Welcome to the September 2020 issue of ‘Brainstorm’
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“Brainstorm,” a special edition of YFile publishing on the first Friday of every month, showcases research and innovation at York University. It offers compelling and accessible feature-length stories about the world-leading and policy-relevant work of York’s academics and researchers across all disciplines and Faculties and encompasses both pure and applied research.
In the September 2020 issue
How will COVID-19 change us as a global society? Will equity lose ground?
Four York U professors, women in diverse fields, bring unique perspectives to the table as they consider equity in the midst and aftermath of the pandemic. If society is measured on how it treats its most vulnerable, will we encounter greater disparity post-COVID-19?
Academics’ visionary reactions to the pandemic prove we need art more than ever Two artists and scholars in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design respond to the coronavirus and remind us of how important the arts are to society, especially in these unparalleled times. What sector, other than the arts, could reflect so powerfully on the pandemic’s impact on our collective soul?
How a belief system, with justice in mind, ends up silencing Indigenous voices Glendon Professor pens key article in which he argues that political theorists, basing their perspectives and world views on rationalism, turn a blind eye to Indigenous voices. This kind of thinking will be a permanent roadblock to reconciliation.
Camera in hand, HIV stakeholders asked to capture engagement – Bonus video A grad student taps into a previously unexplored community in HIV service delivery and programming: the stakeholders. She puts a camera in their hands, literally, and discovers many visual metaphors for the journey of HIV – all of which have compelling implications for practice.
Study on microdosing psychedelics finds benefits outweigh challenges
Research led by a PhD student in York’s clinical psychology program suggests that the benefits of small doses of LSD – such as enhanced mood, creativity, focus and sociability – may overshadow the challenges. While the most commonly reported drawback of microdosing was “none,” clinical studies are still required.
VISTA-Lassonde team first to tackle grainy image issue with machine learning Researchers at the Lassonde School of Engineering have made a breakthrough in tackling image noise, an undesired by-product of digital photography. This research, supported by VISTA and NSERC, could mean a profound enhancement in computer vision applications, which will be of great interest to tech companies.
Launched in January 2017, “Brainstorm” is produced out of the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation in partnership with Communications & Public Affairs; overseen by Megan Mueller, senior manager, research communications; and edited by Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor and Ashley Goodfellow Craig, YFile deputy editor.
How will COVID-19 change us as a global society? Will equity lose ground?
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“Cockroach infestations, residents left to wallow in soiled diapers, COVID-19 patients allowed to wander around, forceful feeding of the elderly and a ‘culture of fear to use supplies because those cost money.’” This horrific vision, published in the Toronto Star (May 20, 2020), described what the Canadian Armed Forces encountered at five Ontario nursing homes.
Most Canadians were astounded by this, but not Faculty of Health Professor Tamara Daly. She’s been studying long-term care (LTC) for 20 years.
“These revelations were shocking, but not a surprise. This has been happening for years, and this information is readily available in critical incident reports publicly posted on government websites. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fault lines in this system,” she says.
The pandemic has brought to the fore inequities in health care, labour, mental health access and global health
Tamara Daly on making long-term care a priority
Tamara Daly
Daly, also director of York’s Centre for Aging Research and Education, notes that the challenges in LTC are linked to society’s failure to appreciate women’s work and the aging population.
“We undervalue what we consider to be women’s work and we undervalue older people. Most personal care workers (PSWs) are women. PSWs are not well paid, have few benefits and their work is often temporary.
“We do see exceptions. In Nordic countries, there are better workplace protections and working conditions. Long-term care facilities aren’t understaffed in the same way they are in Ontario.”
She points to an aphorism in the LTC field: “Good working conditions create good caring conditions.”
“Combine the poor working conditions LTC workers have with our ageist assumptions about older people and what they deserve at the end of their lives… When you put those two factors together, we tend to forget LTC. But as people continue to live longer, most of us will face the challenge of living in an LTC setting. We must make improved care and working conditions in LTC a priority.”
Kelly Pike on how COVID-19 affects the supply chain
Professor Kelly Pike (Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies) considers COVID-19-based equity issues in a different way. Her research focuses on garment workers in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically those in Lesotho, a small, landlocked kingdom encircled by South Africa. It’s a poor nation that relies heavily on the garment industry, the largest private employer. This industry fits into the global supply chain by securing the raw materials, such as buttons and zippers, from other countries; then its factory workers assemble jeans, t-shirts and underwear for external markets including the United States.
Kelly Pike
The corporations purchasing the garments are supposed to send auditors to the Lesotho plants to ensure that health and safety conditions for the workers are upheld. But historically this has been met with non-compliance by garment factory owners.
The situation improved in 2010-11, when the International Labour Organization launched the Better Work program to encourage buyers, suppliers, union and government to improve compliance. But the 2016 withdrawal of the program undid some progress. Pike worries that COVID-19 could further exacerbate the issue for workers.
“With global supply chains, the impact of the pandemic is affecting everyone, even the big clothing companies. Sourcing is a problem. Lesotho sources raw materials from China and, with COVID-19, it can’t get raw materials. In turn, retail stores aren’t selling because they’re not getting new product and consumers aren’t buying because they’re losing jobs.”
Pike emphasizes that the impact of COVID-19 is most painfully felt in a developing country like Lesotho, and in a certain segment of the population: women, who represent the majority of the labour force. “Before the pandemic, there were existing problems, like high unemployment, poverty, health issues and lack of work alternatives. As COVID-19 paralyzes the supply chain, workers in Lesotho, primarily women, are losing their jobs and may be forced to turn to more dangerous forms of work, like selling their bodies.”
Nazilla Khanlou on how COVID-19 has created a “syndemic”
With millions out of work or locked down in their homes to halt the spread of the virus, other issues are exacerbated. One of them, notes Professor Nazilla Khanlou (Faculty of Health), is gender-based violence (GBV).
Nazilla Khanlou
“Early in the pandemic, reports came out about how violence against women had increased due to lockdown measures. Families were spending more time together, but it was also creating a situation where victims of abuse were not able to access services they needed, like shelters,” she explains. “The nature of this pandemic has increased the risk of violence for those women who are in difficult situations to begin with, and created new settings where they may be more at risk of violence.”
Khanlou, who holds the Women’s Health Research Chair in Mental Health, points to an emerging “syndemic” – the combination of COVID-19 with two other pandemics – that of racism and GBV. Together, they form what she identifies as the 2020 Syndemic of COVID-19, GBV and racism. She notes that “gendered health disparities pathways result in synergistic health disadvantage for certain segments of the population, including racialized women at risk of gender-based violence during COVID-19 pandemic’s response and recovery phases.”
Through their recent knowledge synthesis project, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Khanlou and her team are producing knowledge outputs to help inform mental health support for racialized women at risk of GBV. One example is their publicly accessible Information Sheet that addresses risk factors and systemic challenges, and offers suggestions for service providers. It was co-written with academic and community partners on the project.
Roojin Habibi on the value of solidarity
What can governments do to address COVID-19 and inequity? The big problem, says Osgoode Hall Law School PhD student Roojin Habibi, is that when faced with a crisis, governments tend to lose sight of global solidarity.
Roojin Habibi
“There’s a certain wisdom we often repeat in global health – that the world is only as healthy as its weakest health system,” says Habibi, a research Fellow in Global Health Law at York’s Global Strategy Lab.
“Rattled by SARS in 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) revised the International Health Regulations, an international legal agreement that governs how countries cooperate and coordinate to mount an effective global response to diseases that spread internationally. Despite high hopes to do better post-SARS, it’s alarming how in this COVID-19 crisis, knee-jerk reactions kick in and promises that were agreed to in the Regulations are suddenly ‘nice to do, but we’ll focus on our own country for now – or indefinitely.’”
Habibi, also a consultant to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDs, believes there’s no more stinging example of a country rebuking solidarity with others than when the President of the United States (U.S.) announced U.S. withdrawal from the WHO. “The fact that a state could contemplate this course of action amid an unprecedented pandemic was shocking.”
She’s also concerned about global cohesion when a vaccine is ready. “We need a vaccine that everyone in the world will be able to access. To truly overcome this pandemic, we need everyone, everywhere, to be protected. But as individual countries start cutting deals behind closed doors with specific private manufacturers, we drift further from that ideal.”
Can positive next steps be taken to lessen these inequities?
Daly calls for more oversight: “Public accountability and transparency are critical in long-term care. We need more eyes on this, so that advocacy organizations and researchers can examine data and see when things are wrong.”
Pike believes it’s time to stand up: “The world’s now realizing how important the supply chain is. Everyone along the supply chain is affected negatively, but the people at the bottom are affected a thousand-fold. Now’s the time for buyers to stand up, pay up and help these people who may die if they don’t have better conditions.”
Khanlou calls for improved and more universal access to mental health resources: “The pandemic has shown us how important it is to have a robust public health system. We need to expand that to a public mental health system, where access to a range of mental health promotion programs, and to mental illness and addictions prevention and rehabilitation services, are available universally to all Canadians.”
Habibi advocates learning from the best policy responses: “There will be other pandemics, so scholars and governments need to publish our collective thinking and make it available. There’s a proliferation of databases coming out now synthesizing the effectiveness of COVID-19 laws and policies. With this information in hand, we will be able to compare countries’ responses to the pandemic and find out which policies were the most successful at improving people’s well-being.”
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.
How a belief system, with justice in mind, ends up silencing Indigenous voices
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Yann Allard-Tremblay, of the Huron-Wendat First Nation, wrote a seminal article in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy last year. This Glendon scholar contends that rationalism, embraced by politicians and political theorists, is, in fact, a source of violence because it ignores and distorts the voices of the Indigenous peoples. His article focuses on the population of Turtle Island, referring to the continent of North America. In many Indigenous stories about the universe and human origins, the turtle, an icon of life itself, is said to support the world.
Yann Allard-Tremblay
This is a vital discussion related to reconciliation, at a key point in time when our nation is seeking to transform (and fix) existing oppressive social and political structures so as to ensure greater inclusion and facilitate the continued existence of Indigenous peoples.
Where are we going wrong? Allard-Tremblay, who came to York in 2017, has some answers. Associated with the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, he specializes in political and social theory, with an interest in democracy, political pluralism and Indigenous peoples.
Why is rationalism ineffective?
Allard-Tremblay underscores the short-sightedness of rationalism. “It is optimistic that human reason has the power to apprehend the whole of reality. Reason assumes that there should be a single uniform and coherent scheme to apprehend reality and this scheme is a scientific one.”
The real problem, according to Allard-Tremblay, is two-fold: (1) rationalism, due to its limitations, excludes and/or distorts Indigenous voices; and (2) since rationalism has become an accepted tool for politicians and political theorists, this belief system end up reinforcing cultural imperialism, despite the fact that politicians and political theorists are, at least in theory, aiming to administer justice and oversee reconciliation.
Indigenous worldviews acknowledge the existence of spirits and the interconnectedness of all things
Indigenous discourses ignored; distortion is form of cultural imperialism
Allard-Tremblay unpacks the idea of distortion exceptionally well: “This happens either when Indigenous voices are wrongly interpreted, through a rationalist lens, or when Indigenous peoples modify and frame their claims so as to move [the rationalist people they engage in a dialogue with.]”
Indigenous discourses, he notes, speak a wholly different language metaphorically. “Indigenous worldviews are seen to be like religions and their associated claims are classified as animistic religious claims,” he writes. They acknowledge the existence of spirits and emphasize the interconnectedness of all things, for example – approaches that have little meaning through the lens of rationalism.
“Indigenous worldviews are seen to be like religions and their associated claims are classified as animistic religious claims,” Allard-Tremblay writes. Artwork created by Métis (Otipemisiwak) artist Christi Belcourt
As a result, Indigenous discourses are largely ignored. “They are not seen as alternative points of view on reality, but as forms of discourse to be apprehended and classified by reason. These forms of discourse are not in the same category as objective rational discourse,” Allard-Tremblay explains.
Scholar considers how to oppose rationalism, offers suggestions
In this article, Allard-Tremblay considers how to oppose rationalism and hear Indigenous peoples in their own voices. He warns, once more, against mainstream approaches by well-intentioned scholars that are about, not by, Indigenous people.
He also puts forward considerations about politics and political theory that should be kept in mind “so as to avoid masking domination under the guise of reason and ignoring people’s agency in determining the right structure of society.”
In the end, and at the heart of this thoughtful article, Allard-Tremblay suggests that two things need to happen before real change can be pursued – specifically, justice and reconciliation:
We need to realize that politics is constructed; and
We need to acknowledge that political theory is embedded in politics.
Only then can we break the dominance and exclusivity of rationalism and create the space to incorporate an Indigenous perspective into the discussion, “heard in its own right rather than as an object of our rational apprehension,” Allard-Tremblay adds. “And this is more of an ever-going process than something that can be accomplished one day and on which we could close the books.”
To learn more about Allard-Tremblay, visit his Faculty profile page at Glendon. To read the 2019 article in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, visit the website.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new 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
Camera in hand, HIV stakeholders asked to capture engagement
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Sarah Switzer, a PhD student (now graduate) supervised by Professor Sarah Flicker in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, led a highly original research endeavour as part of her doctoral dissertation: She invited stakeholders within the HIV community to visually document what engagement, in programming and service delivery, meant to them. The results, which have implications for practice, were published in Health & Place (2020).
This project had many contributors including the University of Toronto and Concordia. It was funded by the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research and the REACH 2.0 Canadian Institutes of Health Research CBR (community-based research) collaborative.
Sarah Flicker
Sarah Switzer
Sought to fill an important void in the research
Since the 1980s, when AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) began to devastate various populations, activists have campaigned for programs and services to support those affected. These trailblazers mobilized public health authorities, governments and the research community, and their actions led to the development of vital programs and services.
Forty years later, HIV research in the social sciences has studied and documented the virus from the perspective of the consumers of the healthcare system, those living with HIV and those impacted by the virus.
Switzer and her team wanted to learn more about stakeholders within HIV community-based organizations and their experiences – specifically, related to engagement, an underexplored area.
What does engagement mean?
Key components of engagement include participation, reciprocity and a personal and organizational investment in the process. “Engagement, a dynamic, relational process, includes a set of participatory practices, and people’s subjective understandings of what it means to actively participate in programs or services,” Switzer explains.
‘Weapons of hope’ by Chantal, one of the 63 images and narratives that came out of this project
Sometimes community initiatives can fail. Tokenism is a prime example of this, defined in the Cambridge dictionary as pretending to give advantage to those groups in society who are often treated unfairly, in order to give the appearance of fairness.
This calls attention to why this research is critical: HIV transmission often plays out along existing inequalities. Individuals living with HIV often experience heightened forms of marginalization, such as communities of colour, Indigenous communities and/or people who use drugs.
Diverse group of participants from three organizations
The research team secured 36 study participants from three community-based organizations in Toronto, Canada:
PWA, Canada’s largest service provider for people living with HIV/AIDS;
Empower, a youth-led HIV prevention and harm reduction program; and
Casey House, Canada’s first and only stand-alone hospital for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Participants from Empower were former program participants, mentors and a program coordinator; those from PWA were peer volunteers and a coordinator; and those from Casey House were clients and staff.
Through a survey at the start of the project, the researchers learned that the participant group was extremely diverse in terms of age, race, gender, Indigeneity, sexuality, HIV status, disability, role and experience.
Photovoice used to capture experience
Using photovoice, a qualitative research method invented in the 1990s where people take photographs of what they experience, the researchers invited participants to document their understandings of engagement. Participants shared photos and narratives that reflected on seven key themes, including individual and/or organizational journeys.
Over six months, the research team undertook 20 photovoice workshops and 17 photo-elicited interviews. “We introduced the project; brainstormed ideas; provided training on ethics and photography; supplied equipment and instructions for taking photos; discussed, analyzed, and celebrated participants’ work; and created site-specific installations using the images,” Switzer sums up.
Photographs, with narratives, tell a comprehensive story
This work culminated in a curated exhibit of 63 photographs and accompanying narratives that were mounted in several community settings, three installations, a website, co-led workshops and a community report.
The images speak to the themes that emerged, such as reflecting on journey; honouring relationships; accessibility and support mechanisms; diversity and difference; advocacy and peer leadership; navigating grief and loss; and non-participation.
‘A Dark Day’ by Raul
‘Growth’ by Lydia
The journey is a foundational concept for this research. “A journey implies a long, sometimes arduous, trek. It evokes notions of change over time, movement, deep learning and attention to process,” Switzer states.
It’s clear that the idea of a journey provided study participants with a way to make sense of their experience. “I love seeing the candle not lit, but there’s times when I like to see the candle lit, because I know that person isn’t suffering anymore,” said one Casey House participant about the image of a memorial candle. Participants also reflected on organizational journeys and how they connected (or not) to individual journeys.
Findings and implications for practice
Essential learnings from the project included:
Understandings of engagement vary within and across the HIV sector.
Journey is an apt metaphor to discuss these different understandings.
Journey metaphors show that engagement is a dynamic and relational process.
Understandings of engagement are shaped by organizational context(s) and roles.
This work has strong implications for practice. Switzer, Flicker and their team believe that organizations and stakeholders could use the journey lens to pose key questions such as: How did we arrive here? Where do we want to go ― as individuals, as a community, as an organization? How can we go there together? These questions can also unearth important conversations about power dynamics and differentials in community engagement.
Asking these questions could be transformative, the researchers emphasize – for individuals, organizations and the HIV sector as a whole.
To read the article, “Journeying Together: A visual exploration of “engagement” as a journey in HIV programming and service delivery,” visit the journal website. For a copy of the co-authored community report, visit the Picturing Participation website. To learn more about Flicker, see the Faculty profile page. For more on Switzer, see her list of publications.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new 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
Study on microdosing psychedelics finds benefits outweigh challenges
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LSD or lysergic acid diethylamide is a mind-altering substance in a class of drugs called hallucinogens. Experiments in the 1950s using LSD showed promise, in terms of psychological benefits, but were shut down due to social and political pressures. By 1966, this drug had become a symbol of counterculture. It was deemed illegal in the United States as a result of its increased recreational use.
In the 1960s, LSD was emblematic of counterculture. The substance was made illegal in 1966, despite the fact that some promising research was emerging
But the notion of LSD’s benefits never died in the research community. One intrepid grad student at York University, Rotem Petranker, took up the idea and led an international research team that included academics from University College London (U.K.), the University of Toronto, the University of California, RMIT University (Australia) and the University of Queensland (Australia).
Rotem Petranker
This research, soon to be published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology (accepted), looked into the benefit of microdosing psychedelics – the practice of taking small, sub-hallucinogenic doses of substances like LSD or psilocybin-containing “magic” mushrooms.
It showed that the benefits, such as enhanced mood, creativity, focus and sociability, outweighed the challenges. “Quite remarkably, the most common challenge participants associated with microdosing was ‘none,’” Petranker says.
Petranker has already published a great deal in this area. His main research interest is emotion regulation, or the skill of dealing with uncomfortable emotional states in an adaptive way. He is interested in the way emotion regulation interacts with sustained attention, mind wandering and creativity.
Fascinating history of LSD
Albert Hofmann, 1993. Source: Philip H. Bailey in Public Domain (Wikipedia)
First synthesized in 1938 by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, LSD has an intriguing history. Although Hofmann created it as a respiratory and circulatory stimulant, he stumbled upon its trippy effects (no pun intended).
LSD was introduced into the United States in 1949. It was believed that the drug might have clinical applications, re: depression and anxiety. Psychological experiments in the 1950s using LSD were launched to investigate its helpful effect in facilitating psychotherapy, curing alcoholism and enhancing creativity.
One of the most prominent advocates in the scientific world was Timothy Leary. In the early 1960s, having just arrived at Harvard University, he began to explore the effects of psychotropic substances on the human mind.
The darkest chapter in this drug’s history took place during the Cold War when the CIA allegedly conducted secret experiments with LSD around mind control and psychological torture.
Timothy Leary
Research fills an important void
Sixty years later, much more research has been undertaken. But Petranker identified a void in this work around the effects of microdosing.
To fill this void, Petranker’s research team sought to replicate the findings of earlier studies on the benefits and challenges of microdosing, and to measure whether people who microdosed tested their substances for purity before consumption. Here, the researchers were interested in whether or not this testing plays a role in or is related to the benefits.
“We hypothesized that an approach-motivation – that is, motivation stemming from approaching a potential reward rather than avoiding a potential harm – would predict more positive outcomes,” he explains.
Researchers dove into the Global Drug Survey with data from over 50 countries
To gain information, the researchers turned to the world’s largest drug survey, the Global Drug Survey (GDS). Using anonymous online research tools, the GDS has access to drug use data from more than 500,000 people in over 50 countries. Here, Petranker found his participants.
For his study, participants who responded to the 2019 survey and who reported the use of LSD (or psilocybin) within the last year were offered the opportunity to answer a specialist sub-section on microdosing. Data from 6,753 people who reported microdosing at least once in the last year were used for analyses.
The researchers asked participants to indicate which benefits, from the following select list, applied to their experience of microdosing:
Enhanced mood, reduced depression symptoms;
Enhanced focus;
Enhanced creativity and/or curiosity;
Enhanced productivity, motivation or confidence;
Enhanced energy and/or alertness;
Enhanced empathy, sociability or communication skills;
Enhanced sight, smell, hearing, athletic performance or sleep;
Reduced stress; and
Reduced anxiety, including social anxiety.
They also asked participants which challenges, from the following select list, applied to their experience of microdosing:
Negative mood, irritability or instability;
Reduced focus;
Legal consequences;
Restlessness and/or fatigue;
Social problems;
Mental confusion, memory problems or racing thoughts;
Unpredictable effects and/or negative drug interactions;
Substance dependence symptoms and hard comedown;
Increased anxiety, including social anxiety; and
None; I experienced no side effects.
Participants also shared why they chose to microdose. Their reasons included: to enhance creativity; to improve mood and/or overall life satisfaction; to avoid boredom; to escape negative feelings, e.g. depression, anxiety; to get away from bad habits and unhealthy behaviours; and, to treat ADHD symptoms.
Most participants, roughly one-third, reported no negative side-effects from microdosing. The most commonly reported positive effects included improved mood and creativity. Focus and sociability improved for some.
This research also showed that participants did not test for purity before taking the drug, leading the researchers to determine that the perceived benefits associated with microdosing greatly outweigh the potential risks.
“Microdosing may have utility for a variety of uses while having minimal side-effects,” Petranker concludes.
He presses, however, for more research. “Double-blind, placebo-controlled experiments are still required to substantiate these reports,” he states.
To read the article on microdosing psychedelics in the Journal of Psychopharmacology visit the website. To learn more about Petranker’s work, visit the Toronto Centre for Psychedelic Science website.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new 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
VISTA-Lassonde team first to tackle grainy image issue with machine learning
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Image noise in photographs captured by cameras, an important aspect in many computer vision applications, is the variation of brightness or color in images. It can appear as graininess that can seriously affect the quality of the image.
Grad student Abdelrahman (Abdel) Abdelhamed, supervised by Canada Research Chair in Computer Vision and member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Professor Michael Brown, presented a key paper on this at the 2019 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision.
The paper introduces ‘Noise Flow,’ a powerful and accurate noise model where computers, through machine learning, can understand the characteristics of noise and regenerate it. Since this model will lead the way to removing the noise, this new knowledge will capture the attention of many tech companies. It’s a big step forward in computer vision and deep learning.
Abdelrahman Abdelhamed
Michael Brown
This research was funded by VISTA and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This work was undertaken while Abdelhamed was at Borealis AI in an internship, supported by the Mitacs Accelerate Program.
Abdelhamed and Brown discuss this work and its impact with Brainstorm.
Q: What is image noise and why is it problematic?
AA: Image noise is an undesired effect that we see in digital images. We all use digital cameras but, in some situations – when we’re in a dark room, for example – this negatively affects the quality of the image. You’re measuring the amount of light that gets in, in pixels. If you’re in a low-light environment, you have more noise.
MB: The camera sensors inherently have noise. Now that camera sensors are smaller and smaller – on your phone, for example – so much less light gets in. The chance of having more noise is much higher. For small digital cameras, one of the trade-offs is more inherent noise – a grainer or noisier image.
In this paper, we looked at noise from the perspective of smartphone cameras with very small sensors.
For small digital cameras, especially in dim environments, one of the trade-offs is a noisier image. The noisy image to the left is a common output of a smartphone camera in a dim environment. The clean image to the right is heavily processed to minimize noise. (Source: Smartphone Image Denoising Dataset (SIDD): https://www.eecs.yorku.ca/~kamel/sidd/)
Q: What was the objective of this research?
AA: For computer vision or photography, the objective is to get rid of, or minimize, noise. But we took a different approach: we wanted to model, characterize or understand the noise in order to remove it more efficiently.
MB: Abdel’s method was in reverse; he didn’t try to generate a clean [noise-free] image, he sought to understand the noisy image.
Q: Is this a new area of research?
AA: We studied older literature, papers from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and Google, and we saw that they had models for this, but the research hadn’t been updated in years – especially important with today’s smart cameras. Ten years ago, they didn’t have these tiny sensors. The technology was so different. We found that the mathematical models used to characterize noise in the literature were outdated – the models were for older, larger sensors, not for the sensors used in smartphones.
Q: How did the Noise Flow model work, and how could this benefit computer vision and deep learning?
AA: The Noise Flow model is a type of machine learning – teaching computers how to solve a problem by providing many examples. In our research, we collected lots of images, noisy images and their corresponding clean images, so the computer model could learn the mapping between the noisy images and the clean images. As a result, the computer could learn the characteristics of noise so it could generate more examples of noisy images.
This is beneficial to computer vision because in computer vision, and deep learning, we need more data to make machine learning algorithms work.
MB: Broadly speaking, we’re trying to mathematically model noise. We wanted to know if we could predict the type of noise that occurs on different sensors. Could the computer generate the type of noise that a particular sensor would produce?
Q: Please describe how you tested this.
MB: Abdel did the work. He sat in the lab and captured 30,000 images. He set the camera on a tripod, very still in a special room, under special lighting, and took these images. Then he fed the information into the computer model and calculated an average. He would have, say, 500 noisy images and one clean image. This is how the computer learned how to generate the noise.
Q: Many tech companies would be very interested in this.
MB: The beauty of this is, if you’re a company that wants to denoise images, you first need information on how to predict noise. Then you could train another model to denoise using this new knowledge, using this new model.
We’ve been approached by many companies; Abdel has been approached by Samsung.
Q: Is this a ‘first?’
MB: Yes. We were the first group to revisit the noise modeling problem and address it with machine learning. This is a big deal. Nobody had revisited this for a very long time.
Marcus Brubaker, another co-author of this paper, is a machine learning expert at Lassonde and a member of VISTA. He was instrumental in helping us to shape this work because he introduced us to the normalizing flow method, a new powerful machine learning method. It was perfect for the type of problem we had before us.
Q: VISTA has supported your work in many ways.
MB: VISTA was instrumental for getting me to Canada. It was the main reason that brought me to York. My CRC was created because of VISTA. VISTA supports our entire lab.
It’s also worth mentioning that if we do anything that’s able to be commercialized or needs a patent, we go through Innovation York. In this case, Borealis filed the patent for our new model, but, generally speaking, Innovation York is our go-to partner.
To read the conference paper, visit the website. To learn more about Brown’s research, visit his Faculty profile page.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new 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
Academics’ visionary reactions to the pandemic prove we need art more than ever
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Last March, the dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) at York University, Sarah Bay-Cheng, penned an influential article in the Globe & Mail that argued for the arts and cultural organizations as a source of relief, or balm, in times of crisis.
The original contributions of two AMPD academics epitomize this idea and, in doing so, further underscore the value and unique contribution of the arts and culture in our society. Indeed, Professors Laura Levin (Theatre Studies) and Ingrid Veninger (Cinema and Media Arts) remind us of how important the arts are, particularly in this extraordinary era where the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic looms over every aspect of life.
Laura Levin
Ingrid Veninger
Performances of politicians during the crisis offer key insights
Levin, former director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology and associate dean, Research in AMPD, focuses our attention on a significant aspect of COVID-19: the performance of political leaders during the pandemic.
“Leaders have podiums or stages like no one else, and they can use them to model the collective responsibility, care and cooperation needed to prevent community spread and overburdening of the health care system,” she explains.
Levin, currently writing a book on performing politicians, examines how a leader’s performance contributes to collective action in terms of uniting, galvanizing or motivating communities. She believes that this kind of theatricality is becoming increasingly vital as a means of understanding our political leaders.
Trudeau and other world leaders set stage for collective responsibility
Levin says Prime Minister Trudeau is skilled at using rhetoric or oratory to model collective responsibility
Levin looks closely at performance strategies used by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, alongside the empathetic crisis leadership of other politicians, like New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “One of the most effective ways Trudeau models this collective responsibility is by breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to viewers watching his press conferences from home. Here, he asks members of the public to see themselves as part of a collective ‘we’ and reminds them that they, too, can play a role,” she explains. “Trudeau looks straight at the camera and says things like, ‘The strength of our country is our capacity to come together and care for each other, especially in times of need. So call your friends. Check in with your family. Think of your community.’”
In these moments, Levin emphasizes, leadership is envisioned not as a top-down role performed by government officials, but rather as a distributed, community-led action.
“It allows us to see how we as citizens can collectively assume leadership within our local communities and be part of the solution,” she says.
ONE(NINE) Project unites women filmmakers from around the world
When COVID-19 began in early spring, 2020, filmmaker Veninger, whom the Globe & Mail once dubbed “the DIY queen of Canadian filmmaking,” halted all planned creative ventures, most notably her eighth feature film. She switched gears to embark on a highly collaborative piece that focused on isolation during the pandemic.
She reached out to women filmmakers around the world – some of whom she knew, others were strangers – to bring together a group that would represent a diverse set of voices, styles and strengths, and, very quickly, the ONE(NINE) Project took shape. The title refers to nine filmmakers, isolating in different parts of the world, coming together to collaborate on a feature film.
Veninger was joined by international filmmakers Isa Benn, Jennifer Podemski, Slater Jewell-Kemker and Mina Shum from Canada; Lydia Zimmermann from Spain; Carmen Sangion from South Africa, Shengze Zhu from China; and Dorothee Wenner from Germany.
ONE (NINE) Project participants, left to right: top row – Mina Shum, Lydia Zimmermann, Carmen Sangion; middle row – Jennifer Podemski, Ingrid Veninger, Dorothee Wenner; and bottom row – Shengze Zhu, Slater Jewell-Kemker, Isa Benn
The mandate was straightforward: with complete creative freedom, make a film with whatever and whomever you have with you in isolation. This is very much in keeping with Veninger’s oeuvre as community and family have always been at the core of her work. “The aspiration for this project was to make something collectively that would be impossible to make individually,” she explains.
From there, Veninger would stitch the short films, like chapters, together to make a larger narrative. The process sounds reminiscent of concept albums where words, objects and emotions are woven throughout the work.
The schedule unfolded rapidly. The filmmakers filmed in April and May, the editing and sound design took place remotely in June and July, with final completion in Toronto at Deluxe post-production. Delivery was expected for August 2020 with the aim of submitting to film festivals in the fall.
Hopes the film will inspire others in uncertain times
Veninger was inspired and challenged by the process. “We fostered ideas originating from a place of deep respect, trust, listening and dialogue to generate something of value to our greater communities,” she says.
She hopes the project will fuel different kinds of co-creation endeavours in the future. “Many of us have faced this uncertain time as an opportunity to learn and innovate new pathways for creative production. In this collaborative feature film project, we embraced our limitations, which informed how we told our stories, and that hands-on DIY approach will live in the result and reflect how an audience might experience the work as authentic and true, which in turn mirrors the process,” she elaborates.
To read the Globe & Mail piece, visit the website. To read a related YFile article, visit the VPRI website. To listen to a CBC interview with Veninger, visit the website. To read the Dolce magazine interview with Levin, visit the website. To learn more about Levin, visit her Faculty Profile Page. To learn more about Veninger, see her Faculty Profile Page.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new 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
New evidence on the justice crisis: making the case for reform
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Access to justice is essential in the Canadian judicial system. Photo courtesy of the Supreme Court of Canada
Access to justice is one of the most basic rights of democratic citizenship. However, over the past decade, there has been a growing consensus that in many parts of Canada’s justice system, unmet legal needs are at a crisis point. According to new research:
Canadians spend just under $8 billion annually on their everyday legal problems – on average about $6,000 per problem – and likely much more. By comparison, this is about 75 per cent of what households spend on food each year, half of what they pay for transportation, and a third of what they spend on housing.
Canada ranks around the middle of sample comparison countries regarding some aspects of justice (e.g. access to laws and legal information), but lower than average when it comes to affordable justice or the efficiency of civil justice.
Less than seven per cent of people use courts to resolve their problems and less than 20 per cent get legal advice.
Access to justice costs and barriers are higher and more complex for domestic violence survivors.
Some access to justice reforms designed to assist lower-income users may not be working the way policy makers intended, according to one landlord-tenant study.
Within Indigenous communities, the justice system has re-traumatized and re-victimized some claimants, particularly in the context of the residential schools litigation.
These are just some of the findings and conclusions included in a new collection of research from 24 Canadian and U.S. scholars – The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law – edited by York University Professors Trevor C.W. Farrow and Lesley A. Jacobs. It is the first book to provide an in-depth overview based on new empirical research of what is working and not working to improve access to civil and family justice in Canada.
The Justice Crisis is part of the Cost of Justice project, a seven-year $1-million project of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, located at Osgoode Hall Law School. The Cost of Justice project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Trevor Farrow
“Having access to justice primarily means having available options to prevent, address and resolve the legal problems and challenges that people face in their daily lives. This requires more than traditional courts and lawyers. Of course those are important. But we also need to properly recognize and support other legal services and initiatives, such as public legal education, alternative dispute settlement, paralegals, innovation in regulation, robust legal aid, and others,” said Farrow, principal investigator on the Cost of Justice project and a Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.
Les Jacobs
“There are significant knowledge gaps, disconnects and insufficiencies when analyzing peoples’ legal needs, what they do about their legal problems, and government spending on justice,” adds Jacobs, a professor who holds the York Research Chair in Human Rights and Access to Justice. “Our particular focus is on reporting groundbreaking empirical research that address two main research questions: what does it cost to deliver an effective civil justice system, and what does it cost – economically and socially – if we fail to do so. Our findings are important because they enable us to identify what paths to justice are working best for people in meeting their legal needs and resolving their problems.”
Focusing on reducing lawyer fees is not the answer to solving the access to justice crisis. Rather, a full culture shift is needed, with foundational reforms, if access to justice is to be improved, the research shows. Social enterprise and social innovation initiatives – including justice innovation hubs, NGO initiatives, justice information centres, and public/private collaborations – can provide new ways to address access to justice barriers.
The research also concludes that although liberalizing the market for legal services may assist with some aspects of accessibility, maintaining some form of self-regulation of the legal profession continues to be important to protect the justice system from unwarranted intrusions from problematic state actors.
Other important issues and themes canvassed by the research include the role and importance of public funding, self-help assistance in family law, litigation risk and cost assessments, and the disproportionate social impact of unmet legal needs on certain vulnerable populations including Indigenous communities
The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law is edited by Trevor C.W. Farrow, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and Chair, Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, and Lesley A. Jacobs, FRSC, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Ontario Tech University, and a Professor and York Research Chair in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University. For more information on The Justice Crisis, visit UBC Press.
Lassonde showcases cutting-edge research at 2020 undergrad research conference
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York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering hosted the fifth annual Lassonde Undergraduate Summer Student Research Conference on Aug. 13, and despite the ongoing pandemic, the school was able to showcase the research of 57 undergraduate students taking part in summer research programs.
Lassonde Undergraduate Summer Student Research Conference virtual showcase of student research projects
For the first time, the annual research conference was delivered in an entirely virtual format. The conference was an immersive and interactive experience that included a virtual fair of research projects where guests could connect with student researchers in real time. The research projects ranged from the construction of 3D maps and models for urban traffic, online engineering education, artificial intelligence, microfluidic devices, and deep learning in space. The full conference program can be found here.
Caroline Floyd
Caroline Floyd (BSc ’01, Earth and Atmospheric Science) delivered a keynote presentation titled “Being ‘They’ in “They say it’s going to rain:” Thoughts from 20 Years in Weather” which provided an engaging overview of her career in weather as the lead forecaster for coverage at two Olympic games and producing hour-by-hour forecasts for every continent (excluding Antarctica – so far).
The virtual research conference also included remarks from:
Jane Goodyer, Lassonde dean
John Moores, associate dean, Research & Graduate Studies
Gerald Audette, associate dean, Faculty of Science
The conference closed with a presentation on graduation studies from Professor and Graduate Program Director Usman Khan and the highly anticipated awards ceremony. The awards were presented by Goodyer and Moores.
The oral presentation winners, announced at the event, include:
First Place Oral Presentation Award: Aryan Nabidur Rashid
The video research presentation winners, announced at the event, include:
Third Place Students’ Choice Award (Morning Session): Chester Wyke
Second Place Students’ Choice Award (Morning Session): Daphne-Eleni Archonta
First Place Students’ Choice Award (Morning Session): Sara Kashanchi
Third Place Students’ Choice Award (Afternoon Session): Rashiq Shahad
Second Place Students’ Choice Award (Afternoon Session): Karen Abogadil
First Place Students’ Choice Award (Afternoon Session): Mohammad Sotoudehfar
Third Place Video Award: Julia Ferri
Second Place Video Award: Sara Hajari
First Place Video Award: Koko Nanahji
Best Booth Graphic Award: Daphne Archonta
More about undergraduate research at Lassonde
This year, Lassonde awarded 19 NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) and 35 Lassonde Undergraduate Research Awards (LURA). Incoming students are from multiple programs at York University, but also Carleton University and Western University. Want to learn more about these programs? Check out the promo video here: http://www.lassondeundergraduateresearch.com/2020-summer-research-at-lassonde.
Students spent the summer working alongside professors and their teams to develop potential solutions, further knowledge and get hands-on experience in their respective fields. The professors have worked tirelessly to flip the program to a remote setting so as to provide the same value to our student participants, re-creating professional research environments online to give students the chance to hone their laboratory skills, solving problems associated with their project; and writing reports and disseminating their findings.
Program for women business owners receives funding boost from FedDev Ontario
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Student Services Department Of University Providing Advice Smiling Looking At Laptop
York University’s Entrepreneurial Leadership and Learning Alliance program for women business owners – ELLA – has received top-up funding from the Government of Canada to establish a new program to help female business owners who are facing barriers to expansion.
The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) Ecosystem Fund investment of $281,600, delivered through FedDev Ontario, will be used to create a new Fractional Executive Program that will enable participants in ELLA’s Altitude program to hire a professional to deliver a specific program or solve a specific problem, in order to accelerate the company’s growth.
Mary Ng, minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade joined York University Vice-President Research & Innovation Amir Asif and Lucrezia Spanolo, founder of Vesta Social Innovation Technologies, to announce top-up funding for the ELLA program
Mary Ng, minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, announced the funding on Aug. 25. This investment builds on an initial $1.86 million in federal funding for ELLA announced last summer, bringing federal investment in the ELLA program to more than $2.1 million.
“We understand the challenges businesses are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and those challenges can be amplified for women entrepreneurs,” said Ng. “Today’s investment for ELLA through the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy Ecosystem Fund top-up will help our women-led businesses to weather these challenging times while preparing for future success.”
“Economists and leading philanthropists agree about the importance of increasing the diversity of entrepreneurs to keep Canada competitive including the representation of women,” said Rhonda L. Lenton, president and vice-chancellor of York University. “The Government of Canada’s investment in York University’s ELLA program is a vote of confidence in this innovative program that supports women entrepreneurs in Ontario. It will empower these women to take their businesses global reflecting on the context created by the pandemic and enhancing the benefits for ELLA participants, their families and their communities.”
Ten women entrepreneurs will be chosen to take part in the four-month ELLA Altitude program, which will begin in October.
“Many applicants need help reaching customers through different channels than they used before the COVID-19 pandemic,” said ELLA Entrepreneurship Manager Nicole Troster. “The Altitude program will enable them to turn to seasoned professionals for help with specific challenges such as, for example, selling through digital channels. It will build on the business skills they are already employing.”
“Brainstorm,” a special edition of YFile publishing on the first Friday of every month, showcases research and innovation at York University. It offers compelling and accessible feature-length stories about the world-leading and policy-relevant work of York’s academics and researchers across all disciplines and Faculties and encompasses both pure and applied research.
