Caption: Iron Skulls Co dancers Adrian Vega (left) and Diego Garrido performed the dance duet Un último recuerdo for the spectators participating in the study. Photo Credit: Juanmi Ponce
An October 2, 2024 University of Helsinki press release (also on EurekAlert but published October 15, 2024) describes research exploring the differences in brain activity between audience members with extensive dance or music experience and audiences with little of experience of either,
University of Helsinki researchers measured the brain activity of people watching a live dance performance in a real-world setting. They invited spectators with extensive experience of either dance or music as well as novices with no particular background in either of these areas.
The spectators’ brain activity was measured using EEG while they watched the live dance duet Un último recuerdo, a piece created by the Spanish Iron Skulls Co that combines contemporary dance and breakdance.
Experienced dancers respond more strongly than novices
The results showed that dance experience is detectable in spectators’ brain activity during a dance performance. The experienced dancers watching the performance displayed stronger synchronisation than the novices at the low theta frequency.
Experience of dance affects brain functions associated with the visualisation of movement in the mind, the simultaneous integration of several sensory stimuli (listening to music and watching dance) and social interaction.
When musicians watched the live dance performance, they had stronger synchrony in the delta band, which is even lower than theta. This may be associated with the musicians’ trained ability to observe rhythmic bodily movements.
Watching dance in a real-world environment is unique for our brain
The effect of watching a dance performance on brain activity has previously been studied by having subjects watch a video recording on their own in a brain research laboratory.
The present study was conducted in a real-world performance environment and shows that watching a live dance performance in a full venue activates the brain more extensively than the above setting.
“As our interaction increasingly moves to online platforms and the virtual world, it’s important to know that real-world interaction is unique – for our body and brain,” says Hanna Poikonen, the lead author of the study.
The results also emphasise the effect of a background in creative movement on the spectator experience.
“If we have practised our bodily skills, we may better understand the body language of others, which makes social interaction smoother,” Poikonen notes.
Way back in time (see my March 6, 2012 posting), I featured some research into how experienced ballet watchers (not dancers or musicians) experienced a ballet performance.
Researchers at two Ontario universities have developed a pain-free, wearable sensor that can continuously monitor levels of blood sugar, lactates and other critical health indicators for weeks at a time, sending results to a smartphone or other device.
The Wearable Aptalyzer, created by a team featuring researchers from McMaster University and the University of Waterloo, uses an array of tiny hydrogel needles that penetrate just deeply enough to reach the interstitial fluid beneath the skin, but not far enough to reach the blood vessels or nerves.
The patch gathers and sends information about markers in the fluid to an electronic device such as a smart phone, creating an ongoing record of patterns in the rise and fall of critical biomarkers.
Once developed for clinical use, it will allow health professionals to access current medical information that today is available only retrospectively after blood tests and lab work.
The new technology could make monitoring the markers of specific diseases and conditions as simple as tracking pulse, blood pressure and other vital signs. The researchers describe the work in a new paper published today [version of record published May 16, 2024] in the journal Advanced Materials.
“This technology can provide real-time information about both chronic and acute health conditions, allowing caregivers to act more quickly and with greater certainty when they see trouble,” says one of the paper’s two corresponding authors, McMaster’s Leyla Soleymani, professor of Engineering Physics who holds the Canada Research Chair in Miniaturized Biomedical Devices.
“The Wearable Aptalyzer is a general platform, meaning it can measure any biomarkers of interest, ranging from diabetes to cardiac biomarkers,” says corresponding author Mahla Poudineh, an assistant professor and director of the IDEATION Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Waterloo. “Continuous health monitoring doesn’t just help catch diseases early and track how treatments are working. It also helps us understand how diseases happen, filling in important gaps in our knowledge that need attention.”
A user would apply and remove the patch much like a small bandage held in place with barely visible, soft hooks. The convenience is likely to appeal to diabetics and others who test themselves by drawing samples of blood or by using solid monitoring patches with metal needles that penetrate deeper and rely on less specific electrodes.
The greatest promise of the technology, though, may lie in its ability to produce weeks’ worth of meaningful results at a time, and to transmit data to electronic devices experts can read without sophisticated equipment.
Among the other potential applications, the Wearable Aptalyzer can make it possible to read and send data that signals cardiac events in real time, making it a potentially valuable tool for monitoring patients in ambulances and emergency rooms, and during treatment. The same technology can readily be adapted to monitor the progress and treatment of many chronic illnesses, including cancers, the researchers say.
The technology holds promise for improving care use in remote care settings, such as northern Indigenous communities set far from hospitals, or on space flights. Data from the Wearable Aptalyzer can signal trouble before symptoms become apparent, making it more likely patients can receive timely care.
The next steps in developing the technology for broad use include human trials and regulatory approvals. The researchers are seeking partners to help commercialize the technology.
The paper’s lead authors are Fatemeh Bakhshandeh of McMaster and Hanjia Zheng of Waterloo. Together with Soleymani and Poudineh, their co-authors are Waterloo’s Sadegh Sadeghzadeh, Irfani Ausri, Fatemeh Keyvani, Fasih Rahman, Joe Quadrilatero, and Juewen Liu, and McMaster’s Nicole Barra, Payel Sen, and Jonathan Schertzer.
Caption: The monitoring patch as compared to a 25-cent coin for scale. Credit: University of Waterloo
I don’t always do as good a job at covering the commercialization of emerging technologies as I’d like, so, this December 13, 2023 news item on Yahoo News was a welcome discovery,
Oakville, Ontario–(Newsfile Corp. – December 13, 2023) – FendX Technologies Inc. (CSE: FNDX) (OTCQB: FDXTF) (FSE: E8D) (the “Company” or “FendX“), a nanotechnology company developing surface protection coatings is pleased to announce it has entered into a Collaborative Research Agreement (“CRA“) dated December 12, 2023 with McMaster University (“McMaster“) which details the research and development plan to create a protective catheter coating using our nanotechnology licensed pursuant to the license agreement dated February 5, 2021, as amended, between the Company and McMaster.
Dr. Carolyn Myers, President and CEO of FendX, stated, “We are excited about the prospect of developing a coating for catheters using our nanotechnology which we believe will reduce catheter blockage caused by either blood clots or bacterial biofilms. Early work conducted at McMaster has demonstrated significant reduction in the adherence of both bacteria and blood which could potentially translate to reduced bacterial biofilm or blood clot formation. [emphasis mine] Our aim is to further this research to tackle the medical need to reduce catheter blockage rates, which can be costly and interfere with patient therapy. We anticipate the development of this coating formulation will also strengthen our overall intellectual property portfolio.”
The CRA outlines more fully the research and development work to be conducted by McMaster on behalf of FendX as well as a payment schedule for the maximum research funding requirements. The term of the CRA is for 24 months commencing on the effective date of December 1, 2023, unless terminated in accordance with the provisions of the CRA. In the first and second year, maximum research funding to McMaster will be $150,547 each year.
About FendX Technologies Inc.
FendX is a Canada-based nanotechnology company focused on developing products to make people’s lives safer by reducing the spread of pathogens. The Company is developing both film and spray products to protect surfaces from contamination. The lead product under development, REPELWRAP™ film, is a protective surface coating film that, due to its repelling properties, prevents the adhesion of pathogens and reduces their transmission on surfaces prone to contamination. The spray nanotechnology is a bifunctional spray coating being developed to reduce contamination on surfaces by repelling and killing pathogens. The Company is conducting research and development activities using its nanotechnology in collaboration with industry-leading partners, including McMaster University. The Company has an exclusive worldwide license to its technology and IP portfolio from McMaster, which encompass both film and spray coating nanotechnology formulations.
Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor the Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, including with respect to: the plans of the Company; statements regarding the catheter coating development and anticipated benefits; the Company’s belief that the catheter coating could reduce catheter occlusions caused by either blood clots or bacterial biofilms; statements regarding strengthening the Company’s overall intellectual property portfolio; the Company’s belief that REPELWRAP™ will have applications in healthcare settings and other industries; and products under development and any pathogen reduction benefits related thereto. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts; they are generally, but not always, identified by the words “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “intends,” “estimates,” “projects,” “aims,” “potential,” “goal,” “objective,” “prospective,” and similar expressions, or that events or conditions “will,” “would,” “may,” “can,” “could” or “should” occur, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company’s management on the date the statements are made and involve several risks and uncertainties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and that actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.
Important factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include: product candidates only being in formulation/reformulation stages; limited operating history; research and development activities; dependence on collaborative partners, licensors and others; effect of general economic and political conditions; and other risk factors set forth in the Company’s public filings which are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca. Accordingly, the reader is urged to refer to the Company’s such filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management’s beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors should change.
FendX offers next to no information about their technology or the proposed work with McMaster as seen in this excerpt from the Our Technology webpage on the FendX website,
Our patent-pending licensed nanotechnology works by combining a hierarchical wrinkled molecular structure with chemical functionalization to create nano-surfaces with repelling properties that prevent adhesion of bacteria, viruses and liquids.
Inspired by the water-resistant surface of the lotus leaf
Our nanotechnology causes both high surface tension (e.g., water) and low surface tension (e.g., oil) liquids to form droplets when they come in contact with the nano-surface.
The repelling properties of our nano-surfaces prevents adhesion of bacteria and viruses.
We believe our technology will have numerous applications and opportunities in healthcare and other industries.
That’s it. No technical details and not a single research study is cited.
While McMaster University doesn’t seem to have issued any news releases about their joint research effort with FendX, there are two research papers that I’m reasonably confident are relevant. From the Didar Lab Publications webpage, here are links and citation for both papers,
Uncredited image promoting Poetry Night [downloaded from: https://mailchi.mp/e40a5373a9cd/dont-miss-artscisalon-poetry-night?e=ee5b8cc3f5]
Is there some sort of misunderstanding between Toronto’s ArtSci Salon and the Onsite Gallery at OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) University)?
Previously, I featured a series organized around the ‘more-than’human’ exhibition at the Onsite Gallery which included events being held by the ArtSci Salon in my February 1, 2023 posting. This morning (April 3, 2023), I received, via email, an April 2, 2023 ArtSci Salon announcement about some upcoming events for the ‘Re-situating: more-than-human’ event series (sigh), Note 1: They’ve added a poet to the Poetry Night, added more detail to the May 2023 excursion, and added a call for projects; Note 2: The Onsite Gallery continues call to it the ‘more-than-human’ exhibition,
Poetry Night Wednesday, April 5 [2023] – 7:30-9:30
An immersive poetry performance that involves three poets reading poems and a site-specific live projection mapping response created by artist Ilze Briede (Kavi). Come to this in-depth and unique event of deep listening and embodied experience!
Dr. Madhur Anand, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph Dr. Karen Houle, College of arts, University of Guelph
Liz Howard, Department of English, Concordia University
Projection mapping by Ilze Briede (Kavi) PhD student, York University
Don’t forget next event of the Re-Situating series:
The rare Charitable Research Reserve is an urban land trust and environmental institute in Waterloo Region/Wellington, protecting over 1,200 acres of highly sensitive lands.
This event follows and concludes several interdisciplinary dialogues on ethics of care, ecology, symbiosis, and human-plant relations. We weave together embodied discovery and sensory experience ; listening and thinking about the ethical and material implications of recognizing non-human individuals as valuable ; as well as different disciplines, epistemologies, positionalities. Our goal is to acquire better awareness of the ecological community to which we belong, with the intention of rethinking and resituating the human within a diverse, complex, and multifaceted ecosystem of other-than-human lifeforms.
The day will begin with a panel between artists and scientists investigating the social, economic, and natural complexities affecting both human and plant-life. The afternoon events will include a 30-minute walk through the wetlands at rare (wetland as carbon sinks), a Master Class led by Dr. Alice Jarry (the design of plant-based air filtration), and a rare led walk following the ecological lichen monitoring.
IMPORTANT! Bus will leave for rare at 9 am and will return to Toronto at 5:30 pm.
Please, note: Tickets are limited. Should you not be able to attend, please let us know so we can free up the space for someone else.
We require a nominal registration fee of $5 which will be refunded on the day of the event.
PROGRAM
Sunday, May 7 [2023] – 9:00 am – 5:30 pm
Meeting place: Onsite gallery, 199 Richmond Street West.
11:00 am-12:30 pm: Panel
Sumia Ali, McMaster University
Grace Grothaus, PhD candidate, York University
Dr. Alice Jarry, Speculative Life BioLab, Concordia University
Dr. Marissa Davis, University of Waterloo
12:30-1:30pm: lunch – catered
1:30-2:15 Wetlands walk
2:30-4:15 Workshop
Dr. Alice Jarry, Speculative Life BioLab, Concordia University – Plant based filtration systems
4:30-5:15 The lichen monitoring walk. This program at rare is one of several long-term ecological monitoring programs yielding valuable baseline data and can help to identify critical changes in ecosystem dynamics.
5:30 – return to Toronto
For more information and for media inquiries please contact Roberta Buiani – ArtSci Salon, The Fields Institute roberta.buiani@utoronto.ca Jane Tingley – Slolab, York University jtingley@yorku.ca
The call
From the April 2, 2023 ArtSci Salon announcement (received via email),
call for GLAM Incubator projects for 2023 – 2024
For more information about the Call for Projects please visit the GLAM Incubator’s website For specific questions about the Incubator or this year’s call, please email me directly at p.keilty@utoronto.ca. I am happy to answer any questions you or any potential partner organizations might have.
Great idea to have this acronym for a set of institutions that don’t usually inspire fun, slang adjectives. Here’s more about GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) incubator from its homepage on the University of Toronto website,
The GLAM Incubator is a research and support hub that connects galleries, libraries, archives, and museums with industry partners, researchers, and students to advance the development of seedling projects that benefit cultural institutions, industry, and the research and teaching goals of universities worldwide. The overarching goal of the Incubator is to provide support to experimental projects that benefit the GLAM industries and engages students. It provides the broader context and overarching structure for an ongoing series of responsive, finite, cross-sector action research collaborations. A collaboration between the Faculty of Information and the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto, the GLAM Incubator provides space, administrative assistance, research expertise, equipment, event facilitation, limited funding, and knowledge mobilization.
Each year, the GLAM Incubator puts out a Call for Projects from GLAM institutions for small-scale projects that experiment or incubate new programming, service models, interactive experiences, technical services, knowledge media, and user interfaces that will have an impact on GLAM institutions or professions more broadly. Please consult our Call for Projects page for more information.
The GLAM Incubator is a theory and innovation lab dedicated to launching and supporting small-scale projects focused on the development of cutting-edge programming, service models, interactive experiences, knowledge media, and user interfaces that address a specific issue or opportunity associated with emerging technologies within the GLAM sector. The themes and contents of the projects supported by the Incubator evolve in keeping with shifting technological developments and in response to the fluctuating needs and concerns of the various stakeholders involved in the cultural industry sectors (professionals, patrons, funders).
The Incubator will use its resources and infrastructure to run multiple projects concurrently. In addition to meeting the above criteria, projects will demonstrate a capacity to engage a diversity of stakeholders, as well as new and existing community partners. Projects will be “small-scale,” with a well-bounded research design (e.g. a study addressing a specific issue or timed opportunity faced by a community or industry partner) and short-term (1-3 years) duration. Active projects will be set up in a “doored lab,” either dedicated or shared. The Incubator will purchase or assist with the purchase of technological equipment and software required for the research. It will assist with administrative tasks and knowledge mobilization activities, as described in more detail below. It will provide in-kind support to help project leads secure external grants to fund other costs associated with the research (including research assistant salaries, conference travel, etc.). In exchange, project leads and their teams will ensure that a significant proportion of the research activities occur within that space.
Project teams must participate in an annual Symposium and engage their research and results in Incubator-supported knowledge mobilization activities, public or community outreach activities, and student engagement opportunities, where applicable.
Incubator projects will be selected through an application process.
Two-page description of the project that includes an explanation of the project’s purpose and impact on a GLAM industry or profession;
Resume(s) of the lead applicant(s);
A list of collaborators including brief biographies or descriptive information
Sustainability for continuing the project after incubation
A list of potential equipment, space, administrative, and funding needs.
We also welcome inquiries from potential applicants.
Enjoy the events and good luck with your submission to GLAM.
Should you be interested in an ArtSci Salon event (and part of whatever this series and exhibition is being called), titled ‘On Ethics of Care’, held in late March 2023, there’s an embedded two hour video on their ‘Re-situating: more-than-human’ webpage,
The Canadian Science Policy Centre’s September 22, 2022 announcement (received via email) includes this nugget of information,
The Canadian Forum on Innovation and Societal Impact [CFSI] will launch in the Fall 2022 with a first series of catalyst roundtables, deliberative dialogues and concertation workshops at McMaster University on October 12th and 13th, 2022. A joint-venture of the Canadian Science Policy Centre and The/La Collaborative, CFISI will convene social research and innovation stakeholders across sectors with the purpose of exploring alignment on policies and practices that leverage impact-first training and knowledge mobilisation in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) to foster innovation and build capacity in the social and municipal sectors. For more information, please click here.
I went to the CFSI webpage on the McMaster University website and found this,
The objective of the inaugural meeting is to understand how universities can better utilize and mobilize social and human knowledge into their communities, in particular into social sector organizations (non-profit, charities, funders) and municipal governments. What are the knowledge gaps? What are the needs and priorities in social sector organizations and the social innovation ecosystem? Which approaches to cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations can help address the biggest social and policy challenges?
The event is by invitation only [emphasis mine], and will proceed under the Chatham House rules. Sessions will leverage strategic visioning and deliberative dialogue to create stakeholder alignment and deliver a first series of action plans.
Participants will bring individual and organisational perspectives on a range issues including:
The nature and structure of innovation in the social sector.
Campus-community relationship and the challenges of knowledge mobilisation in social innovation ecosystem
The role of municipal governments in fostering innovation in the social space
Needs around policy innovation and talent in the social and municipal sector.
Contribution of Indigenous knowledge to social sector, local policy making
Who are the Participants?
Social sector organisation leaders
Social Innovation stakeholders
Research and higher education policy stakeholders
Decision- and policy-makers from municipal governments
Social and human sciences researchers
Concertation and Action Plan
The event is intended as a concertation and consultation. Sense-making workshops and consultative roundtables will aim at building consensus around key concepts and best-practices. Catalysts panels and reporting sessions will aim to establish a shared vision for an action plan around cross-sectoral strategies for innovation in the social impact ecosystem.
The genuinely cross-sectoral setting will provide an opportunity to learn from a variety of perspectives in an effort to reduce barriers to knowledge-driven collaboration and partnerships and increase the social capital of research institutions to streamline impact.
This is where it got interesting,
SUBMIT A LETTER OF INTENT TO REQUEST PARTICIPATION
The event is by invitation only and will proceed under the Chatham House rules. Those with a demonstrated interest in the theme of the Forum can submit a letter of intent to request participation in the meeting. The number of places is limited.
Please fill out the participation request FORM and return it to:
The results described in the news release are from a preclinical study, meaning they tested the vaccine on animals. The results were promising enough that there is a phase 1 clinical trial taking place now. On to the news.
Scientists at McMaster University who have developed an inhaled form of COVID vaccine have confirmed it can provide broad, long-lasting protection against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern.
The research, recently published in the journal Cell, reveals the immune mechanisms and significant benefits of vaccines being delivered directly into the respiratory tract, rather than by traditional injection.
Because inhaled vaccines target the lungs and upper airways where respiratory viruses first enter the body, they are far more effective at inducing a protective immune response, the researchers report.
The reported preclinical study, which was conducted on animal models, has provided the critical proof of concept to enable a Phase 1 clinical trial that is currently under way to evaluate inhaled aerosol vaccines in healthy adults who had already received two doses of a COVID mRNA vaccine.
The tested COVID vaccine strategy was built upon a robust tuberculosis vaccine research program established by Zhou Xing, a co-lead author of the new study and a professor at the McMaster Immunology Research Centre and Department of Medicine.
“What we’ve discovered from many years’ research is that the vaccine delivered into the lung induces all-around protective respiratory mucosal immunity, a property that the injected vaccine is lacking,” Xing says.
Currently authorized COVID vaccines are all injected.
“We wanted, first and foremost, to design a vaccine that would work well against any variant,” explains the study’s co-lead author Matthew Miller, an associate professor at McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.
The McMaster COVID vaccine represents one of only a handful developed in Canada. The urgent work is a critical mission of Canada’s Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats, which is based at McMaster.
Researchers compared two types of adenovirus platforms for the vaccine. The viruses serve as vectors that can deliver vaccine directly to the lungs without causing illness themselves.
“We can remain ahead of the virus with our vaccine strategy,” says Miller. “Current vaccines are limited because they will need to be updated and will always be chasing the virus.”
Both types of the new McMaster vaccine are effective against highly transmissible variants because they are designed to target three parts of the virus, including two that are highly conserved among coronaviruses and do not mutate as quickly as spike. All COVID vaccines currently approved in Canada target only the spike protein, which has shown a remarkable ability to mutate.
“This vaccine might also provide pre-emptive protection against a future pandemic, and that’s really important because as we’ve seen during this pandemic – and as we saw in 2009 with the swine flu – even when we are able to rapidly make a vaccine for a pandemic virus, it’s already way too late. Millions of people died, even though we were able to make a vaccine in record time,” says Miller.
“We have revealed in our report that besides neutralizing antibodies and T cell immunity, the vaccine delivered into the lungs stimulates a unique form of immunity known as trained innate immunity, which is able to provide very broad protection against many lung pathogens besides SARS-CoV-2,” Xing adds.
In additional to being needle and pain-free, an inhaled vaccine is so efficient at targeting the lungs and upper airways that it can achieve maximum protection with a small fraction of the dose of current vaccines – possibly as little as 1 per cent – meaning a single batch of vaccine could go 100 times further, the researchers say.
“This pandemic has shown us that vaccine supply can be a huge challenge. Demonstrating that this alternative delivery method can significantly extend vaccine supply could be a game changer, particularly in a pandemic setting,” says Brian Lichty, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine who co-led the preclinical study along with Miller, Xing and the senior trainees Sam Afkhami and Michael D’Agostino, who are the joint first authors of the study.
…
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Respiratory mucosal delivery of next-generation COVID-19 vaccine provides robust protection against both ancestral and variant strains of SARS-CoV-2 by Sam Afkhami, Michael R. D’Agostino, Ali Zhang, Hannah D. Stacey, Art Marzok, Alisha Kang, Ramandeep Singh, Jegarubee Bavananthasivam, Gluke Ye, Xiangqian Luo, Fuan Wang, Jann C. Ang, Anna Zganiacz, Uma Sankar, Natallia Kazhdan, Joshua F.E. Koenig, Allyssa Phelps, Steven F. Gameiro, Shangguo Tang, Manel Jordana, Yonghong Wan, Karen L. Mossman, Mangalakumari Jeyanathan, Amy Gillgrass, Maria Fe C. Medina, Fiona Smaill, Brian D. Lichty, Matthew S. Miller, Zhou Xing. Cell, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.02.005
This is a ‘pre-proof’ journal paper. It is open access. However, from the PDF of the article, there is this statement from the journal publishers,
This could be a bit stomach-churning for some folks.
Researchers at Canada’s McMaster University have developed and are commercializing a technique for cultivated meat (the first experiment involved mouse meat). (You could call it vat-grown meat.) A January 19, 2021 news item on phys.org makes the announcement (Note: Links have been removed),
McMaster researchers have developed a new form of cultivated meat using a method that promises more natural flavor and texture than other alternatives to traditional meat from animals.
Researchers Ravi Selvaganapathy and Alireza Shahin-Shamsabadi, both of the university’s School of Biomedical Engineering, have devised a way to make meat by stacking thin sheets of cultivated muscle and fat cells grown together in a lab setting. The technique is adapted from a method used to grow tissue for human transplants.
The sheets of living cells, each about the thickness of a sheet of printer paper, are first grown in culture and then concentrated on growth plates before being peeled off and stacked or folded together. The sheets naturally bond to one another before the cells die.
The layers can be stacked into a solid piece of any thickness, Selvaganapathy says, and “tuned” to replicate the fat content and marbling of any cut of meat – an advantage over other alternatives.
“We are creating slabs of meat,” he says. “Consumers will be able to buy meat with whatever percentage of fat they like – just like they do with milk.”
As they describe in the journal Cells Tissues Organs, the researchers proved the concept by making meat from available lines of mouse cells. Though they did not eat the mouse meat described in the research paper, they later made and cooked a sample of meat they created from rabbit cells.
“It felt and tasted just like meat,” says Selvaganapathy.
There is no reason to think the same technology would not work for growing beef, pork or chicken, and the model would lend itself well to large-scale production, Selvaganapathy says.
The researchers were inspired by the meat-supply crisis in which worldwide demand is growing while current meat consumption is straining land and water resources and generating troubling levels of greenhouse gases.
“Meat production right now is not sustainable,” Selvaganapathy says. “There has to be an alternative way of creating meat.”
Producing viable meat without raising and harvesting animals would be far more sustainable, more sanitary and far less wasteful, the researchers point out. While other forms of cultured meat have previously been developed, the McMaster researchers believe theirs has the best potential for creating products consumers will accept, enjoy and afford.
The researchers have formed a start-up company to begin commercializing the technology.
The researchers have included a picture of the ‘meat’,
Caption: A sample of meat cultivated by researchers at Canada’s McMaster University, using cells from mice. Credit: McMaster University
Coincidentally or not, this research from Australia was announced a little more than a month after reports of a major oil spill in the Russian Arctic. A July 10, 2020 news item on phys.org announces a new technology for mopping up oil spills (Note: Links have been removed),
Oil spill disasters on land cause long-term damage for communities and the natural environment, polluting soils and sediments and contaminating groundwater.
Current methods using synthetic sorbent materials can be effective for cleaning up oil spills, but these materials are often expensive and generate large volumes of non-biodegradable plastic wastes. Now the first comparison of natural-origin sorbent materials for land-based oil spills, including peat moss, recycled human hair, and dog fur, shows that sustainable, cheaper and biodegradable options can be developed.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) project found that dog fur and human hair products—recycled from salon wastes and dog groomers—can be just as good as synthetic fabrics at cleaning up crude oil spills on hard land surfaces like highway roads, pavement, and sealed concrete floors. Polypropylene, a plastic, is a widely-used fabric used to clean up oil spills in aquatic environments.
“Dog fur in particular was surprisingly good at oil spill clean-up, and felted mats from human hair and fur were very easy to apply and remove from the spills.” lead author of the study, UTS Environmental Scientist Dr Megan Murray, said. Dr Murray investigates environmentally-friendly solutions for contamination and leads The Phyto Lab research group at UTS School of Life Sciences.
“This is a very exciting finding for land managers who respond to spilled oil from trucks, storage tanks, or leaking oil pipelines. All of these land scenarios can be treated effectively with sustainable-origin sorbents,” she said.
The sorbents tested included two commercially-available products, propylene and loose peat moss, as well as sustainable-origin prototypes including felted mats made of dog fur and human hair. Prototype oil-spill sorbent booms filled with dog fur and human hair were also tested. Crude oil was used to replicate an oil spill. The results of the study are published in Environments.
The research team simulated three types of land surfaces; non-porous hard surfaces, semi-porous surfaces, and sand, to recreate common oil-spill scenarios.
“We found that loose peat moss is not as effective at cleaning up oil spills on land compared to dog fur and hair products, and it is not useful at all for sandy environments.” Dr Murray said.
“Based on this research, we recommend peat moss is no longer used for this purpose. Given that peat moss is a limited resource and harvesting it requires degrading wetland ecosystems, we think this is a very important finding.” she said.
The research concluded that, for now, sandy environments like coastal beaches can still benefit from the use of polypropylene sorbents, but further exploration of sustainable-origin sorbents is planned.
The researchers say that future applications from the research include investigating felted mats of sustainable-origin sorbents for river bank stabilisation, [emphases mine] as well as the removal of pollutants from flowing polluted waters, similar to existing membrane technology.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel oil leaked into a river within the Arctic Circle.
The spill happened when a fuel tank at a power plant near the Siberian city of Norilsk collapsed last Friday [May 29, 2020].
The power plant’s director Vyacheslav Starostin has been taken into custody until 31 July, but not yet charged.
The plant is owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, which is the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer.
The Russian Investigative Committee (SK) has launched a criminal case over the pollution and alleged negligence, as there was reportedly a two-day delay in informing the Moscow authorities about the spill.
Ground subsidence beneath the fuel storage tanks is believed to have caused the spill. Arctic permafrost has been melting in exceptionally warm weather [more information about the weather towards the end of this posting] for this time of year.
…
Russian Minister for Emergencies Yevgeny Zinichev told Mr Putin that the Norilsk plant had spent two days trying to contain the spill, before alerting his ministry.
The leaked oil drifted some 12km (7.5 miles) from the accident site, turning long stretches of the Ambarnaya river crimson red.
The leaked diesel oil drifted some 12km (7.5 miles) from the site of the accident [downloaded from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52915807]
“Why did government agencies only find out about this two days [May 29, 2020?) after the fact?” he asked the subsidiary’s chief, Sergei Lipin. “Are we going to learn about emergency situations from social media?”
The region’s governor, Alexander Uss, had earlier told President Putin that he became aware of the oil spill on Sunday [May 31, 2020] after “alarming information appeared in social media”.
The spill has contaminated a 350 sq km (135 sq mile) area, state media report.
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The state of emergency means extra forces are going to the area to assist with the clean-up operation.
The accident is believed to be the second largest in modern Russian history in terms of volume, an expert from the World Wildlife Fund, Alexei Knizhnikov, told the AFP [Agence France Presse] news agency.
The incident has prompted stark warnings from environmental groups, who say the scale of the spill and geography of the river mean it will be difficult to clean up.
Greenpeace has compared it to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.
Oleg Mitvol, former deputy head of Russia’s environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said there had “never been such an accident in the Arctic zone”.
He said the clean-up could cost 100bn roubles (£1.2bn; $1.5bn) and take between five and 10 years.
Minister of Natural Resources Dmitry Kobylkin warned against trying to burn off such a vast quantity of fuel oil.
He proposed trying to dilute the oil with reagents. Only the emergencies ministry with military support could deal with the pollution, he said.
Barges with booms could not contain the slick because the Ambarnaya river was too shallow, he warned.
He suggested pumping the oil on to the adjacent tundra, although President Putin added: “The soil there is probably saturated [with oil] already.”
Russia’s environmental watchdog has asked a power subsidiary of Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel to pay almost 148 billion rubles, or $2.8 billion Cdn, in damages over an Arctic fuel spill in Siberia.
Rosprirodnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision of Use of Natural Resources, said in a statement on Monday [July 8, 2020] that it had already sent a request for “voluntary compensation” to the subsidiary, NTEK, after calculating the damage caused by the May 29 [2020] fuel spill.
Norilsk Nickel’s Moscow-listed shares fell by 3 per cent after the watchdog’s statement.
A fuel tank at the power plant lost pressure and released 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil near the city of Norilsk, 2,900 kilometres northeast of Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin subsequently declared a state of emergency in the region, and investigators detained three staff at the power plant.
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Norilsk, a remote city of 180,000 people situated 300 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, is built around Norilsk Nickel, the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer, and has a reputation for its pollution.
Rosprirodnadzor said the damages included the cost for nearby water bodies, estimated at 147.05 billion rubles, $2.8 billion Cdn, and for subsoil, estimated at 738.62 million roubles, $14 million Cdn.
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I can’t find any August 2020 updates for the oil spill situation in Russia. (Note: There is now an oil spill in a ecologically sensitive region near Mauritius; see August 13, 2020 news item on CBC news online website.)
Exceptionally warm weather
The oil spill isn’t the only problem in the Arctic.Here’s more from a June 23, 2020 article by Matt Simon for Wired magazine (Note: A link has been removed),
On Saturday [June 20, 2020], the residents of Verkhoyansk, Russia, marked the first day of summer with 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures. Not that they could enjoy it, really, as Verkhoyansk is in Siberia, hundreds of miles from the nearest beach. That’s much, much hotter than towns inside the Arctic Circle usually get. That 100 degrees appears to be a record, well above the average June high temperature of 68 degrees. Yet it’s likely the people of Verkhoyansk will see that record broken again in their lifetimes: The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet—if not faster—creating ecological chaos for the plants and animals that populate the north.
“The events over the weekend—in the last few weeks, really—with the heatwave in Siberia, all are unprecedented in terms of the magnitude of the extremes in temperature,” says Sophie Wilkinson, a wildfire scientist at McMaster University who studies northern peat fires, which themselves have grown unusually frequent in recent years as temperatures climb.
The Arctic’s extreme warming, known as Arctic amplification or polar amplification, may be due to three factors. One, the region’s reflectivity, or albedo—how much light it bounces back into space—is changing as the world warms. “What we’ve been seeing over the last 30 years is some relatively dramatic declines in sea ice in the summertime,” says University of Edinburgh global change ecologist Isla Myers-Smith, who studies the Arctic.
Since ice is white, it reflects the sun’s energy, something you’re already probably familiar with when it comes to staying cool in the summer. If you had to pick the color of T-shirt to wear when going hiking on a hot day, she says, “most of us would pick the white T-shirt, because that’s going to reflect the sun’s heat off of our back.” Similarly, Myers-Smith says, “If the sea ice melts in the Arctic, that will remove that white surface off of the ocean, and what will be exposed is this darker ocean surface that will absorb more of the sun’s heat.”
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If you’re interested in the environmental consequences of the warming of the Arctic, this is a very good article.
Finishing up, I wish the clean-up crews (in Russia and near Mauritius) all the best as they work in the midst of a pandemic, as well as, an environmental disaster (both the oil spill and the warming of the Arctic).
Originally, the plan was to produce some sort of a Canadian science culture roundup for 2019 but it came to my attention that 2019 was also an end-of-decade year (sometimes I miss the obvious). I’ll do my best to make this snappy but it is a review (more or less) of the last 10 years (roughly) and with regard to science culture in Canada, I’m giving the term a wide interpretation while avoiding (for the most part) mention of traditional science communication/outreach efforts such as university rresearch, academic publishing, academic conferences, and the like.
Since writing that opening paragraph in late December 2019, COVID-19 took over the world and this review seemed irrelevant for a while but as time passed, Iit occurred to me it might serve as a reminder of past good times and as a hope for the future.
Having started this blog in 2008, I’ve had the good fortune to observe a big increase in the number and range of science outreach/communication/culture initiatives, projects, festivals, etc. It’s tempting to describe it as an explosion of popular interest but I have no idea if this is true. I spend much of my time searching out and writing up this kind of work in addition to the emerging science and technology that I follow and my perception is most likely skewed by my pursuits. What i can say is that in 2019 there was more of everything to do with science culture/outreach/communication than there was when I started in 2008.
Coincidentally, I wrote a three-part series about science communication (including science outreach/culture projects) in Canada in Sept. 2009, just months before the start of this decade. In retrospect, the series is sprawling everywhere and it looks to me like I was desperately trying to make something look bigger than it actually was.
I’m looking at the more formal aspects of science communication and so onto mainstream media and education. This is the saddest section but don’t worry it gets better as it goes on.
Mainstream Media
As I note in the following subsection, there are fewer science writers employed by mainstream media, especially in Canada. The only science writer (that I know of) who’s currently employed by a newspaper is Ivan Semeniuk. for the Globe and Mail.
Margaret Munro who was the science writer for PostMedia (publisher of most newspaper dailies in Canada) is now a freelancer. Kate Lunau, a health and science journalist for Maclean’s Magazine (Canada) until 2016 and then Motherboard/VICE (US online publication) until March 2019 now publishes her own newsletter.
Daily Planet, which was a long running science programme (under various names since 1995) on Discovery Channel Canada and which inspired iterations in other countries, was cancelled in 2018 but there is still a Twitter feed being kept up to date and a webpage with access to archived programmes.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) programmes, Spark for technology and Quirks & Quarks for science on the radio side and the Nature of Things for science, wildlife, and technology on television carry on year after year and decade after decade.
A more recent addition (2019?) to the CBC lineup is a podcast that touches on science and other topics, Tai Asks Why? According to the programme’s About page, the host (Tai Poole) is in grade seven. No podcasts dated after September 2019 have been posted on Tia’s page.
Yes Magazine for children and Seed magazine (for adults) have both died since 2009. On a happier note, Canadian children’s science magazines are easier to find these days either because I got lucky on my search and/or because there are more of them to find.
Thank you to helpwevegotkids.com for their 10 Awesome Magazines for Canadian Kids webpage. First published in 2016, it is updated from time to time, most recently in October 2019 by Heather Camlot; it’s where I found many of these science/technology magazines (Note: I’m not sure how long these magazines have been published but they are all new to me),
Chickadee Magazine: ages 6-9 ( Every month, the Chickadee team creates a package of interactive stories, puzzles, animal features, and science experiments to educate and entertain readers.) It’s from the folks at owlkids.com
OWL Magazine: ages 9-13 (… highlight the elements of science and tech, engineering, art and math ) Also from the folks at owlkids.com
AdventureBox: ages 6 – 9 (… nature with beautiful photographs and fascinating scientific information … Hilarious and adventurous comic-strips, games and quizzes … An audio CD every 2 months) Also from the folks at owlkids.com
DiscoveryBox: ages 9 – 12 ( … Animals and nature, with spectacular photographs … Fascinating scientific topics, with clear explanations and experiments to carry out …) Also from the folks at owlkids.com BTW, I was not able to find out much about the Owl Kids organization.
WILD magazine ( … jam-packed with fun wildlife stories, games and pictures for youngsters of all ages. It’s a great way to get the children in your life engaged in nature and share your passion for the outdoors. Published 6 times per year) From the folks at the Canadian Wildlife Federation (enough said).
Bazoof! (… suited for ages 7-12 … nutrition, personal care, fitness, healthy lifestyles, character development, eco-education—all in a creative and zany style! Filled with short stories, comics, recipes, puzzles, games, crafts, jokes, riddles, pet care, interviews, healthy snacks, sports, true stories, fun facts, prizes and more!) Bazoof! is being brought to you by the team responsible for Zamoof! You might want to read their About page. That’s all I can dig up.
Brainspace (an augmented reality magazine for kids 8 – 14) As best I can determine they are still ‘publishing’ their interactive magazine but they make finding information about themselves or their organization a little challenging. It’s published in Ontario and its publisher Nicky Middleton had this in her LinkedIn profile: “Publisher of Brainspace interactive magazine for kids 8-12. Creating augmented reality content for teaching resources in partnership with Brock University, District School Board of Niagara.”
One more thing regarding mainstream media
While there are fewer science journalists being employed, there’s still a need for science writing and journalism. The Science Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) opened in 2010 (from its Wikipedia entry),
… to serve journalists with accurate information on scientific matters. The centre has a Research Advisory Panel of 20 Canadian scientists who will make their expertise available in a simple and understandable manner. In order to secure objectivity, the centre has an Editorial Advisory Committee of eight journalists. The centre is bilingual.
As of January 2020, the SMCC is still in operation.
Education
It’s been up and down. Banff Centre (for Arts and Creativity) no longer runs a Science Communication programme in the summer but Laurentian University, which in 2009 seemed to offer a single module for one programme, now offers a Masters of Science Communication or a Science Communication Graduate Diploma.
Mount St. Vincent University in Nova Scotia offers a minor in Science Communication (scroll down). I gather it’s a new minor.
The University of British Columbia’s Journalism School (Vancouver) no longer has a Science Journalism Research Group nor does Concordia University (Montréal) have its Science Journalism Project. I have checked both journalism schools and cannot find any indication there is a science programme or specific science courses of any kind for journalists or other communicators but I didn’t spend a lot of time digging. Interestingly, the chair, David Secko, of Concordia’s journalism programme is a science journalist himself and a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Science Media Centre of Canada.
The lack of science journalism programmes in Canada seems to reflect on overall lack of science journalism. It’s predictable given that the newspapers that once harboured science journalists have trimmed and continue to trim back their staffs.
Miscellaneous
Science centres, museums, and the like are considered part of the informal science community with Makerspaces being a new addition. For the most part, their target audience is children but they are increasingly (since 2010, I believe) offering events aimed at adults. The Canadian Association of Science Centres (CASC) describes itself and its membership this way (from the CASC About Us webpage),
CASC members are a diverse group of organisations that support informal learning of science, technology and nature. Our common bond is that we offer creative programming and exhibitions for visitors that inspire a drive to learn, create, and innovate.
If you are a member of a Science Centres, Museums, Aquariums, Planetariums and Makerspaces [these are a 2010s phenomenon] you could benefit from our reciprocal admission agreement. Not all CASC Members are participants in the Reciprocal Admissions Agreement. Click here for more information.
You can find a full list of their members including the Ingenium museums (the federal consortium of national Canadian science museums), the Saskatchewan Science Centre, the Nunavut Research Institute, Science East, and more, here.
I’m calling what follows ‘truly informal science culture’.
Science: the informal (sometimes cultural) scene
When I first started (this blog) there was one informal science get-together (that I knew of locally) and that was Vancouver Café Scientifque and its monthly events, which are still ongoing. You can find our more about the parent organization, which was started in Leeds, England in 1998. Other Canadian cities listed as having a Café Scientifique: Ottawa, Victoria, Mississauga, and Saskatoon.
Now onto the music, the dance, and more
Sing a song of science
Baba Brinkman is well known for his science raps. The rapper and playwright (from British Columbia) lives in New York City these days with his wife and sometime performance collaborator, neuroscientist Dr. Heather Berlin and their two children (see his Wikipedia entry for more), he is still Canadian (I think).
He got his start rapping science in 2008 when I think he was still living in Vancouver (Canada) after gaining the attention of UK professor Mark Pallen who commissioned him to write a rap about evolution. The Rap Guide to Evolution premiered at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Here’s a video of Brinkman’s latest science rap (Data Science) posted on YouTube on October 21, 2019,
I find this one especially interesting since Brinkman’s mother is the Honourable Joyce Murray, a member of parliament and the Minister of Digital Government in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest cabinet. (My December 27, 2019 posting highlights what I believe to be the importance of the Minister of Digital Government in the context of the government’s science and technology vision. Scroll down about 25% of the way to the subhead titled “The Minister of Digital Government and a bureaucratic débacle,”) You can find out more about Baba Brinkman here.
Tim Blais of A Capella Science first attracted my notice in 2014 thanks to David Bruggeman and his Pasco Phronesis blog (btw: David, I miss your posts about science and music which are how I found out most of what I know about the Canadian science music scene).
Blais (who has a master’s degree in physics from McGill University in Québec) started producing his musical science videos in 2012. I featured one of his earliest efforts (and one of my favourites, Rolling in the Higgs [Adele parody]) in my July 18, 2014 posting.
Dating back to 2012. The Institute of Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo held two performances of Quantum: Music at the Frontier of Science. Raymond Laflamme, then director of the institute, wrote a September 20, 2012 article (The Quantum Symphony: A Cultural Entanglement) about the performances. You can see a video (15 mins., 45 secs.,) of the February 2012 performances here.
More recently, the Life Sciences Institute at the University of British Columbia (UBC) hosted a performance of Sounds and Science – Vienna Meets Vancouver in late 2019. I covered it in a November 12, 2019 posting (scroll down to the Sounds and Science subheading). The story about how the series, which has its home base in Vienna, started is fascinating. The sold out Vancouver performance was a combination of music and lecture featuring the Vienna Philharmonic and UBC researchers. According to this Sounds and Science UBC update,
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For those who missed this exceptional evening, JoyTV and its CARPe Diem show will be producing an episode focusing on the concert, to be aired in February, 2020 [emphasis mine].
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There is another way to look at musical science and that’s to consider the science of music which is what they do at the Large Interactive Virtual Environment Laboratory (LIVELab) at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). it’s “a research concert hall. It functions as both a high-tech laboratory and theatre, opening up tremendous opportunities for research and investigation”, you can read more about it in my November 29, 2019 posting.
One last thing, there is data sonification which means finding a way to turn data into music or a sound which can more or less be defined as musical. There may be other data sonification projects and presentations in Canada but these are the ones I’ve tripped across (Note: Some links have bee removed),
Songs of the Ottawa From the website: “Songs of the Ottawa” is the Master’s Research Project of Cristina Wood, under the co-supervision of Dr. Joanna Dean and Dr. Shawn Graham. She completed her Master’s of Arts in Public History with a Specialization in Digital Humanities at Carleton University in spring 2019. She will continue her explorations of the Ottawa River in the Ph.D. program at York University [fall 2020]. Be in touch with Cristina on Twitter or send an email to hello [at] cristinawood [dot] ca.”
The Art of Data Sonification (This January 2019 workshop at Inter/Access in Toronto is over.) From the website: “Learn how to turn data into sound! Dan Tapper will teach participants how to apply different data sonification techniques, collect and produce a variety of sonifications, and how to creatively use these sonifications in their own work. The workshop will move from looking at data sonification through the lens of Dan Tapper’s work sonifying data sets from NASA, to collecting, cleaning and using your own data for artistic creation. Participants will work with pre-gathered and cleaned data sets before collecting and working with personal data and online data sets. Tools will be provided by Tapper created in Pure Data and Processing, as well as versions for Max/MSP users. A particular focus will be placed on how to use data sets and the created sonifications in creative practice – moving beyond quantitative sonic representations to richer material. “
Sonification: Making Data Sound (This September 2019 workshop at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia is also over.) From the website: ” Computers and music have been mingling their intimate secrets for over 50 years. These two worlds evolve in tandem, and where they intersect they spawn practices that are entirely novel. One of these is “sonification,” turning raw data into sounds and sonic streams to discover new musical relationships within the dataset. This is similar to data visualization, a strategy that reveals new insights from data when it is made for the eye to perceive as graphs or animations. A key advantage with sonification is sound’s ability to present trends and details simultaneously at multiple time scales, allowing us to absorb and integrate information in the same way we listen to music. In this workshop, Chris Chafe will lead a discussion of the practice and application of sonification in a wide array of disciplines, drawing on his own extensive experience in this field.”
I have been looking for data sonification projects in Canada for years. It’s amazing to me that all of this sprung up in the last year of this decade. If there’s more, please do let me know in the Comments section.
Science blogging in Canada
The big news for the decade was the founding and launch of Science Borealis, a Canadian science blog aggregator in 2013. Assuming I counted right in December 2019, there are 146 blogs. These are not all independent bloggers, many institutional blogs are included. Also, I’m not sure how active some of these blogs are. Regardless, that’s a pretty stunning number especially when I consider that my annual Canadian blog roundup from 2010 -2012 would have boasted 20 – 30 Canadian science blogs at most.
I’m not sure why ASAP Science (Michael Moffit and Gregory Brown) isn’t included on Science Borealis but maybe the science vloggers (video bloggers) prefer to go it alone. or they fit into another category of online science. Regardless, ASAP Science has been around since May 2012 according to their About page. In addition to the science education/information they provide, there’s music, including this Taylor Swift Acapella Parody.
One of the earliest Canadians to create a science blog,Gregor Wolbring, Associate Professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, started his in 2006. He has taken a few breaks, 2011 and August 2013 – June 2017 but he’s back at it these days. He is in a sense a progenitor for Canadian science blogging. At one time, his blog was so popular that US researchers included it in their studies on what was then ‘the blogging phenomenon’. His focus academically and on his blog is on rehabilitation and disability. This webpage on his blog is of particular interest to me: FUTUREBODY: The Future of the Body in the Light of Neurotechnology. It’s where he lists papers from himself and his colleagues’ in the ERANET NEURON ELSI/ELSA funded by the European Community. (ELSI is Ethical, Legal and Social Implications and ELSA is Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects.)
Canada’s Favourite Science Online, a competition co-sponsored by Science Borealia and the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada (SWCC), gives a People’s Choice Award annually in two categories: blog and science site. This September 16, 2019 posting on the Science Borealis blog features the finalists in the categories and a pretty decent sampling of what available online from the Canadian science community.
Science in the City is a Canadian life sciences blog aggregator and job and event listing website. The name is an official mark of McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) and it is used and registered by STEMCELL Technologies Canada Inc. Here’s more from their AboutScienceInTheCity webpage,
As scientists ourselves, we know that science is accelerated by collaboration and connection, but that the busy, demanding lifestyle of a scientist makes this challenging. Thus, we saw the need for a central resource that connects local scientists, provides them with a platform to share their ideas, and helps them stay current with the news, events, and jobs within their local scientific community. This inspired us to launch Science in the City in our hometown of Vancouver, Canada in 2017.
Science in the City is your complete source for all the life science news and events happening in your city. The Science in the City website and weekly newsletter provide researchers and medical professionals with breaking news, in-depth articles, and insightful commentary on what is happening around them. By supplying scientists with a resource for the local news and events that affect them, Science in the City fosters learning and collaboration within scientific communities, ultimately supporting the advancement of science and medicine.
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Vancouver is our hometown, so it made sense to launch this exciting initiative in our own backyard. But we’re only getting started! We’ve launched Science in the City in Seattle and Boston, and we’re currently working on bringing Science in the City to several more scientific communities across North America and Europe!
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Do check their event listings as they range past life science to many other interesting ‘sciencish’ get togethers. For example, in early 2020 (in Vancouver) there was,
At a guess their funding comes from STEMCELL Technologies while Science Borealis was originally (not sure what the status is today) bankrolled by Canadian Science Publishing (CSP).
It’s just dance, dance, dance
Ranging from pigeon courtship to superconductivity, Canadian scientists have scored a number of wins in the Dance Your Ph.D. competition founded in 2008 according to its Wikipedia entry and held by Science Magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The contest requires that the entrant dance either as a solo artist or as part of a troupe.
In 2018, a University of Alberta student won in the physics category and then went on to win overall. I covered it in a February 22, 2019 posting. Because I love the video, here is Pramodh Senarath Yapa with his Superconductivity: The Musical!, again,
BTW, John Bohannon who came up with the idea for the contest wrote this February 15, 2019 article about Yapa’s win for Science Magazine.
While searching for other Canadian Dance Your Ph.D. winners, I found some from the 2010 and 2011 contests. (If there are others, please do let me know in the Comments section.)
McConnell’s video did not win in its division but another Canadian student, Queen’s University (Ontario) biologist, Emma Ware won the 2011 social science division for ‘A Study of Social Interactivity Using Pigeon Courtship‘. For more about McConnell and Ware’s 2011 efforts, you can read Tyler Irving’s October 20, 2011 posting on his eponymous blog. (Side note: Irving is a Canadian science writer who started the blog in 2011 and took a five year hiatus from January 2015 to January 2020.)
Onward dance
Lesley Telford, choreographer and director of Inverso Productions based in Vancouver, seems to have started showing a dance piece inspired by Albert Einstein’s famous description of quantum entanglement as “spooky action from s a distance” in 2017.
I first wrote about it in an April 20, 2017 posting. The title, at that time, was, ‘Three Sets/Relating At A Distance; My tongue, your ear / If / Spooky Action at a Distance (phase 1‘. In 2017, Telford was artist-in-residence at the Dance Centre and TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and accelerator-based science, both located in Vancouver.
She has continued to work with the concept and most recently her company gave performances of ‘Spooky Action’ in 2019 and will go on tour in 2020 according to her company’s homepage.
Unlike Lesley Telford who has a single science-inspired piece, Blue Ceilingdance in Toronto, is organized around the idea of art (dance) and science according to the company’s About page,
Blue Ceiling dance aims to pierce the soul through investigations at the intersection of art and science, and physical rigour provoked by the imagination. By peering into the mysterious corners of human experience and embodying the natural laws of the universe, we want to inspire empathy and curiosity. Through creation, production, commissioning and touring of new dance and multi-disciplinary works and through the Imaginative Body Classes, Blue Ceiling dance uses the poetry of the body and of scientific language to describe our experience of the world through the lens of poetic naturalism.
Blue Ceiling dance was founded by Lucy Rupert in 2004, as an umbrella for her creative endeavours. …
Our biggest project to date premieres January 23-26th, 2020 at The Theatre Centre [Toronto].
Using the length of time it takes light to travel from the Sun to Earth, we launch into 8 overlapping meditations on the physical behaviour of light, the metaphors of astrophysics, and the soul of cosmology, as they brush against a sense of our own mortality. What would you do with your last 8 minutes and 17 seconds before the lights go out?
Choreographed and conceived by Lucy Rupert with additional choreography by Karen Kaeja, Emma Kerson and Jane Alison McKinney, and Michael Caldwell. With text written by Hume Baugh.
The company’s repertoire is diverse and focused largely on science,
Animal Vegetable Mineral is a site-specific work with a naturalist-led hike. Exploring embodiments of each category of matter, the dancers form an ecosystem under stress, and highlight the interconnectedness of all species and our deep need for one another. Audiences explore their local environment and encounter human embodiments in an intimate performance setting.
Originally made for the High Park Nature Centre in Toronto, the piece is adaptable to different ecosystems and environments.
dead reckoning Perplexing, haunting and slightly mischievous, with choreography by Lucy Rupert and international ballet choreographer Peter Quanz. The launching point for this work of dance-theatre is Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in 1914 and the mysterious experiences surrounding his life-or-death situation. Three linked dances offer three views of an explorer pursued by an enigmatic “other”.
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Bye, bye ScienceOnline Vancouver
A ScienceOnline conference and community based in the United States inspired a short-lived but exciting offshoot in Vancouver. With much ado, their first event was held on April 19, 2012. As I recall, by December 2012, it had died.
The volunteers were wildly ambitious and it’s very hard to maintain the level of dynamism and technology they established on their first night. Here’s how I described the first event in my April 20, 2012 posting, ” It was a very technology-heavy event in that there was livestreaming, multiple computers and screens, references to tweeting and Storify, etc.” That’s a lot to do on a regular basis as volunteers. By Christmas 2012, ScienceOnline was gone. It was a great and I’m thankful for it.
Now onto part 2 where you’ll find the visual arts, poetry, festivals, and more.
Curcumin is a constituent of turmeric (used in cooking and as a remedy in Ayurvedic medicine). It’s been a while since I’ve stumbled across a curcumin story (scientists have been trying to find a way to exploit its therapeutic qualities for years). The latest news comes from Australia, which is a little unexpected as most of the ‘curcumin research stories’ previously on this blog have come from India.
A March 5, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily announces new research on curcumin therapeutic possibilities,
For years, curry lovers have sworn by the anti-inflammatory properties of turmeric, but its active compound, curcumin, has long frustrated scientists hoping to validate these claims with clinical studies.
The failure of the body to easily absorb curcumin has been a thorn in the side of medical researchers seeking scientific proof that curcumin can successfully treat cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and many other chronic health conditions.
Now, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA), McMaster University in Canada and Texas A&M University have shown that curcumin can be delivered effectively into human cells via tiny nanoparticles.
Over three years ago on December 2, 2016, researchers from McMaster University made this video about Alzheimer’s and curcumin research available,
This video investigates the therapeutic potential of curcumin, a substance found in turmeric, to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The information presented in this video has integrated research including in vitro studies that aimed to observe the influence of curcumin based interventions in the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease. From mechanisms for neurogenesis to the disintegration of beta amyloid plaques, this video highlights that there are many pathways by which curcumin can elicit its effects. However, there are currently not enough human trials to support the mouse-model studies for turmeric’s ability to prevent Alzheimer’s.
Back to the latest work, a March 5, 2020 UniSA press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes curcumin research that focuses on STI’s (sexually transmitted infections), also mentioned is earlier work on Alzheimer’s Disease,
Sanjay Garg, a professor of pharmaceutical science at UniSA, and his colleague Dr Ankit Parikh are part of an international team that has developed a nano formulation which changes curcumin’s behaviour to increase its oral bioavailability by 117 per cent.
The researchers have shown in animal experiments that nanoparticles containing curcumin not only prevents cognitive deterioration but also reverses the damage. This finding paves the way for clinical development trials for Alzheimer’s.
Co-author Professor Xin-Fu Zhou, a UniSA neuroscientist, says the new formulation offers a potential solution for Alzheimer’s disease.
“Curcumin is a compound that suppresses oxidative stress and inflammation, both key pathological factors for Alzheimer’s, and it also helps remove amyloid plaques, small fragments of protein that clump together in the brains of Alzheimer disease patients,” Prof Zhou says.
The same delivery method is now being tested to show that curcumin can also prevent the spread of genital herpes.
“To treat genital herpes (HSV-2) you need a form of curcumin that is better absorbed, which is why it needs to be encapsulated in a nano formulation,” Prof Garg says.
“Curcumin can stop the genital herpes virus, it helps in reducing the inflammation and makes it less susceptible to HIV and other STIs,” Prof Garg says.
Women are biologically more vulnerable to genital herpes as bacterial and viral infections in the female genital tract (FGT) impair the mucosal barrier. Curcumin, however, can minimize genital inflammation and control against HSV-2 infection, which would assist in the prevention of HIV infection in the FGT.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest paper,
For anyone interested in the earlier work on Alzheimer’s Disease, here are links to two papers that were published in 2018 by a team led by Sanjay Garg,
Neither of these paper is open access but you can gain access by contacting sanjay.garg@unisa.edu.au
This looks like exciting work, bearing in mind the latest curcumin research on an STI was performed on female mice. As for the Alzheimer’s papers, that curcumin research was also performed on animals, presumably mice. As the press release noted, “This finding paves the way for clinical development trials for Alzheimer’s.” Oddly, there’s no mention of clinical trials for STI’s.
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