SSHRC Partnership Grant, just under $2.5 M, awarded to AMPD Professor Laura Levin

May 27, 2020

Laura Levin

Professor Laura Levin, in York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), was awarded a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) in May 2020, as principal investigator for the project “Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices.” The term of the funding for the partnership team is seven years and the value is $2,499, 978.

“York University is delighted to learn of the success of Professor Levin’s SSHRC Partnership Grant. This prestigious grant, intended for large teams working in formal collaboration with postsecondary institutions, illustrates York’s leadership and that of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. It underscores the University’s capacity as a driving force for positive change and its historic strength in analyzing cultures and mobilizing creativity,” said Vice-President Research & Innovation Amir Asif.

“Professor Laura Levin and her collaborators’ work reminds us of how essential performance is to the vitality and well-being of diverse communities across the Americas. This research will enhance critical connections among diverse cultures and communities. As an avid reader of Levin’s past work, I’m excited to see what this new project yields,” said AMPD Dean Sarah Bay-Cheng.

Levin is associate professor of Theatre & Performance Studies at York. She is director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology and incoming associate dean, Research in AMPD (starting July 1, 2020). She teaches courses on contemporary theatre and performance art, devised theatre and practice-based research. Her research focuses on site-specific, immersive and urban intervention performance; performing gender and sexuality; political performance; intermedial and digital performance; research-creation methods; and performance theory.

Hemispheric performance as a tool for social change

“Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices” is a partnership project that seeks to develop a network of universities, community organizations, artists, and activists across Canada, the United States, and Latin America actively working in and with “hemispheric performance” as a methodology, a pedagogical strategy, and a tool for social change.

“We activate this network for the purpose of sharing strategies and resources, forming transnational alliances, and developing more advanced understandings of human rights concerns affecting multiple sites in the Western hemisphere,” Levin explains.

This project is especially timely in forming transborder coalitions for exchanging hemispheric knowledge ― an action that Levin says could not be more urgent as growing rights emergencies require the coordinated action of activists in the Americas. Among others, these include:

The dramatic rise in nativism and populism and related spread of anti-immigrant sentiment;
The growing expulsion of refugee migrants from Central America;
The displacement of Indigenous communities by mining and pipeline projects; and
Record-high rates of sexual, racial and gender-based violence

Levin states that the partnership will generate original understandings of embodied practice as a unique method of conducting research on, and ethically tackling, these humanitarian and ecological challenges.

“It seeks to define, explore, and experiment with ‘hemispheric performance practice’ as a distinctive practice-based, decolonial, transborder, and collaborative mode of knowledge production,” she says.

This project, which builds on networks of the Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas and New York University (NYU)’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, assembles a group of international co-applicants and collaborators who are leaders in performance, human rights, environmental justice and research-creation.

Academic partners include Concordia University, OCAD, University of Alberta, University of Manitoba, L’Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Toronto, University of Windsor, University of Winnipeg, ITESO-Guadalajara, NYU, The José Simeón Cañas Central American University, La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, La Universidad Nacional de Colombia, La Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina).

Community partners are artist and activist groups, with long histories of pursuing social justice through performance: Aluna Theatre, FADO Performance Art Centre, grunt gallery, LACAP, Productions Onishka, Western Front, Intervocal, Mapa Teatro, Mirador Colectivo, Radio Nativa, Resistencia Creativa, Sanctuary Neighborhoods, Teatro Azoro, Teatro Ciego, The Yes Men, Voces Mesoamericanas. These organizations bring current, vital experience in working on the real-life impacts of the hemispheric issues that the project is exploring.

Postdoc Fellowships also announced

SSHRC also posted its Postdoctoral Fellowship winners, in May 2020, which included many from York.

“We extend our congratulations to the SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship winners. The diversity of these projects, ranging from Canada’s new immigration landscape to gender justice, speaks to York’s strong commitment to shared values and our aspiration to better understand the human condition and the world around us, and to employ the knowledge we gain in the service of society,” said Vice-President Research & Innovation Amir Asif.

For more information on SSHRC Partnership grant information, visit the website. For the Postdoc Fellowships, go here. To learn more about Levin, visit her Faculty Profile page

Ancient stellar collisional ring galaxy forms stars 50 times faster than Milky Way

May 27, 2020

Ring galaxy James Josephides, Swinburne Astronomy Productions

Researchers have found a rare and massive collisional ring galaxy from some 10.8 billion years ago that is forming stars 50 times faster than the Milky Way, says York University Postdoctoral Fellow Leo Alcorn of the Faculty of Science.

These kinds of ring galaxies are formed when one galaxy collides with another galaxy that passes through its centre.

“The aftermath of the collision leaves behind a ring of diffuse light around the galaxy, a density wave of stellar material,” says Alcorn, a co-author on the paper, “A giant galaxy in the young Universe with a massive ring,” published in Nature Astronomy.

An artist’s impression of the ring galaxy. Credit: James Josephides, Swinburne Astronomy Productions

She adds that “this collisional ring galaxy is believed to be the most distant collisional ring confirmed to date.”

The discovery could shake up theories about the earliest formation of galactic structures and how they evolve.

Little is known about distant collisional rings, but with this finding the research team, led by researcher Tiantian Yuan of Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions, can provide what it believes is the first detailed study of a ring galaxy from 10.8 billion years ago.

“It is a very curious object that we’ve never seen before,” says Yuan, who is based at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology. “Most of that activity is taking place on its ring – so it truly is a ring of fire.”

The researchers found the massive collision ring galaxy, named R5519, while searching for spiral galaxies.

“These systems are rare in the local Universe but finding one at a lookback time of 10.8 billion years ago, is unexpected,” says Alcorn. “We were not expecting to see a system like this so long ago given the rarity of these events in the local Universe.

She says the importance of this finding is it will allow researchers to study significantly more about merger-driven star formation and how disk galaxies evolve and interact with their environment, as well as with neighbouring galaxies.

This galaxy is similar in stellar mass to the Milky Way, but more than one and a half times larger in stellar half-light radius. It also has a clear ring structure and large diffuse disk, resembling a giant donut. It may be the most distant collisional ring confirmed to date. The closest thing to it in the local Universe is the well-known Cartwheel Galaxy, also a collisional ring galaxy.

The hole at its centre is three million times bigger than the diameter of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy Messier 87, which in 2019 became the first ever to be directly imaged.

The team worked with colleagues from Australia, the United States, Canada, Belgium and Denmark. Spectroscopic data was gathered by the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii and images recorded by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to identify the unusual structure of the galaxy.

To view an animated GIF of the ring galaxy (Credit: James Josephides, Swinburne Astronomy Productions), visit https://news.yorku.ca/files/Ring-galaxy-animated.gif.

Success of Ontario’s re-opening will depend on testing rate and contact tracing

May 27, 2020

An image of the COVID-19 virus. Image: CDC

Enhanced testing and contact tracing for the coronavirus in Ontario could allow physical distancing measures to be relaxed, while keeping the reproduction ratio under one and preventing a second wave of infections, says corresponding author of a new modelling study Distinguished Research Professor Jianhong Wu of York University’s Faculty of Science.

The de-escalation would include three phases – a re-opening of workplaces, a resumption of public events and activities, followed by the opening of schools. The researchers modelled the requirement for testing, contact tracing and quarantine for each phase.

To be successful in the first two phases, the current time for diagnosis needs to be maintained and almost 60 per cent of exposed contacts would have to be traced, quarantined and isolated. Although, if some level of social distancing is maintained, that could counter any decrease in quarantining.

In the third phase, the researchers found that 70 per cent of exposed contacts would need to be isolated to avoid a rebound, a value they say is unrealistic. The use of masks and personal protective equipment during de-escalation, however, could be an important tool in helping to prevent a rebound.

“Our analysis can help inform public health and policy makers on best future actions and interventions to control the outbreak while relaxing physical distancing,” says Wu, director of the Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation Program.

The researchers looked at different possibilities and scenarios involving de-escalation of the current physical distancing and isolation rules for all of Canada, but particularly in Ontario. The province closed schools on March 14 and declared a state of emergency on March 17 with the closure of non-essential workplaces as of March 24.

The study estimated the effectiveness of interventions in terms of contact rate, probability of transmission per contact, detection rate, and proportion of isolated contacts. They concluded that a feasible de-escalation approach is to reverse the steps taken that led to most workplace and school closures.

In the future, the researchers say a transmission model involving age-specific contact mixing could be used to determine logistic implementations of a wider range of de-escalation strategies that would be dependent on a person’s age and the setting, whether a school, workplace, the home or community.

The research was published in the journal Biology.

Social distancing means a breath of fresh air, but for how long?

May 24, 2020

As working and spending more time at home are becoming the new normal for many families, our air is getting cleaner as a result.

With fewer people driving, especially to and from work, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of traffic-related pollution in the atmosphere is decreasing noticeably.

According to York University Professor Mark Winfield, co-chair of the University’s Sustainable Energy Initiative, clear and significant improvements in air quality can be observed locally, across the country and around the world as a result of people staying off the roads.

Winfield says that road transportation – specifically of those using internal combustion engines – accounts for around one third of Ontario’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. With a significant number of those cars staying in their driveways, the environmental gains become meaningful.

Similarly, cars and trucks are the source of approximately one-third of precursors for smog. Levels of nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide and particulate matter are also declining as people drive less, and to fewer places.

Winfield notes that the extent to which transportation is a contributor to air quality issues varies across jurisdictions. Whereas pollution and emissions in other parts of the country can be attributed more directly to energy production and industrial activity, emissions from these sectors have been declining in Ontario over the past decade. This means that, in order to make a dent in Ontario’s overall contributions to climate change, critical changes will need to be made to the way we get around.

While we are observing a noticeable drop in emissions, similar to what the world experienced following the economic crisis of 2008, we shouldn’t expect to see a significant change in the trajectory of global temperature. Much of the hard work of tackling global emissions still lies ahead.

However, whether the current reductions in GHG emissions motivate future strategies to fight climate change will depend largely on the choices people make about their transportation habits in the long term, and which aspects of the current paradigm stick.

“Depending on how things play out with COVID-19, we may see permanent adjustments in terms of peoples’ willingness to work from home and not commute,” Winfield says, “and we may eliminate a significant portion of emissions from transportation that way.”

Right now, society is engaged in what Winfield describes as a mass experiment of the viability of new work patterns, an experiment that could head in several different directions.

There’s no certainly that current attitudes and habits toward driving will last as economies begin to re-open and people are drawn out of their homes, either by choice or necessity.

“It could play out in the opposite way as well,” he cautions. “Even today, we’re already hearing reluctance, in particular, to taking public transit.”

Road transportation accounts for around one third of Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions

Winfield expects that many commuters will opt for personal automobile use over less carbon-intensive forms of transportation until a COVID-19 vaccine is available. Such a shift toward automobile-based transportation habits could lead to significant increases in pollution and would undermine the recent environmental benefits of transit use and carpooling.

He also predicts that dense, transit-oriented urban planning may become less desirable given the role close human contact plays in disease transmission, making emission-driving urban sprawl more difficult to combat in the future.

Ultimately, this has demonstrated to Winfield that society does have an ability to change trajectories.

As economies re-open, a return to business as usual would mean these environmental gains wouldn’t make much of a difference in the long run. However, if some of the changes to the way we live, work and move are permanent, we may see a less carbon intensive society as a result.

Winfield sees the potential as more people and organizations do increasingly more things online and remotely, but also expects to see intense pressure to return to the status quo.

Either way, while individual behaviour will be a major variable, there are numerous policy decisions governments can make to support more people to work remotely even as public health restrictions are eased.

According to Winfield, access to the Internet, especially in low-income households and remote rural communities, as well as access to childcare and clean transportation, are crucial challenges, exacerbated by class, that governments will have to pay attention to. There are also many questions about how people will react to these dramatic lifestyle changes over time.

“We’re at an inflection point,” he explains, “but which way it goes, at this stage in the game, is at best unknown.”

Ozone-depleting chemical alternatives getting into our food and water

May 20, 2020

An international environmental agreement to regulate the use of chemicals depleting the ozone layer may have inadvertently allowed higher levels of other harmful chemicals to flourish, new research co-led by York University and Environment and Climate Change Canada has found.

The 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), such as freon used in older air conditioners.

But these replacement compounds, thought to be a better alternative, degrade into products that do not break down in the environment and have instead continually increased in the Arctic since about 1990.

“Our results suggest that global regulation and replacement of other environmentally harmful chemicals contributed to the increase of these compounds in the Arctic, illustrating that regulations can have important unanticipated consequences,” says Assistant Professor Cora Young of the Faculty of Science and the paper’s corresponding author.

It is important to study these products of CFC replacement compounds, short chain perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (scPFCAs) before more of them are phased in over the next few years as they can adversely impact human health and the environment. They are part of the perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) class of man-made chemicals used in commercial products and industrial processes that are currently receiving a lot of attention.

Ices cores the team drilled in the Arctic ready for shipping. Photo credit: Ali Criscitiello, University of Alberta

These scPFCAs are products of chemicals used in the fluoropolymer industry in automotive, electrical and electronic applications, industrial processing and construction.

“Our measurements provide the first long-term record of these chemicals, which have all increased dramatically over the past few decades,” says Young. “Our work also showed how these industrial sources contribute to the levels in the ice caps.”

They can travel long distances in the atmosphere and often end up in lakes, rivers and wetlands causing irreversible contamination and affecting the health of freshwater invertebrates, including insects, crustaceans and worms.

Current drinking water treatment technology is unable to remove them, and they have already been found accumulating in human blood as well as in the fruits, vegetables and other crops we eat.

Team members prepare ice cores in the Arctic. Photo credit: Ali Criscitiello, University of Alberta

The researchers measured all three known scPFCA compounds over several decades in two locations of the high Arctic and found all of them have steadily increased in the Arctic, particularly trifluoroacetic acid.

The researchers acknowledge the importance of the Montreal Protocol’s positive impact on the ozone and climate but point out that even the best regulations can have unintended negative impacts on the environment.

The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Call for applications: Innovation York and NRC-IRAP’s Artificial Intelligence Industry Partnership Fund

May 15, 2020

Artificial intelligence: A human hand shakes a robot hand

Innovation York and the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) are offering a fifth round of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Partnership Fund program to support artificial intelligence (AI) collaborative research projects for industry and York University researchers.

This is a unique opportunity for faculty members and their students to work with innovative companies to execute industry-driven research projects in Artificial Intelligence. Students will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge and technologies to real-world situations and employ their research to further extend the knowledge base within AI. The research project must be jointly supervised by the faculty member and the industry partner, with the work being performed by Masters, PhD or PostDoc.

Faculty members are encouraged to use the funding to initiate a new partnership or continue the support provided to their industry partners. For small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have not pre-identified a research partner, Innovation York will work to find an appropriate faculty member partner.

Applicants: Canadian SMEs that are (or will be) partnered with York faculty members. The industry partner must be in business for a minimum of one year and have assigned NRC IRAP industrial technology advisor (ITA).

Application Deadline: June 15 by 4 p.m. EST.

Funding Amount: Up to $12,000 per selected research project (no funding to industry partners; no funding required of industry partners).

Project Length: Two to four months.

Use of Funds: To execute industry-driven research projects in AI. The funds can only be used towards student stipends. Travel, living expenses and seminar costs are ineligible.

For those requiring assistance finding a partner, contact Rachel Sung, Mitacs specialist, at rsung@yorku.ca, as soon as possible.

For more information and to apply for this grant, visit innovationyork.ca/partnership-grant.

Knowledge Mobilization Unit is available to assist and support researchers

May 10, 2020

During this global pandemic there has been an increased demand for leading experts at York University to help inform the public, health practitioners and policy makers with research relevant to COVID-19. To help make this research relevant and understandable, knowledge mobilization is more important than ever. Knowledge mobilization is defined as making research relevant to society, and this work is done purposefully.

Innovation York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit is available to help support researchers with strategies and tools to help mobilize their research. Michael Johnny and Krista Jensen, staff within the Knowledge Mobilization Unit offer the following tips for researchers seeking to mobilize their knowledge:

Communicate in clear language

There are multiple audiences, including the public, who are keen to access relevant information to help inform decisions around public health. Clear communication is vital in conveying messages about your research. Be concise in sharing relevant messages. Where appropriate, keep your messages actionable. Before people can act on your research, they need to understand it. The best tip these days – pretend you are communicating your research to your grandmother.

Consider how audiences like to access information

Here, we can look to research project teams and see excellent examples of how they are mobilizing their research during the pandemic:

Boredom Lab: Clinical psychologist, John Eastwood has seen increased interest in his research since the onset of this pandemic. His team has translated research findings into infographics to help engage and inform the public around boredom, including strategies for coping with self-isolation.

Homeless Hub: Canada’s leading homelessness researcher, Stephen Gaetz (Education) uses collaborative partnerships to help inform knowledge mobilization efforts. His team uses knowledge mobilization tools like social media and research summaries (among others) to help share key messages with the public and key decision makers. They have developed specific resources for the sector related to COVID-19.

Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research: Dahdaleh Distinguished Chair, Steven Hoffman has become even busier these days. Media engagement is woven into Steven’s daily calendar, and he presents key messages with clarity to help educate and inform the public. Recently, their team has completed development of a Global Health Portal, specific to COVID-19

Be aware of your goals

Regardless of the knowledge mobilization tools you use, researchers should be aware of the goals of their knowledge mobilization efforts. There are three overarching goals for consideration: to generate awareness, to inform policy decisions and practice, or to impart tools and new knowledge. Your knowledge mobilization efforts should align to these goals, in addition to considering how your audiences like to access information.

The Knowledge Mobilization Unit is available to help researchers tailor a plan and develop knowledge mobilization products to help ensure their research can have its greatest impact.

Contact the knowledge mobilization unit at kmbunit@yorku.ca

York University announces funding for new COVID-19 research projects

May 6, 2020

Featured illustration of the novel coronavirus

COVID-19 featured image, CDC — An image of the COVID-19 virus that was created by the Centers for Disease Control in the United States

York University has awarded $300,000 in research grants to advance 20 new research projects dedicated to Canada’s fight against COVID-19 and its impacts. The University recently announced a $250,000 research fund and call for proposals to support immediate term COVID-19 research projects. Due to the impressive response, the University increased the fund by $50,000 to support the further development of additional high-potential projects.

York researchers will undertake 10 new projects related to COVID-19 over the next year with special funding of more than $250,000 from the University. Researchers will study the human and public health impacts of the pandemic with a broad goal to find unique responses to the challenges of COVID-19.

The projects selected will address topics ranging from the impact of COVID-19 on child protection investigations, to how textiles and non-woven materials could be modified to boost protection offered by cloth-based personal protective equipment (PPE). York researchers will also examine transmission of the virus through microdroplets and potential implications for ventilation system design, as well as the role that variations in the genomic sequences of the virus play in infection and disease.

An additional 10 projects will receive a total of $50,000 in seed funding to develop their proposals further in order to attract external funding. In all, more than 150 projects were proposed.

“We have an exceptional community of researchers eager to examine the social and health impacts of this pandemic, and York is proud to provide funding to support this important work,” said Rhonda L. Lenton, president and vice-chancellor. “Our researchers are called to serve the public through exploration and discovery and together with our partners in industry, government and community organizations, we are embracing our role in aiding the world’s recovery from COVID-19.”

Researchers were asked to submit their proposals in April to a panel of scholars that chose which projects should be funded, to start immediately.

“This was a competitive grant with a time-sensitive deadline, and I would like to thank all applicants and congratulate those chosen to receive funding.Their projects demonstrate York’s exceptional interdisciplinarity and the University’s ability to respond to the unique challenges posed by COVID-19 in these unprecedented times,” said Vice-President Research & Innovation (VPRI) Amir Asif.

Research funding for this important COVID-19 initiative was provided by three areas within the University: the Office of the President provided $100,000; the Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic contributed $50,000; and the VPRI provided $100,000. Following the number and strength of submissions, the VPRI added $50,000 for seed funding, bringing the total funding to $300,000.

The 10 funded projects are listed below, divided into two categories, with the principal investigators who are leading the research, and funding amount.

Category A – Social Science, Humanities, Education, Arts & Business

Ingrid Veninger, Cinema and Media Arts, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), will work with 10 female filmmakers self-isolating in Australia, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Germany and the United States. The filmmakers will produce a 10-minute cinematic “chapter” in response to COVID-19, joining them together in a 100-minute film that is greater than the sum of its parts. ($15,000)

Daniel Kikulwe, School of Social Work, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), will lead a critical examination asking how Children’s Aid Societies across Ontario are adapting child protection investigation safety interventions, within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, for immigrant and refugee families. ($16,570)

Jinyan Li and Scott Wilkie, Osgoode Hall Law School and Thaddeus Hwong, LA&PS, will evaluate Canadian government support programs, their short-term and permanent impact on the financial health of Canada and lessons from the COVID experience that will assist in developing a fiscal antibody for future emergency responses. ($14,792)

Sue Winton, Faculty of Education, will research how teachers in two school districts, in Alberta and Ontario, enacted online learning policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and examine implications for social inequality. ($19,527)

Aaida Mamuji, Disaster & Emergency Management, School of Administrative Studies, LA&PS, will lead a study on the risks and benefits of contact tracing measures, and establish a foundation for developing guidance mechanisms when digital contact tracing methodologies are deemed a viable solution. ($36,833)

Gertrude Mianda, Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies, Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Tubman Institute and Elaine Coburn, International Studies and the Centre for Feminist Research, Glendon, will co-lead a team examining how gender influences the challenges that measures such as social distancing, closure of schools and travel restrictions pose to African immigrant men and women, and how policies and practices could change. ($23,224)

Category B – Health, Science & Engineering

Jennifer Chen, Cora Young and Trevor VandenBoer, Chemistry, Faculty of Science, are researching how to modify textiles and non-woven materials to derive antimicrobial properties that will increase the protection of cloth-based personal protective equipment (PPE). Existing antimicrobial agents present health risks and environmental toxicity, so they will develop methods to incorporate copper for cloth-based PPE. ($44,000)

Marina Freire-Gormaly, Mechanical Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, will work with Faizul Mohee, director of research at TMBNEstradosinc, to explore how COVID-19 is transmitted by microdroplets that remain suspended in the air, and the implications for improved HVAC design. ($25,000)

A.M. Viens, Health Policy & Management/Global Health, Faculty of Health, Adèle Cassola, investigator, Global Strategy Lab, Roojin Habibi and Steven Hoffman, Osgoode Law School, Eric Kennedy, LA&PS, are leading an interdisciplinary team mapping and evaluating laws and policies, focusing particularly on emergency powers and restrictive public health measures. The project will catalogue and evaluate legal instruments in terms of law, human rights, and commitments under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Parallel projects are collecting similar data, which will enable researchers to compare the success of different government responses to COVID-19 in jurisdictions worldwide that have similar legal traditions. ($39,800)

Vivian Saridakis, Biology, Faculty of Science, Gillian E. Wu, Faculty of Health, are on a team to investigate the hypothesis that variations in the genomic sequences of the virus may play a pivotal role in geographic differences in rates of COVID-19 infection, transmission and deaths. Using bioinformatics and biochemical approaches, they will analyze the genomic variations and their resulting structural or functional changes, in order to establish the roles of these variations in COVID-19 infection and disease. ($20,000)

Mom genes: What makes a bee brain buzz?

May 6, 2020

Small carpenter bees

The extremely common “small carpenter bee” (genus Ceratina) can be found all over the world.

Sandra Rehan, an assistant professor of biology at York University who has dedicated much of her career to studying the species, describes them as “often overlooked,” and a very abundant and critical wild pollinator.

These solitary, typically not aggressive bees couldn’t hurt you with a sting even if they tried – but maybe that’s just the way their mothers raised them.

As the principal investigator at The Rehan Lab @ York, Rehan is directing research into the origins of social behaviour in bees like the small carpenters. By observing the bees in their natural environment (living inside sticks) as well as studying comparative genomics in the laboratory, Rehan and her team of researchers are discovering the vital role mother bees play in the genetic and social development of their young.

“There are genes for behaviour,” Rehan explained. “When an individual (bee) forages, guards or cares for offspring, we are interested in what is underlying each heavily regulated trait.

“In terms of studying the evolution of social behaviour, this bee is extremely useful,” said Rehan, noting that the species operate in a malleable system with both solitary and group roles, that provides opportunities to observe long-term parental care. “Not everyone is doing the same thing all the time, so we can look at differences due to ecological factors but also at differences in real-time gene expression and what underlies these different traits.”

Much of what can be learned about bee behaviour begins by “experimentally modifying the social environment,” as Rehan described it. “You can look at a normal system and not know how it works,” she said. “You have to start testing each component to see.”

Having established a baseline of how the bees behave and which genes react when they do, the researchers attempt to perturb the social system and observe how it, along with the bee’s brain, changes.

The work is based on seminal research involving mice and rats which showed a connection between mothers licking and grooming their offspring and a low-stress, low-anxiety, “normative and tolerant” brain.

“When you take away mom, licking and grooming, they become very anxious, avoidant and aggressive with each other,” Rehan explained. “Not being cared for fundamentally changes their behaviour.”

Intrigued by these findings, Rehan has been testing the theory with populations of small carpenter bees.

“It turns out, they tell the same story,” Rehan said. “We can use these bees to understand effect of maternal care on offspring behaviour.”

Female small carpenter bee in a stick nest

In a study titled “The effect of maternal care on gene expression and DNA methylation in a subsocial bee” published in Nature Communications, Rehan and her team found that when mother carpenter bees are removed from their populations, otherwise calm and tolerant bees begin to avoid each other or become aggressive to one another.

This change can be observed easily in the bees’ behaviour when the mother is gone, but in order to see it in gene expression, Rehan and her team need to look at what the bees’ brains look like frozen, literally, in time.

The field aspect of this research involves translocating the bees’ stick habitats for observation, watching individuals interact, and identifying a bee, or bees – in this case, the mother – to remove from the group.

A subject is put in a small container, the kind takeout dipping sauce comes in, where it can be paint marked, measured, examined for wear and then either kept in observation nests for further study or frozen so its brain can be extracted.

Once a bee brain is frozen and removed, Rehan and her team are able to examine thousands of genes regulated under different conditions to determine which genes and regulatory networks are associated with certain social behaviours and their related social environment.

This is how they can see that the presence of a mother has a significant impact on the makeup of a small carpenter bee’s behaviour.

The researchers’ conclusions aren’t just limited to small groups of the species; they also found that the same gene regulatory networks underly both simple and complex societies, suggesting that this kind of “hard wiring” is in place well before the elaboration of queen and workers castes – a foundational finding for this field.

For Rehan, this demonstrates that the presence of a mother and maternal care for an otherwise solitary being is fundamental to accepting a society and wanting to be with kin. She believes that as species develop their social structures, maternal care may be a critical first step.

“That could be the golden ticket to understanding how societies evolved,” she said.

Rehan, who joined York in 2019, hopes to continue studying bees from novel perspectives, such as exploring how they are interacting with increasingly urban ecologies, and believes the interdisciplinary nature of her lab positions her researchers to answer complex questions with a collaborative approach.

She noted that, likely due to general concern that bees aren’t doing well, everyday people seem much more interested in bees than they were a decade ago. “They think they are cute, they are important, they want to learn about them,” she said.

While many academics and enthusiasts typically focus their interests on non-native honeybees and pollination systems, Rehan’s lab is unique in specifically studying native species including the small carpenter bees from this perspective.

“There is so much untapped potential,” Rehan said. “It is a unique niche that students come to me to work on. There are so many open questions.”

By Aaron Manton, communications officer, YFile

Welcome to the May 2020 issue of ‘Brainstorm’

April 30, 2020

“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.

York University Libraries create a new, globally accessible COVID-19 research guide
In an initiative spearheaded by the Dean of Libraries, Joy Kirchner, York University Libraries has created a comprehensive new resource for researchers around the world that is devoted exclusively to COVID-19, and it could not be timelier.

Study predicts brain tumour response to therapy, could improve patient outcomes
A York University researcher, who led a team from U of T and Sunnybrook, undertook a study to predict whether a metastatic brain tumour would respond to radiotherapy or not. Early alterations in treatment, based on the prediction, could improve patient outcomes.

Limitless possibilities: ‘Curious Creatures’ takes VR to a whole new level
A mind-blowing project from AMPD immerses human participants in virtual reality (VR) environments where they interact with computers to, collectively, build the experience.

Researcher creates practitioners’ resource that supports people with disabilities
A professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science led a study that looked at resources for practitioners to use while working with individuals with disabilities engaging in physical activities. She and her team built an important new tool for these practitioners.

New book on breast cancer shifts narrative away from happy survivor
Interdisciplinary scholar in the health humanities and critical social sciences, creative writer and poet Emilia Nielsen turns conventional breast cancer narratives on their head in a new book that considers the complexity of emotions, including rage, that many women feel associated with this disease.

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.

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SSHRC Partnership Grant, just under $2.5 M, awarded to AMPD Professor Laura Levin