Tag: VP Research and Innovation

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‘Queer Bathroom Stories’ has world premiere at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

Queer Bathroom Stories poster

Queer Bathroom Stories posterA new play by a York professor will explore the secret sex life of bathrooms and gender politics in public washrooms, while exhibiting a refined sense of toilet humour.

Queer Bathroom Stories the play is based on the award-winning book Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality and the Hygienic Imagination (2010), both written by York sociology Professor Sheila Cavanagh, coordinator of York’s Sexuality Studies Program. It is a play about lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer experiences in Canada’s public facilities.

It will have its world premiere at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, from May 31 to June 15, 12 Alexander St., Toronto. Following the previews (May 31 and June 1), the official opening will take place June 3 and the after-party (open to all) will be in the Cabaret at Buddies. Queer Bathroom Stories will be performed Tuesday to Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2:30pm. Tickets range from $20 to $25, with special rates for student groups.

Sheila Cavanagh. Photo by Drasko Bogdanovic.
Sheila Cavanagh. Photo by Drasko Bogdanovic.

The play is an official World Pride in Toronto event, which is significant, says Cavanagh, as it “is based on interviews with LGBTQ people in Toronto, which were published in my Queering Bathrooms book.” In Queer Bathroom Stories, three actors play 72 characters who are composites culled from a hundred of those interviews with LGBTQ North Americans.

The play is much more than the secret sex life of the bathroom as told through the eyes of those interviewed, it is a brutally honest display of gender politics in public washrooms. Cavanagh asserts that while toilets are not typically considered within traditional scholarly bounds, they form a crucial part of people’s modern understanding of sex and gender.

“Bathrooms have always been places where we segregate people on the basis of gender, sexuality, class, disability and race,”saysCavanagh. “In addition, the production is an example of a new method called queer performance ethnography and is designed to increase awareness about transphobia and homophobia.You will never look at the bathroom the same way after witnessing the tragic and passionate reenactments of life in the can.”

The play, presented by Libido Productions, is directed by Megan Watson (Derailed/Summerworks) with scenographic design by Cory Sincennes (designer-in-residence with Surreal Soreal Theatre/Edmonton) and stars Hallie Burt (writer/actor elizabeth – darcy: an adaptation of pride and prejudice/Toronto Fringe), Tyson James (Arigato, Tokyo/Buddies in Bad Times Theatre) and Chy Ryan Spain (Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical/EcceHomo).

From left, actors Tyson James, Chy Ryan Spain and Hallie Burt. Photo by Drasko Bogdanovic.
From left, actors Tyson James, Chy Ryan Spain and Hallie Burt. Photo by Drasko Bogdanovic.

Queer Bathroom Stories first jumped from the page to the stage at the original book launch at the Gladstone Hotel in 2010. Queer Bathroom Monologues was then staged at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, where it was presented with the Patron’s Pick Award.

The play was funded by a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada dissemination grant.

For more information, visit Sheila Cavanagh’s website.

To order tickets, visit the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre website or call 416-975-8555.

Learn about what goes on inside your muscles Friday

Human body muscles

The fifth annual Muscle Health Awareness Day will feature the latest research on muscles by several scientists working in the field.

David Hood
David Hood, director of York’s Muscle Health Research Centre

How do glucose and fatty acids get metabolized? That’s what speaker Rolando Ceddia, a professor in York’s School of Kinesiology and Health Science will be discussing. In particular, Ceddia will look at how various therapeutic approaches, such as exercise, pharmacological products and diet management, affect metabolism in both skeletal muscle and adipose (fat) tissue.

Minna Woo, a scientist of the Keenan Research Center and Staff Endocrinologist, St. Michael’s Hospital and a professor medicine and medical biophysics at the University of Toronto, will discuss the roles specific molecules play in determining cell survival and function. That includes their role in cell death, tumor suppression and oncogenesis. Woo’s research has implications for greater understanding and treatment of diabetes.

The Muscle Health Awareness Day will be held Friday, May 23, from 9am to 4:30pm, at 103 Life Sciences Building, Keele campus. Registration is $20 for faculty members and $15 for students. Registration includes a light breakfast, buffet lunch and coffee.

The day will feature a series of lectures and graduate student poster presentations related to muscle adaptation, development, metabolism and disease.

Rolando Ceddia
Rolando Ceddia

Also speaking about their research at the event will be Joe Chakkalakal of the Center for Musculoskeletal Research, Rochester University; Dr. Ronald Cohn, Clinical and Metabolic Genetics, Sick Kids/University of Toronto; Penney Gilbert of the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto; Brendon Gurd of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen’s University; David MacLennan of the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research, University of Toronto; Jeremy Simpson of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph; and René Vandenboom of Applied Health Sciences, Brock University.

Gurd’s work focuses on comprehending the impact of exercise intensity and various forms of exercise on mitochondrial function. In particular, his research examines the effect of these factors on the molecular regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis, and how this differs in individuals new to or accustomed to exercise training.

Minna Woo
Minna Woo

MacLennan is famed for his contributions to the structure and function of proteins mediating calcium ion transport, and in particular, those that regulate calcium flux through the sarcoplasmic reticulum in muscle. He has also led research teams that have defined the genetic basis for several muscle diseases, including malignant hyperthermia, central core disease and Brody disease.

Cohn’s research has emphasis on the molecular mechanisms of muscle regeneration and fibrosis in inherited and acquired myopathic conditions. Furthermore, Cohn is investigating the translation of next-generation sequencing techniques into daily clinical diagnoses and management.

Vandenboom’s research focuses on the role of calcium in the translation of chemical signals for contraction into a mechanical response. In particular, Vandenboom has concentrated on delineating the relationship between muscle force potentiation and muscle fatigue.

Joe Chakkalakal
Joe Chakkalakal

Chakkalakal’s work surrounds alterations in age-related signaling mechanisms associated with the growth and regeneration of skeletal muscle. Specifically, work in identifying a molecular signature of the changes to the satellite cell pool during aging aims to provide insight into how we can promote and maintain optimal skeletal muscle function.

Simpson has investigated the molecular adaptations of the heart to chronic overload, typically observed during hypertension and cardiac disease. His work has also extended into the examination of hypoxic stimulus in muscle signaling, in addition to modifications in skeletal muscle proteins during fatigue and ischemia.

Gilbert’s lab researches the use of biomaterial approaches to aid in the treatment of skeletal muscle wasting. In particular, her focus has been in the use of biomimetics to support the expansion of the muscle stem cell network, as well as the regulation of stem cell fate to control tissue regeneration and the synthesis of replacement muscle tissue.

For updates and more information, visit the Muscle Health Research Centre website or email mhrc@yorku.ca.

York U’s Glendon campus serves as host for the Canada Prizes Award Ceremony May 7

Canada prizes lead image for YFile homepage

Two books authored by individuals with connections to York University are among a group of scholarly works by Canadian academics that are in the running for a prestigious Canada Prize.

The winners of the annual awards will be announced prior to the Canada Prizes ceremony on May 7, from 4:30 to 5:30pm, at the Centre of Excellence for French-language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education at York University’s Glendon campus. The ceremony will be followed by a reception. The selection of Glendon as the site for the ceremony is the result of a new partnership with the Federation for the Humanities & Social Sciences and York University. Members of the York University community are invited to attend the Canada Prizes ceremony, RSVP online (Event Code: 882) by May 5.

Lisa Philipps
Lisa Philipps

“Glendon was identified as an ideal location to host this national event in light of its bilingual mandate and its unique focus on education in the humanities and social sciences. We are really excited to be working with the federation to celebrate the excellence of Canadian scholarship in these disciplines,” said Lisa Philipps, AVP research and a member of the federation’s board.

The Canada Prizes are adjudicated by a group of leading academics and public intellectuals, as exemplified by this year’s distinguished jury panel, which includes previous winners of the award.  Michael Adams, CEO of Environics and a juror for this year’s Canada Prize in the Social Sciences, will give keynote remarks at the event.

This year, Wilderness and Waterpower: How Banff National Park Became a Hydroelectric Storage Reservoir (2013, University of Calgary Press) authored York Professor Emeritus of History Christopher Armstrong with York Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of History Viv H. Nelles, and Autonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade (2013, University of Toronto Press) by York alumnus Dimitry Anastakis (MA ’95, PhD ’02), are in the running for a Canada Prize.

Canada prizes book by York Professors Wilderness and Waterpower: How Banff National Park Became a Hydroelectric Storage Reservoir explores how the need for electricity at the turn of the century affected and shaped Banff National Park. It tells the story of Alberta’s early need for electricity, entrepreneurial greed, debates over Aboriginal ownership of the river, moving park boundaries to accommodate hydro-electric initiatives, the importance of water for tourism, rural electrification, and the ultimate diversion to coal-produced electricity. It is also a lively national story, involving the irrepressible and impetuous Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaverbook), R.B. Bennett (local legal advisor and later prime minister), and a series of local politicians and bureaucrats whose contributions confuse and conflate issues along the way. (Source: University of Calgary Press)

autonomous state book coverAutonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade provides the first detailed examination of the Canadian auto industry, the country’s most important economic sector, in the post-war period. In his book, Anastakis, who is professor of history at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., chronicles the industry’s evolution from the 1973 OPEC embargo to the 1989 Canada–US Free Trade Agreement and looks at its effects on public policy, diplomacy, business enterprise, workers, consumers, and firms. Using an immense array of archival sources, and interviews with some of the key actors in the events, Anastakis examines important topics in recent auto industry and Canadian business and economic history.

Awarded annually by the Federation, the Canada Prizes celebrate the best Canadian scholarly books—not simply within a single academic discipline, but across all the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. The prizes are awarded to books that make an exceptional contribution to scholarship, are engagingly written, and enrich the social, cultural and intellectual life of Canada.

To learn more about the other books short listed for the prizes, visit the Canada Prizes website.

Children with developmental disabilities facing isolation and mental health issues, study finds

From left, Adrienne Perry, Jonathan Weiss and James Bebko

The results of a York-led research project looking at children with developmental disabilities has found more than half of the children also had motor impairments, one-third had no friends at school, half had no friends outside of school and 44 per cent  were reported to have additional challenges, including anxiety and depression.

The Great Outcomes for Kids Impacted by Severe Developmental Disabilities (GO4KIDDS) research project also showed that the stress of raising children with developmental disabilities was taking a toll on the parents with 41 per cent reporting mental health problems and nearly half reporting poor health.

Adrienne Perry
Adrienne Perry

Some of the results of the research were shared March 18at the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health hosted celebration and wrap-up of the research phase of the GO4KIDDS research project, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The project was initiated by a group of researchers and clinicians who saw the need to provide a better understanding about the health, well-being and social inclusion of school-aged children with severe developmental disabilities (DD) and the experiences of their families.

Together, the team of researchers and clinicians represented different sectors and disciplines, as well as a broad range of institutions and centres – four Universities (York, Queen’s, Brock and Western), two hospitals (Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario), as well as  community treatment programs (e.g. Surrey Place Centre) and private practices (e.g. Four Points).

Principal investigator and psychology Professor Adrienne Perry opened the day with the caveat that although the research has been completed, the hard work is far from done. As this project involves different sectors and disciplines, it is important to mobilize the knowledge now and put it to practical use to help those whom they studied.

“The process of putting together the team who’ve been involved was very stimulating and rewarding. The data about health, well-being and social inclusion in regards to children with developmental disabilities and autism forms an important body of work that didn’t exist before today in Canada,” said Perry. “We’re grateful for the funding from CIHR because the findings have important implications. Now our job is to get it out to policy-makers and families in order to make the knowledge useful. The title of the study is Great Outcomes, but some of our findings are not so great – but this is important for people to know, too.”

Jonathan Weiss
Jonathan Weiss

The project consisted of two objectives: a nationwide “report card” asking parents about their children’s skills and behaviors, physical health, mental health and behavior problems, social participation and well-being, and three focused studies. The co-principal investigators included York psychology Professors James Bebko and Jonathan Weiss, and Queen’s University psychology Professor Patricia Minnes, and team leads Barry Isaacs, director of research and evaluation at Surrey Place Centre, and Professor Rosemary Condillac of Brock University. Together they took on varying roles in carrying out the Family Quality of Life Study, the Social Inclusion Study and the Health Care and Service Utilization Study that comprised the second objective of the GO4KIDDS Project.

Along with the co-investigators, there were co-applicants from other universities and organizations, project coordinators, research coordinators, coders and graduate students hired on to help over the span of the project. This undertaking managed to recruit 800 different families for its database, create 31 posters for local and international conferences, present at six conferences, spur five master’s and bachelor’s thesis projects (so far) and distribute $193,714 to 24 graduate students.

Among the project’s findings:

  • More than 60 per cent of children with DD had motor impairments (ranging from being extremely clumsy to needing a wheelchair); nearly 30 per cent had eating difficulties (ranging from excessively picky to needing a feeding tube); and more than 20 per cent experience seizures;
  • 16 per cent have stayed overnight in the hospital in the last year and 11 per cent have visited the emergency room more than three times in the last year;
  • 44 per cent of caregivers reported that their child regularly showed multiple types of challenging behaviours – self-injurious behaviour, aggressive behaviour and mental health issues such as anxiety or depression;
  • Although 62 per cent of children were rated as being generally happy, almost three quarters of parents reported that their children were not achieving their potential; and
  • More than 70 per cent of the children were not playing team sports;  more than 60 per cent were not able to be involved in community activities such as Brownies or Cubs; one-third had no friends at school and more than half had no friends outside of school;

Stresses on parents were also significant as the study found nearly half of parents reported poor health; another 41 per cent reported mental health problems – of which 15 per cent were significant and 26 per cent mild – and one-third of parents reported having a high burden caring for their child with DD.

Among the project’s recommendations:

  • Professionals need to better recognize mental health issues in children with DD and promote quicker access to appropriate evidence-based interventions that target behaviour problems;
  • Encourage more opportunities for meaningful social experiences for children with DD in their communities, some of which may require more specialized supports or adapted community options; and
  • Ensure that better supports are available for families when they really need them to prevent crisis situations from occurring.

At the research celebration, Weiss spoke of the “Report Card” and how the team broke it into more manageable pieces, so as to not inundate families with long questionnaires before getting basic information from them. They received responses from over 400parents (mainly from mothers). Seventy per cent of the responses were about boys with DD, where 57 per cent of the whole group with developmental disabilities were also on the Autism Spectrum.

James Bebko
James Bebko

“If we wanted to know about quality of life, we would ask about quality of life,” said Weiss, arguing that their methodology is more direct and easier to code than others in the field. One of the main results from the survey was that a psychiatric diagnosis for those who already had a developmental disability is often linked to negative life events like a transition to a new school an injury or illness in the family, or legal issues.

“This is an ideal example of an emerging research team. Together, a number of researchers from a numbers of institutions managed to study real world issues that had an impact on children with developmental disabilities, including those with autism. The results have implications for policies and practices to support youth with developmental disabilities across the country,” said Weiss.

Bebko’s project, the Social Inclusion study, ran into difficulty finding participants and obtaining approval to study the children (at schools and other community settings). The end results of this study were based on 26 children (median age of 11). He reported that children would rarely, if ever, initiate or be the recipients of interactions with others, even though other children were generally in proximity to them.

“It’s been a gratifying process to be part of. When we started out we realized these kids were often not included in research and we wanted to find out what life was like for them. What our research doesn’t show is that some peers are being really supportive on an intermittent basis. In many cases, though, these kids are like an island. We’re hoping these findings will spur policy makers to improve the situations and raise awareness for it,” said Bebko.

The researchers will be presenting the project at the Ontario Association on Developmental Disabilities annual conference at the beginning of April, after which they will work out a plan to start presenting their findings to different ministries and community organizations.

More information about the project can be found on GO4KIDDS.ca.

By Arina Kharlamova in the Office of the Dean, Faculty of Health

New digital mining tool opens door to historical data

Trading Consequences

York researcher Colin Coates, director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, is part of an international project team mining thousands of pages of text and images to trace patterns and environmental consequences of early industrialization in the 19th century.

Colin Coates
Colin Coates

For the past two years, Coates and Jim Clifford (PhD ’11) have worked with a team of text mining and computer visualization experts from the University of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, as well as York University, to develop a geographic database. They launched the database this week showcasing early results.

“The key goal from our perspective was to create a tool for research that would be available to a range of historians interested in the economic and environmental history of the 19th-century British world. With this digital history initiative, historians are able to explore new historical questions and make broad comparisons using vast amounts of data in ways that previously were not possible for individual researchers,” said Coates.

The process involved programming computers to read documents, in this case more than 10 million pages of 19th-century documents, looking for mentions of commodities and their locations. This allowed the researchers to explore the process of globalization that was well underway in that era.

Trading Consequences blog

“We used computers to read the historical documents and then extracted a very large database that allows us to explore every location mentioned in the same sentence as the commodities we were interested in, like coal, rubber, wheat, cinchona or cotton,” said Clifford, a York alumnus, now a professor at the University of Saskatchewan. “Combining text mining with engaging visualizations makes this database unique and enables us to look at history from a different perspective than previous studies.”

Jim Clifford
Jim Clifford

The project, called Trading Consequences, charts the commercial growth of the British Empire. It details the economic and environmental impact of extracting and shipping hundreds of different commodities. The database includes well-known commodities like sugar, coffee and tea, but also includes some largely forgotten raw materials like gutta-percha, used to insulate telegraph cables before the invention of plastics. Anyone interested in this topic can explore the results through a series of purpose-built, web-based visualizations.

The two-year project forms part of the second round of the Digging into Data Challenge and one of eight international projects that includes Canadian researchers. Funds are provided by the British Jisc, Economic & Social Research Council, Arts & Humanities Research Council and Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

To learn more, visit the Trading Consequences project website.

Key clinical trial information still inaccessible to Canadian doctors: York study

A bottle of pills

Despite increased transparency in Health Canada’s drug approval policy, doctors are still not getting key clinical trial information that will help when prescribing new drugs to their patients, a new York University study has revealed.

lexchinmrstory-fp-V“Characteristics of the patients participating in clinical trials, and the results of those trials, were among the key omissions in information that we found in Summary Basis of Decision (SBD) documents,” says Roojin Habibi, the lead researcher and former York student working with Professor Joel Lexchin in the Department of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health.

Health Canada introduced the SBD documents in 2004, with an aim to improve transparency of the drug approval process by providing health-care professionals and patients more information regarding the clinical trials used by Health Canada to accept a new drug for marketing in Canada.

With the SBD initiative, industry experts and stakeholders hoped that more informed prescribing decisions could be made. But according to the researchers of the current study, there is still not enough detail provided about the patients in the trials for clinicians to know if those patients resemble the ones they see in their offices. In an article, titled Quality and Quantity of Information in Summary Basis of Decision Documents Issued by Health Canada, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, they also observe that trial results are not shared to convey an understanding of the risks and benefits of the drug.

“There was also inconsistency in information provided from one SBD document to another, with no obvious logic to the order in which information was presented and the type and/or level of detail of the information discussed,” says Lexchin.

Lexchin, who is also a practicing physician, notes that Health Canada’s current approach to transparency is outdated and ineffective compared to that of the Food and Drug Administration in the US and the European Medicines Agency of the European Union.

The researchers took into account 14 items of clinical trial information from all SBDs published as of April 30, 2012, and gave scores for information present (two points); unclear information (one point); and information absent (zero points). The items were grouped into three components — patient characteristics, benefit/risk information and basic trial characteristics.

“We reviewed 161 documents, spanning 456 trials, and the majority were rated as having some information present. However, while items corresponding to basic trial information were often provided (71 per cent), items in the patient characteristics component scored the poorest with 40.4 per cent. This clearly indicates that clinicians are being denied crucial tools for decision-making,” Habibi says.

Health research celebration spans disciplines toward change

Martin Bunch speaks at research celebration

There are two certainties in life – death and taxes, said Professor Tamara Daly at the most recent research celebration at York. Her research focuses on how to better use taxes to make the last few years of life better for those in long-term care in residential settings.

Robert Hache
Robert Hache

The Healthy Individuals, Healthy Communities and Global Health research celebration on Friday, March 7, was co-hosted by three of York’s Faculties (Health, Environmental Studies, Science) and Glendon College, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation.

Robert Haché, York’s vice-president research & innovation, opened the event with an insight on the breadth of health research happening across both the Keele and Glendon campuses at York University.

“York continues to build and strengthen our national and international profile for health-related research – and in particular building upon the concept of Healthy Individuals, Healthy Communities and Global Health – one of the five areas of opportunity for the strategic development of research that is highlighted in the Strategic Research Plan,” said Haché. “This research celebration offers the opportunity to learn more about the breadth and depth of health-related research and its connections to science and environmental studies research.”

Tamara Daly
Tamara Daly

Daly, of the School of Health Policy & Management, was one of five researchers who presented their work. She pinpointed a critical lack of minimum staffing standards at publicly funded long-term care homes and a 19,000-strong waiting list. The current trend, she said, is to hire personal support workers (PSWs) to further support those in understaffed long-term care residential facilities, but also to employ volunteers and family members as secondary supports. Daly is currently principal investigator on the Invisible Women project, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. Her team is exploring how occupational health and safety and the division of labour are affected by the informal care provided by people other than those employed at the facility, usually women.

She left audience members with several troubling questions about the state of health policy in the Canadian context, including: Should care be a part of Canadian citizenship? What are the minimum staffing requirements for safety? There were once minimal staffing levels in Ontario, but those were eliminated in the mid-1990s, said Daly. Later this year, she will travel to Norway, Sweden, Germany and the United Kingdom with her research team to explore how long-term care is handled in other jurisdictions to determine if practices elsewhere can inform changes to current regulations in Canada.

Joe Baker
Joe Baker

Professor Joe Baker of the School of Kinesiology & Health Science followed up Daly’s research on long-term care facilities by exploring the question of “What are we capable of?” by studying human development and capacity and the implications for older adults.

To qualify his research, Baker proposed, “When Mozart wrote his best pieces, other people claimed they were unplayable, and yet now they’re part of regular musical development repertoire.” Over the years, people have limited their own capacity for development, said Baker, who also studies how ageism affects society and how an internalization of a stereotype, particularly the notion that older adults are expected to slow down, can limit or determine your capabilities. Once you predict people’s attitudes towards aging, he has found you can also predict their longevity and cardiovascular health. Ultimately, Baker wants to build an accurate profile of what healthy age-related decline looks like, and he is curious whether elite athletes are the “ideal” model of aging, due to their physical activity and positive body-outlook, or not.

Guy Poulx
Guy Proulx

“Policymakers are in for a surprise because we’ve just graduated from a young world to an older world,” said the following speaker, Professor of psychology at Glendon College Guy Proulx, citing international statistics indicating that there were more people in the world over age 65 than under age 15. The number of people 65 and older in the world is expected to increase by 160 per cent by 2040, Proulx added. In Canada in 1800, there were no centenarians; but in 2060 there is expected to be 80,000 centenarians – an unprecedented growth that will put strain on the already struggling health-care system.

His research complements that of Baker’s in the respect that it reinforces that older adults are different now than they were 100 years ago – they are richer, better educated, proactive in advocating for their needs and have more resources (and according to Baker, more likely to push their physical limits). As a result, there has been a paradigm shift in health-care services in Canada, from young to older, from curing diseases to preventing them, and from a focus on nursing and long-term care facilities to at-home care.

Following the health researchers, the Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies, Noël Sturgeon, introduced a different take on “healthy communities” by introducing Professor Martin Bunch, whose focus on ecohealth supports healthy communities and thus healthy individuals. His research also extends to the social and environmental determinants of health in India, bringing a global perspective to health research at York University.

Martin Bunch
Martin Bunch presents his research at the Health Individuals, Healthy Communities and Global Health research celebration

Bunch explored two slums near Chennai in India, which were deemed worst-case scenarios, with no access to urban services, recurring outbreaks of cholera and a high incidence of narcotics abuse. These communities were very resilient but resistant to change, which is why Bunch and his investigators held community meetings and tried to understand the gendered life of the community by conducting socio-economic and health surveys.

Dawn Bazely
Dawn Bazely

By encouraging residents to form relationships with external partners and jump-starting such relationships, they were able to envision an alternate future that would be as resilient as their initial resistance. By actively taking a community organizing approach, the community began to see benefits, including linkages with an area hospital, a children’s hygiene program, accessible latrines, HIV/AIDS awareness and improved drainage, among others. “Once they reached out, more people saw them and wanted to work with them,” said Bunch.

The final speaker, Professor Dawn Bazely of the Faculty of Science, had a strong stance on the role ecologists can play in the environment. “Ecologists are not being heard, but we also can’t save the world in ecology departments,” she said.

“We need academics to become interdisciplinary, because ‘truth’ doesn’t automatically lead to policies, like we would like to think.” That is why Bazely is doing research on how disenfranchised people will be affected by and adapt to climate change and its effects. “There’s big data in ecology,” said Bazely, “but we now need to turn that into knowledge and information, and really look at knowledge as a nutrient.”

Her biggest takeaway, which can be said for all of the researchers, is that health policies that affect the lives of people everywhere are formed in “iterative and web-like ways”, which is why researchers must work to build relationships with a variety of people in different industries and levels of government to provide a chance for their findings to impact society and bring change.

Explore health research Friday, from elite athletes to impacts of oil and gas

Explore health, environmental studies and science based-research at a celebration highlighting Healthy Individuals, Healthy Communities and Global Health. The celebration is being co-hosted by three of York’s Faculties and Glendon College, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation Friday, March 7.

Robert Hache
Robert Hache

The event will highlight the research of five York scholars, on topics ranging from healthy aged-care in long-term care settings to how human security provided a chart for assessing the impacts of oil and gas development in the northwestern Canadian Arctic. It will also delve into what elite athletes can tell us about maximizing health and changes in long-term care witnessed in Ontario over the years and more.

“The Healthy Individuals, Healthy Communities and Global Health celebration highlights the range and diversity of health research at York and its connections to other disciplines including science and environmental studies research. It also gives a glimpse into the health research taking place on both the Keele and Glendon campuses,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation. “All York students, staff and faculty are invited to attend.”

The celebration will take place from 2 to 4pm in the Life Sciences Building Lobby. The event will feature mini-research byte presentations followed by Q&As from the audience.

Featured presenters will include: Professor Joe Baker of the School of Kinesiology & Health Science, Faculty of Health; Professor Dawn Bazely of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, who is also the director of the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability; Professor Martin Bunch, associate dean research of the Faculty of Environmental Studies; Professor Tamara Daly of the School of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health; and Professor Guy Bernard Proulx, CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health, of the Department of Psychology, Glendon College.

The event will be available for viewing online.

Tamara Daly
Tamara Daly

Tamara Daly: Healthy Public Policy for Living and Working in Long-term Care
Daly will discuss how an ethos of care must inform public debate about healthy aged care, drawing on her local and international research in long-term care settings. She will highlight some challenges in long-term care settings and raise questions about how to create healthy care communities that include a focus on the needs of residents, families and workers.

Dawn Bazely
Dawn Bazely

Dawn Bazely: Navigating the waters of transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary collaboration
Bazely’s presentation will explore how human security provided a chart for assessing the impacts of oil and gas development in the northwestern Canadian Arctic.  She will also discuss how human security has provided a map for supporting local peoples, both in Canada and elsewhere in the world, who are facing the consequences of climate change. Her presentation will briefly highlight the lessons learned and exported from the IPY GAPS project: International Polar Year, Gas, Arctic Peoples and Security (2006-11).

Martin Bunch
Martin Bunch

Martin Bunch: Ecohealth: Using complexity science to inform an adaptive ecosystem approach to environment and health in informal settlements in Chennai, India
Informal settlements (“slums” in Asian and United Nations parlance) are characterized by extremely poor living conditions. They are located on marginal and often dangerous sites; lack urban amenities; housing is dense and substandard; residents almost always lack tenure and are subject to eviction; and they are the location of poor, vulnerable and marginalized populations. Unfortunately, attempts to address problems of slums demonstrate that slum settlements are resilient and resistant to change.  In May 2004 a Canadian and Indian project team began working with NGOs and two community partners to explore the efficacy of applying an adaptive ecosystem approach, which draws upon complexity theory and resilience thinking, to environment and health in those communities. Bunch will discuss how the perspective of complexity and self-organization helped to understand why these communities can be so perversely resilient, and identify key relationships and processes that should be either undermined or promoted to encourage this social-ecological system to evolve to more desirable configurations.

Joe Baker
Joe Baker

Joe Baker: Optimal function and optimal health: What elite athletes can tell us about maximizing health
Elite athletes can inform our understanding of the limits of human potential, which may have particular relevance for older adults. Masters athletes typically show exceptional maintenance of cognitive and physical function compared to the normal aging population and challenge our notions of what older adults are capable of doing.

Guy Proulx
Guy Proulx

Guy Proulx:  The Shifting Borders of Cognitive Aging
The field of cognitive aging is changing rapidly. Half of Canadians born in 2012 can expect to live to 100 years and the hope is that their “health expectancy” could be as long. The presentation will contrast changes in long term care witnessed in Ontario the last decades and the need for more applied research addressing the wide variability within the normal aging population.

Please RSVP.

York celebrates its leading researchers

Mamdouh Shoukri present a award to Laurence Harris

York University celebrated its leading researchers Tuesday for their outstanding achievements and leadership during the second annual York U Research Leaders celebration.

Hosted by York University’s President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri and Vice-President Research & Innovation Robert Haché, and led by MC Lisa Philipps, the University celebrated the outstanding research achievements of faculty and students. Accolades from 2013-2014 include, but are not limited to, the Canada Prize, the Sir John A. MacDonald Prize and the John Porter Award from the Canadian Sociological Association, as well as fellowships in the American Society for Legal History, American Physical Society and the Royal Society of Canada.

Mamdouh Shoukri and Laurence Harris
Mamdouh Shoukri presents Laurence Harris with the 2014 President’s Research Excellence Award

Shoukri praised the researchers for their tremendous achievements, their dedication to excellence and innovation, and for the recognition that has brought both national and international renown to themselves and to York through awards and publication in prestigious journals, including Nature and Science.

“I am proud to say that today York’s researchers are among the world’s leading scholars and experts. From Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada to Distinguished Research Professors, Canada Research Chairs and more, our researchers are not only dedicated to the pursuit of new ideas and solutions to the most pressing local and global issues, but they are increasingly being recognized for their work,” said Shoukri. “This event is one important way that we at York can celebrate the research excellence all around us.”

“We are delighted to host our second annual event recognizing York’s research leaders,” added Haché. “What makes York truly special is the people – the dedicated community of faculty members, students, postdoctoral fellows and other researchers that conceive the ideas, carry out the research and translate the research product into impact.”

York's leading researchers celebrated Tuesday.
York’s leading researchers celebrated Tuesday

Several York researchers received special recognition for their outstanding research achievements. Philipps spoke about their individual accomplishments as they were presented with gifts by Shoukri and Haché. The complete list of researchers is as follows:

  • Rob Bowman, Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts;
  • Bettina Bradbury, Department of History and School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies;
  • Deborah Britzman, Faculty of Education;
  • James Carley, Department of English, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies;
  • Qiuming Cheng, cross-appointed to the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the Lassonde School of Engineering;
  • Douglas Crawford, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health;
  • Tamara Daly, School of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health;
  • Shelley Gavigan, Osgoode Hall Law School;
  • Stephen Gaetz, Faculty of Education;
  • Douglas Hay, Osgoode Hall Law School;
  • David Hood, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, Faculty of Health;
  • Anna Hudson, Department of Visual Art and Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts;
  • Joel Katz, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health;
  • Thomas Kirchner, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Faculty of Science;
  • Sergey Krylov, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science;
  • A.B.P. (Barry) Lever, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science;
  • Scott Menary, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Faculty of Science;
  • Arturo Orellana, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science;
  • Jean-Paul Paluzzi, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science;
  • Marcia Rioux, School of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health;
  • Shayna Rosenbaum, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health;
  • Adrian Shubert, Department of History, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies;
  • Lorne Sossin, dean, Osgoode Hall Law School;
  • Peter Victor, Faculty of Environmental Studies;
  • Leah Vosko, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies;
  • Eleanor Westney, Schulich School of Business; and
  • Lesley Wood, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

The celebration was preceded by recognition of the winning students and honourable mentions from the same day’s multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Fair, held in Scott Library. “I’m thrilled to be invited here to share the passion of undergraduate researchers at York,” commented Catherine Davidson, associate university librarian.

“I’m so proud of the students starting their research careers here and being mentored by some of Canada’s, and the world’s, leading researchers,” Shoukri said later.

Barbara Crow, interim dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies, spoke about the high percentage of graduate students at York who are involved in research, and mentioned the more than 300 external awards they’ve received for their work. The 2014 President’s Research Excellence Award was presented to Professor Laurence Harris of the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health for his significant contributions to multi-sensory research and to York’s research community since 1990. “Professor Harris’s research on ‘how we see during movement’ has far reaching impact locally, nationally and internationally,” said Shoukri. “His strong achievements in research, his exceptional leadership at the Centre for Vision Research and his tireless mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students have enhanced York’s reputation for research excellence.”

The Senate Committee on Awards selected Harris from eight nominees to receive this year’s award – a $10,000 internal research grant – for his many achievements as an internationally renowned scholar.

Harris has published more than 20 book chapters and 100 peer-reviewed articles, has partnered with the Humboldt Foundation and the Canadian Space Agency, and is the director for York’s Centre for Vision Research. He also recently led a $1.9-million project funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to investigate the role of peripheral vision in balance and self-motion to help reduce the risk of falling in at-risk populations.

Explore engineering research that matters Feb. 28

From left, Christina Hoicka and Costas

Explore engineering-, science- and environmental studies-based research at a celebration co-hosted by three of York’s Faculties in collaboration with the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation and York Libraries on Friday, Feb. 28.

The event highlights the research of five York scholars on topics ranging from three-dimensional (3-D) augmented  urban spaces, the exploration of searching for other universes, 3-D imaging and measurements for photogrammetric engineering and an opportunity to learn more about 3-D Printing Services at Steacie Library.

Robert Hache
Robert Hache

“This research celebration provides an opportunity for members of the York community to learn more about the breadth of engineering research at the University and its connections to other disciplines including science and environmental studies,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation. “Throughout the year, we will continue to highlight research in the five areas of opportunity for the strategic development of research, as described in the Strategic Research Plan, Building on Strength.”

Students, faculty and staff are invited to the celebration, from 2 to 4pm, in the Lassonde Building Lobby. The event will feature mini-research byte presentations followed by a Q&A session with the audience and various research demonstrations. To RSVP to Engineering that Matters, fill out the form by Feb. 26.

Featured presenters include: Lassonde School of Engineering Professors Gunho Sohn and Costas Armenakis; Associate Lecturer Hugh Chesser; Adjunct Librarian Sarah Shujah of the Steacie Science & Engineering Library; Matthew Johnson, a Faculty of Science professor; and Christina Hoicka, a professor and PowerStream Chair in Sustainable Energy Economics, Faculty of Environmental Studies.

Alongside these research presentations, many other interesting research projects taking place at Lassonde and York will be showcased and demonstrated, including an interactive demonstration from the Centre for Innovation in Information Visualization and Data-Driven Design, the Athenians Project demonstration led by Professor Nick Cercone, Geomatics Engineering display, a 3-D printing showcase with the Steacie Science & Engineering Library and the York University Rover Team.

Costas Armenakis
Costas Armenakis

Costas Armenakis: Geomatics Engineering, A Flavour of 3-D Imaging Applications

Professor Armenakis will present his work on 3-D imaging and measurements for photogrammetric engineering and remote sensing mapping from terrestrial, aerial and space-borne imaging and ranging sensors. He will demonstrate the importance of positioning-centric research and how engineering research conducted on unmanned mobile mapping systems, 3-D landscape modelling, road assets extraction, monitoring of ice fields and spatially based emergency management systems can provide solutions for the socio-economic betterment of society.

Gunho Sohn
Gunho Sohn

Gunho Sohn: 3-D Virtual Augmented City
Professor Sohn’s talk will introduce the emerging concept of augmented urban spaces and its applications and provide an overview of ongoing research projects at York in relation to urban sustainability, infrastructure risk monitoring and disaster management. In particular, this presentation will concentrate on fundamentals and the state of the arts to automatically reconstruct 3-D urban models, including building rooftops, facades, single trees, power lines, railway and indoor space modelling from remote sensed data. The presentation also presents recent works to model augmented urban spaces and spatial awareness and discuss its limitations and future research directions.

Christina Hoicka
Christina Hoicka

Christina Hoicka: Socio-technical Research and Sustainable Energy

Professor Hoicka will describe her development as an interdisciplinary researcher with training in engineering, strong sustainability and environmental studies, and geography. Her research program focuses on the study of energy decisions, community energy planning and the transition to sustainable energy systems.

Matthew Johnson
Matthew Johnson

Matt Johnson: Searching for Other Universes

Professor Johnson will explore how human conception of the size and diversity of the universe has changed dramatically throughout history. The existence of other planets, stars and galaxies was once wild speculation. However, we now have observational evidence that the universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. Is this all there is? A nexus of ideas from theoretical cosmology, quantum gravity and string theory suggests that it isn’t. Rather, these theories predict the existence of an enormous diversity of regions, each of which could rightfully be called a universe; these theories suggest that we inhabit a multiverse. Perhaps most excitingly, this idea can be tested with observations of the large-scale structure of the observable universe. This talk will explore the multiverse, and what these ideas might mean for science and society.

From left, Hugh Chesser and Sarah Shujah
From left, Hugh Chesser and Sarah Shujah

Sarah Shujah and Hugh Chesser: 3-D Printing Services @ Steacie Library

Shujah (adjunct librarian) and Chesser (associate lecturer) will discuss the set of 3-D touch printers that are being set up in the Steacie Library to give students and faculty the ability to produce relatively simple plastic components. The talk will describe how the service can be accessed, show some examples of printer output and provide some tips and tricks for component design and print set-up.