant sonic hedgehog. We can conclude that pesticide exposure induced bone marrow aplasia is the direct manifestation of downregulated hedgehog signaling in the bone marrow microenvironment.