Tag Archives: Simon Fraser University (SFU)

Genetic study of native hazelnut reveals how ancient Indigenous peoples used the land

Large, rounded beaked hazelnuts associated with the Shuswap region, growing at the ancestral village of Gitsaex in Laxyuumb Gitselasu, northwestern BC [British Columbia]. Courtesy: Simon Fraser University

A December 6, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily announces some research from Simon Fraser University (SFU; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada),

By decoding the DNA of the beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), a native plant that thrives in British Columbia, a team of multidisciplinary scientists is providing new insight into how ancestral Indigenous peoples stewarded plants across the province.

Led by Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, an assistant professor in Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Department of Indigenous Studies, the innovative study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science(PNAS), a major scientific journal. 

A December 4, 2024 Simon Fraser University (SFU) news release (also on EurekAlert but published December 5, 2024), which originated the news item, expands on this intriguing story,

“The misconception that Indigenous peoples did not use or steward the land is widespread across North America, but is very pointed in British Columbia, where landscapes are often described as ‘wild’ or ‘untouched,’” says Armstrong of the engrained cultural biases she seeks to address through her research.

Far from being only “hunter-gatherers” — an anthropological designation of the early 20th century to describe Indigenous peoples on the northwest coast — the study challenges settler-colonial narratives by establishing people actively cultivated hazelnut on a continental scale, beginning likely 7,000 years ago.

Indigenous knowledge inspires genetic research

As an ethnoecologist and archaeologist, Armstrong specializes in finding hidden signs of how humans in the distant past co-evolved with, and co-constitute, lived environments. To understand the intertwined histories of people and plants, Armstrong often works for and with Indigenous Elders and knowledge-holders.

Through previous projects, Armstrong became aware of oral traditions that told of how ancient humans cultivated beaked hazelnut. In addition to providing a reliable source of nutrition, people uncovered ingenious uses for all parts of the plant: making medicine and cosmetics from its oil; producing a rich blue dye from its roots; as well as building and crafting useful items, such as snowshoes, from its flexible-yet-durable wood and shoots.

Armstrong was inspired to investigate how the genetic profile of the hazelnut aligned with the knowledge passed down for generations, and brought together a team of geneticists and linguists to find multifaceted evidence of how actions by humans led the beaked hazelnut to become naturalized in the forests of British Columbia.

Genes point to trade and plant transplantation over long distances

Alongside oral traditions, Armstrong’s team found similarities in Indigenous languages in the province that indicate the beaked hazelnut was a versatile commodity that was traded and shared among different communities, “British Columbia is very linguistically diverse. We found that the word for hazelnut is similar in many Indigenous languages, where there should be no similarities.” 

To retrace how the native hazelnut spread across Western North America, Armstrong and her team collected specimens found throughout the province, but also focused on sampling near archaeological village sites. A team of interdisciplinary scientists from the Hakai Institute worked closely with Armstrong to analyze the DNA of these specimens and mapped out the geographic distribution of plants sharing these genetic traits.

“We found that people were actively transplanting and cultivating hazelnuts hundreds of kilometers from their place of origin,” Armstrong explains of the expansive trade activity the maps illustrated. “People were moving hazelnut around and selectively managing it to the point that it increased genetic diversity. This type of activity was previously thought to be entirely absent in the Pacific Northwest.”

Significantly, by analyzing specimens from the Skeena Watershed, Armstrong’s team identified unique hazelnut clusters that are only found at the origin place of the Gitxsan, Ts’msyen, and Nisga’a peoples. “Genetic clustering allowed us to map something that appears subtle,” says Armstrong of the finding, which supports Indigenous land claims in the area.

Reconnecting with Indigenous science will support food security

According to Armstrong, settler-colonial efforts to systematically separate Indigenous peoples from their land and suppress traditional knowledge have obscured the role humans played in shaping the landscape. By using genetic evidence to recount the shared history of people and plants, the study brings wider appreciation to the effective methods Indigenous peoples used to manage the land for millennia. 

Jesse Stoeppler (Gwii Lok’im Gibuu), who belongs to Wilp Spookwx of the Lax Gibuu Clan, is a Gitxsan land steward, co-executive director of the Skeena Watershed Coalition and Deputy Chief of the Hagwilget First Nation. Stoeppler believes that mobilizing this traditional knowledge will benefit his community’s economy and the environment. “Throughout thousands of years of human history, someone has faced the same problems our communities are facing now and has found a solution,” says Stoeppler. “Our future is in our past. Our people saw value in the hazelnut and practiced stewardship of the land. The flora and fauna in the area were able to thrive in that environment. Understanding this can support food sovereignty in our communities.”

Similarly, Armstrong says the study indicates that ancestral Indigenous peoples understood the importance of genetic diversity in promoting environmental sustainability, “This research confirms what Indigenous peoples have always known: plants were cultivated and engineered to a level that is now observable in the genetic structure of hazelnut.” 

You can get more information about what the researchers unearthed (couldn’t resist the wordplay) in a December 4, 4024 article by Amanda Follett Hosgood for The Tyee,

… most intriguing was the complexity in northwest B.C., where five distinct genetic hazelnut clusters are scattered around the area surrounding Temlaxam — a region that today includes the community of Hazelton.

Armstrong said the findings were the “opposite of what you’d expect” from plants in an isolated grouping, which would normally lack genetic diversity.

“The pattern here with increased genetic diversity… that’s huge unto itself,” she said. “When you drill down and you start to look at the ethnographic record, the archeological record, things start to come together in this really neat way.”

The same study that unearthed the 3,500-year-old landslide at Seeley Lake, about 10 kilometres west of Hazelton, also found that hazelnut pollen abruptly appeared at the location about 7,000 years ago.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Genetic differentiation and precolonial Indigenous cultivation of hazelnut (Corylus cornuta, Betulaceae) in western North America by Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, Rute B. G. Clemente-Carvalho, Nancy J. Turner, Sara Wickham, Andrew Trant, and Matthew A. Lemay. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) November 18, 2024 121 (48) e2402304121 DOI https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2402304121

This paper is behind a paywall.

Canadian Science Policy Centre and its February 26, 2025 online event: Maintaining trust in published scientific research

This is old news and it’s an excuse to take a walk down memory lane. First, a February 6, 2025 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) notice (received via email) contained an event announcement,

Reports of research fraud and mass retractions have combined with populist distrust of expertise to contribute to widespread mistrust of scientific research. This session, composed of panelists with backgrounds in research, ethics, and publishing, will explore some of the many ways that allies within the research ecosystem can rebuild readers’ trust in science, including readers in within [sic] the research community itself, policymakers, and the public. Key topics will include research fraud, ethics education, peer review, open science practices, and research assessment reform.

Click the button below to register for the panel!

Register Now

I’ve occasionally written about problematic science research with the most extraordinary case I can recall being that of Paolo Macchiarini. Like a lot of other people, he fooled me. Once I realized that his work was deeply problematic, I started digging. The results can be seen in my April 19. 2016 postings (part one) and (part two). I also provided an update in my December 31, 2023 posting, where I note consequences for Macchiarini under the ‘A long time coming, a nanomedicine comeuppance’ subhead and provide more details under the ‘Other players in the Macchiarini story’ subhead.

Getting back to the panel on February 26, 2025, the event description seemed more focused on how problems with scientific research have fused with current ‘populist’ mistrust of science rather than on scientific malfeasance per se.

I have more details from the CSPC’s Maintaining trust in published scientific research event page,

Details

Date: Feb 26

Time: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST

Event Category: Virtual Session

Website: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JALnFZSlS6yTCfRO_p-asg

Venue

Zoom

Email: info@sciencepolicy.ca

Here’s more about the panel,

David Moher is a clinical epidemiologist, and Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, where he directs the Centre for Journalology (publication science). He is also a full Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa and full Professor, Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Professor Moher spends his time trying to help improve academic scholarship.

Panelist: Natasha McDonald

Natasha McDonald is responsible for advancing the system of peer review at Canadian Science Publishing to yield a more inclusive, transparent, and rigorous research output. She is passionate about Open Science and is a proponent of challenging long-held narratives in scientific publishing that have led to the underrepresentation of researchers from a number of communities and regions. Before moving into scholarly publishing, she held a career as a researcher in the field of marine biogeochemistry. She currently serves as a Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) UN SDG [sustainable development goals] Publishers Compact Fellow.

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a professor and research chair at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary (Canada). Dr. Eaton leads transdisciplinary research teams focused on integrity and ethics in educational contexts. Dr. Eaton also holds a concurrent appointment as an Honorary Associate Professor, Deakin University, Australia.

Juan Pablo Alperin is an associate professor in the School of Publishing, scientific director of the Public Knowledge Project, and the co-director of the Scholarly Communications Lab at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is a multi-disciplinary scholar who uses a combination of computational techniques and traditional qualitative methods to investigate ways of raising the scientific quality, global impact, and public use of scholarly work.

Kaia Motter is Head of Academic Affairs, North America at Springer Nature where she leads academic affairs activities in the US and Canada, building relationships and collaborating with funders, institutions, and other non-profit organizations in the region. Kaia has a background in publishing, having held editorial positions at Elsevier and Wiley. In recent years, her work has been centered on open science development, policy, and outreach with a topical focus on research assessment reform, research integrity, AI, and other issues impacting the research community.

That was a lot more (three panelists?) focus about publishing than I was expecting.

Soundscapes comprised of underground acoustics can help amplify soil health

For anyone who doesn’t like cartoons, this looks a lot cuter than the information it conveys,

An August 16, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily announces the work,

Barely audible to human ears, healthy soils produce a cacophony of sounds in many forms—a bit like an underground rave concert of bubble pops and clicks.

Special recordings made by Flinders University ecologists in Australia show that this chaotic mixture of soundscapes can be a measure of the diversity of tiny living animals in the soil, which create sounds as they move and interact with their environment.

An August 16, 2024 Flinders University press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes a newish (more about newish later) field of research ‘eco-acoustics’ and technical details about the researchers’ work, Note: A link has been removed,

With 75% of the world’s soils degraded, the future of the teeming community of living species that live underground face a dire future without restoration, says microbial ecologist Dr Jake Robinson, from the Frontiers of Restoration Ecology Lab in the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University.

This new field of research aims to investigate the vast, teeming hidden ecosystems where almost 60% of the Earth’s species live, he says.

“Restoring and monitoring soil biodiversity has never been more important.

“Although still in its early stages, ‘eco-acoustics’ is emerging as a promising tool to detect and monitor soil biodiversity and has now been used in Australian bushland and other ecosystems in the UK.

“The acoustic complexity and diversity are significantly higher in revegetated and remnant plots than in cleared plots, both in-situ and in sound attenuation chambers.

“The acoustic complexity and diversity are also significantly associated with soil invertebrate abundance and richness.”

The latest study, including Flinders University expert Associate Professor Martin Breed and Professor Xin Sun from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, compared results from acoustic monitoring of remnant vegetation to degraded plots and land that was revegetated 15 years ago. 

The passive acoustic monitoring used various tools and indices to measure soil biodiversity over five days in the Mount Bold region in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. A below-ground sampling device and sound attenuation chamber were used to record soil invertebrate communities, which were also manually counted.   

“It’s clear acoustic complexity and diversity of our samples are associated with soil invertebrate abundance – from earthworms, beetles to ants and spiders – and it seems to be a clear reflection of soil health,” says Dr Robinson.

“All living organisms produce sounds, and our preliminary results suggest different soil organisms make different sound profiles depending on their activity, shape, appendages and size.

“This technology holds promise in addressing the global need for more effective soil biodiversity monitoring methods to protect our planet’s most diverse ecosystems.”

This is a copy of the research paper’s graphical abstract,

Caption: Acoustic monitoring was carried out on soil in remnant vegetation as well as degraded plots and land that was revegetated 15 years ago. Credit: Flinders University

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Sounds of the underground reflect soil biodiversity dynamics across a grassy woodland restoration chronosequence by Jake M. Robinson, Alex Taylor, Nicole Fickling, Xin Sun, Martin F. Breed. Journal of Applied Ecology Volume 61, Issue 9 September 2024 Pages 2047-2060 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14738 First published online: 15 August 2024

This paper is open access.

‘Newish’ eco-acoustics

Like a lot of newish scientific terms, eco-acoustics, appears to be evolving. A search for the term led me to the Acoustic ecology entry on Wikipedia, Note: Links have been removed,

Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment.[1] Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer a musician, composer and former professor of communication studies at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) with the help of his team there[2] as part of the World Soundscape Project. The original WSP team included Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, Bruce Davies and Peter Huse, among others. The first study produced by the WSP was titled The Vancouver Soundscape. This innovative study raised the interest of researchers and artists worldwide, creating enormous growth in the field of acoustic ecology. In 1993, the members of the by now large and active international acoustic ecology community formed the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.[3]

Soundscapes are composed of the anthrophony, geophony and biophony of a particular environment. They are specific to location and change over time.[12] Acoustic ecology aims to study the relationship between these things, i.e. the relationship between humans, animals and nature, within these soundscapes. These relationships are delicate and subject to disruption by natural or man-made means.[9]

The acoustic niche hypothesis, as proposed by acoustic ecologist Bernie Krause in 1993,[23] refers to the process in which organisms partition the acoustic domain, finding their own niche in frequency and/or time in order to communicate without competition from other species. The theory draws from the ideas of niche differentiation and can be used to predict differences between young and mature ecosystems. Similar to how interspecific competition can place limits on the number of coexisting species that can utilize a given availability of habitats or resources, the available acoustic space in an environment is a limited resource that is partitioned among those species competing to utilize it.[24]

In mature ecosystems, species will sing at unique bandwidths and specific times, displaying a lack of interspecies competition in the acoustic environment. Conversely, in young ecosystems, one is more likely to encounter multiple species using similar frequency bandwidths, which can result in interference between their respective calls, or a complete lack of activity in uncontested bandwidths. Biological invasions can also result in interference in the acoustic niche, with non-native species altering the dynamics of the native community by producing signals that mask or degrade native signals. This can cause a variety of ecological impacts, such as decreased reproduction, aggressive interactions, and altered predator-prey dynamics.[25] The degree of partitioning in an environment can be used to indicate ecosystem health and biodiversity.

Earlier bioacoustic research at Flinders University has been mentioned in a June 14, 2023 posting “The sound of dirt.” Finally, whether you spell it eco-acoustics or ecoacoustics or call it acoustic ecology, it is a fascinating way of understanding the natural and not-so-natural world we live in.

Highlights from Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) July 2024 Metacreation Lab newsletter

There’s some exciting news for people interested in Ars Electronica (see more below the newsletter excerpt) and for people who’d like to explore some of the same work from the Metacreation Lab in a locale that may be closer to their homes, there’s an exhibition on Saltspring Island, British Columbia. Here are details from SFU’s Metacreation Lab newsletter, which hit my mailbox on July 22, 2024,

Metacreation Lab at Ars Electronica 2024

We are delighted to announce that the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI will be part of the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival. This year’s festival, titled “HOPE – who will turn the tide,” will take place in Linz [Austria’ from September 4 to 8.[2024]

Representing the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), we will showcase four innovative artworks. “Longing + Forgetting” by Philippe Pasquier, Matt Gingold, and Thecla Schiphorst explores pathfinding algorithms as metaphors for our personal and collective searches for solutions. “Autolume Mzton” by Jonas Kraasch and Philippe Pasquier examines the concept of birth through audio-reactive generative visuals. “Dreamscape” [emphasis mine] by Erica Lapadat-Janzen and Philippe Pasquier utilizes the Autolume system to train AI models with the artist’s own works, creating unique stills and video loops. “Ensemble” by Arshia Sobhan and Philippe Pasquier melds traditional Persian calligraphy with AI to create dynamic calligraphic forms.

We look forward to seeing you there!

More Information

MMM4Live Official Release; Generative MIDI in Ableton Live

We are ecstatic to release our Ableton plugin for computer-assisted music composition! Meet MMM4Live, our flexible and generic multi-track music AI generator. MMM4Live embeds our state-of-the-art music transformer model that allows generating fitting original musical patterns in any style! When generating, the AI model considers the request parameters, your instrument choice, and the existing musical MIDI content within your Ableton Live project to deliver relevant material. With this infilling approach, your music is the prompt!

We, at the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI at Simon Fraser University (SFU), are excited about democratizing and pushing the boundaries of musical creativity through academic research and serving diverse communities of creatives.

For additional inquiries, please do not hesitate to reach out to pasquier@sfu.ca

Try it out!

“Dreamscape” at the Provocation Exhibition

We are excited to announce that “Dreamscape,” a collaboration between Erica Lapadat-Janzen and Philippe Pasquier, will be exhibited at the Provocation exhibition from July 6th to August 10th, 2024.

In response to AI-generated art based on big data, the Metacreation Lab developed Autolume, a no-coding environment that allows artists to train AI models using their chosen works. For “Dreamscape,” the Metacreation Lab collaborated with Vancouver-based visual artist Erica Lapadat-Janzen. Using Autolume, they hand-picked and treated 12 stills and 9 video loops, capturing her unique aesthetic. Lapadat-Janzen’s media artworks, performances, and installations draw viewers into a world of equilibrium, where moments punctuate daily events to clarify our existence and find poetic meaning.

Provocation exhibition brings artists and audiences together to celebrate and provoke conversations about contemporary living. The exhibition is at 215 Baker Rd, Salt Spring Island, BC, and is open to the public (free admission) every Saturday and Sunday from 12-4 pm.

More Information

Ars Electronica

It is both an institute and a festival, from the Ars Electronica Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the city of Linz. Ars Electronica’s activities focus on the interlinkages between art, technology and society. It runs an annual festival, and manages a multidisciplinary media arts R&D facility known as the Futurelab. It also confers the Prix Ars Electronica awards.

Ars Electronica began with its first festival in September 1979. …

The 2024 festival, as noted earlier, has the theme of ‘Hope’, from the Ars Electronica 2024 festival theme page,

HOPE

Optimism is not the belief that things will somehow work out, but rather the confidence in our ability to influence and bring about improvement. And that perhaps best describes the essence of the principle of hope, not as a passive position, but as an active force that motivates us to keep going despite adversity.

But don’t worry, this year’s festival will not be an examination of the psychological or even evolutionary foundations of the principle of hope, nor will it be a reflection on our unsteady fluctuation between hope and pessimism.

“HOPE” as a festival theme is not a resigned statement that all we can do is hope that someone or something will solve our problems, but rather a manifestation that there are actually many reasons for hope. This is expressed in the subtitle “who will turn the tide”, which does not claim to know how the turnaround can be achieved, but rather focuses on who the driving forces behind this turnabout are.

The festival’s goal is to spotlight as many people as possible who have already set out on their journey and whose activities—no matter how big or small—are a very concrete reason to have hope.

Believing in the possibility of change is the prerequisite for bringing about positive change, especially when all signs point to the fact that the paths we are currently taking are often dead ends.

But belief alone will not be enough; it requires a combination of belief, vision, cooperation, and a willingness to take concrete action. A willingness that we need, even if we are not yet sure how we will turn the tide, how we will solve the problems, and how we will deal with the effects of the problems that we are (no longer) able to solve.

Earlier, I highlighted ‘Dreamscape’ which can be seen at Ars Electronica 2024 or at the “Provocation” exhibition on Salt Spring Island. Hopefully, you have an opportunity to visit one of the locations. As for the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI, you can find out more here.