York and T2K experiment researchers closer to solving antimatter puzzle
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Why is there an abundance of matter compared to antimatter in the Universe? This question has stymied physicists for years, but researchers at York University, along with other Canadian institutions as part of the international Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) Collaboration, have found neutrinos may hold the answer.
The international T2K experiment is aimed at unraveling this matter-antimatter conundrum by studying neutrinos, subatomic particles produced in huge numbers immediately after the Big Bang. They come in three types – electron, muon, and tau neutrinos – and are created in stars, inside the earth, the atmosphere and at accelerators, such as J-PARC in Japan, where the T2K experiment is conducted.
Sampa Bhadra
To tackle this puzzle, the T2K team, including York University Faculty of Science physics Professor Sampa Bhadra, the project leader for the optical transition radiation (OTR) detector for the experiment, was looking for behavioural differences of neutrinos (matter) and antineutrinos (antimatter) as they change states during flight into electron neutrinos and electron antineutrinos, respectively.
If matter and antimatter exhibit the same behaviour, charge-parity symmetry implies that the laws of physics are the same for matter and antimatter. But this doesn’t appear to always hold true. For example, there is way more matter than antimatter in the Universe. To account for the observed level of asymmetry, researchers believe there must have been a violation of charge-parity symmetry in the early Universe initiated by neutrinos.
T2K team found the strongest indication yet of this violation in charge-parity symmetry between neutrinos and antineutrinos, but more work is needed to definitively prove it.
The results, published in the journal Nature, are a major step forward in the study of what caused the original difference between matter and antimatter.
“Neutrino transformations are a beautiful way to study the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe,” says Bhadra, who is also a TRIUMF affiliate scientist. “What can be more exciting than studying a particle that may hold the clue to our very existence?”
The T2K experiment used a beam consisting primarily of muon neutrinos or muon antineutrinos created using the proton beam from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai, Japan. A small fraction of the neutrinos (or antineutrinos) are detected 295 km away at the Super-Kamiokande water Cerenkov detector in Kamioka, Japan. Previously, T2K studied how the original neutrinos (antineutrinos) transition or oscillate into electron neutrinos (antineutrinos) as they traverse the distance from Tokai to Kamioka (hence the name T2K) in a process called “neutrino oscillations.” This was the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015.
The T2K collaboration consists of close to 500 scientists from 12 countries, including Canada. The Canadian effort provided some of the most challenging and critical detectors of the project – the time projection chamber, the fine-grained calorimeter and an OTR detector – and contributed to the success of T2K through key leadership roles.
“Canadian scientists look forward to building on the success of the T2K experiment to realize even more precise measurements of neutrino oscillations through upgrades of the experimental apparatus,” said TRIUMF Professor Mark Hartz, the corresponding author on the paper, former research associate at York, and leader of the Canadian-led Intermediate Water Cerenkov Detector project.
Bhadra says, “York will continue to be involved in neutrino physics with more sensitive neutrino experiments being built in the future that will surely provide an answer to the question: what happened to the antimatter?”
ProFile: John Amanatides, head of Bethune College
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ProFile Featured
Consistent with its name, the new series ProFile will feature faculty and staff at York University. Included in this short Q-and-A style profile are details about working life at York, followed by a few fun and quirky questions.
ProFile: John Amanatides
Position at York U and department/faculty: Faculty member in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
John Amanatides
How long have you been with York University, and what is your role? I’ve been here 34 years. My current role is head of Bethune College. Colleges exist to make a big university feel small to incoming students and provide a home for academic support, community building, intramural sports and extra-curricular events.
Describe a typical work day at York for you? In my role as head I spend most of the time in the College. I work to make sure that our academic support programs are meeting the needs of our students and support our student government. I love interacting with them, helping them grow into mature leaders.
What do you enjoy most about working at York University? Spending time with students outside of the classroom.
Where is your favourite place on campus and why? Bethune College, of course.
Describe York University using one word: Home.
And now for a little fun…
What is the most used app on your phone? Overcast, a podcast app. I love podcasts and listen to them when I travel to York. Unfortunately, now that I’m isolated at home, I don’t listen as much.
What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read or seen this week? The Far Side is back! (www.thefarside.com)
Where is the most interesting place you’ve lived? During my last sabbatical I went to Kodaikanal, India, with my family and taught at an international school there. My wife’s parents taught there in the ‘60s and she always wanted to go back. I taught physics, history and math (mostly math). We had an amazing time and I’d love to go back. I also learned how hard it is to be a high school teacher; you really have to be a motivation expert, not just a content expert.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? An astronomer. I loved looking up at the night sky. I even remember seeing northern lights in Toronto (!) when I was a kid. We were poor but my dad bought a telescope and built a deck on our roof to observe the sky.
What is something you always have in your fridge? Milk. I love milk. I’ve read that about the time when humans first domesticated cattle in west Asia, about 10,000 years ago, those humans also acquired a mutation that allowed lactose to be broken down beyond weaning. This allows their descendants (which includes me!) to enjoy milk all of our lives.
If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would that person be and why? God. I’ve got some questions for him.
If you’d like to be featured in ProFile, download the form here and send it back to yfile@yorku.ca with the subject line “ProFile candidate.” Please include a high-res photo in your response.
Primary symptoms of coronavirus are fever and cough, don’t ignore fatigue and muscle aches
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An image of the COVID-19 virus. Image: CDC
A comprehensive review of studies on COVID-19, including clinical, epidemiological, laboratory and chest imaging data, shows that the most common symptom was fever (82 per cent), followed by a cough (61 per cent), then muscle aches and/or fatigue (36 per cent), says York University Postdoctoral Fellow Nicola Bragazzi, a co-author on the paper.
Shortness of breath appeared in 26 per cent of the cases, followed by a headache in 12 per cent and a sore throat in 10 per cent. Gastrointestinal symptoms appeared in nine per cent of patients.
“It’s important to not to overlook non-respiratory symptoms, such as headache, fatigue, sore throat and gastrointestinal symptoms,” says Bragazzi of the Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Science.
“COVID-19 symptoms are indistinguishable from other viral respiratory illnesses, making it difficult to diagnose, especially as the amount of time before a fever manifests is unknown. This may cause patients to be missed initially and some may be asymptomatic.”
Chest imaging for SARS-CoV-2, however, does show a different pattern, which is becoming a hallmark of COVID-19 infection.
The review found the most prevalent co-morbidities were hypertension, diabetes, chronic liver disease and smoking.
To understand the infection better, more research is needed, especially on the rate of asymptomatic patients and beneficial treatments, says Bragazzi.
Do you have a story to share about how you are coping, or what you are doing differently, during the COVID-19 pandemic? Email us at yfile@yorku.ca.
York Research Leaders celebrated; President’s Awards announced
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ResearchLeadersCelebration
The President’s Office and the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation (VPRI) would like to acknowledge our researchers for their outstanding contributions this year. York University is deeply committed to supporting and recognizing the success of our researchers and scholars.
“It is our great pleasure to acknowledge this year’s President’s Award winners: Professors Christopher Perry, Theodore Noseworthy, Debra Pepler and Eric Hessels,” said President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton. “All four of these researchers are deeply committed to the University’s mission and vision to advance academic and research excellence for the benefit of all. At the same time, they are helping to establish York among the country’s leading research-intensive universities through their visionary research, leadership and mentorship.”
To see this year’s booklet, which showcases all of the researchers, visit the VPRI website.
“This year, over 70 researchers and academics were acknowledged across all Faculties and professional schools for their outstanding contributions in 2019. We wish to extend our warmest congratulations and best wishes to all for their continued success,” said Interim Vice President Research & Innovation Rui Wang.
The President’s Research Awards
President’s Emerging Research Leadership (PERLA) Award 2020
Christopher Perry
Christopher Perry, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, Faculty of Health, was selected for this award (Engineering, Science, Technology, Health and Biomedicine Cluster), as a reflection of his outstanding leadership in and contribution to the fields of exercise physiology, metabolism and skeletal muscle health.
Since 2012, when he came to York, Perry has contributed significantly to the success of the University, both internally and externally. He established the only human muscle biopsy lab at York, where he investigates the basic cellular mechanisms of muscle fitness and applies these discoveries toward developing novel therapies to treat muscle weakness disorders.
In 2016, he was elected to serve as a Director Academic for the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, Canada’s major authority in exercise science and prescription. This society focuses on integrating state-of-the-art research into best practice. It is comprised of professionals interested and involved in the scientific study of exercise physiology, exercise biochemistry, fitness and health.
Perry was the recipient of the 2017 Faculty of Health Research Award (early career). He has also received multiple internal and external awards, including funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Research Fund, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the James H. Cummings Foundation, the Rare Disease Foundation and industry funding.
Theodore J. Noseworthy
Theodore Noseworthy, Schulich School of Business, was chosen for this award (Social Science, Art & Design, Humanities, Business, Law and Education Cluster), for his extraordinary leadership and contribution to the fields of marketing and consumer studies.
As the Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Public Good, he develops insights that inform business and policy-makers about the benefits of properly communicated innovation and the potential costs to susceptible consumers and society. He examines how marketers can better communicate product and service innovations to maximize adoption and awareness. This work focuses on new product design and innovation, as well as product categorization, category ambiguity and visual processing.
In 2012, Noseworthy was appointed Scientific Director of the NOESIS: Innovation, Design, and Consumption Laboratory, a world-class behavioural lab at Schulich to extend his primary research programs. The NOESIS lab is intended to foster innovative research into consumption, consumer behaviour and design. Noseworthy has developed this lab with the specific goal of conducting high quality research, training skilled personnel and facilitating knowledge mobilization.
Broadly speaking, Noseworthy’s research program is designed to help combat Canada’s innovation deficit by helping the private sector transfer knowledge into commercialized products and services to grow the economy.
President’s Research Impact (PRIA) Award 2020
Debra Pepler
Debra Pepler, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, was selected for this award for her innovative contributions to psychology and mental health in the areas of bullying, aggression and violence, especially among marginalized children, youth and families. In recognition of these contributions, Pepler was named an Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General.
She is the only psychologist recognized by the Canadian Psychological Association for Distinguished Contributions to both Psychology as a Science and Public or Community Service.
Pepler received a Network of Centres of Excellence grant to establish PREVNet – Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network, funded from 2006-2019. She built this interdisciplinary network with her former PhD student Wendy Craig (Queen’s University), with over 120 researchers, 150 graduate students and 62 national organizations. PREVNet’s researchers and partners co-created over 150 resources for bullying prevention and healthy relationships. PREVNet was the culmination of Pepler’s decades of research linking science with practice and public policy for children’s healthy development and healthy relationships.
Pepler’s research embedded in clinical and community settings has real impact on the lives of children, youth, and families. She has a strong publication record, having written or co-edited 10 books, and more than 200 journal articles, chapters, and reports. In 2007, Pepler was recognized as a Distinguished Research Professor by York for her ground-breaking research.
President’s Research Excellence (PREA) Award 2020
Eric Hessels
Eric Hessels, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science, was chosen for his award (Engineering, Science, Technology, Health and Biomedicine Cluster), for his exceptional contribution to atomic, molecular and optical physics.
Hessels, York Research Chair in Atomic Physics and a York University Distinguished Research Professor, has led numerous research projects that have far-reaching consequences for the understanding of the laws of physics. He is leading a collaboration whose goal it is to use ultra precise measurements of the electron to study one of the fundamental unresolved questions of physics.
In 2019, Hessels led a study published in the esteemed journal Science, which found a new measurement for the size of proton at just under one trillionth of a millimetre. The study confirmed the 2010 finding that the proton is smaller than previously believed.
The year before, Hessels led a team that achieved the most precise measurement of the fine structure of helium ever recorded. His researchers had been working on this for eight years. Hessels is now leading a collaboration (EDMcubed) that is attempting to measure the shape of the electron — or, more specifically, whether its charge is evenly distributed. This measurement will try to shed light on one of the fundamental mysteries of physics: why the universe is made entirely of matter (electrons,protons, etc.) and, unexpectedly, has no antimatter (anti-electrons, antiprotons, etc.).
To see this year’s booklet, visit the VPRI website. To watch the new video, featuring Celia Haig-Brown, Associate Vice President Research discussing research and academic work across the University and aspiration areas for this work, visit VPRI’s playlist.
Experience the cosmos online with York’s observatory team
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The Orion Nebula – Allan I. Carswell Observatory
The Orion Nebula – Allan I. Carswell Observatory
Like Earth’s Moon, the planet Venus goes through phases. It’s currently in a “half phase” and is heading into a “crescent phase” that it will reach by the end of April. This means that, as Venus gets closer to Earth, its apparent size in our night sky is increasing, something that happens once every two years.
“It’s unmistakable,” said Paul Delaney, professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Allan I. Carswell Astronomical Observatory at York University. “It’s like a searchlight.”
He says that on a clear night, stargazers can currently expect to see Venus just after sunset, 40 degrees above the west horizon.
Paul Delaney
Delaney says it feels strange not to be watching it through the new one-metre telescope at the York observatory, currently closed as part of social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Though he admits he feels a pull from the observatory on clear nights, he advises that most people should be able to see the phases of Venus quite well with binoculars.
Delaney owns a smaller personal telescope at home. “I haven’t gotten it out yet,” he joked, citing the switch to online teaching and upcoming exams “but if this goes on much longer, I’ll have to dig it out of the garage.”
While the campus closure has prevented use of the telescope and halted regular activities and in-person viewings for Delaney and the undergraduate team running the observatory, they are continuing to give the York University community opportunities to enjoy benefits of the telescope and the virtual observatory experience by maintaining their weekly Online Public Viewings (OPV).
Each Monday from 9 to 10 p.m., York astronomy students moderate an online chat and Q-and-A for astronomy enthusiasts of all levels to discuss images taken by the telescope at the Carswell Observatory.
The Crab Nebula – Allan I. Carswell Observatory
Under normal circumstances, and weather permitting, participants would have the opportunity to view live images taken through the one-metre telescope – “like a request line” Delaney explained – and watch astronomy students process the pictures in real time, while chatting with experts (usually York faculty and alumni) about the astronomic principles at work. All of this happens in tandem with the production of an astronomy show, YorkUniverse, which broadcasts simultaneously on Internet radio.
Thankfully York’s astronomers have saved up for a rainy day – and apparently for a campus closure as well – as they are able to continue hosting the weekly event remotely using hundreds of archived images already taken by the telescope.
Sunna Withers
For third-year astronomy student Sunna Withers, who has worked and conducts variable star research with the observatory, hosting the weekly viewing while practicing social distancing has provided a sense of continuity and community. “Everything else has stopped,” she explained, “so I’ve enjoyed having the OPV running to keep connecting with people I work with, learning new things and staying involved in astronomy, but from a safe distance.”
Withers encourages members of the community to check out the OPV. “Chat is a lot of fun,” she said. “We have people that log on from the York University area, but we even have a couple people logging on from different countries.”
Chat participants have the opportunity to submit their own photos for discussion and pose questions about themes of the day. Radio listeners can enjoy segments dedicated to the history of astronomy and an overview of significant current news and events.
Delaney, who is spending time away from the observatory working on three papers, is considering increasing the frequency of the OPV in the future, once students have had a chance to complete exams and adjust to their new academic environment.
The Deer Lick Group – Allan I. Carswell Observatory
In the meantime, while Withers misses the one-metre telescope, she is reminded that, along with the weekly OPV, many cosmological events are more accessible to many of us than we realize.
“You can get clear amazing views of the moon with binoculars,” she explained. “You can keep an eye out for transits of the International Space Station. Those are always really fun to watch.”
“You don’t need expensive telescopes to do astronomy in your backyard,” she added.
Do you have a story to share about how you are coping, or what you are doing differently, during the COVID-19 pandemic? Email us at yfile@yorku.ca.
AI fuels research that could lead to positive impact on health care
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Meet four York University researchers: Lauren Sergio and Doug Crawford have academic backgrounds in physiology; Shayna Rosenbaum has a PhD in psychology; Joel Zylberberg has a doctorate in physics.
They share two things in common: They focus on neuroscience – the study of the brain and its functions – and they leverage advanced computing technology using artificial intelligence (AI) in their research ventures, the application of which could have a profound and positive impact on health care.
In a nondescript room in the Sherman Health Sciences Research Centre, Lauren Sergio sits down and places her right arm in a sleeve on an armrest. It’s an odd-looking contraption; the lower part looks like a sling attached to a video game joystick.
Sergio is putting herself in the shoes of a person who has suffered a stroke that has hampered mobility in the arm. That’s how strokes do their damage – a blood clot shoots to the brain and shuts off motor function. But what if you combined AI engineering and neuroscience research? What if that AI could tell your brain what to do to get your arm to reach and grab something?
Lauren Sergio
Sergio, York Research Chair in Brain Health and Skilled Performance and core member of VISTA (Vision: Science to Applications), is working with IT Universe, a Toronto-based tech company, to develop the sleeve encasing Sergio’s arm. A real stroke patient would also have an EEG cap on their head that measures brainwaves and virtual reality goggles over their eyes showing images of objects, such as a balloon. “Then we say, ‘Look at the red balloon and think about moving your hand to it,’” Sergio explains.
Sergio demonstrates how a person’s arm fits into the devise. Photo credit: Paul Fraumeni
Given the disconnection between the brain and the arm that the stroke would have caused, the patient wouldn’t be able to reach the balloon. But the robotic arm can. The team teaches it – through machine learning – to imitate or duplicate the brain activity associated with arm movement. Eventually, after the robot has been trained sufficiently, it takes that information, transmits it to the robotic arm, and facilitates the patient’s hold on the balloon. And in repeating this task, the robotic arm feeds directions back to the human brain. “This helps repair those networks in the brain that were severed by the stroke.”
Doug Crawford
This kind of collaborative research, with a focus solving real-life problems, is exactly what Doug Crawford had in mind when he pitched VISTA to the federal government’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF). In 2016, CFREF awarded York $33 million over a seven-year period. With matching funds from the University and contributions from industry partners, the total funding package is $120 million.
“VISTA’s goal is to take the outstanding model of interdisciplinary research laid down by York’s Centre for Vision Research and expand on it to bring even more researchers from a greater of variety of areas together,” says Crawford, VISTA director and Canada Research Chair in Visual-Motor Neuroscience. “And our work is translational – meaning, fundamental [or discovery] research is important, but we’ll see it through to application.”
There are over 80 researchers associated with VISTA. The range of disciplines is breathtaking – from computer science to forestry, from pain management to theatre performance. The potential applications of their work are equally mind-blowing – from the quality of animation in a movie to improving children’s environmental health.
Shayna Rosenbaum is York Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and a core member of VISTA. She focuses on clinical neuropsychology, the study of the relationships between brain and behaviour. Her area of specialization is the role of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that stores information we need so we can navigate in our daily lives.
“People with Alzheimer’s become disoriented easily. That’s partially because they’re unable to learn how objects relate to one another, including landmarks. When they try to find their way in a new place, they often have difficulty.
Shayna Rosenbaum
“We’re interested in what happens when the person navigates familiar places. Because, even then, individuals in early stages of Alzheimer’s can have difficulties. So, we’d like to detect this as early as possible because we think it’s a good gauge of whether someone will develop the disease,” Rosenbaum explains.
VISTA has enabled her to collaborate with James Elder (York Research Chairin Human and Computer Vision) and Matthew Kyan, both in York’s department of electrical engineering and computer science. They are leveraging AI to develop real-world tasks that can be used to test older adults’ navigation abilities.
“We create situations in the computer program where an older adult has to circumvent the original, known route to get to a particular location. Some patients have difficulties generating the detour. They eventually arrive at their goal location, but it’s very inefficient.”
Rosenbaum has applied for funding for a project involving the creation of a computer model of the interior of Baycrest Health Sciences, a research and teaching hospital for older adults. “We’ll put the model into virtual reality and use it to see how people learn to navigate in Baycrest. We hope to pre-expose individuals who plan to move into Baycrest to reduce instances of wandering or disorientation. Our technology might give them a sense of their new space and reduce their anxiety.”
Joel Zylberberg came to York in 2019. He’s the Canada Research Chair in Computational Neuroscience, a fellow at CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) and a core member of VISTA.
Among his many ventures in applying AI to neuroscience, Zylberberg is looking into using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) to teach computers to mimic brain activity. His goal is to help radiologists with their diagnoses.
Joel Zylberberg
“A few University of Alberta radiologists have agreed to sit in a scanner and examine radiology images of their patients and do their diagnostic tasks, while we look at what their brains are doing. Then we’ll use their brains as the teacher for our deep neural nets,” Zylberberg explains.
He says the goal isn’t to replace radiologists with machines. “It’s more likely to be a critical decision support tool: the radiologist would look at the image, feed it into computer software that mimics the learning ability of the brain and then study the output to see if they missed something.”
All four of these York researchers are excited about the possibilities, while also aware of the challenges that the brain presents.
“AI can help us take the brain signals and try to figure out what the brain might be trying to send from the spinal cord to the muscles to the arm – something a baby picks up easily within days,” says Sergio. “The technology isn’t perfect yet, but we’re making huge leaps. What’s happening in robotics now is astounding.”
For Zylberberg, what he values most is the multidisciplinary nature of VISTA. “My lab’s in a weird kind of space. We’re not biologists or computer scientists. I’m a physics professor but I’m not much of a physicist. So, without something like VISTA there wouldn’t be a research community that my lab would fit into. VISTA has assembled an incredible community that covers the whole spectrum.”
Rosenbaum stresses the real-world focus. “VISTA has really allowed for this kind of work I’m doing. It’s important to show the link between the fundamental [discovery] research that we do, learning how the brain and AI work, and how that might apply to the real world and actually help people. VISTA is giving us that opportunity.”
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new animated video, which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity, such as Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the snapshot infographic, a glimpse of the year’s successes.
Paul Fraumeni is an award-winning freelance writer who has specialized in covering university research for more than 20 years. To learn more, visit his website.
Zika vaccine study finds inoculating would work and be cost effective
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The Zika virus, to most people, is harmless. But to pregnant women it can be devastating because this virus is associated with serious neurologic disorders in newborns.
Seyed Moghadas
Professor and Director of York University’s Agent-Based Modelling Laboratory Seyed Moghadas and his then-graduate student, Affan Shoukat (now a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University), led a study that concluded that the vaccination of young women would prevent Zika from infecting these individuals in about 75 per cent of them. The vaccine would also be cost effective at under $16 (US dollars) per vaccination in most countries in the Americas.
“Our findings indicate that targeted vaccination of women of reproductive age is a noteworthy preventive measure for mitigating the effects of Zika virus infection in future outbreaks,” says Moghadas, an expert in mathematical and computational modelling in epidemiology and immunology.
Zika is transmitted by mosquitoes. It is particularly dangerous for pregnant women.
This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Financial support also came from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for the establishment of the Areto Computational Cluster at York, used to perform the simulations.
The article, “Cost-effectiveness of Prophylactic Zika Virus Vaccine in the Americas,” was published in the high impact journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (2019).
Economic burden in the billions
The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne virus that was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in monkeys. It was later identified in humans in 1952 in Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. Today, 87 countries and territories have reported evidence of mosquito-transmitted Zika infection, according to the World Health Organization (July 2019, WHO).
The economic burden is estimated to be substantial, ranging from $7 to $18 billion in short-term costs and $3.2 to $39 billion in long-term costs.
A vaccine could be a game changer.
Zika virus devastating during pregnancy
To the average person, this virus causes mild disease. Most people never develop symptoms. If they do, these signs include fever, rash, muscle and joint pain or headache, and usually last two to seven days.
People who have contracted Zika face an increased risk of neurologic complications, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rapid-onset of muscle weakness; neuropathy (nerve damage); or myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that can result in paralysis and sensory loss.
Zika virus infection during pregnancy is very dangerous. It can cause infants to be born with congenital malformations – primarily, microcephaly. This is a condition where a baby’s head is much smaller than expected. It means that the baby’s brain has not developed properly during pregnancy or has stopped growing after birth.
Researchers develop simulation model to see how effective vaccine would be
The idea of a vaccine, more specifically how effective this would be, is something that Moghadas has been working on for some time. In this article, he and Shoukat developed a simulation model where the human population was divided into four categories:
Susceptible;
Exposed and incubating;
Infectious; and
Recovering.
The mosquito population was also divided into groups: susceptible, exposed and incubating, and infectious groups. (Only three groups, not four as the human population. Why? Because once a mosquito is infectious, it cannot recover; it will be infectious for the rest of its lifespan, which is days to weeks.)
The team also looked at country-specific demographics (age and sex distributions and fertility rates), and calibrated it to attack rates, which were based on 2015–2017 outbreaks. The countries ranged from Belize to Brazil, Peru to Panama.
Seyed Moghadas and the Areto Computational Cluster, used to perform the simulations
“These attack rates were considered to be the proportion of the population that was infected (representing the level of herd immunity) at the start of simulations for each country in the evaluation of vaccination scenarios,” Shoukat explains. (Herd Immunity is where the majority of individuals in a population have developed immunity to a pathogen. Because so many people within the community are unable to contract the disease, this reduces the likelihood that those who haven’t developed immunity will contract the disease.)
The researchers also factored in the costs associated with the disease and vaccination.
Vaccination results
In this simulation, the vaccination coverage was 60 per cent for women of reproductive age. For pregnant women, it was 80 per cent initially and continued at 80 per cent throughout the simulations. Averaging these numbers in their computer simulations, the researchers concluded that the vaccination of young women would prevent Zika from infecting about 75 per cent of these individuals.
They also calculated the reduction of fetal microcephaly during pregnancy (if vaccination had occurred), and found a marked reduction, within the range of 74 to 92 per cent. The median percentage reduction was over 80 per cent in all countries.
Cost-effectiveness results
The researchers considered both short- and long-term medical costs specific to each country. Short-term costs included physician visits and diagnostic tests for pregnant women. Long-term costs included disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs, the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death) with disability weight (i.e., severe intellectual disability) extracted from a Global Burden of Disease study (published in The Lancet in 2013).
The researchers concluded that “a single-dose vaccination program is cost-effective for all countries studied.” Specifically, the vaccine would be cost effective at under $16 (US) per vaccination.
Figure 1 offers a country-by-country break-down. (Note: “Cost-saving” and “cost-effective” are not the same thing. “Cost-saving” refers to preventive care that decreases costs. If the benefits are sufficiently large compared to the costs, the intervention is “cost-effective” even if it doesn’t save money.)
Figure 1: Vaccination costs per individual by country
This work could help to inform health policy
Moghadas emphasizes the policy applicability of this work: “We want to develop knowledge translation methods to bridge existing gaps between theory, policy and practice. Modeling outcomes should be translated to inform health policy development and support decision-making.”
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new animated video, which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity, such as Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the snapshot infographic, a glimpse of the year’s successes.
By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca
Shrub and vegetation cover predict resource selection use by endangered species of desert lizard
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blunt nosed leopard lizard wikimedia commons
Location, location, location. A research team from York University has published research using field data that describes habitat use and animal movements for an endangered species of desert lizard and foundation shrub species.
The study was published March 17 in the journal Nature.
Christopher Lortie
Biology Professor Christopher Lortie and graduate students Jenna Braun, Taylor Noble, Mario Zuliani, Nargol Ghazian and Malory Owen, together with colleagues at The Bureau of Land Management, The Nature Conservancy and University of California, Santa Barbara, developed a set of resource selection functions to examine habitat use patterns to better inform management and protection of large protected desert habitats.
Lortie states that “these tools can be simple and show where a species is most likely to live within an ecosystem, or relatively more complex identifying key drivers within a landscape that best predict where to find a species. These statistics are not unlike many of the tools used in real estate models, and we developed several online tools to this effect to support stakeholders in exploring these ideas.”
Using the endangered species Gambelia sila (G. sila) and a foundation plant species, researchers used analysis of telemetry, vegetation surveys and remotely sensed data to identify key drivers of selected versus available locations for this lizard in Carrizo Plain National Monument, U.S. This is novel because data from very different scales were integrated and validated in a single set of integrated models.
Blunt-nosed leopard lizard (G. sila)
Lortie proposes that “space is always limiting in natural systems, and we must balance the needs of the many with the needs of the few to ensure that we protect biodiversity and support socioeconomic resilience regionally.”
Braun worked tirelessly for months to compile and connect the data from telemetry sensors, vegetation surveys on the ground and data from satellites to stitch together the big picture for this protected area.
Many endangered species likely have limited access to potential resources and habitats locally and regionally. This is significant because the capacity for endangered species to choose to use habitat can be constrained by availability and relative location. Furthermore, not all species have the capacity to disperse and move long distances biologically or ecological because of barriers in place naturally or from anthropogenic sources.
Tools like resource selection function models and occupancy models can be critical tools that inform strategic restoration. Time, space and resources are always limiting for conservation, and enabling the best decision given the hand we have been dealt in each context is a necessity. This is where strategic investment, triage and habitat ranking come in to play.
In this specific study, the probability of selection by a population of endangered animals given the resource types that were available to them was modeled. Increasing shrub cover, lower and relatively more flat sites, increasing normalized difference vegetation index and solar radiation all significantly predicted likelihood of observed selection within the area sampled.
This thinking can be applied to many other systems and for many other species, and the analytics to do so are rapidly evolving and becoming more accessible, said Lortie. The real estate paradigm that key environmental infrastructure within a neighbourhood or region, such as foundation plant species including shrubs or local differences in the physical attributes, can inform potential investment in some locations over others for this endangered species is critical.
We need to know what other animals prefer too before we can protect and invest wisely, said Lortie.
Social distancing and why it works, explained by math Professor Jane Heffernan
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social distance covid FEATURED
Social distancing: It’s a term that has become a buzzword associated with the global pandemic of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. It saturates the news, social media, our conversations with family, friends and neighbours. Some of us have become watchdogs of social distancing, monitoring our neighborhoods and hoping for it to happen in abundance; others of us have taken to spreading the call-to-action on social distancing in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. Many of us are realizing how, on days before the pandemic, we never really monitored the distance between ourselves and others.
Stay six feet apart (that’s two metres, for the metric-minded), and don’t gather in groups. That’s what Canadians have been asked to do.
But what does it mean from a mathematical lens? What is the mathematical evidence that shows social distancing to be effective in curbing this outbreak?
Jane Heffernan
York University Faculty of Science Professor Jane Heffernan says keeping a specific physical distance away from others does prevent the spread of the virus – that can be expelled by cough, sneeze and breathing – by creating a spatial barrier from an infected person.
Heffernan, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York Research Chair (Tier II), and communications director of the Centre for Disease Modelling (CDM), says the math shows that social distancing can indeed stop a chain of exposures.
“Someone can infect a person, and then that person can infect someone else, and so on… but if one person is social distancing in this chain, all of the possible infections that come after them will not happen,” she said.
Ontario, and Canada, have been taking proactive steps to undertake and promote social distancing, but different organizations and institutions are approaching this with different measures and timelines. In order for it to have the greatest effect on “flattening the curve,” Heffernan says we should be engaging now, and remain diligent not to allow our social distancing behaviour to wane.
“If it does wane,” she says, “we will not be able to control transmission effectively. Additionally, we must keep up our social distancing behaviours until we are told that we are allowed to decrease them. If we decrease our behaviours too early, it is possible that we can bring on a second wave of infection.”
An image of the COVID-19 virus (Image: CDC)
The challenges then become maintaining the behavior – and complying for as long as it takes. This may seem like a daunting task given all that is still unknown about the virus. For instance, we don’t actually know where we sit on the “curve,” and Heffernan agrees it is too early to predict when the peak in Ontario will happen.
“I don’t expect to see a peak in the short term. There is a lot of uncertainty in data right now, so peak projection times from models have a broad range. Shorter estimates are a month. Longer estimates are a few months,” she said.
The provincial government recently announced that it will extend the school closures beyond the initial two-week closure, and school-aged children won’t be back in the classroom on April 6. Heffernan agrees this is the right approach; however, how long the schools stay shuttered remains to be seen.
Based on her own research on social distancing, Heffernan says the more diligent people are in adhering to social distancing measures now – even though it may feel disruptive – the shorter the time frame will be that we need to adhere to them.
“Sometimes it is hard to adhere when the infection is not ‘observed’ as being ‘close’ to a person. We must all remember that our behaviour affects not only those ‘close’ to us, but all of the other people that would be down a chain of infections,” she said.
Heffernan’s research shows that not only does social distancing slow the spread of disease, it also decreases the infection burden on the healthcare system. It also shows that when social distancing behaviours begin to wane – near the end of an epidemic – this poses a great risk for a second wave of the infection.
“We MUST be diligent in our social distancing behaviours until we know we are allowed to relax them,” she said. “It’s best to keep your circle very small for now.”
By Ashley Goodfellow Craig, deputy editor, YFile
New COVID-19 rapid research funding for York professors
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An image of the COVID-19 virus. Image: CDC
An image of the COVID-19 virus. Image: CDC
Three more York University professors will receive $703,217 in funding for COVID-19 related research to better inform the best way forward, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announced. Two other York researchers are co-applicants on another $666,667.
This new funding follows a previous COVID-19 rapid research funding announced on March 6 by CIHR for three other York projects.
The researchers from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) and the Faculty of Science will look at how supply chain disruptions are affecting medical and pharmaceutical industries and how social media is spreading misinformation, fostering racism and xenophobia, and hindering the capacity of public health officials to communicate scientific facts. They will also evaluate how intervention strategies can help decision-makers identify the type and intensity of control measures needed for containment.
“York University is thrilled that three additional researchers from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the Faculty of Science will receive funding for COVID-19 rapid research projects,” said Interim Vice-President Research & Innovation Rui Wang. “This new funding will contribute to a global effort and could have a huge impact on how information is delivered, supply chains work and the rate of disease transmission in future outbreaks.”
Funding will come from CIHR in partnership with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the International Development Research Centre, and Genome Canada.
Professor Harris Ali of LA&PS and the Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation (ADERSIM) facility at York and Associate Professor Fuyuki Kurasawa of the Department of Sociology in LA&PS, will receive $308,183 to study how social media misinformation shapes public health and lay responses to COVID-19, and what public health strategies and public policies can be adopted to combat it and its stigmatizing social impacts. They will track misinformation about COVID-19 on Western social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, and Chinese social media platforms, such as WeChat, Weibo, Tencent, and Toutiao. Read more in this Conversation Canada piece.
Computational epidemiology Professor Seyed Moghadas of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the Faculty of Science will receive $264,434 from CIHR to develop new and adapt existing mathematical models to predict the scope of disease transmission, potential outbreaks and clinical attack rates. He will also project what services hospitals will require and assess the effects of interventions, such as quarantine, self-reporting, isolation and school closures. In addition, he will evaluate the effectiveness of a vaccine and best distribution scenarios based on population age and risk.
Associate Professor (Decision Sciences) Fuminori Toyasaki of the School of Administrative Studies in LA&PS and ADERSIM will receive $130,600 from CIHR to study countermeasures to the supply chain disruptions in medical and pharmaceutical industries. His project will focus on the supply chain disruptions that medical and pharmaceutical industries are currently facing as a result of strategic hoarding by suppliers and consumer panic buying. In addition, he will explore the feasibility of two countermeasures – a collaborative stock sharing/transshipment system and an incentive contract with a potential second source that can produce highly customized medical and pharmaceutical items.
Professor Jianhong Wu of the Faculty of Science and director of ADERSIM is leading a national COVID-19 math modelling team. The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences has received $666,667, along with local and international partners, to mobilize this national network of infectious disease modellers to develop mathematical technologies to assess transmission risk of COVID-19 and project outbreak trajectories. Co-applicants include Associate Professor Ali Asgary, deputy director of ADERSIM and the School of Administrative Studies in LA&PS, Professor Jane Heffernan and Professor Huaiping Zhu of the Faculty of Science and director of the Centre for Disease Modelling, and Professor Adriano Solis of the School of Administrative Studies in LA&PS. These researchers are evaluating public health interventions for its prevention and control, and to inform public health policy makers. Their goal is to conduct multi-scale modelling to assist in the development of effective intervention and mitigation strategies.
The T2K experiment used a beam consisting primarily of muon neutrinos or muon antineutrinos created using the proton beam from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai, Japan. A small fraction of the neutrinos (or antineutrinos) are detected 295 km away at the Super-Kamiokande water Cerenkov detector in Kamioka, Japan. Previously, T2K studied how the original neutrinos (antineutrinos) transition or oscillate into electron neutrinos (antineutrinos) as they traverse the distance from Tokai to Kamioka (hence the name T2K) in a process called “neutrino oscillations.” This was the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015.
