Highly applicable research could help brain surgeons target disease

April 2, 2020

This new research could help surgeons learn more about the patient’s brain before operating.

Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Visual-Motor Neuroscience and Scientific Director of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA), Professor Doug Crawford has focused his research for the past two decades on the control of visual gaze in 3D space, eye-hand coordination and spatial memory during eye movements. The Distinguished Research Professor is also a member of the Centre for Vision Research (CVR), an institution that’s leading the way, in a global scale, in human and machine vision research. It was here where some compelling new research took place.

Morteza Sadeh. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois College of Medicine. — Morteza Sadeh. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois College of Medicine

One of Crawford’s graduate students, Morteza Sadeh (now a neurosurgeon at the University of Illinois College of Medicine), led a study that recorded the activity of the superior colliculus, a structure in the brain that’s part of the circuit that transforms sensory input into movement output.

This research was supported by the Canadian Institute of Health Research. The findings, which could help to treat Parkinson’s disease and depression, were published in “Timing Determines Tuning: a Rapid Spatial Transformation in Superior Colliculus Neurons During Reactive Gaze Shifts” in eNeuro (2020).

Crawford and Sadeh sit down with Brainstorm to discuss the significance and applications of this new research.

Q: What were the study’s objectives?

DC: There’s an area of the mid brain called the superior colliculus that has a specific function: If you stimulate this area, it’ll make your eyes and your head move toward a target. It has been believed, for many years, that this area’s involved in converting visual input into the command to turn the eyes and head in the same direction.

Now, the problem is how do you show that? In the past, people tried to separate the visual part from the movement part. They’d shine a light and then have the subject look at it, or they’d shine a light and tell subjects to look the opposite way.

Until now, there wasn’t any technology to show what’s happening in that very short time. That’s where we come in: We wanted to see in a normal eye movement to a visual target, how does this spot, the superior colliculus, convert vision into the movement command. That was the objective.

Q: How did you go about doing this research?

DC: We recorded the activity of individual cells, in the superior colliculus, while the subject was looking at different lights. We flashed lights in the area of space that activates those cells. When the subject turned their eyes and head toward the flashed light, we recorded the eye and head movements and the cell activity.

The brain, with an indication of the superior colliculus. Credit: www.thebrain.mcgill.ca

Then we analysed the data using special software that we developed at York, which allows us to decode, at each point in time, what the neurons are actually encoding. With this new software, we can break that down into very short time periods. Even though these neurons would only be active for 200 milliseconds – that’s one-fifth of a second – we could track through that time period how that code is changing.

Q: What were the key findings, and did anything surprise you?

DC: There are two key findings: one, we expected, our hypothesis; the other was a bit surprising. We expected to find that early on, in what we call a burst of activity, the neurons encoded where the target was, and they encoded where it was relative to my eye. Then, 100 milliseconds later, they were already encoding where the subject wanted to move – that is, the gaze. This involves movements of both the eyes and the head toward the object.

That was our first finding: there’s a very rapid switch from coding, where is the target to where am I going to move my eye. We determined that it would take a person one third of a second to do this.

Then something surprised us. In the superior colliculus, you have different kinds of cells. Some only code the visual response, some only code the movement response and some code both. When we tracked all their activity, we found that they’re all involved in this transformation. We now believe they’re sharing information with each other – so as one develops a new code, it passes it on to its neighbours and, in the end, they all end up doing the same thing.

Q: Is this a “first?”

DC: Yes. We developed the software to do that here. We’re the first to show that, and track what happens in different kinds of cells.

Q: How can this work be applied?

DC: The technology we developed could be applied in pre-surgical recordings in human patients. When you do surgeries, you want to know as much as you can about the area you’re operating on, in advance. This knowledge could help when you’re removing, say, tissue or when you’re doing brain stimulation.

We could apply this to patients to, say, figure out what exactly these neurons are coding in the brain. My lab is collaborating with Dr. Adam Sachs in Ottawa right now. We’ve been applying these exact experiments on different areas of the brain in some of his patients.

MS: The findings of our study could be applied to brain stimulation, which is becoming more popular in terms of its efficacy and its application to movement disorders and psychiatric disorders. This has great potential here.

Q: Could this be used to treat depression and Parkinson’s disease?

MS: Absolutely, both depression and Parkinson’s are examples of the few disorders where brain stimulation is widely used. What we found in this study would be most applicable in terms of movement disorders like Parkinson’s because it’s about control of movement. We could use what we’ve learned to improve deep brain stimulation approaches and targets for treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

A man sitting with hands crossed — The findings of this study would be most applicable in terms of movement disorders, for example Parkinson’s

Q: York University and the CVR are leading the way in this kind of research.

DC: For many years, the Centre for Vision Research (CVR) has been the largest and, we would argue, the best, vision centre in Canada. We’re mostly known for the discovery research, but the Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) grant enabled us to move toward applications. The collaboration I mentioned with Ottawa was funded by VISTA as well as CHIR.

With all this increased support that we have for research, trainees and collaborations with partners, we really do aim to be the top vision centre in the world.

To read the article, visit the website. To read more on the York Centre for Vision Research, see the website. To learn more about VISTA, visit the website. To read more about Doug Crawford, visit his Faculty profile page.

To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new animated video, which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity, such as Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the snapshot infographic, a glimpse of the year’s successes.

By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca

Research exposes unintended consequences of AI for consumers

April 2, 2020

3d rendering robot working with digital display

Distinguished Research Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Russell Belk, has carved a unique niche in academia by delving into artificial intelligence (AI) in a very different way, with the consumer at the centre.

The conclusions of his most recent article, “Machines and Artificial Intelligence” published in the Journal of Marketing Behaviour (2019), are thought-provoking if not foreboding: “The ultimate concern for future generations may not be that we pale intellectually and physically in comparison to the machines we’ve created but rather that we suffer economically at the hands of such machines.”

Belk’s new research raises vital consumer research topics for the future

The article unpacks how we got here, digging into a myriad of topics and profound philosophical questions. “My goal is to stimulate marketing and consumer research into related issues, including the possible results of our current and future engagement with technology,” Belk says.

He is an incredibly prolific academic. His annual list of publications is long, varied and extends beyond conventional consumerism. He digs much deeper to ponder the meaning of possessions, materialism, collecting, sharing, etc.

This work is qualitative, interpretive and cultural in nature. “In a consumer society, our ideas about ourselves are often bound up or represented in what we desire, what we own, and how we use these things,” he explains.

Belk considers our relationship to machines

This article begins with a philosophical examination of humans and our tools – implements that differentiate us from animals and also become extensions of ourselves. Examples of smartphones and laptops are particularly apt.

The tools we create are powerful and fast. We humans then add intelligence, creativity and problem-solving to the mix. But what happens when the machines dip into our domain, when technology threatens to slip from human control? “There is a lingering fear that our machines may out-do, out-smart and out-power us,” Belk says.

Tools and technology are designed to make our lives better, but some fear machines will outsmart humans and that power shift would be dangerous

He considers our engagement with technology and how it entails a sense of ownership, rights and responsibilities. But in the case of a humanoid robot or self-driving car, these tools may have (or develop) their own rights and responsibilities. (Machine/robot ethics is a blossoming field.)

Belk points out that as our machines become more human-like, we become more machine-like. “We magnify our capabilities with hand-held computers, we replace our body parts with prostheses and we may soon modify our genes to procure additional benefits for ourselves and our progeny, including an extended lifespan,” he says.

Looks at issue from moral, existential lens

Belk doesn’t believe there will be a robot rebellion, but instead a series of small concessions. His article profiles developments and speculations involving computers, algorithms, AI, robots, cyborgs, transhumanism, posthumanism and more.

In this, he broadens the discussion to consider what it means to be human and what it means to be a machine, and the idea of a desired extended lifespan. He does this using four lens: the sacred, the moral, the societal and the existential.

Topics for future research: from driverless cars to robots for sex

After this fulsome analysis, Belk introduced vital areas of future consumer research. “These topics bear on future consumer well-being and perhaps even human survival,” he emphasizes.

He believes that the robots entering our homes, streets and factories are problematic. First, there’s the loss of employment. Driverless vehicles, for example, will mean that truck drivers lose their vocation, as will taxi, Uber and Lyft drivers.

Similarly, robots used in retail spaces, hotels, nursing homes and hospitals pose a problem. How willing would consumers be to interact with and trust robots in these settings? Belk wonders. For this reason, robots are given human-sounding voices, and the ability to detect and respond to human emotions.

With population aging, assistant robots could be used for the elderly. This is the Softbank Robotics’ Pepper robot. Reproduced with permission

Interestingly, Belk points out that robots in some cultures are deemed more trustworthy than in other cultures. In Japan, the idea of a robot caring for elderly person is more accepted than in the West.

Then there’s morality. Robots being programmed to act on moral grounds poses another set of issues. How would it work and what if it malfunctioned? What would happen if an autonomous military weapon, or robot-soldier, committed a criminal act, or a self-driving car killed a pedestrian? Who would be held accountable?

If a robot-soldier committed a crime, who would be held accountable?

Then there’s the thorny issue of robots for sex. Some see this as the further dehumanizing of women; others interpret this as a cure for loneliness or a disease-free form of prostitution.

As Belk raises these key questions, he also warns us of the dangers. “It would be nice if robots and AI could be harnessed for the good of humankind, to eliminate poverty and provide a life of leisure for us all,” he says. But he fears that a few wealthy entrepreneurs would further divide the world into haves and have-nots, reinforcing inequity. In this article, Belk underscores the irony: We may suffer at the hands of the machines we made to improve our lives.

To learn more about Belk’s work, visit his faculty profile page. To read the article in the Journal of Marketing Behaviour, visit the website.

By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca

New book paints vivid picture of mariners’ world in the Age of Exploration

April 2, 2020

Schotte takes readers on a 250-year journey as the science behind sailing became more sophisticated.

In world history, it wasn’t long ago when the oceans were considered unknowably mysterious as our understanding of the natural world was in its infancy. Additionally, to a mariner in the 1550s, the tides, the heavens, inclement weather and pirates threatened their journey at every step.

This is where History Professor Margaret Schotte begins, and from here she takes readers on a 250-year journey as the science behind sailing became more sophisticated; nations acquired technical proficiency from one another; and sea voyages became increasingly and inextricably bound to cultural and socio-economic developments, capitalism, imperialism, nationalism and more.

To Schotte, navigating the sea provides unique insights into world history during a particularly breathtaking era: The Age of Exploration.

Her richly illustrated book, Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), recreates the experience of learning to sail, a complex apprenticeship that took place not only onboard ships but in classrooms in Europe’s port communities. This scholarly monograph provides a detailed picture of what it meant to become an expert navigator.

Margaret Schotte and her book, Sailing School. Cover reproduced with permission of the publisher

The book was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the Barr Ferree Fund.

Author hooks readers at the very start

Edward Riou, age 14 (1776), painted by Daniel Gardner. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

It is immediately clear that Schotte knows how to draw readers into sweeping historic events, enriching the story with detail and accuracy to inspire awe and underscore the significance of nautical advancements.

Chapter One, for example, begins: “At the dawn of the 17th century, a group of nautical men assembled in an elegant home on one of Amsterdam’s grand canals. They gathered around a large table: nine well-to-do men, wearing the flat-brimmed beaver hats and fitted waistcoats fashionable among merchants and sea captains alike.”

Who wouldn’t have wanted to be around that illustrious table?

Skipping ahead, another chapter recounts the heroic tale of a 26-year-old British naval officer, Edward Riou, who kept his damaged vessel, the Guardian, afloat for two months in 1789, thanks to the nautical lessons he’d learned as a student.

Pivotal times in navigation history are highlighted

In this book, Schotte focuses on key points: Seville around 1552; Amsterdam in 1600; Dieppe around 1675; London in 1683; the Netherlands around 1710 and the Southern Indian Ocean in 1789. Within these historic pinpoints, she establishes the socio-economic and cultural context of scientific advancements, such as the drive for commerce and trade in 17th-century Amsterdam or the impact the printing press had on navigation.

She connects nautical history into a broader history of civilization and shows how members of the marine community “shaped politics and finance, appeared in art and literature and pushed for new solutions to long-standing, complex scientific problems.”

Publication commences when navigation was a mishmash of fields

Aristotelian cosmography diagram (1545). Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, Madrid.

In telling the story, Schotte starts at the beginning of the accumulation of scientific knowledge, noting that the way sailing was discussed for centuries incorporated a mishmash of fields, including pseudo scientific disciplines such as astrology and the zodiac, alongside cosmology, astronomy, geometry and mathematics.

One of the first steps forward was in 1551, when Spanish humanist Martín Cortés penned a popular book on navigation, which, says Schotte, “set the tone for navigational textbooks for years to come.”

She reminds us, however, that most people were illiterate, and many navigators tended to value experience over book learning. Furthermore, there was resistance to scientific progress: Englishman William Bourne, for example, claimed that experienced captains were resistant to “newfangled tools,” such as maps.

Nations learned from nations, nautical classrooms sprung up

But slowly the introduction of instruments, charts and maps fueled advancements. The interplay among nations, which Schotte discusses, is interesting. The English learned from the Spanish: In 1558, Captain Stephen Borough, from Dover, visited Seville and viewed the instruments and manuals used to teach Spanish navigators, then brought back this knowledge to the court of Queen Elizabeth I.

As well, naval administrators, keen to get a leg up on the competition, sought to find out what neighbouring countries were developing. Soon nautical classrooms, textbooks and examination processes spread across Europe.

Several inventions were game changing

Comparing the 1400s to the 1500s, the average length of voyages more than tripled.

Schotte describes the key instruments that facilitated this great change. For example, by the 16^th century, mariners were able to ascertain latitude using news tools like a cross-staff, backstaff or mariner’s ring. A navigator using a backstaff, for example, looked at the sun to measure its altitude.

Three tools, from left: (1) Backstaff (Amsterdam, 1637). Leiden University Library (2313 F 14). (2) Golden Number (1605), from ‘Tractaet des Tijdts' Deur Robert Cuningham (B4179), Collection Maritiem Museum Rotterdam. (3) Traverse board (Amsterdam, 1840-60). Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam. — Three tools, from left: (1) Backstaff (Amsterdam, 1637). Leiden University Library (2313 F 14). (2) Golden Number (1605), from ‘Tractaet des Tijdts’ Deur Robert Cuningham (B4179), Collection Maritiem Museum Rotterdam. (3) Traverse board (Amsterdam, 1840-60). Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam.

The Golden Number was another key tool, albeit non-technical. It involved the navigator counting with his fingers and thumb to figure out the epact – the number of days by which the solar year differs from the lunar year. (Knowledge of sun and stars became increasingly important as well as math skills related to nature and geographic knowledge.)

Early modern navigators also used Traverse boards, wooden boards marked with the points of the compass with holes and pegs by which to indicate the course of the ship and to calculate distance.

From technical advancements to highly charged personal stories, Schotte’s book is a fascinating read.

To read more about Schotte’s work, visit her faculty profile page. To learn more about the book, visit the website.

By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca

AI fuels research that could lead to positive impact on health care

April 2, 2020

Artificial intelligence: A human hand shakes a robot hand

Meet four York University researchers: Lauren Sergio and Doug Crawford have academic backgrounds in physiology; Shayna Rosenbaum has a PhD in psychology; Joel Zylberberg has a doctorate in physics.

They share two things in common: They focus on neuroscience – the study of the brain and its functions – and they leverage advanced computing technology using artificial intelligence (AI) in their research ventures, the application of which could have a profound and positive impact on health care.

In a nondescript room in the Sherman Health Sciences Research Centre, Lauren Sergio sits down and places her right arm in a sleeve on an armrest. It’s an odd-looking contraption; the lower part looks like a sling attached to a video game joystick.

Sergio is putting herself in the shoes of a person who has suffered a stroke that has hampered mobility in the arm. That’s how strokes do their damage – a blood clot shoots to the brain and shuts off motor function. But what if you combined AI engineering and neuroscience research? What if that AI could tell your brain what to do to get your arm to reach and grab something?

Sergio, York Research Chair in Brain Health and Skilled Performance and core member of VISTA (Vision: Science to Applications), is working with IT Universe, a Toronto-based tech company, to develop the sleeve encasing Sergio’s arm. A real stroke patient would also have an EEG cap on their head that measures brainwaves and virtual reality goggles over their eyes showing images of objects, such as a balloon. “Then we say, ‘Look at the red balloon and think about moving your hand to it,’” Sergio explains.

Sergio demonstrates how a person’s arm fits into the devise. Photo credit: Paul Fraumeni

Given the disconnection between the brain and the arm that the stroke would have caused, the patient wouldn’t be able to reach the balloon. But the robotic arm can. The team teaches it – through machine learning – to imitate or duplicate the brain activity associated with arm movement. Eventually, after the robot has been trained sufficiently, it takes that information, transmits it to the robotic arm, and facilitates the patient’s hold on the balloon. And in repeating this task, the robotic arm feeds directions back to the human brain. “This helps repair those networks in the brain that were severed by the stroke.”

This kind of collaborative research, with a focus solving real-life problems, is exactly what Doug Crawford had in mind when he pitched VISTA to the federal government’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF). In 2016, CFREF awarded York $33 million over a seven-year period. With matching funds from the University and contributions from industry partners, the total funding package is $120 million.

“VISTA’s goal is to take the outstanding model of interdisciplinary research laid down by York’s Centre for Vision Research and expand on it to bring even more researchers from a greater of variety of areas together,” says Crawford, VISTA director and Canada Research Chair in Visual-Motor Neuroscience. “And our work is translational – meaning, fundamental [or discovery] research is important, but we’ll see it through to application.”

There are over 80 researchers associated with VISTA. The range of disciplines is breathtaking – from computer science to forestry, from pain management to theatre performance. The potential applications of their work are equally mind-blowing – from the quality of animation in a movie to improving children’s environmental health.

Shayna Rosenbaum is York Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and a core member of VISTA. She focuses on clinical neuropsychology, the study of the relationships between brain and behaviour. Her area of specialization is the role of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that stores information we need so we can navigate in our daily lives.

“People with Alzheimer’s become disoriented easily. That’s partially because they’re unable to learn how objects relate to one another, including landmarks. When they try to find their way in a new place, they often have difficulty.

“We’re interested in what happens when the person navigates familiar places. Because, even then, individuals in early stages of Alzheimer’s can have difficulties. So, we’d like to detect this as early as possible because we think it’s a good gauge of whether someone will develop the disease,” Rosenbaum explains.

VISTA has enabled her to collaborate with James Elder (York Research Chair in Human and Computer Vision) and Matthew Kyan, both in York’s department of electrical engineering and computer science. They are leveraging AI to develop real-world tasks that can be used to test older adults’ navigation abilities.

“We create situations in the computer program where an older adult has to circumvent the original, known route to get to a particular location. Some patients have difficulties generating the detour. They eventually arrive at their goal location, but it’s very inefficient.”

Rosenbaum has applied for funding for a project involving the creation of a computer model of the interior of Baycrest Health Sciences, a research and teaching hospital for older adults. “We’ll put the model into virtual reality and use it to see how people learn to navigate in Baycrest. We hope to pre-expose individuals who plan to move into Baycrest to reduce instances of wandering or disorientation. Our technology might give them a sense of their new space and reduce their anxiety.”

Joel Zylberberg came to York in 2019. He’s the Canada Research Chair in Computational Neuroscience, a fellow at CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) and a core member of VISTA.

Among his many ventures in applying AI to neuroscience, Zylberberg is looking into using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) to teach computers to mimic brain activity. His goal is to help radiologists with their diagnoses.

“A few University of Alberta radiologists have agreed to sit in a scanner and examine radiology images of their patients and do their diagnostic tasks, while we look at what their brains are doing. Then we’ll use their brains as the teacher for our deep neural nets,” Zylberberg explains.

He says the goal isn’t to replace radiologists with machines. “It’s more likely to be a critical decision support tool: the radiologist would look at the image, feed it into computer software that mimics the learning ability of the brain and then study the output to see if they missed something.”

All four of these York researchers are excited about the possibilities, while also aware of the challenges that the brain presents.

“AI can help us take the brain signals and try to figure out what the brain might be trying to send from the spinal cord to the muscles to the arm – something a baby picks up easily within days,” says Sergio. “The technology isn’t perfect yet, but we’re making huge leaps. What’s happening in robotics now is astounding.”

For Zylberberg, what he values most is the multidisciplinary nature of VISTA. “My lab’s in a weird kind of space. We’re not biologists or computer scientists. I’m a physics professor but I’m not much of a physicist. So, without something like VISTA there wouldn’t be a research community that my lab would fit into. VISTA has assembled an incredible community that covers the whole spectrum.”

Rosenbaum stresses the real-world focus. “VISTA has really allowed for this kind of work I’m doing. It’s important to show the link between the fundamental [discovery] research that we do, learning how the brain and AI work, and how that might apply to the real world and actually help people. VISTA is giving us that opportunity.”

To learn about Sergio’s work, visit her Faculty profile page. For more information on Rosenbaum, visit her Faculty profile page. To learn more about Zylberberg, see his profile page. For more on Crawford and VISTA, visit the VISTA website.

Paul Fraumeni is an award-winning freelance writer who has specialized in covering university research for more than 20 years. To learn more, visit his website.

Zika vaccine study finds inoculating would work and be cost effective

April 2, 2020

The Zika virus, to most people, is harmless. But to pregnant women it can be devastating because this virus is associated with serious neurologic disorders in newborns.

Professor and Director of York University’s Agent-Based Modelling Laboratory Seyed Moghadas and his then-graduate student, Affan Shoukat (now a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University), led a study that concluded that the vaccination of young women would prevent Zika from infecting these individuals in about 75 per cent of them. The vaccine would also be cost effective at under $16 (US dollars) per vaccination in most countries in the Americas.

“Our findings indicate that targeted vaccination of women of reproductive age is a noteworthy preventive measure for mitigating the effects of Zika virus infection in future outbreaks,” says Moghadas, an expert in mathematical and computational modelling in epidemiology and immunology.

Zika is transmitted by mosquitoes. It is particularly dangerous for pregnant women.

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Financial support also came from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for the establishment of the Areto Computational Cluster at York, used to perform the simulations.

The article, “Cost-effectiveness of Prophylactic Zika Virus Vaccine in the Americas,” was published in the high impact journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (2019).

Economic burden in the billions

The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne virus that was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in monkeys. It was later identified in humans in 1952 in Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. Today, 87 countries and territories have reported evidence of mosquito-transmitted Zika infection, according to the World Health Organization (July 2019, WHO).

The economic burden is estimated to be substantial, ranging from $7 to $18 billion in short-term costs and $3.2 to $39 billion in long-term costs.

A vaccine could be a game changer.

Zika virus devastating during pregnancy

To the average person, this virus causes mild disease. Most people never develop symptoms. If they do, these signs include fever, rash, muscle and joint pain or headache, and usually last two to seven days.

People who have contracted Zika face an increased risk of neurologic complications, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rapid-onset of muscle weakness; neuropathy (nerve damage); or myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that can result in paralysis and sensory loss.

Zika virus infection during pregnancy is very dangerous. It can cause infants to be born with congenital malformations – primarily, microcephaly. This is a condition where a baby’s head is much smaller than expected. It means that the baby’s brain has not developed properly during pregnancy or has stopped growing after birth.

Researchers develop simulation model to see how effective vaccine would be

The idea of a vaccine, more specifically how effective this would be, is something that Moghadas has been working on for some time. In this article, he and Shoukat developed a simulation model where the human population was divided into four categories:

Susceptible;
Exposed and incubating;
Infectious; and
Recovering.

The mosquito population was also divided into groups: susceptible, exposed and incubating, and infectious groups. (Only three groups, not four as the human population. Why? Because once a mosquito is infectious, it cannot recover; it will be infectious for the rest of its lifespan, which is days to weeks.)

The team also looked at country-specific demographics (age and sex distributions and fertility rates), and calibrated it to attack rates, which were based on 2015–2017 outbreaks. The countries ranged from Belize to Brazil, Peru to Panama.

Seyed Moghadas and the Areto Computational Cluster, used to perform the simulations

“These attack rates were considered to be the proportion of the population that was infected (representing the level of herd immunity) at the start of simulations for each country in the evaluation of vaccination scenarios,” Shoukat explains. (Herd Immunity is where the majority of individuals in a population have developed immunity to a pathogen. Because so many people within the community are unable to contract the disease, this reduces the likelihood that those who haven’t developed immunity will contract the disease.)

The researchers also factored in the costs associated with the disease and vaccination.

Vaccination results

In this simulation, the vaccination coverage was 60 per cent for women of reproductive age. For pregnant women, it was 80 per cent initially and continued at 80 per cent throughout the simulations. Averaging these numbers in their computer simulations, the researchers concluded that the vaccination of young women would prevent Zika from infecting about 75 per cent of these individuals.

They also calculated the reduction of fetal microcephaly during pregnancy (if vaccination had occurred), and found a marked reduction, within the range of 74 to 92 per cent. The median percentage reduction was over 80 per cent in all countries.

Cost-effectiveness results

The researchers considered both short- and long-term medical costs specific to each country. Short-term costs included physician visits and diagnostic tests for pregnant women. Long-term costs included disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs, the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death) with disability weight (i.e., severe intellectual disability) extracted from a Global Burden of Disease study (published in The Lancet in 2013).

The researchers concluded that “a single-dose vaccination program is cost-effective for all countries studied.” Specifically, the vaccine would be cost effective at under $16 (US) per vaccination.

Figure 1 offers a country-by-country break-down. (Note: “Cost-saving” and “cost-effective” are not the same thing. “Cost-saving” refers to preventive care that decreases costs. If the benefits are sufficiently large compared to the costs, the intervention is “cost-effective” even if it doesn’t save money.)

Figure 1: Vaccination costs per individual by country

This work could help to inform health policy

Moghadas emphasizes the policy applicability of this work: “We want to develop knowledge translation methods to bridge existing gaps between theory, policy and practice. Modeling outcomes should be translated to inform health policy development and support decision-making.”

To read the article, visit the website. To learn more about Moghadas, visit his Faculty profile page.

By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca

New study finds higher social capital and trust leads to better COVID-19 response in some U.S. states

April 1, 2020

COVID outbreak image

In the United States, those states that are responding more quickly and effectively to the COVID-19 crisis also seem to have higher levels of social capital built up and citizens who trust more in their governments and health agencies, according to new research by York University Assistant Professor of sociology Cary Wu and team.

The paper was published in the journal Contexts.

Social capital refers to the networks of relationships between people who live, work and play in any one place, and speaks to the strength of their communities, workplaces and other social groups.

As pandemics such as COVID-19 spread because of our social nature, having high social capital and trust is one way to help prevent spread.

“States with higher trust and social capital are better able to mobilize resources and foster collective actions,” says Wu of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

The researchers found that states with the most social capital and trust positively predicted which ones tended to have higher testing rates. This was regardless of household income, income inequality, racial diversity or whether the states had a Republican or Democratic leaning.

“People with little confidence in their government or health agencies are less likely to comply with prevention and control measures,” says Wu.

The researchers used data from the Social Capital Project to ascertain the levels of social capital and trust in each state.

Do you have a story to share about how you are coping, or what you are doing differently, during the COVID-19 pandemic? Email us at yfile@yorku.ca.

Social distancing and why it works, explained by math Professor Jane Heffernan

March 29, 2020

social distance covid FEATURED

Social distancing: It’s a term that has become a buzzword associated with the global pandemic of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. It saturates the news, social media, our conversations with family, friends and neighbours. Some of us have become watchdogs of social distancing, monitoring our neighborhoods and hoping for it to happen in abundance; others of us have taken to spreading the call-to-action on social distancing in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. Many of us are realizing how, on days before the pandemic, we never really monitored the distance between ourselves and others.

Stay six feet apart (that’s two metres, for the metric-minded), and don’t gather in groups. That’s what Canadians have been asked to do.

But what does it mean from a mathematical lens? What is the mathematical evidence that shows social distancing to be effective in curbing this outbreak?

York University Faculty of Science Professor Jane Heffernan says keeping a specific physical distance away from others does prevent the spread of the virus – that can be expelled by cough, sneeze and breathing – by creating a spatial barrier from an infected person.

Heffernan, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York Research Chair (Tier II), and communications director of the Centre for Disease Modelling (CDM), says the math shows that social distancing can indeed stop a chain of exposures.

“Someone can infect a person, and then that person can infect someone else, and so on… but if one person is social distancing in this chain, all of the possible infections that come after them will not happen,” she said.

Ontario, and Canada, have been taking proactive steps to undertake and promote social distancing, but different organizations and institutions are approaching this with different measures and timelines. In order for it to have the greatest effect on “flattening the curve,” Heffernan says we should be engaging now, and remain diligent not to allow our social distancing behaviour to wane.

“If it does wane,” she says, “we will not be able to control transmission effectively. Additionally, we must keep up our social distancing behaviours until we are told that we are allowed to decrease them. If we decrease our behaviours too early, it is possible that we can bring on a second wave of infection.”

An image of the COVID-19 virus (Image: CDC)

The challenges then become maintaining the behavior – and complying for as long as it takes. This may seem like a daunting task given all that is still unknown about the virus. For instance, we don’t actually know where we sit on the “curve,” and Heffernan agrees it is too early to predict when the peak in Ontario will happen.

“I don’t expect to see a peak in the short term. There is a lot of uncertainty in data right now, so peak projection times from models have a broad range. Shorter estimates are a month. Longer estimates are a few months,” she said.

The provincial government recently announced that it will extend the school closures beyond the initial two-week closure, and school-aged children won’t be back in the classroom on April 6. Heffernan agrees this is the right approach; however, how long the schools stay shuttered remains to be seen.

Based on her own research on social distancing, Heffernan says the more diligent people are in adhering to social distancing measures now – even though it may feel disruptive – the shorter the time frame will be that we need to adhere to them.

“Sometimes it is hard to adhere when the infection is not ‘observed’ as being ‘close’ to a person. We must all remember that our behaviour affects not only those ‘close’ to us, but all of the other people that would be down a chain of infections,” she said.

Heffernan’s research shows that not only does social distancing slow the spread of disease, it also decreases the infection burden on the healthcare system. It also shows that when social distancing behaviours begin to wane – near the end of an epidemic – this poses a great risk for a second wave of the infection.

“We MUST be diligent in our social distancing behaviours until we know we are allowed to relax them,” she said. “It’s best to keep your circle very small for now.”

By Ashley Goodfellow Craig, deputy editor, YFile

New COVID-19 rapid research funding for York professors

March 25, 2020

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

Three more York University professors will receive $703,217 in funding for COVID-19 related research to better inform the best way forward, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announced. Two other York researchers are co-applicants on another $666,667.

This new funding follows a previous COVID-19 rapid research funding announced on March 6 by CIHR for three other York projects.

The researchers from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) and the Faculty of Science will look at how supply chain disruptions are affecting medical and pharmaceutical industries and how social media is spreading misinformation, fostering racism and xenophobia, and hindering the capacity of public health officials to communicate scientific facts. They will also evaluate how intervention strategies can help decision-makers identify the type and intensity of control measures needed for containment.

“York University is thrilled that three additional researchers from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the Faculty of Science will receive funding for COVID-19 rapid research projects,” said Interim Vice-President Research & Innovation Rui Wang. “This new funding will contribute to a global effort and could have a huge impact on how information is delivered, supply chains work and the rate of disease transmission in future outbreaks.”

Funding will come from CIHR in partnership with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the International Development Research Centre, and Genome Canada.

Professor Harris Ali of LA&PS and the Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation (ADERSIM) facility at York and Associate Professor Fuyuki Kurasawa of the Department of Sociology in LA&PS, will receive $308,183 to study how social media misinformation shapes public health and lay responses to COVID-19, and what public health strategies and public policies can be adopted to combat it and its stigmatizing social impacts. They will track misinformation about COVID-19 on Western social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, and Chinese social media platforms, such as WeChat, Weibo, Tencent, and Toutiao. Read more in this Conversation Canada piece.

Computational epidemiology Professor Seyed Moghadas of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the Faculty of Science will receive $264,434 from CIHR to develop new and adapt existing mathematical models to predict the scope of disease transmission, potential outbreaks and clinical attack rates. He will also project what services hospitals will require and assess the effects of interventions, such as quarantine, self-reporting, isolation and school closures. In addition, he will evaluate the effectiveness of a vaccine and best distribution scenarios based on population age and risk.

Associate Professor (Decision Sciences) Fuminori Toyasaki of the School of Administrative Studies in LA&PS and ADERSIM will receive $130,600 from CIHR to study countermeasures to the supply chain disruptions in medical and pharmaceutical industries. His project will focus on the supply chain disruptions that medical and pharmaceutical industries are currently facing as a result of strategic hoarding by suppliers and consumer panic buying. In addition, he will explore the feasibility of two countermeasures – a collaborative stock sharing/transshipment system and an incentive contract with a potential second source that can produce highly customized medical and pharmaceutical items.

Professor Jianhong Wu of the Faculty of Science and director of ADERSIM is leading a national COVID-19 math modelling team. The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences has received $666,667, along with local and international partners, to mobilize this national network of infectious disease modellers to develop mathematical technologies to assess transmission risk of COVID-19 and project outbreak trajectories. Co-applicants include Associate Professor Ali Asgary, deputy director of ADERSIM and the School of Administrative Studies in LA&PS, Professor Jane Heffernan and Professor Huaiping Zhu of the Faculty of Science and director of the Centre for Disease Modelling, and Professor Adriano Solis of the School of Administrative Studies in LA&PS. These researchers are evaluating public health interventions for its prevention and control, and to inform public health policy makers. Their goal is to conduct multi-scale modelling to assist in the development of effective intervention and mitigation strategies.

For more information, visit the CIHR project website.

York U prof. develops simulation model to help families understand how to ‘flatten the curve’

March 25, 2020

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

COVID-19 continues to spread globally and the phrase flatten the curve has now entered our every-day language. To help people better understand the expression, a simple model was developed to depict the rate of infection. Health officials say that flattening the curve will lead to fewer infections and ease the burden on the health care system.

As nations and governments use this model to encourage interventions like social and physical distancing, isolation and basic hygiene, York Professor Ali Asgary from the Disaster & Emergency Management (School of Administrative Studies) and the Advanced Disaster, Emergency & Rapid Response Simulation (ADERSIM) has developed an agent-based simulation to help people understand how the virus spreads within a family unit and how they can work to flatten the curve at home and within their communities.

Test the “Flattening the Curve at Family Level” simulation here.

“I developed this as an interactive educational tool. It uses the same concept of the national models, but it is designed specifically for families. By running different scenarios, it can help people to visualize what flattening the curve looks like with or without interventions,” said Asgary.

If someone in your family unit gets the virus, Asgary notes that there are two probable outcomes. Either everyone becomes infected in a short period of time, and there is limited capacity at home to look after each other, or with physical distancing, self isolation and extra hygiene measures you can stagger the infection among family members. This would mean that there is always someone to care or help others.

The same logic transfers over to the strain that would affect health care systems if there are no interventions nationally. “Hopefully, it builds some understanding, and serves as a good analogy for how we should all be trying to flatten the national curve,” said Asgary.

The simulation is available to the public, along with other interactive visuals surrounding the pandemic, through ADERSIM. According to Asgary, academics in disaster and emergency management have a role to play by helping to enhance understanding of the situation and disseminating research that can assist with prevention and mitigation measures.

“It’s always good to look into new methods that help to change our perspective. ADERSIM has developed the capacity to create simulations like these for the direct benefit of society. While most simulations and modelling are looking at regional, national, or global levels, this simulation is focusing on the family level which should help people to recognize the role they have to play,” said Asgary.

Watch the video below to see a demonstration on how the simulation works.

Faculty of Health Professor David Hood named finalist for prestigious national award

March 20, 2020

David Hood

David Hood, a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies in the Faculty of Health, is a finalist for the 2019 Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentorship. The award is presented annually by the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS). A Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cell Physiology, Hood is also the director of the Muscle Health Research Centre at York University.

Hood is among four finalists for this prestigious award, which recognizes graduate faculty members with a record of outstanding mentorship of graduate students under their supervision.

David Hood in his lab at York University

“The most rewarding experiences that I have had in academia involve observing the result of mentorship, guidance and support efforts that I have given to graduate students and other trainees,” said Hood. “They transition from novice experimentalists to highly competent scientists who have the ability to publish and communicate science in very effective ways. And they end up with good jobs.”

Known for encouraging, inspiring and supporting his students to reach their full potential, Hood’s nominators praise his work to establish a learning environment that maximizes the skills and abilities of each student while also providing opportunities for collaborating on new and unexpected discoveries.

“Being a finalist for this national mentorship award is extremely rewarding and I am grateful to have been nominated,” said Hood.

Hood said he uses an individualized approach to advising his trainees noting that every student is different and “cookie-cutter” approaches don’t work for everyone. He has developed a solid program of skill advancement, involving lab technical developments in biochemistry and physiology research, along with strategies that aid in the formation of verbal and illustrative communication skills. A main strategy that he deploys involves the scheduling of lab meetings that are held weekly, without fail, to hone verbal skills related to the discussion of emerging literature, as well as critical reviews of recent data acquired experimentally. This is an important part of working with graduate students, said Hood, because “we are often requested to publish reviews of the literature in our field of muscle mitochondrial adaptations to exercise.”

Hood makes use of these opportunities to help develop trainee writing and researching skills as they survey the literature. This approach helps the graduate students he supervises to develop a solid foundation for the field, and enhances their CVs considerably, to make them more marketable.

An important part of the learning experience that Hood offers graduate students is the chance to participate in the Muscle Health Awareness Day (MHAD). This annual event has developed into an important local conference that caters not only to scientists and trainees in southern Ontario, but also serves to recruit colleagues from Quebec, New York state and Michigan.

“In 2020, we will be hosting our 11th annual MHAD,” said Hood. “Each year 50 to 60 graduate student posters are displayed, and trainees listen to high-level talks presented by newly emerging, as well as seasoned scientists in the field, covering topics in skeletal muscle, heart and blood vessel physiology, adaptations and disease. It’s a wonderful experience for all, but it is especially rewarding, and fully attainable because of the low cost, for young trainees who have never presented at a conference previously.”

In addition to supervising graduate students, Hood is a highly accomplished researcher. His lab focuses on how mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, are newly made and assembled in muscle when we exercise regularly. The payback of this exercise to develop new muscle, said Hood, is an improved metabolism, accompanied by considerable health benefits. These include better metabolism of fats, less muscle fatigue (i.e. more endurance), and the maintenance of a healthy body weight.

“As we age, the beneficial effects of exercise on mitochondria can help to preserve muscle mass and to prevent the frailty and weakness that is so evident in our aging populations, affecting both men and women,” said Hood. “The lab has studied the underlying biochemistry and molecular control of how mitochondria are synthesized, starting with the signals that initiate the process with the very first exercise bout. More recently, we have also turned toward an understanding of how exercise can also help to remove unhealthy and poorly functioning mitochondria from muscle, clearing the way for more efficient energy production, accompanied by less formation of negative by-products, like damaging free radicals.”

Perhaps this comment from one of his former graduate students best summarizes why Hood is a finalist for the CAGS award: “Dr. Hood instructed me with patience and understanding, teaching me discipline, research techniques, and the basis of scientific research. Most importantly, he taught me how to balance the various aspects of my life as a graduate student.”

To learn more about the Hood lab, visit https://dhood.lab.yorku.ca/.

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