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Canadian researchers work toward early detection 
By Iris Winston, Vancouver Sun, September 7, 2010 – p. D5
There is no screening test for ovarian cancer, the sixth most common cancer in women. The disease might exhibit no symptoms in the early stages.
When symptoms eventually appear, they can be similar to those of such diseases as irritable bowel syndrome, says Regina gynecologic oncologist Dr. Maryam Al-Hayki. That which means many patients are not diagnosed with the disease until it is in its later stages, when survival rates are very much lower.
This, says Al-Hayki, is why it is vital for family physicians to refer patients suspected of having ovarian cancer to a specialist in the area as soon as possible.
“It is important to increase knowledge and awareness of ovarian cancer and its symptoms and to ensure that primary physicians address those symptoms and direct any woman suspected of having ovarian cancer to gynecologic oncology service,” she says. “Referral for primary ovarian cancer surgery and chemotherapy results in better survival rates for patients with advanced disease and influences their quality of life positively.”
A number of research projects across the country are focused on early detection and screening of ovarian cancer, says Barbara Vanderhyden, who holds the Corinne Boyer chair in ovarian cancer research at the University of Ottawa.
“About 30 researchers are working closely with gynecologic oncologists and pathologists to pay attention to this disease,” she says. “Having more people in the field interpreting data based on their own strengths makes it a much more dynamic area of research. We are making much faster progress now that more people are involved.”
One of the most interesting collaborations nationally, she says, is on biomarkers, proteins found in blood or a tumour after its removal. “The proteins present are indicative of how that woman will respond to further treatment or how long she will survive.”
“A lot of good work is being done across the country,” says Ovarian Cancer Canada’s chief executive officer Elisabeth Ross, adding that having a screening equivalent to the Pap test for cervical cancer would make the biggest difference in controlling the disease.
Public awareness of ovarian cancer is also being raised by such prominent Canadians as Olympian Elizabeth Manley, the national spokeswoman for Ovarian Cancer Canada’s Winners Walk of Hope, which takes place Sunday.
“Awareness is important. Early detection is important. Support is important, but research is how we are going to end this disease,” she says.
Ovarian Cancer Canada has contributed more than $3 million to research initiatives over the 11 years the organization has existed. “We are committed to $500,000 a year and, as the budget grows, would like this to increase so that we can sustain and build the current momentum.”
As well as funding projects dedicated to early detection and supporting a biannual conference on the disease headed by Vanderhyden, the association funds tissue banks in four major centres across Canada, which, says Ross, “ensure that resources are available for research.
“It is incredible how many research projects the tissue from the banks are part of,” she says. “It is a fabulous way to keep research alive.”
Elizabeth Croft new chair for Women in Science and Technology
SCWIST member and University of British Columbia Mechanical Engineering professor Elizabeth Croft is a new chair for Women in Science and Engineering for the BC and Yukon region.
Male graduates had higher earnings than female graduates, at all levels of education
From the National Graduates Survey Class of 2005, published by StatsCan
The difference in annual earnings by level of education differed for males and females who were working full-time (Chart 2.6). For females, the median earnings increased by level of education. For males, the median earnings increased from the college to bachelor level and from the bachelor to master level but stayed the same between the master and doctorate levels.
Across all levels of education, males typically earned more than females (Chart 2.6). Furthermore, as the earnings level (percentile) increased, the gap between the genders increased as well – at least among college, bachelor and master graduates. At the doctorate level, the difference between male and female earnings still existed at the median and the 75th percentile, but was narrower than at other levels of education. At the 25th percentile, however, earnings of female doctorate graduates actually exceeded those of males by $2,400. The largest earnings gap between the genders was at the master level, at the 75th percentile, where gross earnings for males exceeded those of women by $13,000. This pattern did not change from five years before.
Earnings distribution of 2005 graduates working full-time in 2007, by gender and level of study
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-595-m/2009074/activ-eng.htm
Stroke Research at UBC
The results of two studies involving patients who have survived severe strokes indicate that rehabilitation strategies for such patients need to be improved.
PhD student Jodi Edwards discovered that although more Canadians are surviving severe strokes, they are experiencing poorer quality of life after the event. Her study was published in the May issue of the journal Stroke.
Post-doctoral fellow Sean Meehan established that survivors of severe stroke use the prefrontal cortex area of the brain when learning new movements, to compensate for damage to the normally-involved motor region.
“Jodi’s study tells us that quality of life after stroke has decreased in the past decade,” says her supervisor, Lara Boyd, Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology of Motor Learning. “A potential reason for this decline is that while we’re good at rehabilitating patients who have suffered mild to moderately severe strokes, we have very little to offer the increasing numbers of Canadians who have survived a severe stroke. But Sean’s study is pointing to ways to make a major impact in post-stroke care.”
Edwards analyzed public health statistics from 1996-2005, a period when there were many advances in early-intervention treatment for severe stroke. Meehan studied functional magnetic resonance imaging results from health subjects and stroke patients to compare which parts of the brain were engaged in performing new tasks.
“This new information on how the brain compensates for damage suggests two potential strategies for rehabilitation: We could work on restoring the original brain function before the stroke occurred, or by promoting this new pathway,” says Meehan, who is Edwards’ lab mate and also supervised by Boyd.
“The convergence of these findings from seemingly divergent areas of research is telling us that the brain isn’t working in compartments with each area taking charge of certain functions that may be irrevocably damaged by injury or disease,” says Boyd. “Rather, the different domains of the brain are inter-related and may
work together to take on new challenges.”
UBC Alumni Magazine Trek Summer 2010, p. 9
Man, Mouse or Just Plain Chicken?
At the embryo stage, humans, mice and chickens apparently have a lot in common. Their faces, at least, are similar enough to allow Joy Richman to study chicken embryos to learn more about the development of the human face. Richman is a pediatric dentist and development biologist. Her work will provide new understanding around facial abnormalities such as cleft palate, today affecting one in 700 babies born.
“The chicken embryo is ideal to unravel these mysteries,” says Richman, who literally cuts postage-stamp sized windows into eggs that allow her to peer inside to the developing embryos with a microscope.
Many animal faces start out as a rudimentary oral cavity surrounded by buds of tissue called prominences that develop into a face. Richman is trying to discover what it is that, at the molecular level, stimulates indistinct cells to form specific structures of the face. To help, she has been awarded $900,000 from the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research.
Prior to receiving her grant, Richman had established that jaw development is linked to the presence of retinoic acid, a vitamin A derivative and a protein linked to bone formation. She did this by inserting beads containing the acid into a chicken embryo, which subsequently developed bones that would become a beak, where
normally there would be cheek bones.
Now she is investigating the genes that play a role in forming the centre of the face. She has already discovered a gene of interest “because it makes a protein that is secreted outside the cell and as such could play a pivotal role. It may act as an orchestrator, directing nearby cells into required patterns.” The protein is strongly
turned on during beak development, and placing a gene for the protein in an embryo caused the growth of an extra beak. Ongoing research will further determine the protein’s role in forming face and limbs.
“Our work will shed light on inherited birth defects that affect the skeleton including cleft lip, jaw size and shape abnormalities, and disturbances in the bones of the hands and feet,” says Richman. “Our results may also one day help to improve healing after injuries to the skeleton.”
UBC Alumni Magazine Trek Summer 2010, p. 5
Profile of UBC’s Ingrid Stairs
The Academic: Ingrid Stairs, Radio Astronomer
Smiling and soft-spoken, Ingrid Stairs is passionate about stars. Her speciality, neutron stars, are the leftovers from supernova explosions. Roughly one-and-a-half times the mass of the sun, these stars are compressed into spheres about one-quarter the size of Vancouver. They also spin very fast – up to 700 times a second. The combination of small size, huge mass and fast rotation makes for an extreme environment full of powerful magnetic fields and gravitational forces.
Stairs uses big telescopes in West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Australia to track signals given off by neutron stars (which are also called pulsars after the bursts of radiation detectable from Earth). Looking at specific stars over years, she can understand many different aspects of the physics involved. “That’s some of the reason that I got into the field in the first place,” she says. “I can do one type of observation and have access to a whole range of physics through the same type of data. So that’s really appealing.”
Luckily, it’s no longer necessary to travel to a telescope in order to do observations. Many facilities now use remote software and onsite support staff, so that Stairs can log-in from her office or home computer. Otherwise, doing frequent observations would be financially prohibitive. That said, when a number of observations are scheduled close together, Stairs makes the trip and takes the opportunity to meet up with collaborators.
Identified just over 40 years ago, pulsars are relatively new study subjects. Many of them are in orbit with other stars, making their physics both complicated and intriguing. Stairs is enthusiastic about the challenge. “We keep finding new things. Every time we look at something with more sensitivity and new instruments and so on, you find new things. So we’re not bored yet.”
Some stars offer the chance to test general relativity. If two pulsars orbit each other in a binary system and both are moving very quickly (with orbits around eight to ten hours) relativistic effects become very important to their movements. Stairs uses the theory of relativity to predict basic orbit properties. Comparing these predictions across several parameters of pulsar data provides sufficient information to check that the theory of relativity is completely self-consistent.
It’s an exciting time for radio astronomy, as instruments become better at detecting signals. Large-scale searches are underway to find new pulsars. These unusual stars offer a view of star dynamics and physical processes in the universe. Stairs is excited about the long-term potential.
The Avocation: Choral Singing
Coming from a musical family, Stairs played the piano from age seven until university. She also sang in her elementary school choir, moving on to adult versions like the McGill Choral Society and Princeton Chapel Choir. After moving to Vancouver, Stairs joined UBC’s Choral Union to get her voice into shape and then auditioned for the Vancouver Bach Choir in 2004.
Stairs finds singing in a group thoroughly invigorating. The connections between science and music are well-established, and while both require careful thought, music and science stimulate the brain in different ways. “It’s challenging,” she says. “It gives you a chance to refocus your brain or think about the world in a different way for a little while. It helps everything in the long run.”
Joining the Vancouver Bach Choir requires a serious commitment. With 150 members coming from diverse work backgrounds, the choir rehearses two and a half hours each week. Additional rehearsals are required before performances, which are often in concert with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as well as prominent soloists and other guest performers. The choir offers a chance for singers to tackle major classical pieces. “We’re all there because we want to sing that repertoire,” Stairs says. In the past several years works have ranged from the old – Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St. John Passion – to the newer – Mahler’s 8th Symphony and Elgar’s War Requiem.
Stairs is an alto, singing alongside other UBC faculty members and staff including Trish Schulte, a zoologist, and endocrinologist Jerilynn Prior. “Singing alto is a good challenge. It’s more interesting than just having the melody all the time,” she says. Members must re-audition every three years, allowing the conductor to re-evaluate individual vocal ranges and quality. But with a new conductor coming in next season, auditions for all will be required, and choir members are steeling themselves for the process. A change of leadership also offers the potential for unfamiliar choral works. Stairs is just hoping to make the cut and continue carving out the time to sing with gusto.
UBC’s Alumni Magazine Trek Summer 2010, p 23-24
Male faculty out-earn females at universities
By Allison Cross – Vancouver Sun – August 11, 2010, p. B2
Male professors at Canadian universities on average earn higher salaries than their female colleagues—with the discrepancy reaching more than $20,000 at some institutions, according to Statistics Canada.
The average salary of a full-time, male teaching-staff member at the University of Toronto, excluding medical and dental faculty, is $20,362 higher than a full-time, female teaching-staff member, data from 2008 and 2009 show.
The University of Calgary has the second-largest gap, with male teaching staff earning $20,147 more than female professors.
Other schools reported similar discrepancies: Dalhousie University ($16,162) and McGill University ($15,082) are two examples.
University officials say these pay discrepancies aren’t a sign of modern bias but the result of former hiring practices that favoured men, the age and rank of professors and the distribution of men and women in different disciplines.
“When you actually factor in all those variables then, in fact, the gender differences in salary largely disappear,” said Edith Hillan, vice-provost, faculty and academic life, at the University of Toronto.
Fields such as business, computer science and engineering tend to pay more and are dominated by men, while female-dominated fields, such as social sciences and the humanities, pay less.
“In general, when you look at the data, unfortunately, I think it’s probably only about 18 to 20 per cent of all full professors [are] women across Canada,” Hillan said. “In a sense … a lot of it is the result of hiring practices in the past.
“At [the University of Toronto] we’re doing pretty well. Over the last few years, through a very proactive recruitment process, we’ve got up to the 50-per-cent mark in terms of woman hires. But most of them are going to be at junior ranks, because that’s the way the bulk of our professors come in.”
Pay gap
How the gender gap plays out in major B.C. universities.
University of B.C.: $16,559
Simon Fraser University: $13,095
University of Victoria: $11,526
University of Northern B.C.: $7,590
Protected ocean areas can’t save coral reefs from climate change, new research shows
By Emily Jackson – Vancouver Sun – August 5, 2010, p. A9
The conventional wisdom that marine reserves can save coral reefs from climate change is wishful thinking, according to Simon Fraser University researchers.
In fact, marine reserves, areas of the ocean that are protected from overfishing and pollution, make coral reefs more vulnerable to higher temperatures, said Isabelle Cote, a professor of tropical marine ecology at SFU who has studied coral reefs for 25 years.
“If they can’t cope with fishing, they can’t cope with climate change either,” Cote said.
Experts have long agreed that reducing fishing and pollution would help coral reefs survive climate change, according to a 2008 report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network.
But Cote’s research contradicts this.
If it held true, higher water temperatures would cause less suffering for protected reefs than for unprotected reefs, she said.
Cote and her research partner, Emily Darling, analyzed more than 50 publications on the vulnerability of coral reefs to climate change for evidence supporting the theory. None was found.
Coral reef species that can’t deal with typical ocean pressures such as fishing and pollution do survive in protected areas, Cote said.
However, “When there’s a period of really warm waters, these species drop like flies because they’re really sensitive,” she said.
Because coral reefs outside of protected areas deal with more stress, the species they house are more resilient. These “tougher” reefs are more likely to withstand climate change, Cote said.
But that doesn’t mean that marine reserves don’t have a purpose.
“Inside marine protected areas you do get massive increases in diversity, species that you don’t find anywhere else,” Cote said.
Climate models are advanced enough now to predict which areas of the ocean will warm the most in the next 50 to 100 years, she said, and planners should use this information to ensure marine reserves are put in places that are the least likely to warm up.
Even without factoring in the potential for climate change, experts predicted that 15 per cent of the world’s coral reefs will be seriously threatened in 10 to 20 years, according to the 2008 report.
Coral reefs act as barriers during storms, provide seafood, are a source of sand for beaches and are home to millions of species.
And, says Cote, “We’ve only scratched the surface of the potential for these organisms to solve health problems.”
While Cote’s research was done in tropical climates, she said her conclusions might also apply to the temperate waters off B.C. “There are lots of strong parallels between tropical coral reefs and temperate kelp forests,” she said.
B.C. has 148 marine protected areas in place to conserve kelp beds, abandoned canneries and archeological sites.
Canadian scientists lead the way in analysis of Martian atmosphere
Team will develop spectrometer to use in search for signs of life on Red Planet
By Mike Barber – Vancouver Sun – August 3, 2010
A Canadian team will share a lead role in creating an instrument to analyze the levels of methane and oxygen in Mars’s atmosphere, potentially uncovering signs of life on the red planet.
The Canadian Space Agency announced Monday a team of Canadian scientists will develop the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer.
It is an extremely sensitive device that will orbit Mars and document the planet’s chemical makeup, said Victoria Hipkin, a planetary scientist with the agency and the project’s co-leader.
The spectrometer will be placed aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency scheduled to launch in 2016.
If successful, “it would set a very clear pathway for future Mars exploration,” Hipkin said. “It’s a very ambitious mission.”
The spectrometer has its roots in another Canadian endeavour, a satellite measuring trace amounts of gas on Earth that has yielded discoveries on ozone depletion and air quality since its launch in 2003, Hipkin said.
“We’re now applying this amazingly sensitive instrument to the Mars atmosphere to look for signs of activity,” she said. “This is an area in which Canada is currently leading the world.”
The spectrometer will search primarily for methane, which Hipkin called “a potential signature of biology on Mars.”
On Earth, both methane and oxygen are primarily produced by life—methane from algae and the digestive tracts of animals, and oxygen from plants.
“Together, they provide an amazing signature for anyone looking at Earth a long way away to say that there must be active biology on this planet, because those two gases will react together,” Hipkin explained.
The spectrometer will be able to measure how much methane there is at different locations around Mars, and how it changes throughout the seasons.
Areas with higher concentrations would indicate regions on Mars’s surface ripe for further exploration.
“Trying to understand its atmospheric chemistry is a different kind of fundamental look that we’re taking at Mars that hasn’t been done before,” Hipkin said.
“The technique we’re applying to Mars now is the primary one we will use to understand the planets beyond our solar system.”
Canadian sounds alarm on wombat carnage Down Under
Beaver-sized marsupials are dying by the thousands as roadkill on highways around Sydney, ironically in areas identified as reserves
By Randy Boswell – Vancouver Sun – July 22, 2010, p. B3
A young Canadian scientist, who earned her academic spurs studying moose and porcupines in the Great White North, is now grabbing headlines Down Under for her efforts to protect Australia’s iconic wombat, the beaver-sized marsupials that are dying by the thousands as roadkill on highways around Sydney.
University of New South Wales wildlife biologist Erin Roger, an Ottawa native who also went to school in British Columbia and Nova Scotia, has raised alarms over the wombat carnage in southeast Australia, where about 3,000 of the creatures are killed annually by cars and trucks—often, ironically, in areas identified as wombat reserves.
“I am interested in how roads are an often overlooked threat and how we continue to build more and more roads with little regard for the kinds of habitat and species populations we are fragmenting,” Roger said in an interview. “I feel like people have this sense of inevitability when it comes to roadkill, whereas in most other situations that kind of loss of life would be otherwise very concerning.”
Her research, featured last week in the Sydney Morning Herald and on Australian radio, has highlighted the potential need for mitigation measures such as fencing along roadways and animal-crossing structures.
In the Herald article, the Canadian researcher perhaps risked a backlash from Australians by expressing her surprise at the “negative” attitudes many in the country hold toward commons species such as the wombat and kangaroo—treating “icons as pests,” she said.
“The conservation of wildlife populations living adjacent to roads is gaining international recognition as a worldwide concern,” Roger and two UNSW colleagues wrote recently in the journal Population Ecology.
Their study noted that road deaths are having a significant, species-wide impact and are a greater threat to some wombat subpopulations than either of the traditional threats to the animal—diseases such as mange or predation by the dingo and Tasmanian devil.
Ancient underwater ecosystems found off Newfoundland’s coast
By Giuseppe Valiante – Vancouver Sun – July 21, 2010, p. B1
A team of Canadian and Spanish scientists has discovered forms of marine life previously unknown to science, some of which are more than 1,000 years old and hold the secrets to ancient underwater ecosystems.
The Fisheries Department and scientists from three Canadian universities and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography are on a 20-day expedition, using a robot to take pictures and to grab samples of coral and sponges up to three kilometres deep in the waters off the coast of Newfoundland.
The team is studying 11 areas under protection of the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) that are, collectively, about 1½ times the size of Prince Edward Island.
These areas are important because they contain the “trees of the ocean,” says Ellen Kenchington, research scientist with the Fisheries Department, who is one of the leaders of the expedition.
The coral that grows in this area can be several metres tall and change the flow of water currents. It also gives shelter to fish and other organisms.
“It’s a similar function a tree would serve in the forest, cutting down wind, providing branches for birds. We have the same type of communities that take shelter down there,” she said.
These coral and sponges—which are extremely fragile—are essential in keeping the areas abundant with the marine life that is fished by many countries around the world, including Canada, the U.S., the European Union and Japan.
Kenchington’s team is assessing whether more of these areas need to be protected from fishing in order to keep stocks sustainable.
During the course of the research, Kenchington’s team says it has discovered at least two new species of coral and six sponges in international waters, thousands of metres down.
Black coral, in particular, cements itself to the bottom of the ocean and can live more than 1,000 years. The coral has the equivalent of growth rings that can be revealed when sectioning its skeleton.
Kenchington said scientists can potentially look at the coral’s chemical composition and determine the temperature of the water and other data from as far back as 1,000 years.
“That’s how we are able to say if there is warming or a change in climate direction,” she said. “In order to understand the present we need to put it into context.”
SCWIST Newsletter - July 2010
SCWIST-News-2010-July.pdfSCWIST-News-2010-July.pdf
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