Priscila Uppal

“Canada’s coolest poet”, York English Professor Priscila Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04), has received one of the country’s highest forms of recognition – election as a Fellow to the (RSC).

Uppal has accomplished a great deal in her 39 years. She has published 10 collections of poetry, two novels, a memoir, a play, an academic monograph and several anthologies. Her poetry includes Traumatology (2010), Successful Tragedies: Poems 1998-2010 (2010), Winter Sport: Poems (2010) and Ontological Necessities, which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

“This is a wonderful achievement for Professor Uppal, who exemplifies the excellence, dedication and engagement of our York faculty," says York President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. "A gifted poet, writer and teacher, she is an incredible role model for our students and for the arts community. On behalf of all of us at the University, I’d like to congratulate her on this special recognition of her contributions.”

Uppal's other work includes the critically-acclaimed novels The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002) and To Whom It May Concern (2009); and the study We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy (2009), as well as the memoir Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother (2013), which was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Hilary Weston Prize for Non-Fiction.

“It’s a big honour and it obviously puts me in the company of some very remarkable people, past and present,” says Uppal, who is one of 90 new Fellows announced Tuesday by the RSC. “I’m also thrilled to be inducted at such a young age, which I understand is quite rare.”

Uppal's work has been translated into Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Korean, Latvian and Serbo-Croatian. Uppal was the first-ever poet-in-residence for Canadian Athletes Now during the summer and winter Olympics and Paralympic games, as well as the Rogers Cup tennis.

“I was very pleased to see that recognition for my work, but also the continued recognition…that creative work is a form of research that is highly respected and it is a field of knowledge that is important and vital to society and to Canadian citizenship,” adds Uppal.

She is looking forward to the opportunity to learn about research and discoveries in drastically different fields from her own. She believes one of the strengths of the RSC is that is brings people together from such diverse disciplines allowing for a cross-pollination of ideas and the spawning of innovative ways of thinking, adapting and approaching one’s work.

“I’m delighted to be a Fellow,” she says. “It’s a great honour to represent the arts at York, but also to represent the field of artistic production and inquiry. It should be seen as not only a legitimate form of research, but also as an incredibly important one that can stand side by side the hard sciences and other more conventional forms of scholarship."

The RSC website states that the “fellowship of the RSC comprises distinguished men and women from all branches of learning who have made remarkable contributions in the arts, the humanities and the sciences, as well as in Canadian public life”. Uppal will join the ranks of more than 2,000 Canadian scholars, artists and scientists, who have been peer-elected as the best in their field.

Uppal will be inducted as a Fellow in the ’s Academy of the Arts and Humanities on Saturday, Nov. 22 in Quebec City.

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This year's lecturers were Professor��Michael Rosbash, 2012 Canada Gairdner International Award Recipient, and��Professor Cheryl Arrowsmith, Canada Research Chair in Structural Proteomics and a member of the Gairdner Awards Medical Review Panel.��

Michael Rosbash

Rosbash, a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor in the��Department of Biology at��Brandeis University in��Waltham, MA, has pursued two fields of research: studies concerning the metabolism and processing of RNA, and the molecular basis of circadian rhythms.

It is��his work delving into circadian rhythms –��the built-in 24-hour biological clock that regulates sleep and wakefulness, activity and rest, hormone levels, body temperature and other important functions –��for which he received the Canada Gairdner International award, along with his colleagues��Brandeis University Professors Jeffrey Hall and Michael Young. Rosbash's discoveries could lead to the development of drugs to treat insomnia, jet lag and other sleep disorders.

Rosbash encouraged students to��pursue science as a career, but also told them of the importance of finding balance in their pursuits. “Science, and life in general, is balancing means and ends. Like lab experiments, life is not about the outcome, but about the journey and process of discovery. Find something you love and you will be much better for it, ” he said.

Arrowsmith, a professor and researcher in the Department of Medical Biophysics in the��Faculty of Medicine at the��University of Toronto, is head of the Arrowsmith Lab and the senior scientist in the Division of Molecular & Structural Biology, Ontario Cancer Institute and at the (SGC), a not-for-profit, public-private partnership. “Science is a highly rewarding team effort. Be passionate about your research, share your data with others and you’ll see the world,” Arrowsmith told students.

Cheryl Arrowsmith

As part of her lecture, she demonstrated a portion of her work with the SGC which creates 3D models of proteins that represent potential drug targets. Knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of proteins involved enhances our understanding of the molecular basis of cancer and pharmaceutical agents that could impede disease processes. Arrowsmith encouraged students to “play” with the structures as they are all available online at the website.

Following the lecture, many of the high school groups stayed on campus for a presentation by �첥��Ƶ’s recruitment officers. Students also took tours of campus guided by York Student Ambassadors and remained on campus for lunch.��Participants were encouraged to fill out reply cards to be kept up-to-date about admission events.

The lecture, which took place Oct. 24, is part of an annual event that brings high school science students to the Keele campus to hear lectures delivered by the world's top scientists and medical researchers.

Visit the website to learn more about the foundation, its work and awards.

Republished courtesy of YFile– �첥��Ƶ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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The gala dinner will take place Thursday, April 26, from 6 to 9:30pm, at the MaRS Discovery District, 101 College Street, Toronto. Gala tickets cost $250.

Twenty-five scientists will host a table, including three from �첥��Ƶ. They are physics Professor Scott Menary, Professor Marshall McCall, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Professor Brenda Zimmerman, director of health industry management at the Schulich School of Business. In addition, York honorary degree recipient Calvin Stiller will also host a table.

Guests have the opportunity to choose which table they wish to be seated at, as long as it’s not already sold out. Each scientist will provide a brief overview of their subject and/or current work and guests are then free to ask any questions or suggest topics they would like the host to discuss. Scientists are chosen from various disciplines from academic institutions and other sectors across southern Ontario.

Scott Menary

Menary’s present main research thrust is the ALPHA experiment at the antiproton decelerator at CERN, the European Centre for Particle Physics located in Geneva, Switzerland.��ALPHA aims to produce, "trap", and spectrally analyze a sample of antihydrogen atoms. Comparison of the properties of antihydrogen to those of hydrogen, the most precisely understood system that exists, promises to be a stringent test of our present description of the interactions of the fundamental objects in our universe.

Before coming to York, Menary was a scientific associate of CERN, a research associate with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a staff scientist with the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) located near Chicago.��He has performed research at CERN (specifically at LEP – the Large Electron Positron collider), Fermilab where he helped design a neutrino beam, as well as HERA, the large electron-proton collider at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, and the CLEO experiment at the CESR electron-positron collider located on the Cornell University campus.

Brenda Zimmerman

Zimmerman will discuss hospital-acquired infections, such as Clostridium difficile, which are typically antibiotic-resistant organisms and often nicknamed “superbugs”, and whether or not a different approach can provide the solution.��Patients and staff in hospitals are at risk of becoming infected and of infecting others.��Positive deviance is a change-management approach that has been used in six Canadian hospitals to address this challenge.��The hallmark of positive deviance is locally created and implemented solutions in contrast to dictated guidelines or rules.��How can the lessons learned from these hospitals be used to broadly spread the ideas without destroying the very essence of the PD approach?

Zimmerman‘s primary research applies complexity science to organizations, especially health-care organizations.�� She was a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences chronic disease expert panel, is a member of the Health Foundation’s Improvement Science Network (UK), advises the Canadian Public Health Agency and is the chair of Patient Safety and Quality Committee for Mount Sinai Hospital.

Marshall McCall

"How We Got Here: The Milky Way and Beyond" is the title of McCall’s discussion. He’ll talk about our understanding of the Milky Way and how our place within it is inextricably tied to thinking about galaxies.��Our own bodies bear the imprint of galactic evolution.�� How did we get here mentally?�� How did we get here physically?�� How special are we?

McCall is an astronomer who has spent most of his research life studying the structure, evolution and formation of galaxies and galaxy aggregates.��He has spent two years observing southern skies at Mt. Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories in Australia.��His primary research adversary is interstellar dust, and he has spent a good deal of time uncovering what lies behind it, including two hitherto unknown galaxies in the backyard of the Milky Way.

Stiller will talk about the translation of university discoveries to world markets. As the role of universities is the pursuit of truth, their societal responsibility is to translate those findings where possible into goods and services that serve the community.��Canada has lagged behind in this translation of discoveries to the community and many programs are seeking ways to improve this performance.

Calvin Stiller

Stiller, who started his career in organ transplantation and immunology research, and leading the major transplant program in Canada, has been involved with promoting translation of research both locally and nationally. He was a co-founder of MaRS and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and led the formation of venture capital to fill the gap that exists in Canada in early translation.

Following the dinner, there will be a general question-and-answer period, at which time any of the participants are free to direct a question to any of the scientists present.

The RCI for the Advancement of Science is a not-for-profit organization founded in Toronto in 1849 by a small group of civil engineers, architects and surveyors, and��led by Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915) who established the concept of time zones.

For more information, visit the ��website or contact York biology Professor Ron Pearlman, a member of the RCI council and the gala organizing committee,��at ronp@yorku.ca.

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Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in an international collaboration led by Canadians, used microwave spectroscopy – one of the most sensitive techniques for probing the structure of atoms – to manipulate antihydrogen. Their work is published today in the prestigious journal, Nature.

Hydrogen is considered the fundamental building block of physics; by comparing it with its antimatter counterpart, scientists hope to answer a crucial question: if antimatter and matter were created in equal amounts during the Big Bang, where did all the antimatter go?

�첥��Ƶ physics graduate students Chanpreet Amole and Andrea Capra worked on the experiment and are co-authors on the Nature paper, along with their supervisor, Professor Scott Menary. The collaboration, dubbed ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus experiment), includes scientists from Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Sweden, the UK and the US. Five Canadian institutions are represented: University of Calgary, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, �첥��Ƶ and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle and nuclear physics lab.

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Amole and Capra logged 50-hour weeks at CERN in Geneva, preparing the antihydrogen sample and assisting with measurements.

“Every day was a learning experience,” says Amole. “At CERN, you get to work with some of the top minds in the world. Many times, [one of the scientists] would casually walk in and strike up a conversation on some very complex, yet interesting physics phenomenon that would just blow your mind.”

The experiment involved confining anti-atoms in a magnetic trap and irradiating them with microwaves. Precise tuning of the microwave frequency and magnetic field enabled researchers to hit an internal resonance that made atoms literally jump out of the trap and reveal information about their properties. Researchers at SFU designed the apparatus for this latest experiment, working closely with PhD candidates Mohammad Ashkezari of SFU and Tim Friesen from the University of Calgary. Meanwhile, researchers from the Vancouver-based TRIUMF laboratory and �첥��Ƶ teased faint signals from a sophisticated detector system, pinpointing matter-antimatter annihilation events.

Menary, professor in York’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, , says the current experiment represents the collaboration’s biggest milestone to date.

“It was a scientific tour de force just to trap the antihydrogen atoms. Now we’re actually doing physics with them. This, in my mind, is an even bigger achievement,” he says.

ALPHA-Canada researchers played a key role in two other recent antimatter milestones: in November 2010, ALPHA scientists successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time, and in June 2011, they demonstrated they could hold on to them for 1,000 seconds.

“For decades, scientists have wanted to study the intrinsic properties of antimatter atoms in the hope of finding clues that might help answer fundamental questions about our universe,” says lead author Mike Hayden, physicist with SFU. “In the middle of the last century, physicists were developing and using microwave techniques to study ordinary atoms like hydrogen. Now, 60 or 70 years down the road, we have just witnessed the first-ever microwave interactions with an anti-atom.”

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Led by Professor Colin Coates (left), Canada Research Chair��in Canadian Cultural Landscapes and professor of Canadian Studies at Glendon College,��the��project is expected to cast light on the impacts of an earlier period of economic “globalization” as a way of better understanding the challenges of current practices.��It is one of eight projects across Canada that has been granted funding in the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge.

Fourteen teams representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have been awarded grants to investigate how computational techniques can be applied to “big data” to change the nature of humanities and social sciences research. Each team represents collaborations among scholars, scientists and librarians from leading universities worldwide.

Coates, who is also the director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York, is one of the principal investigators on the project titled Trading Consequences,��which received $125,000 in funding. The project��will examine the economic and environmental consequences of commodity trading during the 19th century and��employs information extraction techniques to study large corpora of digitized documents from the 19th century. This innovative digital resource will allow historians to discover novel patterns and to explore new hypotheses through��structured query and a variety of visualization tools.

"Our team of environmental historians is excited to be partners with the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews in the Trading Consequences project. Canadian economic development has historically been defined by commodity flows, and it is important to understand the environmental impacts of this commerce in the past, just as it is today. The focus on Canadian data will test the techniques created through this collaborative project for mapping the scope and impact of international trade in the 19th century," said Coates.

“York is proud to receive recognition in the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge,” said Robert Haché, York’s vice-president research & innovation.��“These important research projects advance knowledge as researchers work collaboratively and internationally to find new ways to analyze, search for and store data using digital and electronic technologies.”

“The Digging into Data Challenge is an international initiative that enables Canadian researchers to take advantage of the huge digital resources now available and to develop close partnerships with overseas universities,” said Chad Gaffield, president of the Social Sciences��& Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). “These exciting projects cross both disciplines and national borders; they lead to new insights into human thought and behaviour.”

The successful cohort of��projects received a total of nearly $5 million in funding from eight international research funding agencies. SSHRC’s contribution of��$869,117 will support Canadian researchers from eight of the fourteen teams. ��

For more information, visit the ��website.

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The study, led by Rutgers University, finds that bees are emerging earlier each spring, advancing their life cycle by nearly a day per decade.

"This may become a case of ‘missed connections’ in terms of bees and the plants they need to pollinate," says Sheila Colla (right), a York PhD��candidate in biology and study co-author. "So far, bees and plants are keeping pace with each other, but this may not be the case as rates of temperature warming increase."

Scientists call this phenomenon a "phenological mismatch" – when the life cycles of dependent species fall out of sync with one another.

"In the case of bees, [this mismatch] hasn’t happened yet," Colla says. "The concern is that some plant species will not respond to climate change in the same manner as their pollinators."��

The study looked at the past 130 years of data on��10 species of wild bees that emerge in the early spring in eastern North America, comparing it with published studies of bee pollinated plants over the same time period.

Results show that life cycle changes in bees have paralleled changes in the plants they visit. Both bees and plants responded to temperature increases from 1971-1999 by more than doubling their rates of phenological advance, suggesting a parallel response to climate change.

"So far, there is only a small difference between bees and plants in terms of their response to climate change, noted in only a handful of species. But, this small difference is worrying," Colla says, noting that of��particular concern is the finding that plant studies conducted in cities showed greater rates of advance for species that emerge earlier in the season.

"This suggests more investigation into the effects of temperature warming in urban environments is needed," says Colla. She emphasizes that potential problems aren’t just limited to pollination.

"Many ecological functions result from interactions among species, and because not all species respond to climate warming in the same manner, this could potentially lead to phenological mismatches that result in the loss of function. In other words, this could result in serious challenges for many different forms of animal and plant life."

Colla conducted her research under the supervision of York biology Professor Laurence Packer as a PhD student in the Department of Biology in��the��Faculty of Science & Engineering.��The research was funded through a Natural Sciences��& Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship to Colla.

The study, "Climate-associated phenological advances in bee pollinators and bee-pollinated plants," was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Republished courtesy of YFile– �첥��Ƶ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Join Professor William Gage, associate dean of research & innovation in the Faculty of Health (FoH) at York, and Professor Andrew Eckford of York’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering in the Faculty of Science & Engineering (FSE), for the launch of the eHealth Alliance brown bag lecture series. They will discuss the importance of accelerometers in studying the walking behaviour and interactions of participants in their natural environment.

Right: William Gage

The first eHealth Alliance lecture, “Wireless Accelerometers to Monitor Walking Activity and Behaviour”, will take place Thursday, Oct. 20, from 3 to 4pm at 402 Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building (HNES), Keele campus.

Gage and Eckford will also look at why these walking measurements are changing how scientists understand the activity levels of healthy individuals, and importantly, how illness and injury alter activity levels.

“We will describe the development our sensor system and contrast this development with other sensor systems in the literature; we will focus the application of our measurement system with healthy individuals, patients with stroke and patients with knee replacement,” says Gage, also a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science, where he teaches a graduate level course in biomechanics and neuromuscular control of posture and gait.

Left: Andrew Eckford

Gage holds scientific appointments as an associate scientist in the Centre for Stroke Recovery at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre and as a scientist at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. He is particularly interested in how balance and walking are affected by age, by joint disease, such as arthritis, and by stroke.

A graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and the University of Toronto, Eckford has written many papers on wireless networking and has research interests in wearable wireless networks, as well as signal processing for biomechanics. He also holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Toronto.

The eHealth Alliance came about after some 30 faculty members from the School of Health Policy & Management, FoH, and the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, FSE, got together. They discussed the need for building a York alliance in e-health that would bring the two Faculties together with relevant York and external partners, such as industry leaders, York Region hospitals and the Central LHIN - Local Health Integration Network, says Professor Serban Dinca, undergraduate program director, coordinator of the Health Informatics Certificate in the School of Health Policy & Management and eHealth Alliance chair.

“The eHealth Alliance lecture series is the first step in coagulating the alliance and making connections with the industry,” says Dinca.

See the following list for upcoming eHealth Alliance lecture presenters:

• Nov. 17 - Serban Dinca, undergraduate program director and coordinator of the Health Informatics Certificate in the School of Health Policy & Management, from 3 to 4pm at 402 HNES Building
• Dec. 15 - Amir Asif, chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, from 3 to 4pm at 3033 Computer Science & Engineering Building
• Jan. 19 - Harvey Skinner, dean of the Faculty of Health, from 3 to 4pm at 402 HNES Building
• Feb. 16 - Professor Farah Ahmad of the School of Health Policy & Management, from 3 to 4pm at 402 HNES Building

Republished courtesy of YFile– �첥��Ƶ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Kent, president of the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale and Toronto, founded the Pollinator Garden Project two years ago to teach gardeners, members of the public and school children how to create and conserve habitat for pollinators.

A postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology in York’s , he is the only Canadian to receive the award this year from the (NAPPC). The NAPPC is made up of more than 120 groups of scientists, researchers, conservationists, government officials and volunteers who lead programs to protect pollinators.

“A pollinator garden is a garden that maximizes chances for food, nesting, and survival, for any kind of pollinator – so we are not focused on just bees, or birds, or butterflies,” says Kent. “That means it needs to have leaves that caterpillars eat, flowers chosen specifically for hummingbirds, and nesting sites like stems, or places in the ground for bees.”

He and a team of volunteers have planted pollinator gardens in Toronto’s High Park and other city parks and worked through the winter to prepare a pollinator garden for the Canada Blooms garden show in March, where they distributed Kent’s guide How to Plant a Pollinator Garden. They have also taken the pollinator guide to schools and planted pollinator gardens at four Toronto elementary schools.

A gardener for many years, Kent left a successful career in the software industry to earn a PhD in biology. He now uses his background in math to do genetics and genomics research in Professor at York.

“I found myself working in a lab at York where Professor Bridget Stutchbury, who wrote Silence of the Songbirds, is down the hall. In the other direction is Professor Laurence Packer, who wrote Keeping the Bees. A lot of what they are talking about is habitat,” says Kent. “I recognized that gardens can be very good habitat if they are managed properly, so I decided to spread the word.”

The NAPPC will present Kent’s award at an international conference at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in late October.

For information, visit the�� website.������

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In a 2009 study by �첥��Ƶ in Toronto, Professor Kerry Kawakami and her team found that participants – despite believing they would be upset and speak out against racism – were likely to remain indifferent or less upset when personally witnessing racist behaviour against a black person. Moreover, they were likely to pass off the racist comments as being a joke or in good humour.

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