Tag: VP Research and Innovation

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PhD student develops tool for improved symptom management in oncology patients

Oncology FEATURED image Brainstorm
Oncology FEATURED image Brainstorm

New research from York University represents a remarkable step forward in personalized breast cancer treatment. Lassonde School of Engineering PhD student Khadijeh Saednia, in collaboration with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the University of Toronto and others, investigated a novel application of machine learning to detect skin toxicity (or damage) from breast radiotherapy much earlier than was previously possible.

This study proved the feasibility of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted image-guided approaches – specifically, Quantitative Thermal Imaging (QTI) – as a new clinical decision support tool for symptom management in the breast radiation oncology clinic.

This was possible through earlier detection using machine learning methodologies: “Patients undergoing radiation therapy, or RT, would benefit from earlier detection of skin damage or toxicity because symptom management could be introduced sooner than is the existing practice. These individuals could experience an improved quality of life during and beyond treatment,” Saednia emphasizes.

A significant patient population could benefit from early detection and early intervention for symptom management
A significant patient population could benefit from early detection and early intervention for symptom management

This original research was supervised by Lassonde Professor Ali Sadeghi-Naini, York Research Chair in Quantitative Imaging and Smart Biomarkers, and Sunnybrook Scientist Dr. William Tran, funded by the Terry Fox Foundation and published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics (2020).

Radiation therapy, a key part of post-operative management, often has side effects on the skin

This research fills an important void. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Canadian women (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers). It is the second leading cause of death from cancer in Canadian women. It is estimated that, in 2020, 27,400 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer – that’s 25 per cent of all new cancer cases in women in 2020. (Canadian Cancer Society)

RT, which uses ionizing radiation to target residual cancer cells of the breast, is a crucial component in the postoperative management of breast cancer. But the side effects from this treatment may affect patients’ quality of life since the skin is susceptible to radiation damage and toxicity. This can mean pain and discomfort for these patients. That’s one of the reasons why patients undergoing RT are carefully monitored.

From the left: Ali Sadeghi-Naini and Khadijeh Saednia
From the left: Ali Sadeghi-Naini and Khadijeh Saednia

Saednia, who specializes in AI and machine learning for cancer management, turned her attention to one common side effect of RT in breast cancer patients: dermatitis. She suspected that thermal imaging in conjunction with machine learning could help because it could detect the damage earlier than previously possible.

She explains how this would work: “Physiological changes associated with radiation-induced dermatitis, such as inflammation, may also increase body-surface temperature, which can be detected by thermal imaging.” Quantitative imaging techniques coupled with machine learning can potentially be adapted to detect such alterations earlier after the start of RT.

So, she investigated the use of QTI biomarkers and machine learning for early detection of radiation-induced skin toxicity in breast cancer.

Ninety patients recruited from Sunnybrook

Saednia’s study took place at the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto. Image reproduced with permission of Sunnybrook.
Saednia’s study took place at the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto. Image reproduced with permission of Sunnybrook.

The research team recruited 90 patients who were being treated for RT. The study took place in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

Thermal images of the treated areas of these patients were acquired at various intervals: before RT, then weekly. Parametric thermograms, which measure heat, were applied and their findings analyzed. The thermograms were used to derive quantitative thermal-based features that included surface temperature and texture parameters. Skin toxicity or damage was evaluated at the end of RT using the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events guidelines.

<Caption> This diagram illustrates how the QTI measured the heat and detected the damage or toxicity resulting from the RT at various different points in time. (“Fraction” refers to the session.)
This diagram illustrates how the QTI measured the heat and detected the damage or toxicity resulting from the RT at various different points in time. (“Fraction” refers to the session.)

Results: Researchers were able to predict skin toxicity much earlier

Thirty-seven patients, of the 90 in the study, exhibited adverse skin effects, and had significantly higher local increases in skin temperature, reaching above 36 C.

The timing of this key finding is what’s important; the researchers’ ability to measure skin toxicity earlier than previously possible is key. Skin toxicity is typically observed after the 10th RT session (or fraction) or after 10 or 14 days of initiating RT. Instead, Saednia and her team, using QTI with machine learning, obtained this information at the fifth RT session, demonstrating early prediction capabilities to severe skin toxicity.

“Machine learning models demonstrated early thermal signals associated with skin-toxicity after the fifth radiotherapy fraction with high prediction accuracy,” she explains.

“Our study concluded that QTI can be used to detect changes associated with radiation-induced dermatitis and can be integrated with machine learning frameworks to develop a predictive tool for skin-toxicity assessment at early treatment times,” adds Sadeghi-Naini.

Saednia is confident that a significant patient population would potentially benefit from early detection and early intervention for symptom management. She emphasizes the direct application of this research: “We propose that ‘smart’ QTI be used as a clinical tool in radiation oncology.”

To read the article, “Quantitative Thermal Imaging Biomarkers to Detect Acute Skin Toxicity from Breast Radiotherapy Using Supervised Machine Learning,” visit the publisher’s website. To learn more about Ali Sadeghi-Naini, visit his Faculty profile page.

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

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

The slippery editorial slope of the documentary into ‘reality’ TV

Becker_Featured image
Becker_Featured image

In an era where truth is increasingly difficult to unearth amidst doublespeak, fake news and political spin; where diplomats’ televised speeches are fact checked on air (and found woefully fictitious); and where the drive for media to entertain the public is acutely pressing, one book by a well-known filmmaker at York University, rises above the fray. This publication unpacks the age of alternative facts and helps readers understand just how we ended up here.

In an era of alternative facts, this new publication couldn’t be more necessary
In an era of alternative facts, this new publication couldn’t be more necessary

Professor Manfred Becker, in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design, has written Creating Reality in Factual Television: The Frankenbite and Other Fakes, a book published by Routledge, e-released this fall and set for printing in early 2021. It’s based on his dissertation, completed through York University and Ryerson University’s joint graduate program in Communication and Culture.

This cartoon illustrates the problem with the frankenbite. Source: Termwiki (https://en.termwiki.com/EN/frankenbiting)
This cartoon illustrates the problem with the frankenbite. Source: Termwiki (https://en.termwiki.com/EN/frankenbiting)

A frankenbite is an editorial tool that extracts and re-orders the key elements or single words of a statement, interview or exchange to create a revealing confession or argument. It can transform an everyday discussion into a seemingly blunt confrontation. In short, it allows editors to manufacture a “story;” to add drama.

“As the hybridization of information and entertainment (aka ‘fake news’) becomes more pronounced in mass media, the need for media literacy in factual programs becomes more urgent. This book includes the questioning and radical re-evaluation of the established genre distinctions, as the lines between non-fiction and fiction are increasingly blurred. We may well be in a time of change as essential as the transition from oral to written storytelling,” Becker says.

Becker known for work that is unsettling and intense

Manfred Becker, upon winning the Donald Brittain Gemini Award in 2007 for Best Documentary
Manfred Becker, upon winning the Donald Brittain Gemini Award in 2007 for Best Documentary

Becker, a German-Canadian independent documentary filmmaker and film editor, is a prolific creator whose films have often been described as irresistible, unsettling, intense and thought-provoking.

For the past 20 years, he has been writing and directing documentaries for television – earning him numerous nominations and awards, including the Directors Guild. His 2006 film Fatherland won the Donald Brittain Gemini Award in 2007 for Best Documentary. One of his latest, with Peter Mansbridge, on the Declaration of International Human Rights, was nominated for one.

What’s real when the truth takes a back seat to entertainment

Creating Reality in Factual Television leverages Becker’s two decades in this industry as it focuses on the fact that documentary television is increasingly following reality television’s mandate to entertain instead of inform or educate. He studies how the “real” and the “truth” fall victim to the demand to “tell entertaining stories,” and how editors must compromise their professional ethics as a result.

Becker explains how the idea for the book began: “I first came to consider ethics in post-production as a pertinent subject for academic research while working in traditional documentary production. I began to reflect on the characteristics of the profession and the implications of a changing television industry. It was a personal experience that served as the ‘inciting incident’ to motivate me to examine my own participation in the documentary television industry. […] I began to research whether colleagues faced similar decisions in the edit room. Had they also made changes that resulted in a degree of inaccuracy or manipulation?” 

In preparing for this publication, he interviewed more than 70 North American and European editors. In his discussions with them, he explored their experiences and sought out their opinions of reality and documentary television practices.

The book is built around the premise that human beings have been attracted to story throughout recorded history. “Narrative is essential to what it means to be human; an engagement in life takes the shape of a story. This understanding of human interaction frames our lives as stories lived out while interacting with others who too are living out their stories.”

Becker believes that the pervasiveness of television may be grounded in its ability to portray human stories. However, he also sees that in the medium of television, the formative forces of most of these narratives are increasingly grounded in story formulas achieved through market analysis, replacing complex poetics with a succession of superficial tropes.

<Caption> Becker apprenticed with Academy Award winning director and editor Peter Watkins, on the ethics of documentary film
Becker apprenticed with Academy Award winning director and editor Peter Watkins, on the ethics of documentary film

“On a societal scale,” he explains, “there’s a growing misappropriation of the individual story to serve corporate interest. The emphasis on sentiment and the careful attempt to involve the viewer’s feelings are parts of a larger trend in mass media where producers seek an emotional investment in their stories or products, knowing the connection drives the viewer to become a consumer. Those narratives might be well constructed, yet they’re really anti-stories. My inquiry centres on the question if television editors, trained as [authentic] storytellers, are increasingly forced to compromise their professional ethics to build what constitutes anti-story in the practice of their craft.”

Creating Reality in Factual Television powerfully illuminates the real and potential ethical dilemmas of editorial decision-making, the context in which decisions are made, and how editors themselves validate the editing choices to themselves and others. It will be a valuable research tool for scholars and students of documentary film, media literacy, genre studies and media ethics.

To learn more about Becker, visit his website or his Faculty profile page. To read more about Frankenbite, visit the publisher’s website. To learn more about joint graduate program in Communication and Culture, visit the website.

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

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

Novel interventions reduce stress, depression, anxiety in students

man sitting at a computer
n/a

There’s no doubt, higher education students are under more pressure than ever. Mental health disorders are a growing problem among this group – now more than ever with the myriad of stressors related to the global pandemic.

York University Faculty of Health Professors Christo El Morr (nominated principal investigator or NPI), Farah Ahmad (PI) and Paul Ritvo (PI) designed and conducted a study that looked at interventions – specifically, mindfulness virtual community interventions – to help with students’ mental health. Their first-of-its-kind, eight-week research study showed great promise as it concluded that these interventions could lead to significant reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress in a student population.

For college and university students, disorders involving depression, anxiety and stress are on the rise
For college and university students, disorders involving depression, anxiety and stress are on the rise

“Interventions like the one we used in our study offer a good opportunity to successfully address mental health conditions in a post-secondary population while also reducing the burden on traditional counseling and services,” El Morr emphasizes.

From left: Christo El Morr, Farah Ahmad and Paul Ritvo
From left: Christo El Morr, Farah Ahmad and Paul Ritvo

The study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, included IT partner ForaHealthyme.com and collaborators from the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, North York General Hospital and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (University of Toronto). The results of the study were published in JMIR Mental Health (2020).

Mental health assistance for students limited by access, stigma and cost

Existing research on the mental health status of university and college students in Canada and the United States tells us that disorders involving depression, anxiety and stress are on the rise. El Morr cites a large 2013 study of nursing students in Canada that indicated the prevalence of mild-to-severe depression, anxiety and stress at 33 per cent, 39 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively.

COVID-19 exacerbated the issue as did the roadblocks that students face while trying to connect with resources. There are systems and programs in place to help these young adults, but access, cost and stigma are barriers. Additionally, counseling centers are very often overwhelmed with clients, and operating well beyond capacity.

El Morr, Ahmad and Ritvo realized that new and easily accessible strategies were needed to address this issue. One such approach, which they considered, was mindfulness-based techniques. Derived from Buddhism, mindfulness is a kind of meditation where the participant focuses on judgement-free living in the moment. It has been successfully used in therapy, where it dovetails with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a type of psychotherapy where the client modifies thought patterns to change moods and behaviors.

El Morr, Ahmad and Ritvo also realized that making this service available to students online would lighten the workload of overburdened counsellors and therapists at universities and other community-based facilities.

119 students recruited in first-time study

The researchers opted to do a randomized control study, which is considered the ‘gold standard’ for generating reliable evidence due to its potential to limit bias. Their goal was to examine the usefulness of a Mindfulness Virtual Community (MVC) web-based program for mental health among undergrad students in a Canadian university.

The team recruited 119 students (25 per cent males; 75 per cent females) from a single institution between December 2016 and January 2017. The participants were divided into four groups: full MVC (F-MVC), partial MVC (P-MVC), waitlist control (WLC) and group-based face-to-face CBT mindfulness. The eight-week-long interventions ran from January to March, 2017.

Screenshot of the Mindfulness Virtual Community platform
Screenshot of the Mindfulness Virtual Community platform

As the figure below illustrates, the three components of the program were:

  1. Youth-specific mental health education and mindfulness-practice modules, delivered via video to participants;
  2. Anonymous, peer-to-peer discussion boards pertaining to mental health and mindfulness practice; and
  3. Anonymous, 20-minute videoconferences (group-based) on module topics, guided by a mental health professional.
Key components of the Mindfulness Virtual Community program
Key components of the Mindfulness Virtual Community program

There were 12 modules with eight videos in each, recorded in male and female voices with low volume background music. Each module had educational content. (The topics, which included mindfulness and being a student, are listed in the table below.)

Ahmad explains the thought processes behind the topics and the module scripts: “The topics were informed by our findings from the focus groups with students, while the module scripts and audio recordings were created by one of the investigators, Dr. Ritvo, with extensive clinical experience and drew from combined mindfulness and CBT principles.”

This table shows the session topics
This table shows the session topics

Participants were surveyed at various intervals during and after they completed the program, using well-founded surveys including the Patient-Health Questionnaire, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, and Quality of Life Scale.

Key findings: Could reduce symptoms in student population

The intervention was a success; the researchers concluded that these kinds of interventions can result in significant reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress in a student population in a cost-effective manner.

Ritvo sums up the benefits and how this study could be applied: “Personal visits to a mental health professional concerns are not the only economic burden on both users and the system; difficulties to access also exist for students because of stigma and the challenges of scheduling visits. Our work informs the designing of appropriate programs accessed by students at their convenience, with some limited moderation by a mental health professional.”

To read the article, “An Eight-Week, Web-Based Mindfulness Virtual Community Intervention for Students’ Mental Health: Randomized Controlled Trial,” visit the JMIR Mental Health (Feb 2020) website. To read a second related article, “Effectiveness of an eight-week web-based mindfulness virtual community intervention for university students on symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression: A randomized controlled trial,” published in J MIR Mental Health (Jul 2020), visit the website. The focus group study with students “Design of a Mindfulness Virtual Community: A focus-group analysis” published by the Health Informatics Journal (Nov 2019) can be accessed through the website.

To learn more about El Morr, visit his website. For more on Ahmad, see her Faculty profile page. To read more about Ritvo, visit his page.

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

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

Research uncovers different levels of Muslim participation in society – why?

Laxer story FEATURED image
Laxer story FEATURED image

The rise of populist politicians in Europe and North America exhibiting intolerance towards minorities has spurred fierce debate around the effects of a growing Muslim minority on their respective national identities. Some countries have prohibited Islamic religious coverings in public spaces and institutions, while others haven’t. This remains an area of intense political debate.

A sociologist has discovered that Muslim contributions to or engagement with society, as newcomers, varies from France to Canada. Shedding light on how and why this is happening will inform national debates on religious diversity in both countries and around the world.
Emily Laxer

Glendon Campus Professor Emily Laxer recently published an article on Muslim participation in society – that is, political and civic incorporation – in two countries: Canada and France. Laxer led this first-time study, published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2019), whose contributors included Jeffrey Reitz from the University of Toronto and Patrick Simon, of the French Institute for Demographic Studies (Paris, France).

She and her co-authors conclude that laws relating to citizenship and voting affect Muslims’ political membership and participation by determining access to official mechanisms of engagement.

Delving into these multi-layered subjects around multiculturalism and religious diversity could inform policy-makers, politicians and citizens in Canada and around the world.

This is in Laxer’s wheelhouse. With expertise in political sociology, immigration, citizenship, nationalism and gender, she has spent years wrestling with these complex issues. Her research focuses on how contests for political power shape the incorporation of ethno-religious minorities in large-scale immigration countries.

France and Canada chosen because they have vastly differing approaches to diversity

This original study examines the impact of national contexts on the political and civic incorporation of Muslim minorities by comparing France and Canada, with their sharply contrasting national integration models.

Why these two countries? Canada and France were selected because they have adopted radically different approaches to political and civic incorporation. French republican secularism demands that newcomers shed their cultural and religious particularities to actively engage, while Canada’s federal approach values diversity. Multiculturalism in Canada has become regarded by many as the cornerstone of Canadian identity, Laxer emphasizes. There’s also the unique case of Québec, which has developed a distinct – though unofficial – discourse of ‘interculturalism,’ which combines respect for pluralism with the promotion of Francophone culture.

“These three integration models – republicanism, multiculturalism and interculturalism – have been featured in recent debates on the acceptability of Islamic symbols and practices in the public sphere in each setting,” Laxer explains.

a street in Paris
French republican secularism demands that newcomers shed their cultural and religious particularities. Here, two Muslim women in France retain their religious attire: the hijab and shayla

Data collected from surveys featuring immigrant and second-generation minorities

To launch this investigation, the researchers analyzed data from France’s 2008 Trajectories and Origins survey and Canada’s 2002 Ethnic Diversity survey. Most participants who responded to these surveys were between 18 and 60 years of age. Both surveys contain vast content on immigrant and second-generation minorities.

Broadly speaking, Laxer’s team looked at Muslim and non-Muslim responses to questions around citizenship, voting and civic participation. In doing so, they conducted a comprehensive analysis of the differences between Muslims and the mainstream population, as well as other minority groups, in both countries.

Findings get to the heart of the differences

Laxer and her colleagues’ analysis was three-pronged, and the findings were likewise categorized:

Citizenship: Citizenship rates are substantially higher in Canada than in France. The effect of this is negative in France, but positive in Canada where, in most cases, the majority of immigrants become Canadian citizens.

Voting rate: In France, 90 per cent of the Muslim community votes. In Canada, only 65 per cent of Muslims vote.

Civic participation: Rates are higher in the Muslim community in Canada, compared to counterparts in France, but overall, participation is low. This suggests that Muslims in both countries experience a similar degree of social isolation or lack of integration.

In Canada, unlike France, the majority of immigrants become Canadian citizens
In Canada, unlike France, the majority of immigrants become Canadian citizens

“Our findings suggest that laws pertaining to citizenship and voting shape Muslims’ political membership and participation by determining access to official mechanisms of engagement,” Laxer concludes. However, she emphasizes neither national model is necessarily superior in producing high levels of political and civic engagement.

Award-winning book also examines secularism in France and Quebec

In addition to the journal article, Laxer also published a book in the same year, which expands on the topic: Unveiling the Nation: The Politics of Secularism in France and Québec (McGill-Queen’s University Press). This publication just won the 2020 John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award from the Canadian Sociological Association.

Here, Laxer traces how the struggle of political parties for power and legitimacy shapes states’ responses to Islamic signs. Providing historical evidence and gripping, behind-the-scenes interviews with activists and politicians, she brings to light unseen links between structures of conflict and the strategies that political actors employ when articulating the secular boundaries of the nation.

Emily Laxer’s new book. Image reproduced with permission of the publisher.
Emily Laxer’s new book. Image reproduced with permission of the publisher.

In France’s historically class-based political system, she argues, parties on both the left and the right have united around a secular agenda to limit the siphoning of votes by the ultra-right. In Quebec, by contrast, the longstanding “national question” [French identity and culture] has led political actors to paint a picture with conflicting images of the province’s secular past, present and future.

This book adds a great deal to the discussion around how party politics shape the secular boundaries of nationhood in diverse societies.

What’s next for Laxer? Her current research focuses on representations of the rule of law by past and present populist politicians in Canada.

To read the research article, visit the publisher’s website. To learn more about the book, visit the publisher’s website. To learn more about Laxer, visit her profile page at Glendon.

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

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

Politicians’ temperament may pave way to war, suggests book by legal scholar

War and Peace book FEATURED image
War and Peace book FEATURED image

Peter S. Jenkins, an adjunct faculty member at Osgoode Hall Law School, is an expert on digital media and the law. However, he turned his attention to a highly original area a few years ago – the mindset of political leaders – and the resulting book, War and Happiness – The Role of Temperament in the Assessment of Resolve (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), could not be timelier. Although it was published before the pandemic, key insights can be gleaned about the politicization of COVID-19 and the response to the global crisis by certain world leaders.

Canada and the world need visionary and inspirational leaders more than ever, many would argue. With the plight of COVID-19 patients and their families, healthcare systems and resources stretched to the limit, and with the global financial disruption that began last March, it feels as if we’re living through a dreadful combination of the Great Depression and the Spanish Flu. “Unprecedented” no longer suffices.

Jenkins’ desire to investigate cognitive biases in international relations is well-timed. He is a seasoned academic who has presented his research papers around the globe, including at the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Beijing Normal University.

Peter S. Jenkins and his new book, War and Happiness. Cover image reproduced with permission.
Peter S. Jenkins and his new book, War and Happiness. Cover image reproduced with permission

Lesson 1: Leaders often act in very odd ways prior to war

In this 16-chapter, 378-page book, Jenkins dug deep into the British Hansard and the U.S. Congressional Record; he examined four crises leading up to the First World War; the appeasement of Nazi Germany; Pearl Harbour; the Korean War versus the Gulf War; and much more.

War and Happiness offers a fulsome analysis of empirical data, from psycholinguistic text mining and semantic analysis of debates, speeches, statements and memos to detailed case studies of the origins of twelve wars with Anglo-American involvement from 1853 to 2003.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain greets Hitler in 1938 (Wikipedia). He was more worried about the Poles, not the Germans, behaving reasonably.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain greets Hitler in 1938 (Wikipedia). He was more worried about the Poles, not the Germans, behaving reasonably

In analyzing these many separate events, Jenkins’ first realization was one commonality: leaders often act in bizarre ways leading up to crises. For example, Jenkins notes that, less than 48 hours before the Germans invaded Poland prior to World War Two, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared that he was more worried about getting the Poles, not the Germans, to be reasonable.

The 1982 Falkland Islands War, led by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is another perplexing event that Jenkins unpacks, as is American involvement in the Vietnam War, which caused a total of more than 1.3 million deaths.

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” spearheaded by American President George W. Bush, in search of weapons of mass destruction that never materialized, is another example of unwarranted conflict that Jenkins cites. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the resulting Iraq War, which lasted until 2011.

Jenkins’ book is filled with many such historical gems – events that have left scholars scratching their heads for years. Most academics point to geopolitics and power plays as the root cause of conflict, but Jenkins has unearthed a different and novel commonality: the leaders’ mindset.

A collage of different world leaders' faces
Peter S. Jenkins has he turned his attention to a highly original area: the mindset of political leaders. Sources for all images: Wikipedia

Jenkins argues depressive temperament at heart of issue

War and Happiness suggests that leaders, politicians and diplomats who have depressive temperaments will tend to underestimate the resolve of their state’s adversaries and overestimate the resolve of its allies, while the converse will occur when those individuals have non-depressive temperaments.

The chart below illustrates the annual frequency (per million, inverted) of sadness words in the U.S. Congressional Record (1880–2018) as a way of measuring the temperaments of politicians over time.

This chart shows the annual frequency (per million, inverted) of sadness words in the U.S. Congressional Record (1880 – 2018). It effectively measures temperaments of politicians over time.
This chart shows the annual frequency (per million, inverted) of sadness words in the U.S. Congressional Record (1880–2018). It effectively measures temperaments of politicians over time

“The emotional climate of a state’s national legislature changes significantly over the long term in response to exogenous factors, creating a greater risk of the outbreak of war being caused by the overestimation or underestimation of its adversary’s resolve,” Jenkins explains.

Clearly, Jenkins is in his element in history. As a result, War and Happiness has received acclaim. “Jenkins’ rare combination of psychological theorizing and archival research in several countries and time periods yields a fascinating new take on the central question of when states overestimate or underestimate others’ resolve. The biases that leaders and elites fall prey to appear to vary with their emotional states and senses of well-being, factors that most scholars have ignored,” said Columbia University’s Robert Jervis, a leader in the study of the psychology of international politics.

To learn more about Jenkins, visit his profile page. To learn more about the book, visit the publisher’s website. You can also watch a short video about it.

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

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

York prof involved in next-gen astronomical survey focused on advancing understanding cosmos

Photo by Mohan Reddy Atalu from Pexels
Photo by Mohan Reddy Atalu from Pexels

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s (SDSS) fifth generation collected its very first observations of the cosmos at 1:47 a.m. on Oct. 24. As the world’s first all-sky time-domain spectroscopic survey, SDSS-V will provide groundbreaking insight into the formation and evolution of galaxies – like our own Milky Way – and the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centres.

The SDSS, an international consortium that includes York University as an associate member, just launched the fifth-generation survey to continue the path-breaking tradition set by previous surveys. The survey has a focus on the ever-changing night sky and the physical processes that drive these changes, from flickers and flares of supermassive black holes to the back-and-forth shifts of stars being orbited by distant worlds. SDSS-V will provide the spectroscopic backbone needed to achieve the full science potential of satellites like NASA’s TESS, ESA’s Gaia, and the latest all-sky X-ray mission, eROSITA.

Patrick Hall in front of a bookcase full of books
Patrick Hall

“My colleagues and I on the ‘Black Hole Mapper’ team seek to understand how the matter swirling around supermassive black holes is organized,” says York University Professor Patrick Hall of the Faculty of Science. Hall is part of the SDSS-V team. “These black holes can have dramatic effects on their surrounding galaxies, so they are part of the puzzle of understanding how our current Universe of galaxies came to be.”

The SDSS has always relied heavily on phone and digital communication. Adapting to exclusively virtual communication tactics due to the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge, as was tracking global supply chains and laboratory availability at various university partners while they shifted in and out of lockdown during the final ramp-up to the survey’s start. Particularly inspiring were the project’s expert observing staff, who worked through an even greater than usual isolation to shut down, and then reopen the survey’s mountain-top observatories.

“In a year when humanity has been challenged across the globe, I am so proud of the worldwide SDSS team for demonstrating – every day – the very best of human creativity, ingenuity, improvisation and resilience. It has been a challenging period for the team, but I’m happy to say that the pandemic may have slowed us, but it has not stopped us,” says SDSS-V Director Juna Kollmeier.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s fifth generation made its first observations earlier this month. This image shows a sampling of data from those first SDSS-V data. The central sky image is a single field of SDSS-V observations. The purple circle indicates the telescope’s field-of-view on the sky, with the full Moon shown as a size comparison. SDSS-V simultaneously observes 500 targets at a time within a circle of this size. The left panel shows the optical-light spectrum of a quasar – a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy, which is surrounded by a disk of hot, glowing gas. The purple blob is an SDSS image of the light from this disk, which in this dataset spans about 1 arcsecond on the sky, or the width of a human hair as seen from about 21 meters (63 feet) away. The right panel shows the image and spectrum of a white dwarf – the left-behind core of a low-mass star (like the Sun) after the end of its life. Image Credit: Hector Ibarra Medel, Jon Trump, Yue Shen, Gail Zasowski, and the SDSS-V Collaboration. Central background image: unWISE / NASA/JPL-Caltech / D.Lang (Perimeter Institute)

Funded primarily by member institutions, along with grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Heising-Simons Foundation, SDSS-V will focus on three primary areas of investigation, each exploring different aspects of the cosmos using different spectroscopic tools. Together these three project pillars – called “Mappers” – will observe more than six million objects in the sky, and monitor changes in more than a million of those objects over time.

The survey’s Local Volume Mapper will enhance our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution by probing the interactions between the stars that make up galaxies and the interstellar gas and dust that is dispersed between them. The Milky Way Mapper will reveal the physics of stars in our Milky Way, the diverse architectures of its star and planetary systems, and the chemical enrichment of our galaxy since the early universe. The Black Hole Mapper will measure masses and growth over cosmic time of the supermassive black holes that reside in the hearts of galaxies as well as the smaller black holes left behind when stars die.

“I’ve been affiliated with the SDSS since 2000 and my career of studying supermassive black holes began with SDSS data,” says Hall. “Now that York has secured a full membership for my research group, undergraduate and graduate students at York can join me in studying SDSS observations as soon as they arrive from the telescope.”

The Black Hole Mapper was one of the first of the three Mappers to gather data.

“These early observations are already important for a wide range of science goals,” says SDSS-V Spokesperson Gail Zasowski of the University of Utah. “Even these first targets cover goals from mapping the inner regions of supermassive black holes and searching for exotic multiple-black hole systems, to studying nearby stars and their dead cores, to tracing the chemistry of potential planet-hosting stars across the Milky Way.”

SDSS-V will operate out of both Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, home of the survey’s original 2.5-meter telescope, and Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, where it uses the 2.5-meter du Pont telescope.

SDSS-V’s first observations were gathered in New Mexico with existing SDSS instruments, as a necessary change of plans due to the pandemic. As laboratories and workshops around the world navigate safe reopening, SDSS-V’s own suite of new innovative hardware is on the horizon – in particular, systems of automated robots to aim the fiber optic cables used to collect the light from the night sky. These will be installed at both observatories over the next year. New spectrographs and telescopes are also being constructed to enable the Local Volume Mapper observations.

“I was only a few years out of graduate school when I began work with the SDSS,” says Hall. “Now I’m Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, but I’m just as excited about this survey as I was 20 years ago. I look forward to many more years of learning about our Galaxy and the Universe with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.”

For more information, see the SDSS-V’s website at www.sdss5.org.

Future of virtual reality technology may lie in understanding how older people perceive motion

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Virtual reality goggles on an older person
Scientists at York University’s Centre for Vision Research say technologies that use immersive displays don’t take into account how older people perceive the motion they are being shown. In fact, how we process the distance we move depends on our age according to their research, published in PLOSOne.

“Virtual Reality is being proposed for more and more things and everyone from Apple through to Facebook and Microsoft are investing more into head-mounted displays that they see as a way to provide interactive experiences for everything from entertainment to education. Our findings have implications for many kinds of technology,” says co-author Michael Jenkin, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “If we’re going to build technology that uses immersive displays that meet the needs of people other than 18 to 22 year-olds, we need to understand how they process visual data differently as they age.”

Jenkin did the research with an interdisciplinary team from York’s Lassonde School of Engineering and the Faculty of Health and Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA), including Professor Laurence Harris (Department of Psychology), Professor Rob Allison (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), and former York Postdoctoral Fellow Nils Bury (Department of Psychology) who is the lead author on the paper.

Vision is a key input that both children and adults use to monitor their self-motion and stability. Linear vection is the sensation of movement of the body in space, produced purely by visual stimulation. Being able to interpret linear vection as self-motion allows for proper motor control for foot and hand placement and to judge time to contact. However, the ability to control self-motion develops in youth and often deteriorates with advanced age.

The process of generating self-motion cues from vection is particularly important in technology that uses virtual reality immersive displays, which depend on visual cues alone.

“The process that gave rise to the iPhone, for example, was tested on young healthy people. However, older people may not have the same dexterity or eyesight. These findings provide more insight on why the technology needs to change as we age to be able to reach a larger growing demographic,” says Bury.

The researchers looked at how the smoothness of visually simulated self-motion influences a person’s ability to judge how far they have travelled, over a wide range of ages.

An illustration showing some of the specific details in the study

The technical question the researchers were studying in the experiment was: if you were trying to make someone think they’ve moved, such as simulating a car driving, how far do they actually think they’ve moved? It’s very easy to simulate smooth motion in virtual reality but when people actually move, they bob their heads side to side, which is called jitter, and it turns out that if you add the right kind of jitter, you can make people think they move further, says Jenkin.

Participants from age four to 95 were recruited as part of a Summer of Space program at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. Using a head-mounted virtual reality display, each of the 466 participants was presented with visual motion that simulated forward linear self-motion through a field of circular “lollipops” that were generated and destroyed randomly. This was done to prevent participants from tracking their position by following a single feature.

The research found that while younger participants reported moving farther than they had actually moved, older people have to be moved farther to think they have moved a particular distance. This suggests that a greater amount of visual movement should be provided when simulating self-movement in virtual reality for younger participants but that this should be toned down for older adults.

The findings have implications for virtual reality-based technology in many industries including health and education in which immersive displays are used, says Jenkin.

“If you’re designing a human visual system for any kind of technology and you know as you get older this is the case, then overestimating that distance is not a bad strategy when building these immersive displays. It does mean that if you’re building immersive displays for a 60-year-old for example, to help that person think they’ve moved, you want the motion in the display to be longer because they will take longer to react to short motion than longer motion.”

This study was partially funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

Town Hall offers update on academics, work life and York’s positive contributions through COVID-19

Vari Hall new image
Vari Hall new image

During a Virtual Town hall event held on Oct. 21, York’s senior leadership team shared details on the University’s direction as it continues to evolve to meet pandemic safety guidelines.

The event offered York community members an opportunity to ask questions – in pre-submitted and live formats – and learn more about the University’s plans and initiatives. In attendance were President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda Lenton, Provost & Vice-President Academic Lisa Philipps, Vice-President Finance & Administration Carol McAulay, Vice-President Advancement Jeff O’Hagan, Vice-President Research & Innovation Amir Asif, and University Registrar Darran Fernandez.

Rhonda L. Lenton
Rhonda L. Lenton

Lenton opened with a land acknowledgement, and a reminder that some of the University’s facilities – indoor gyms and indoor seated spaces for dining – have been temporarily shuttered to meet updated COVID-19 public health measures announced by the province two weeks ago.

Looking forward to winter term, Lenton said the University will continue to operate with the same plan as fall with the majority of courses offered remotely. Senior leadership, she said, is now in the beginning stages of planning for the 2021-2022 academic year.

“We expect that for fall of 2021 we will be able to move largely back to in-person instruction; however, it’s a volatile situation and there is still some level of uncertainty,” she said, adding that the decision rests largely on guidance from Toronto Public Health as well as the development of, and access to, a vaccine for COVID-19.

Reflecting on the last six months, Lenton noted the University’s highlights including the conclusion of the University’s 10-year plan, the completion of the University Academic Plan (UAP) 2015-2020 and the work on a new five-year UAP that will take the University to 2025. She encouraged the community to read the annual President’s Report, which recognizes institutional accomplishments and positive change led by the University over the 2019-2020 academic year.

The floor opened to questions from the community and kicked off with a query on how students studying from abroad will continue to participate in the winter semester. Lenton offered assurance that winter would continue in the same manner as fall. The 150 courses requiring an in-person component will reflect that requirement in the course notes.

It was also noted that while York is now permitted to welcome international students to campus, domestic students will have to wait for travel abroad for educational opportunities. However, Fernandez pointed out there are opportunities with an international focus available through York’s Globally Networked Learning programs.

Lisa Philipps

Students also voiced concern with lectures being posted too late, lectures running past the allotted time frame, and the lack of focused group work. Philipps said while the University acknowledges the impressive efforts by faculty to pivot to online instruction, she recognizes there is still room for improvement and would ensure these concerns are forwarded to the deans.

While the learning experience may not be the same, Lenton said “our colleagues are ensuring students still have the same student learning outcomes” and that “there’s a continual improvement as we go along.” Lenton further noted the senior leadership team aims to soon host a virtual town hall specifically for students.

One student asked about the development of scholarship fund supporting Black students. O’Hagan said there have been new donations specifically earmarked to support Black students, and Lenton said work has begun on developing an action plan.

Staff inquired about what work-from-home policies York may consider in a post-pandemic scenario. Lenton acknowledged the need to consider flexible work arrangements and said the University plans to continue discussions with management and unions on how to move forward. Other staff were curious to know if staff, like faculty, would be offered early retirement incentives. McAulay said there have been discussions on developing a program, and conversations would continue.

Concerns about potential staff layoffs were addressed as well. Lenton said the University’s approach has been to talk with unions and managers, and to try to get input from colleagues about challenges they face and to try to be responsive to those issues.

Many questions were specifically related to the pandemic and outlined concerns with ventilation on campus and with individuals not complying with the University’s mask and face covering protocol. McAulay said the University has implemented measures to improve ventilation on campus, including overriding settings to bring in more fresh air, filtration material being upgraded to a higher quality filter and air filters changes with increased frequency. (For more details on initiatives undertaken to ensure clean air in buildings at York, visit facilities.info.yorku.ca/maintenance). As for the face coverings, Lenton said she would take concerns to the University’s Emergency Operations Committee and look to them for guidance on how to follow up on complaints of non-compliance.

One community member asked senior leadership to describe what role York University has played in helping the community during the pandemic. Philipps pointed to the five faculty members recognized with provincial awards for their COVID-19 research.

Asif described several of the research projects undertaken by York’s researchers, including statistical modelling that is now used by the province to predict emerging trends, and also recounted York’s contributions of PPE, chemicals and other equipment to the province.

“York University has also awarded $300,000 in research grants to advance 20 new research projects 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), 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,” Asif added.

Commenting on the University’s new brand, one individual asked how the York community shows compelling evidence that York is a community of changemakers and produces graduates who are changemakers.

Lenton highlighted the recent Times Higher Education (THE) rankings, that placed York University 33rd out of 767 competing Universities when measured against the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The new, upcoming interactive UAP website, said Philipps, will also catalogue stories of positive change led by York, similar to the YU Better Together website developed to highlight York’s positive contributions during the pandemic. O’Hagan pointed to the Alumni and Friends page, where there are stories that showcase alumni contributions to creating positive change.

In closing, Lenton thanked community members for their questions, and noted that senior leadership would aim to answer any questions not addressed during the town hall.

To watch the recorded version of this Virtual Town Hall, visit conversations.info.yorku.ca/first-page/webcast.

New funding expands drug research for diabetes hypoglycemia prevention

New funding will expand the development of a diabetes drug designed to prevent insulin-induced low blood glucose levels (hypoglycemia) to include use in Type 2 diabetes (T2D), a project York University researcher Michael Riddell is working closely on with diabetes life sciences company Zucara Therapeutics Inc.

The new funding will nearly $415,000 in funding to the project from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program. In addition, Zucara and York University have been awarded a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellowship grant, which will fund the development of a preclinical T2D diabetes model.

Michael Riddell
Michael Riddell

Riddell is a founding scientist of Zucara Therapeutics Inc. and is the Chair of their Scientific Advisory Board. He is also a professor in York’s School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences and Muscle Health Research Centre, in the Faculty of Health.

In April 2018, the project received US$3.9-million in funding to advance development to clinical trials; on Sept. 29, Zucara dosed the first subject in its ongoing Phase 1 clinical trial of ZT-01, which is in development for the prevention of insulin-induced hypoglycemia in patients with Type 1 diabetes (T1D). The new funding will allow for the expansion of the development program to include treatment in individuals with Type 2 diabetes.

Riddell oversees the Zucara experiments conducted at York University that test the efficacy of ZT-01, and is investigating how this novel drug candidate helps to prevent hypoglycemia in patients who are continuously taking insulin.

“These grants build on the funding we previously received from GlycoNet to extend the therapeutic potential of ZT-01 to T2D patients,” said Riddell. “We look forward to continuing our efforts to address an unmet need of hypoglycemia prevention in people living with either T1D or T2D.”

Hypoglycemia is a major barrier to safe and effective treatment with insulin in T1D and T2D, and is a common side effect of insulin therapy, as well as aerobic forms of exercise such as walking, cycling and jogging. Dangerously low blood glucose can lead to unconsciousness or even death, and is a frequent challenge for people with insulin-dependent diabetes. Current methods of treating episodes of hypoglycemia include ingesting fast-acting carbohydrates or, in emergency situations, using injections of exogenous glucagon.

“We are grateful for NRC-IRAP’s renewed support and are delighted to receive this Mitacs Award, both of which will enable the development of ZT-01 for T2D,” said Dr. Richard Liggins, Zucara’s chief scientific officer. “The expansion of our ZT-01 development program is based on promising results in a preclinical model of T2D and represents the potential to benefit a substantially larger population. We look forward to working with York University to advance this preclinical T2D model to enable future clinical development.”

The Centre for Feminist Research launches multidisciplinary virtual exhibit, Oct. 28

The Darkroom, Oct. 28 to 31

The Darkroom, Oct. 28 to 31Chapter 2: The Darkroom is a multidisciplinary virtual exhibit curated by Abdullah Qureshi, a visiting researcher and doctoral candidate at York University, which will run Oct. 28 to 31.

The exhibit looks at cruising, erotic spaces and practices that are traditionally understood as sexually promiscuous and, as such, are morally rejected or pushed to the peripheries by the dominant heteronormative society. The exhibit challenges and reclaims histories of orientalism, and it activates and disrupts spaces that are otherwise considered dangerous, opening up the possibilities of sex and gender expression from queer, Muslim, and migratory perspective.

The four-day exhibit program features artistic contributions, films and talks. The full schedule, artists, contributors and registration for the exhibit can be found on Facebook at https://fb.me/e/4FTg2dtaJ and Instagram @mythologicalmigrations.

Event launch promotional image Oct. 28On Oct. 28, at 10 a.m., the exhibit will formally launch with an introduction featuring Qureshi. Register in advance at https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMuf-igpjosEtxEX5pxja_3ytfnZLv4cBm1. Then at 12:30 p.m., there will be a panel discussion featuring artists Abdi Osman and Yara El Safi in conversation with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Register in advance at https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtf–vrDMoEtZCWt-R2qGP8vwxRIfYtx1W.

Promotional image for the artists panel Oct. 28This event is free and co-sponsored by The School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, The Sexuality Studies Program and the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University.