11:00am, Vishal Verma, Health-relevant Properties of Ambient Particulate Matter – Targeted Studies in Air Polluted Cities across the World

Worldwide, 4.2 million deaths were attributable to ambient PM2.5 pollution in 2015, which represented 7.6% of total deaths from all causes. Most of these deaths are in the developing countries of Southeast Asia and Africa. Despite the available technologies to measure PM2.5 properties, the regulatory standard to control PM2.5 pollution in both developed and developing world is still solely based on mass concentrations of the particles. Through this project, Professor Verma and his lab developed a global cohort for the measurement of a comprehensive suite of ambient PM2.5 properties. They built a global database on multiple properties of the ambient PM2.5, which they now plan to use in the follow-up epidemiological and toxicological studies to look at the association of each property with the adverse health effects.

Noon, Mark Hauber, Endocrine Bases of Egg Rejection in Hosts of Brood Parasites: A Trade-off With Parental Care?

Hosts of brood parasitic birds raise genetically unrelated young in their nests. To avoid this cost of parasitism, many hosts reject foreign eggs from the nest. Professor Hauber will evaluate the life history and endocrine evidence for a physiological trade-off between egg rejection and parental care in hosts of brood parasites.