Latest news with #O'Hara
Scoop
5 hours ago
- Science
- Scoop
New Zealand Part Of Hidden Global Deep-Sea Network Beneath The Waves
Study of ancient sea creature's DNA links New Zealand to oceans around the world A world-first study of marine life, including sea creatures found in New Zealand's dark, cold, pressurised ocean depths, has revealed that deep-sea life is surprisingly more connected than previously thought. The research, led by Australia's Museums Victoria Research Institute and just published in Nature, found that while marine life in shallow waters is regionally unique, deeper ocean life shows more global connectivity, with some deep-sea species found across vast distances, even on opposite sides of the world. A previous lack of global data meant that the connections of deep-sea species weren't fully known, but the researchers from 19 different institutions, including Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA), were able to discover how marine life is connected across the sea floor. The landmark study mapped the global distribution and evolutionary relationships of brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), an ancient, spiny animal found from shallow coastal waters to the deepest abyssal plains, and from the equator to the poles. In the most comprehensive study of its kind, brittle star DNA from four dozen collections, including from Earth Sciences New Zealand's invertebrate collection in Wellington, was examined. By analysing over 2,500 DNA samples collected from over 300 research voyages in all oceans and at various depths, the researchers were able to uncover how the deep-sea invertebrates have evolved and migrated across the oceans over the past 100 million years, linking ecosystems from Iceland to Tasmania. 'You might think of the deep sea as remote and isolated, but for many animals on the seafloor, it's actually a connected superhighway,' said study lead Dr Tim O'Hara, Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute. 'Over long timescales, deep-sea species have expanded their ranges by thousands of kilometres. This connectivity is a global phenomenon that's gone unnoticed, until now. 'The brittle star was chosen because the animals, which have lived on Earth for over 480 million years, are found on all ocean floors, including at depths of more than 3,500 metres, says Dr O'Hara. "These animals don't have fins or wings, but they've still managed to span entire oceans. The secret lies in their biology; their larvae can survive for a long time in cold water, hitching a ride on slow-moving deep-sea currents." With the yolk-rich larvae able to drift on deep ocean currents for extended periods, the brittle stars have been able to colonise far-flung regions. Unlike marine life in shallow waters, which is restricted by temperature boundaries, deep-sea environments are more stable and allow species to disperse over vast distances, the study found. "The research shows that deep-sea communities, particularly at temperate latitudes, are more closely related across regions than their shallow-water counterparts. This may be due to historic ocean currents and temperature patterns that allowed species to spread over time. For example, marine animals found off southern Australia share close evolutionary links with those in the North Atlantic, on the other side of the planet." However, the deep sea is not uniform, and while species can spread widely, factors such as extinction events, environmental change, and geography have created a patchwork of biodiversity across the seafloor. Deep-sea ecosystems are more connected than first thought, says study co-author Sadie Mills, invertebrate collection manager at Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA). "Understanding how species are related and their connections in the ocean at different depths and different latitudes is key to protecting marine biodiversity across the entire planet. These global links should be taken into account in planning." As threats from deep-sea mining and climate change increase, this new appreciation of how life is distributed and moves through this vast environment is essential if we want to protect it, says Dr O'Hara. "It's a paradox. The deep sea is highly connected, but also incredibly fragile."
Scoop
6 hours ago
- Science
- Scoop
New Zealand Part Of Hidden Global Deep-Sea Network Beneath The Waves
Press Release – Earth Sciences New Zealand In the most comprehensive study of its kind, brittle star DNA from four dozen collections, including from Earth Sciences New Zealand's invertebrate collection in Wellington, was examined. Study of ancient sea creature's DNA links New Zealand to oceans around the world A world-first study of marine life, including sea creatures found in New Zealand's dark, cold, pressurised ocean depths, has revealed that deep-sea life is surprisingly more connected than previously thought. The research, led by Australia's Museums Victoria Research Institute and just published in Nature, found that while marine life in shallow waters is regionally unique, deeper ocean life shows more global connectivity, with some deep-sea species found across vast distances, even on opposite sides of the world. A previous lack of global data meant that the connections of deep-sea species weren't fully known, but the researchers from 19 different institutions, including Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA), were able to discover how marine life is connected across the sea floor. The landmark study mapped the global distribution and evolutionary relationships of brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), an ancient, spiny animal found from shallow coastal waters to the deepest abyssal plains, and from the equator to the poles. In the most comprehensive study of its kind, brittle star DNA from four dozen collections, including from Earth Sciences New Zealand's invertebrate collection in Wellington, was examined. By analysing over 2,500 DNA samples collected from over 300 research voyages in all oceans and at various depths, the researchers were able to uncover how the deep-sea invertebrates have evolved and migrated across the oceans over the past 100 million years, linking ecosystems from Iceland to Tasmania. 'You might think of the deep sea as remote and isolated, but for many animals on the seafloor, it's actually a connected superhighway,' said study lead Dr Tim O'Hara, Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute. 'Over long timescales, deep-sea species have expanded their ranges by thousands of kilometres. This connectivity is a global phenomenon that's gone unnoticed, until now. 'The brittle star was chosen because the animals, which have lived on Earth for over 480 million years, are found on all ocean floors, including at depths of more than 3,500 metres, says Dr O'Hara. 'These animals don't have fins or wings, but they've still managed to span entire oceans. The secret lies in their biology; their larvae can survive for a long time in cold water, hitching a ride on slow-moving deep-sea currents.' With the yolk-rich larvae able to drift on deep ocean currents for extended periods, the brittle stars have been able to colonise far-flung regions. Unlike marine life in shallow waters, which is restricted by temperature boundaries, deep-sea environments are more stable and allow species to disperse over vast distances, the study found. 'The research shows that deep-sea communities, particularly at temperate latitudes, are more closely related across regions than their shallow-water counterparts. This may be due to historic ocean currents and temperature patterns that allowed species to spread over time. For example, marine animals found off southern Australia share close evolutionary links with those in the North Atlantic, on the other side of the planet.' However, the deep sea is not uniform, and while species can spread widely, factors such as extinction events, environmental change, and geography have created a patchwork of biodiversity across the seafloor. Deep-sea ecosystems are more connected than first thought, says study co-author Sadie Mills, invertebrate collection manager at Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA). 'Understanding how species are related and their connections in the ocean at different depths and different latitudes is key to protecting marine biodiversity across the entire planet. These global links should be taken into account in planning.' As threats from deep-sea mining and climate change increase, this new appreciation of how life is distributed and moves through this vast environment is essential if we want to protect it, says Dr O'Hara. 'It's a paradox. The deep sea is highly connected, but also incredibly fragile.'
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A journey into hell with Williams's ‘Not About Nightingales'
The mystery of its meaning is not cleared up till late in the play. Let's just say you won't soon forget the moment when the purgatory of prison turns into hell. (Diggle, the scenic designer, does amazing work in that scene.) Advertisement O'Hara helmed the 2019 Broadway production of 'Slave Play,' by Jeremy O. Harris, who is currently Williamstown's creative director. O'Hara is also a playwright of note. His With its intermittent flights into melodrama, its homoerotic subtext, and its lyricism, 'Nightingales' is recognizably a Tennessee Williams play. (With Williams, even the script's stage directions possess a certain lyricism.) It is also recognizably a Tennessee Williams play in the concision and vividness of its character portraits. O'Hara keeps the story grounded, even gritty, with an intensity of focus that largely prevents any drift — an ever-present danger in a drama that features 16 characters. Advertisement Written in 1938 and inspired by a hunger strike by 650 inmates at a penitentiary in Holmesberg, Pa., 'Nightingales' was Williams's fourth full-length play. He considered 'Nightingales' the best play he had written up to that point in his career. He also thought it was one of the most wrenching. In a foreword to the publication of his 1957 'Orpheus Descending,' Williams wrote of 'Nightingales' that 'I have never written anything since then that could compete with it in violence and horror.' The Williamstown cast includes William Jackson Harper — who played the fretful ethicist Chidi Anagonye on NBC's 'The Good Place' — as a prisoner who was brutally treated by the prison's warden and now works for him. Jim is slowly drawn into a romance with Eva (Elizabeth Lail), the warden's new secretary. A haunting figure is Jack (Ben Getz), an inmate whose experiences in prison have led to the disintegration of his mind. Brian Geraghty is the Stanley Kowalski-like convict Butch, all alpha-male aggression and dominance. It is Butch who leads the hunger strike as a form of protest against the nearly inedible food they are served each day. Chris Messina is the creepy Warden Whelan, abusing power in every way he can, the most detestable warden since Bob Gunton's Warden Norton in 'The Shawshank Redemption.' Williams was only 27 when he wrote 'Nightingales,' finishing it in 1938 — two years before his 'Battle of Angels' became his first professionally produced play in a calamitous train-wreck of a production at Boston's Wilbur Theatre. Advertisement His emphasis in 'Nightingales' on social injustice and the politics undergirding that injustice is notable. He dedicated the play to the memory of Clarence Darrow, whom he called 'The Great Defender, whose mental frontiers were the four corners of the sky.' The play languished in obscurity until Vanessa Redgrave became its champion. It was presented in 1998 as a coproduction by the National Theater of London and the Alley Theater of Houston. The next year, 'Nightingales' moved to Broadway, where it had a short run but garnered half a dozen Tony Award nominations. 'Nightingales' was reportedly the first full-length play where Thomas Lanier Williams signed a script as 'Tennessee Williams.' Many impressive accomplishments would eventually be attached to that name, and 'Not About Nightingales' should be counted among them. NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Robert O'Hara. Presented by Williamstown Theatre Festival. On the NikosStage, Williamstown. Through Aug. 3. Tickets $20-$100. 413-458-3253, Don Aucoin can be reached at
Daily Record
2 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Record
Mark O'Hara looking forward to seeing what Richard King can do at St Mirren
The Buddies captain played alongside the Jamaican international during Saturday's Premier Sports Cup romp at home to Annan Athletic. Mark O'Hara has taken Richard King under his wing — and says he is looking forward to seeing what the Jamaican international can bring to St Mirren. The Buddies skipper has made it his mission to ensure the 23-year-old is settling in well in Paisley. And after a stellar display in the 8-2 Premier Sports Cup win over Annan Athletic, it looks like O'Hara's warm welcome has allowed King to get off to a positive start. King, who arrived from Jamaican Premier League side Caverlier this summer on a two-year deal, has barely had time to take a break from football having played for the Reggae Boyz at the Concacaf Gold Cup in the United States. To help him get a feel for life in Scotland, O'Hara has made sure he feels part of the Saints family as well as showing the defender around on days off. He said: 'With Richard, outside of football, we need to show him about and stuff like that. You can take things like that for granted but he's come to completely new territory here. 'As a team, we like to go out for dinners. I've been out to show him around Glasgow because he's never done that before. We've got a really experienced group and there are a number of guys in there. 'They are made to feel a part of it right when they come in. The differences are funny sometimes and people need to appreciate for guys that it's a real culture shock coming here.' It is a big week for Stephen Robinson's men as progression in the Premier Sports Cup hinges on this Sunday's game against Scott Brown's Ayr United when they arrive at the SMiSA Stadium. Should the Honest Men beat Forfar Athletic tonight — and maintain their 100 per cent Group D record – it will leave Saints needing a win to be in with an opportunity of reaching the knockout stage. Confidence will be high, though, following the demolition of League Two part-timers Annan which featured a hat-trick from Mikael Mandron and a penalty strike by King on his home debut. O'Hara added: 'I'm looking forward to seeing him [King]. We haven't seen much because he's only just finished playing a long season. 'He looks really good on the ball and I'm sure he's going to be exciting for the fans. It's great that we can attract a player like that, a Jamaican international, here. 'They can be made to feel welcome and bed in seamlessly with a lot experience round about them and made to feel welcome — and it's not just me — others help players bed in, too.'
Boston Globe
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A long-neglected Tennessee Williams play gets its moment to shine with a starry cast
'I believe in theater doing the most. Because our lives are the most,' director Robert O'Hara says in a Zoom interview from Advertisement 'We can't just live one portion of our lives. I can't just be a Black man. I'm also a queer man. I'm also a man of a certain age. I'm also an American,' O'Hara says. Williams based his play on an infamous instance of carceral brutality: Four men confined to a Philadelphia prison died after being locked in a room that was deliberately heated to lethal levels. Prison authorities put them there as punishment for participating in a hunger strike protesting conditions. A similar scenario unspools in 'Nightingales.' The story requires a large ensemble, but much of the action turns on the fraught relationship between an inmate named Jim and the prison's sadistic warden. Actor William Jackson Harper was inspired to play Jim for one overriding reason. Advertisement 'I'm scared of it. I don't really know how I'm supposed to play this part,' Harper says over the phone before a rehearsal. Harper earned his commercial breakthrough (and an Emmy nomination) with his much-loved turn on NBC's ' The prison setting of 'Nightingales' and Williams' use of period vernacular and speech patterns emulating those of 1930s Hollywood films make his role an 'experiment,' Harper says. 'It's about trying to play something outside of the things I would usually be considered for, or that are considered my strengths or my habits — trying to develop things that I feel a little more vulnerable about,' he adds. Chris Messina, who excelled as the handsome jerk on TV series including 'Six Feet Under,' ' Williams never saw a production of 'Nightingales,' which went unpublished during his lifetime. Clued in by a decades-old reference to the play, Dame Vanessa Redgrave asked Williams' literary executor to unearth the manuscript for a 1998 staging at London's Royal National Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn. The production went to Broadway the next year. The New York production was too 'polite' for O'Hara's taste. 'Tennessee Williams was one messy homosexual. This is a man who had lots of lovers, who was addicted to pills later on in his life. [Other productions] seem to try and clean up his work. I want to acknowledge the messiness,' O'Hara says. Advertisement The director is not afraid to give sacred cows a good smack on the rump. His radically reconstructed 'Hamlet' last month at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum posited Fortinbras of Norway, a character cut from many modern productions, as a detective spawned from film noir who investigates the mass killing that concludes the play. 'Nightingales' will hew closely to the text but be told 'through a contemporary lens,' O'Hara says. The production makes overt much of the homoerotic subtext that Williams layered into his story of men locked together in a cage, insisting on their own humanity. 'This play is very much a response to an injustice,' Harper says, 'but it isn't a piece of documentary theater. It's the work of someone who's inspired and just going for it.' Casting a Black actor as Jim — a role Williams envisioned as a white man,— adds another complication to a play bristling with contemporary relevance. 'Putting our two bodies on stage is going to create a certain energy,' Harper says of himself and Messina, 'and introduce a lot of dynamics. The way this warden behaves toward Jim, it's almost coded as if Jim was a Black man. There's a lot of language that becomes explicitly racist with this casting.' It all adds up to a tragic mess that remains stubbornly timely. 'At a time where we're rounding up immigrants and sending them overseas to prisons and throwing away the key,' O'Hara says, 'and we see the atrocities of the prison-industrial complex daily, I think it's very clear that how we treat those we confine tells a lot about our society.' Advertisement NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES Williamstown Theatre Festival, NikosStage Theater at the '62 Center. July 17 - August 2. Tickets: $100 or as part of a weekend pass; (413) 458-3253,
