Daniel Werb, senior research assistant at the Addiction and Urban Health Research Initiative (UHRI) at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE), has been awarded the 2012 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Scholarship for his PhD research project investigating initiation and cessation of injection drug use among street youth in Vancouver.

Announced today by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Werb joins 14 Canadian doctoral candidates winning the scholarship for pursuing research of compelling, current concern, and touching upon one or more of the four themes of the foundation: human rights and dignity, responsible citizenship, Canada in the world, and people and their natural environment. The scholarship is worth up to $180,000 in funding over three years. In addition to the financial assistance, the Trudeau Scholarship offers recipients the opportunity to interact with a community of scholars, leaders and policymakers in every field of the social sciences and humanities.

“Mr. Werb is doing important research that will help inform effective, evidence-based drug policy reform to improve the health and safety of people who use drugs and the communities in which they live,” said Pierre-Gerlier Forest, president of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. “He is an ideal recipient of the Trudeau Scholarship for the potential his research has for positively impacting the lives of Canadians.”

“I congratulate Daniel on becoming a Trudeau scholar,” said Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the BC-CfE and head of the Division of AIDS in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. “This recognition is a further testament to the wealth of talented and innovative thinkers we are blessed with at the BC-CfE and in the UBC community.”

Werb’s thesis focuses on mapping out the full cycle of injection drug use, from the circumstances under which individuals begin to inject drugs to determining what may make them more likely to cease their use. The research involves the identification of specific demographic and psychological factors that may put street youth at higher risk of initiating drug injection behaviour, and investigating whether harm reduction approaches such as needle exchange programs impact the length of time that individuals inject drugs.

“I am very fortunate to work with and be mentored by highly gifted and committed researchers at the BC-CfE and UBC,” said Werb, a PhD student at UBC. “The Trudeau Scholarship will allow me to continue to pursue my research and introduce me to a larger Canadian community of scholars who will no doubt challenge and inspire me.”

Werb has been the recipient of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Junior Graduate Studentship Award.

About the Trudeau Foundation

A Canadian institution with a national purpose, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation is an independent and non-partisan charity. It was established in 2001 as a living memorial to the former prime minister by his family, friends, and colleagues. In 2002, with the unanimous support of the House of Commons, the Government of Canada endowed the Foundation with a donation of $125 million. In addition, the Foundation benefits from private sector donations in support of specific initiatives. Through its Scholarship, Fellowship, Mentorship, and Public Interaction Programs, the Foundation supports outstanding individuals who are making meaningful contributions to critical public issues.

About the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) is Canada’s largest HIV/AIDS research, treatment and education facility and is internationally recognized as an innovative world leader in combating HIV/AIDS and related diseases. It is based at St. Paul’s Hospital, Providence Health Care, a teaching hospital of the University of British Columbia. The BC-CfE works in close collaboration with key provincial stakeholders, including health authorities, health care providers, academics from other institutions, and the community to improve the health of British Columbians living with HIV through developing, monitoring and disseminating comprehensive research and treatment programs for HIV and related illnesses.

University of British Columbia researchers are making bikeability research easily accessible to consumers and city planners by introducing bikeability “heat maps” in partnership with Seattle-based Walk Score® at www.walkscore.com/bike.

Combining data on availability of cycling infrastructure (bike lanes and trails), topography (hilliness), desirable destinations (attractions, shops and restaurants) and road connectivity, researchers from UBC’s School of Population and Public Health and Simon Fraser University worked with web developers from Walk Score® to develop algorithms to make the information easily accessible online.

Heat maps of Bike Score™ for 10 Canadian and 10 U.S. cities were launched today during National Bike Month in the U.S. and in advance of Bike Month in Canada. Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal rate highest in bikeability for Canadian cities; while Minneapolis, Portland and San Francisco lead in the U.S.

For a sample of a heat map, visit http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/?p=47739. For more information on bikeability research, visit http://cyclingincities.spph.ubc.ca/mapping-cycling-trips/tools-training/.

“‘Walkability’ has become part of the popular vocabulary as more emphasis is placed on physical activity, community interaction and healthy living,” says Meghan Winters, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, who conducted the research while a PhD student at UBC. “Bike Score™ and the heat maps will help cities measure and improve their cycling infrastructure – a key to increasing ridership.”

Cycling rates in Canada and the U.S. are low in comparison to many European cities. This disparity is explained, in part, by differences in urban form and cycling infrastructure, says Mike Brauer, Professor, UBC School of Population and Public Health. With rising gas prices, however, more North Americans are looking for more affordable ways to get around, particularly in neighborhoods with limited access to public transportation and where distances are too far to walk to work or shopping.

“Bicycling is a form of healthy, active transportation,” Brauer says. “We wanted to provide a user-friendly tool to gauge the bikeability of cities and neighbourhoods that would help planners identify areas that would benefit from additional infrastructure, while encouraging people to hop on a bike.”

“Walk Score® helps people find places to live where they can drive less and live more,” says Josh Herst, CEO of Walk Score®. “With the launch of Bike Score™ we’re excited to provide the only quantitative measure of bikeability in the U.S. and Canada to help people find bikeable neighborhoods and commutes.”

The partnership with Walk Score® was enabled by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

University of British Columbia researchers have found a potential way to develop universal flu vaccines and eliminate the need for seasonal flu vaccinations.

Each year, seasonal influenza causes serious illnesses in three to five million people and 200,000 to 500,000 deaths. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed more than 14,000 people worldwide. Meanwhile, public health and bioterrorism concerns are heightened by new mutations of the H5N1 “bird flu” virus, published last week by the journal Nature, that could facilitate infection among mammals and humans.

Led by Prof. John Schrader, Canada Research Chair in Immunology and director of UBC’s Biomedical Research Centre, the research team found that the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” vaccine triggers antibodies that protect against many influenza viruses, including the lethal avian H5N1 “bird flu” strain.

Details are published today in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

“The flu virus has a protein called hemagglutinin, or HA for short. This protein is like a flower with a head and a stem,” says Schrader, a professor in Medicine and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. “The flu virus binds to human cells via the head of the HA, much like a socket and plug.

“Current flu vaccines target the head of the HA to prevent infections, but because the flu virus mutates very quickly, this part of the HA changes rapidly, hence the need for different vaccines every flu season.”

Vaccines contain bits of weak or dead germs that prompt the human immune system to produce antibodies that circulate in the blood to kill those specific germs. However, the research team found that the 2009 pandemic H1N1 vaccine induced broadly protective antibodies capable of fighting different variants of the flu virus.

“This is because, rather than attacking the variable head of the HA, the antibodies attacked the stem of the HA, neutralizing the flu virus,” says Schrader. “The stem plays such an integral role in penetrating the cell that it cannot change between different variants of the flu virus.”

The new discovery could pave the way to developing universal flu vaccines.

Schrader says the characteristics of the human immune system make it difficult for influenza vaccines to induce broadly protective antibodies against the HA stem. “The pandemic H1N1 swine flu was different, because humans had not been exposed to a similar virus,” he adds.

Schrader has evidence that a vaccine based on a mixture of influenza viruses not circulating in humans but in animals should have the same effect and potentially make influenza pandemics and seasonal influenza a thing of the past.

The research team consists of scientists from UBC, the Universities of Ottawa and Toronto, the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the BC Centre for Disease Control. The research was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the International Consortium for Anti-Virals and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.

New University of British Columbia research shows that – contrary to popular opinion – hedge funds have a positive influence when investing in U.S. companies filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The study, co-authored by Sauder School of Business finance Prof. Kai Li, reveals that when a hedge fund invests in a distressed company, other creditors in the transaction fare better and there is a greater chance a company will emerge from bankruptcy.

“It’s a common view in the media and popular opinion that hedge funds are ‘vulture investors’ who dismantle companies to maximize profits in the shortest time-frame possible,” says Li, who co-wrote the study for the April edition of the Journal of Finance with professors from Columbia and Queens Universities.

“We found the opposite is true. Our data show that hedge funds strategically invest in troubled companies with the intention of becoming major shareholders after they emerge from bankruptcy. They are motivated to strengthen firms, not tear them apart.”

Unlike mutual funds and pension funds, which have very stringent requirements on the types of companies they invest in, hedge funds are free to take on the risk of investing in companies in Chapter 11.

Li and her co-authors conclude that this flexibility allows them to make strategic investments in failing companies that exhibit the potential for recovery. They also argue that hedge funds are much more likely to wait while companies successfully restructure under new management than other private investors.

The researchers analyzed 474 Chapter 11 filings in the United States between 1996 and 2007. Looking at firms with assets worth more than $100 million, the researchers examined bankruptcy filings from a wide variety of angles, including the presence of hedge fund investment, CEO turnover, key employee retention, asset liquidation, debt recovery and emergence.

They found that 87 per cent of these bankruptcies had observable hedge fund involvement. The data shows such companies had improved chances of surviving the bankruptcy process. The results also reveal that the presence of hedge funds increased the likelihood of failed CEOs being fired and reduced the liquidation pressure from other stakeholders clamouring for a payout.

“We find that hedge funds are more like mediators than predators,” says Li. “They use the power of a controlling stake to negotiate between the desires of top executives fighting to preserve their high salaries, and the company’s lenders who may want to cut their losses by dismantling the company and selling off the pieces.”

The researchers also found that the presence of hedge funds as the largest unsecured creditors had a favourable effect on stock price, and positive influence on the overall debt recovery for other lenders. Finally, where hedge funds were involved, companies had a reduction in leveraged debt one year after emergence from bankruptcy.

“Until now, hedge funds have been wrongly classified,” says Li.  “Instead of vultures, circling overhead above a dying prey, it is better to see them as guardian angels of distressed companies, overseeing their transition into healthier entities.”

The University of British Columbia’s Midwifery Program – bolstered by increased funding from the Province of British Columbia – will double in size over the next five years, a move intended to augment the number of pregnancy and childbirth specialists in B.C.

Starting this fall, first-year spaces in the Midwifery Program will grow from 10 to 20. (Once the expansion is complete, the number of students in the four-year bachelor’s degree program will total 80.)

Midwives assist women with low-risk deliveries in hospitals, clinics and homes, and provide pre-natal and post-partum care. The Ministry of Advanced Education worked with UBC and the Ministry of Health to determine the number of B.C. midwife graduates that are needed to help meet the need for greater access to such services.

UBC will receive $1.914 million in one-time funding, and an increase of $833,920 in ongoing operating funding for the phased expansion.

“UBC’s midwifery education program is part of government’s commitment to educating health professionals in British Columbia,” said Minister of Advanced Education Naomi Yamamoto at an announcement today at UBC’s Vancouver campus. “This funding means more students can pursue their chosen field at UBC, and more midwives will graduate, helping to serve the needs of B.C. families.”

The Midwifery Program, part of the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Family Practice, was created 10 years ago, a few years after the province recognized midwives as primary care professionals and began regulating the profession. The program is one of only four midwife training programs in Canada.

Students in the program take foundational courses in the basic sciences, counseling, lactation support, pharmacology and research methods. In addition, they spend approximately 15 months working alongside registered midwives and three months with physicians and other health professional instructors.

“The Faculty of Medicine is grateful that the province has expanded funding for its midwifery program,” said Dr. Gavin Stuart, UBC’s Vice Provost Health and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. “The doubling of enrolment and the hiring of additional faculty will enable more women and their families, particularly in B.C.’s under-served communities, to obtain expert care before and during their deliveries, and will allow for research to make midwifery even more effective in the future.”

An innovative UBC program has provided more than $1 million in funding to help B.C. communities promote their unique histories to audiences around the world, thanks to digitization.

The support will allow users to view photos related to the Japanese-Canadian internment on the West Coast in the 1940s, peruse the pages of historical B.C. newspapers and much more.

Launched by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre in 2006, the B.C. History Digitization Program (BCHDP) provides matching grants to support projects that make B.C. heritage freely accessible to the public via the Internet.

This year, nearly $188,000 in matching funds was allocated for 23 projects throughout the province. In total, the BCHDP has awarded more than $1.02 million for 120 grants over the past six years. To view digitized images from past projects, please visit http://ow.ly/az99R and click on the links under “Successful Projects.”

“The BCHDP not only provides funding to make B.C.’s history available to the world – it also represents an investment in our communities,” says Simon Neame, director of the Learning Centre. “Since its inception, the BCHDP has been dedicated to helping libraries, archives, museums and post-secondary institutions share their unique resources with a broader audience.”

“We are again pleased with the breadth and scope of historical material that will be digitized by B.C. institutions as part of this unique financial partnership,” adds Chris Hives, BCHDP coordinator and university archivist.

Sixty-six of the 120 grants given out over the years have supported projects based outside of the Lower Mainland; nearly one-third of the projects have focused on the digitization of photographs. One of this year’s recipients is the West Vancouver Memorial Library, which will use the funds to add 1,500 digitized images to its online repository.

“The B.C. History Digitization Program, together with the support of the Friends of the West Vancouver Library, has made it possible for us to draw attention to a hidden treasure in our keeping,” says Deb Hutchison Koep, deputy director at West Vancouver Memorial Library. “Local collections reflect the community and promote an important sense of ownership over cultural institutions like our Library.”

Many B.C. newspapers have also been digitized since the BCHDP began – including local papers in Prince George. That project’s next stage is focusing on digitizing titles from 1977 to 1985.

“We are extremely proud of what we have been able to accomplish with funding from the B.C. History Digitization Program,” says Marc Saunders, public service manager at the Prince George Public Library. “The high-quality images we are acquiring now will be used in some form for many years to come, perhaps even for generations.”

Other items to be digitized in this latest program round include: 1,500 photos and artifacts from Burnaby’s Nikkei National Museum related to the Japanese-Canadian internment on the West Coast between 1941 and 1947; a portion of the extensive Karl Spreitz film archive at the University of Victoria; and photos from The Reach Gallery and Museum Abbotsford for the Abbotsford Living History Project.

A complete list of 2012 funding recipients is available at http://ow.ly/axmEv.

Many Canadians complain about government, especially after tax time.

Nearly half – 45 per cent – say that government laws, services and programs are irrelevant to their well-being and quality of life, according to a national poll by McAllister Opinion Research on issues studied by University of British Columbia public policy professor Paul Kershaw.

“These results are ironic, because Canadians use public schools, universities, medical care, pensions, unemployment insurance and many more programs and services on a daily basis,” says Kershaw.

Despite claiming that government policy doesn’t matter, around 90 per cent of Canadians reject spending less on almost all aspects of social policy according to the poll. In fact, the poll shows most want governments to spend as much, if not more, on a broad range of issues like families with kids, seniors, medical care, the environment and poverty reduction.

“The fact is, Canadians are inconsistent in our political rhetoric and social policy priorities,” says Kershaw. “It has become trendy for Canadians to say that government doesn’t matter.  But nine in 10 Canadians want as much, if not more, spending on a variety of priorities.”

Many Canadians don’t want to pay for what they want

Despite the majority of Canadians wanting more social spending, 47 per cent of Canadians also indicate they would vote against any politician who wanted to increase taxes for any reason.

Kershaw’s research shows that Canadian spending on medical care and pensions is $80 billion higher today than it would be if we had 1976 budget decisions.  Spending on these programs increased four times faster than the taxes that pay for them over the same period.

“Canadians haven’t always been so unwilling to balance the country’s chequebook,” says Kershaw, noting that just 10 years ago, taxes were $80 billion higher because Canadians were still determined to pay for the things we want.

“But since 2000, we’ve prioritized tax cuts to ‘pay ourselves’ first and foremost, while continuing spending,” he says.

According to Kershaw, individual income tax is down nearly $38 billion a year, and we slashed sales taxes by nearly $19 billion to a level far below a generation ago.  Corporate taxes also dropped substantially, down nearly $18 billion.

Generational implications

Kershaw’s research shows that the dramatic pattern of tax cuts over the last decade does not play out neutrally across generations. Since expenditures on medical care and pensions grew while taxes declined, there are far fewer resources with which to adapt to the declining standard of living for today’s generations under age 45.

Kershaw says there are policy solutions to the challenges. “Policy solutions need to be paid for; otherwise we squeeze generations that follow with larger debts.  We can make room to pay for them by spending less on other things or we have to pony up ourselves, as we did before the year 2000.”

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A new University of British Columbia study finds that analytic thinking can decrease religious belief, even in devout believers.

The study, which will appear in tomorrow’s issue of Science, finds that thinking analytically increases disbelief among believers and skeptics alike, shedding important new light on the psychology of religious belief.

“Our goal was to explore the fundamental question of why people believe in a God to different degrees,” says lead author Will Gervais, a PhD student in UBC’s Dept. of Psychology. “A combination of complex factors influence matters of personal spirituality, and these new findings suggest that the cognitive system related to analytic thoughts is one factor that can influence disbelief.”

Researchers used problem-solving tasks and subtle experimental priming – including showing participants Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker or asking participants to complete questionnaires in hard-to-read fonts – to successfully produce “analytic” thinking. The researchers, who assessed participants’ belief levels using a variety of self-reported measures, found that religious belief decreased when participants engaged in analytic tasks, compared to participants who engaged in tasks that did not involve analytic thinking.

The findings, Gervais says, are based on a longstanding human psychology model of two distinct, but related cognitive systems to process information: an “intuitive” system that relies on mental shortcuts to yield fast and efficient responses, and a more “analytic” system that yields more deliberate, reasoned responses.

“Our study builds on previous research that links religious beliefs to ‘intuitive’ thinking,” says study co-author and Associate Prof. Ara Norenzayan, UBC Dept. of Psychology. “Our findings suggest that activating the ‘analytic’ cognitive system in the brain can undermine the ‘intuitive’ support for religious belief, at least temporarily.”

The study involved more than 650 participants in the U.S. and Canada. Gervais says future studies will explore whether the increase in religious disbelief is temporary or long-lasting, and how the findings apply to non-Western cultures.

Recent figures suggest that the majority of the world’s population believes in a God, however atheists and agnostics number in the hundreds of millions, says Norenzayan, a co-director of UBC’s Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture. Religious convictions are shaped by psychological and cultural factors and fluctuate across time and situations, he says.

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The Faculty of Dentistry at the University of British Columbia has opened a clinical research centre focusing on best practices and evidence-based patient care thanks to a $1 million donation from Frontier Dental Laboratories.

Named the Frontier Clinical Research Centre, the new initiative allows researchers and industry participants to evaluate and generate scientific data for existing procedures and materials.

“This gift will ensure that B.C. continues to maintain the highest standards of dentistry,” says Dr. Charles Shuler, Faculty of Dentistry Dean. “The Frontier Clinical Research Centre will be an important resource for oral health providers, industry professionals and patients.”

“The rate of change in approaches to oral health care will continue to increase,” says Shuler, “and it will be imperative for all dentists to have access both to the information and to the experts who can help them choose the best approaches in treating their patients.”

Over the past 40 years, the progression from basic science findings to new dental procedures, new materials, new therapeutics and improvements in oral health has been dramatic. Given the speed of change, the materials and procedures used for routine dental practice are an often overlooked point of the clinical research cycle.

“We’re very excited to work with UBC in this commitment to the highest standards of clinical research,” says Paolo Kalaw, Frontier Dental Laboratories CEO.

“Products need to stand up to claims. For that, we need exacting analyses and robust data,” says Kalaw, a UBC alumnus who studied microbiology.

The Frontier Clinical Research Centre will provide contracted services including protocol review, statistical consultation, budget planning, regulatory compliance, recruitment of subjects, data collection and maintenance, data analysis and report preparation.

Cognitive decline is a pressing global health care issue. Worldwide, one case of dementia is detected every seven seconds. Mild cognitive impairment is a well recognized risk factor for dementia, and represents a critical window of opportunity for intervening and altering the trajectory of cognitive decline in seniors.

A new study by researchers at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia shows that implementing a seniors’ exercise program, specifically one using resistance training, can alter the trajectory of decline. Perhaps most importantly, the exercise program improved the executive cognitive process of selective attention and conflict resolution functions, as well as associative memory, which are robust predictors for conversion from mild cognitive impairment to dementia.

The research, led by Teresa Liu-Ambrose, principal investigator with the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility and the Brain Research Centre at VCH and UBC, and co-investigators from the Department of Psychology and Division of Geriatric Medicine at UBC, and Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, was published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Over the course of six months, the study team followed 86 senior women with probable mild cognitive impairment. The randomized controlled trial is the first to compare the efficacy of both resistance and aerobic training to improve executive cognitive functions necessary for independent living – such as attention, memory, problem solving, and decision making. The trial also assessed the effect of both types of exercise on associative memory performance and corresponding functional brain plasticity.

Both types of exercise were performed twice-weekly for six months. Participants were measured with a series of cognitive tests and brain plasticity was assessed using functional MRI. The results showed resistance training significantly improved executive cognitive functions, associative memory performance, and functional brain plasticity. In contrast to previous studies in healthy older adults, aerobic training did not demonstrate any significant effect on cognitive function and brain plasticity.

“There is much debate as to whether cognitive function can be improved once there is noticeable impairment,” says Liu-Ambrose. “What our results show is that resistance training can indeed improve both your cognitive performance and your brain function. What is key is that the training will improve two processes that are highly sensitive to the effects of aging and neurodegeneration – executive function and associative memory – functions which are often impaired in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.”

This work builds on the same research team’s Brain Power Study, published in the January 2010 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine and July 2011 issue of Neurobiology of Aging, which demonstrated that 12 months of once-weekly or twice-weekly progressive strength training improved executive cognitive function and functional brain plasticity in healthy women aged 65- to 75-years-old and provided lasting benefits.

Coinciding with the study, the team has developed and launched an informative YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG6sJm2d4oc of the resistance training exercises used in the study.

“Exercise is attractive as a prevention strategy for dementia as it is universally accessible and cost-effective,” says Liu-Ambrose, who is also an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at UBC and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and CIHR New Investigator scholar. “By developing this YouTube video we can help translate our findings directly to the senior population and fitness instructors who are working with them.”

Cognitive decline among seniors is a pressing health care issue for this province. The number of seniors in BC is expected to increase by 220 per cent by 2031, representing 23.5 per cent of BC’s population. Effective strategies to prevent cognitive decline are essential to improving quality of life for older British Columbians and to save the healthcare system millions in associated costs.

Support for this research has been provided by the Pacific Alzheimer’s Research Foundation and infrastructure support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, a world leader in translational health research, is the research body of Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. VCH Research Institute includes BC’s largest academic and teaching health sciences centres: Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Hospital, and GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. The Institute is academically affiliated with UBC Faculty of Medicine and is one of Canada’s top funded research centres. www.vchri.ca.

The UBC Faculty of Medicine provides innovative programs in the health and life sciences, teaching students at the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels. Its faculty members received $295 million in research funds, 54 percent of UBC’s total research revenues, in 2010-11. For more information, visit www.med.ubc.ca.

The Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, located at the Vancouver General Hospital conducts innovative research programs to decrease the burden of falls, fracture and arthritis across BC, Canada, and the world. It is the first international research centre to broadly focus on problems affecting the bone and joint health across the lifespan by integrating researchers in various aspects of bone health, falls prevention, and arthritis. The Centre is a partnership of UBC Faculty of Medicine and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. www.hiphealth.ca

The Brain Research Centre comprises more than 200 investigators with multidisciplinary expertise in neuroscience research ranging from the test tube, to the bedside, to industrial spin-offs. The centre is a partnership of UBC Faculty of Medicine and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. www.brain.ubc.ca.

The Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia today announced a revamped MBA for fall 2012. Offered by Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School, the new program emphasizes hands-on learning, global immersion and integration of business disciplines for a “360-degree” management perspective.

Students will travel to one of Sauder’s partner institutions – the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Copenhagen School of Business or Shanghai Jiao Tong University – to work with MBA peers on experiential projects for multinational companies, such as IBM and Microsoft.

At home, they will collaborate with classmates across all business disciplines to work on projects for organizations in Vancouver and beyond that emphasize applied problem solving and real-world connections. 

“We are transforming the way we conceptualize MBA education,” says Sauder Dean Daniel Muzyka. “By embracing an integrated approach that responds to the reality of international business and focusing on using knowledge in real-world contexts, we’re equipping students to find success in the hyper-competitive international job market.”  

In the mid 1990s, Sauder pioneered the “integrated” approach to teaching critical business functions – one of the first North American business schools to do so. For its new MBA, the school consulted with business leaders, faculty, alumni and students over the past two years. As a result, the program is streamlined from eight specializations and 10 sub-specializations into four career tracks:

• Business Innovation: Designed for entrepreneurs who want to bring new products and services to market and “intra-preneurs” seeking to lead innovation within organizations.

• Consulting and Strategic Management: With curriculum bringing together corporate strategy, information technology and supply chain management, students also learn “soft skills” needed to lead transformational change.

• Product/Service Management: A blend of marketing, and operations and information management, students focus on product, service and brand management.

• Finance: Examining the financial industry in the broader business context, the principles of finance are applied to investment banking, corporate finance, portfolio management, trading, and risk management.

“We will give our students experiences that aren’t as clean and clear cut as typical academic classes and cases,” says Murali Chandrashekaran, associate dean of professional graduate programs and director, Robert H. Lee Graduate School.

“We want to cultivate leaders who can embrace ambiguity and dive into the cauldron of complex organizations, assess problems and find creative solutions with limited information and time,” says Chandrashekaran.

For more information, visit: http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Programs/MBA/MBA_Full_Time

About the Sauder School of Business
The Sauder School of Business is one of the world’s leading academic business schools, recognized globally for its contributions to the transformation of business practices through innovative research and teaching. With more than 3,000 students, Sauder offers a wide range of bachelors, masters and doctoral programs.  The school has more than 31,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world.

The UBC MBA program ranks among the top 100 programs in the world by the Financial Times and The Economist. The QS Global 200 Business Schools Report 2012, designed to compare the employability of MBA graduates, ranked Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School 18th out of 82 schools in North America.

An innovative UBC Graduate School of Journalism project provides a hard-hitting look into efforts by Aboriginal communities to address such major health and social issues as suicide, sexual abuse, diabetes and the survival of traditional languages.

The series of original news stories that launches today at www.indigenousreporting.com was created by students in UBC’s inaugural Reporting in Indigenous Communities class, Canada’s only university journalism course dedicated to improving the quality of Aboriginal representation by the news media.

The eight multimedia stories, which will run on CBC radio and websites in B.C. this week – result from a unique partnership with Metro Vancouver Aboriginal communities, where UBC graduate students were assigned to cover important community news as “embedded” journalists.

“Far too often, news media portray Aboriginal people in ways that reinforce negative or inaccurate stereotypes,” says Duncan McCue, the award-winning CBC reporter and UBC Graduate School of Journalism adjunct professor who led the course. “By exposing the next generation of journalists to Aboriginal stories, cultures and protocols, we have produced a series that shows Aboriginal people not as victims, but as catalysts of positive change.”

The UBC journalism students learned the history, politics and unique cultures of Aboriginal peoples in Canada and abroad, and analyzed media representation issues. They also studied the online guide and checklist that McCue – one of the only Aboriginal mainstream reporters in Vancouver – created during a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University to help journalists respect Aboriginal cultures and resist stereotypes.

“We had to engage with the community to develop relationships and trust,” said student Kate Adach, who worked on a story about an Aboriginal suicide response team being developed by members of Sto:lo Nation near Chilliwack, B.C. “There is so much to learn about Indigenous history in Canada. It might seem daunting, but it is absolutely vital that reporters continue to engage, educate ourselves, and report on these important stories responsibly.”

The five Aboriginal course partners are the Squamish First Nation, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, Tsawwassen First Nation, Sto:lo First Nation and the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council.

“A course like this is long, long overdue, and helped to create a positive experience for our community and the students,” says Ernie Crey, an advisor to the Sto:lo Tribal Council. “Aboriginal people have an important story to tell and they are eager to tell it. It is important that the outside world understand what is going on.”

The national CBC program The Story from Here is scheduled to broadcast the entire series as a one-hour radio documentary on June 20.

Learn more at www.journalism.ubc.ca.

UBC journalism partners with First Nations to report on major health issues

The eight stories from UBC’s inaugural Reporting in Indigenous Communities class include:

• A Squamish Nation woman’s attempt to bring back the chocolate lily, a traditional staple food that could reduce diabetes
• A new Sto:lo Nation Aboriginal Suicide and Critical Incident Response Team, which aims to provide culturally-appropriate response to suicides
• A Tsleil-Waututh Nation daycare where teachers are reconnecting youth to traditional language and culture to improve health and happiness
• Efforts by the Squamish Nation and a provincial judge to rehabilitate offenders with mental health and addiction issues through a First Nations Court
• At Tsawwassen First Nation, how a young girl’s disclosure may signal a new attitude toward the disturbing problem of sexual abuse
• A unique support group in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where Aboriginal grandparents raising their grandchildren are learning to care for kids diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
• The Seabird Island Mobile Diabetes Clinic, which travels across southern British Columbia so patients can manage their disease from home
• Students training as Health Care Assistants in First Nation communities, in a course designed for Aboriginal learners at the Native Education Centre in Vancouver.

The  students in the course include:

• Kate Adach (Toronto, ON)
• Krystle Alarcon (Montreal, QC)
• Sadiya Ansari (Markham, ON)
• Chelsea Blazer (Toronto, ON)
• Natalie Dobbin (Middle Sackville, NS)
• Malin Dunfors (Stockholm, Sweden)
• Lisa Hale (Vancouver, BC)
• Tyler Harbottle (Calgary, AB)
• Farida Hussain (Hyderabad, India)
• Meg Mittelstedt (Portland, OR)
• Lucas Powers (Toronto, ON)
• Jacqueline Ronson (Toronto, ON)
• Keith Rozendal (Houston, TX)
• Lindsay Sample (Barry, ON)
• Kendall Walters (100 Mile House, BC)

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Scientists at the BC Cancer Agency and University of British Columbia have identified new breast cancer genes that could change the way the disease is diagnosed and form the basis of next-generation treatments.

Researchers have reclassified the disease into 10 completely new categories based on the genetic fingerprint of a tumour. Many of these genes could offer much-needed insight into breast cancer biology, allowing doctors to predict whether a tumour will respond to a particular treatment. Whether the tumour is likely to spread to other parts of the body or if it is likely to return following treatment.

The study, published online today in the international journal Nature*, is the largest global study of breast cancer tissue ever performed and the culmination of decades of research into the disease.

In the future, this information could be used by doctors to better tailor treatment to the individual patient.

The team at the BC Cancer Agency, in collaboration with Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute and Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology at University of Manitoba, analyzed the DNA and RNA of 2,000 tumour samples taken from women diagnosed with breast cancer between five and 10 years ago. The sheer number of tumours mapped allowed researchers to spot new patterns in the data.

Study milestones include:

• Classified breast cancer into 10 subtypes grouped by common genetic features, which correlate with survival. This new classification could change the way drugs are tailored to treat women with breast cancer.

• Discovered several completely new genes that had never before been linked to breast cancer. These genes that drive the disease are all targets for new drugs that may be developed. This information will be available to scientists worldwide to boost drug discovery and development.

• Revealed the relationship between these genes and known cell signaling pathways – networks that control cell growth and division. This could pinpoint how these gene faults cause cancer, by disrupting important cell processes.

This is the second major breakthrough announced by BC Cancer Agency scientists in as many weeks. On April 4, a team led by Dr. Sam Aparicio celebrated the decoding of the genetic makeup of the most-deadly of breast cancers, triple-negative breast cancer, which until then was defined by what it was missing, not what it was. Similar to that announcement, today’s new discovery identifies genes that were previously unknown to be linked to breast cancer and makes it clear that breast cancer is an umbrella term for what really is a number of unique diseases.

While the research is unlikely to benefit women who currently have breast cancer, it substantially advances how scientists approach further research and clinical trials by providing them with a springboard to develop new treatment options and drugs targeted to specific genes.

The research was carried out in collaboration with the following institutes:

• British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver
• University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge
• Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge
• Department of Genetics, The Institute for Cancer Research
• Oslo University Hospital
• Department of Histopathology, University of Nottingham
• Cambridge Breast Unit, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre
• King’s College London, Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit
• Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology, University of Manitoba
• NIHR Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London
• Institute for Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo
• Cambridge Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre.

The research was generously supported by the BC Cancer Foundation, Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation – BC/Yukon Region and Prairies/NWT Region, Michael Smith Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

Quotes:

Dr. Sam Aparicio, Study Co-lead Author and Professor, Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine UBC; BC Cancer Agency Chair of Breast Cancer Research

“Breast cancer is a global problem and it’s exciting to see a new framework for the understanding of breast cancer emerge from our partnership with colleagues in the UK.

“This is a major step forward in building the genetic encyclopedia of breast cancer and in the process we’ve learned there are many more subtypes of breast cancer than we imagined. The new molecular map of breast cancer points us to new drug targets for treating breast cancer and also defines the groups of patients who would benefit most.

“The size of this study is unprecedented and provides insights into the disease such as the role of immune response, which will stimulate other avenues of research.

Professor Carlos Caldas, Study Co-lead Author and Senior Group Leader at Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute and the Department of Oncology.

“Our results will pave the way for doctors in the future to diagnose the type of breast cancer a woman has, the types of drugs that will work, and those that won’t, in a much more precise way than is currently possible.

“This means that women who are diagnosed and treated fairly uniformly today will in the future receive treatment targeted to the genetic fingerprint of their tumour.

“We’ve drilled down into the fundamental detail of the biological causes of breast cancer in a comprehensive genetic study. Our results have reclassified breast cancer into 10 types – making breast cancer an umbrella term for an even greater number of diseases.

“Essentially we’ve moved from knowing what a breast tumour looks like under a microscope to pinpointing its molecular anatomy – and eventually we’ll know which drugs it will respond to.

“The next stage is to find how tumours classified under each sub group behave – for example do they grow or spread quickly? And we need to carry out more research in the laboratory and in patients to confirm the most effective treatment plan for each of the 10 types of breast cancer.”

Dr. Sohrab Shah, Study Co-Author and Scientist, BC Cancer Agency; Assistant Professor, Depts. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Computer Science, UBC

“We have known for a long time that breast cancer is made up of different subtypes.  Based on computational analysis of precise genomic measurements of 2,000 samples, our study provides a further subdivision of the breast cancer population into well-defined groups with different clinical behaviours.

“This provides a molecular scaffold upon which to develop tailored treatment strategies and identifies new cancer genes to target in future therapeutic development.”

Dr. Stephen Chia, MD, Medical Oncologist, BC Cancer Agency; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, UBC

“The results of this landmark study by Dr. Aparicio and colleagues solidifies and now provides insight into the observation of the widely varied response to treatment and outcome in a population of breast cancers we see.”

Dr. Samuel Abraham, Vice President Research, BC Cancer Agency

“Real improvements to patient outcomes for cancer will only be achieved through research.  If we have the will to lead through research and the translation of said research in the clinical arena we can provide a better future for all. Research underwrites our future.”

Ross MacGillivray, Vice-Dean, Faculty of Medicine University of BC

“This major discovery is the result of an international collaboration among fundamental, applied and clinical research scientists across disciplines. It’s this kind of interdisciplinary cooperation that puts BC scientists at the forefront of cancer research, and will no doubt lead to more breakthroughs in the near future.”

Douglas Nelson, President and CEO, BC Cancer Foundation

“This breakthrough is a momentous accomplishment, not only for the scientists and clinicians at the BC Cancer Agency, but also for the 105,000 British Columbians who join us as partners in discovery and supporting groundbreaking cancer research here in B.C. I’m thrilled to see such a tremendous advancement in the knowledge of breast cancer that will impact patient care globally.”

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 The BC Cancer Agency, an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority, is committed to reducing the incidence of cancer, reducing the mortality from cancer, and improving the quality of life of those living with cancer. It provides a comprehensive cancer control program for the people of British Columbia by working with community partners to deliver a range of oncology services, including prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment, research, education, supportive care, rehabilitation and palliative care. For more information, visit www.bccancer.ca.

The BC Cancer Foundation is the bridge that connects philanthropic support and research breakthroughs in cancer knowledge. As the fundraising partner of the BC Cancer Agency and the largest charitable funder of cancer research in this province, we enable donors to make contributions to leading-edge research that has a direct impact on improvements to cancer care for patients in British Columbia. We fund with the goal of finding solutions. As an independent charitable organization, we raise funds exclusively for the BC Cancer Agency that support innovative cancer research and compassionate enhancements to patient care. Visit www.bccancerfoundation.com to make a donation or to learn how you can make a difference in the lives of those affected by cancer.

Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research. The charity’s groundbreaking work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives. This work is funded entirely by the public. Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival rates in the UK double in the last forty years. Cancer Research UK supports research into all aspects of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses. Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK’s vision is to beat cancer. For further information about Cancer Research UK’s work or to find out how to support the charity, please call 020 3469 6699 or visit www.cancerresearchuk.org

BACKGROUND

What did the scientists do?

They examined 2,000 tumours, but instead of studying them under a microscope, they analyzed their genetic profiles. The individual story of every tumour is written in its genes so although this approach is extremely labour intensive and requires highly sophisticated and expensive equipment, it provides scientists with exquisitely detailed information.

What were the researchers looking for?

They were searching for the genetic faults (mutations) that drive breast tumour development. Tumours are littered with faults, but only a select few drive its growth. So spotting “driver mutations” against a much larger backdrop of “passengers” (which do not affect tumour growth or survival) can be extremely difficult.

Why are driver mutations so important?

They are particularly interesting to scientists because cancer cells depend on them for their survival. Because they are cancer-specific, they are appealing targets for new treatments and diagnostics. They might also help doctors predict whether or not a tumour will respond to a particular course of treatment, or whether a tumour is likely to return after treatment.

What did they find?

The researchers identified several potential drivers. They also noticed that tumours clustered together into one of 10 groups; with each group having a distinct set of faults.

Have any drivers for breast cancer already been identified?

Yes. Some tumours have faults that make them produce large amounts of the oestrogen receptor (ER) so patients with these tumours may be offered tamoxifen or drugs called aromatase inhibitors. These block oestrogen activity, making it harder for the tumour to grow. Other tumours have a molecule called HER2 on their surface. Growth of these tumours depends on HER2 so these patients are often given Herceptin which stops HER2 from working.

How do we currently test for these faults?

Doctors look at samples of the tumour under a microscope. This gives them information about the part of the breast that it comes from. They will next examine the tumour to see whether molecules such as ER or HER2 are present or not. They classify the tumour according to what they see and this classification guides treatment decisions.

How could this approach be improved?

Women all over the world have benefited from drugs such as tamoxifen and Herceptin so this approach has saved many lives. But it also relies on the outward appearance of a tumour, which does not always provide meaningful information about its biology. The list of molecules that doctors test for is also too short to explain the complex nature of breast tumour behaviour. So doctors cannot always predict how a tumour will respond to treatment. An improved approach would paint a detailed molecular portrait of the tumour – this could help doctors plan treatment more effectively.

Why is this so exciting?

The research identified new cancer genes which could form the basis of next-generation treatments. This is particularly encouraging for research into tumour types such as the “triple-negative” breast tumours that have traditionally been very difficult to treat. These tumours do not have the molecules that drugs such as tamoxifen and Herceptin target so the choice of drugs that doctors can offer these patients is very limited. This work might lead to more treatment options for these patients.

Many of these genes could offer much needed insight into breast tumour biology; allowing doctors to predict whether a tumour will respond to a particular treatment, whether it is likely to spread to other parts of the body, or whether it is likely to return after treatment. This information could be used to help doctors pick the best treatment plan for individual patients.

Importantly, the researchers found that tumours within each sub-group had similar outcomes, suggesting that this work could form the basis of a classification system for breast tumours in the future. So, doctors will be better placed to offer treatments or clinical trials to patients most likely to benefit from them.

What is the next step?

Scientists will try to find out how specific faults promote tumour growth. They will look for those faults that could be targeted with new drugs in the future.

How will this work affect today’s breast cancer patients?

This research is unlikely to benefit women who currently have breast cancer. The equipment and expertise required to produce and analyze this amount of information is beyond the scope of today’s clinical laboratories, and we still don’t know which treatment plan is best for patients in each of these sub-groups. So the real power of this research is in its potential; it offers scientists and doctors a springboard from which new and exciting avenues of research and drug discovery can be explored.

Jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world’s coastal ecosystems, according to the first global study of jellyfish abundance by University of British Columbia researchers.

In a study published in this month’s edition of the journal Hydrobiologia, UBC scientists examined data for numerous species of jellyfish for 45 of the world’s 66 Large Marine Ecosystems. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

“There has been anecdotal evidence that jellyfish were on the rise in recent decades, but there hasn’t been a global study that gathered together all the existing data until now,” says Lucas Brotz, a PhD student with the Sea Around Us Project at UBC and lead author of the study.

“Our study confirms these observations scientifically after analysis of available information from 1950 to the present for more than 138 different jellyfish populations around the world.”

Jellyfish directly interfere with many human activities – by stinging swimmers, clogging intakes of power plants, and interfering with fishing. Some species of jellyfish are now a food source in some parts of the world.

“By combining published scientific data with other unpublished data and observations, we could make this study truly global – and offer the best available scientific estimate of a phenomenon that has been widely discussed,” says Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us Project and co-author of the study. “We can also see that the places where we see rising numbers of jellyfish are often areas heavily impacted by humans, through pollution, overfishing, and warming waters.”

Pauly adds that increasing anecdotal reports of jellyfish abundance may have resulted from an expansion of human activities in marine habitats, so the study also provides a concrete baseline for future studies.

The study also notes decreases in jellyfish abundance in seven per cent of coastal regions, while the remainder of the marine ecosystems showed no obvious trend.

Prominent Canadian and British Columbian Irving K. Barber passed away peacefully at home on April 13 at the age of 89.

“Ike,” as he preferred to be called, graduated from UBC’s Faculty of Forestry in 1950, having previously served during World War II for five years with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“Ike was a great Canadian, a great British Columbian and a great friend of UBC,“ said UBC President Stephen Toope. “He believed passionately in education as the way to create citizens of the world and to improve life for all in B.C. Ike was a visionary, but he also remained very involved personally with the projects he supported. His contributions to our campuses have been dramatic and permanent – Ike’s contributions will benefit people from all over for generations to come. “

In 1978, Barber founded Slocan Forest Products Limited, building it into one of North America’s leading lumber producers. He retired as chairman in 2002.

Dr. Barber – who received an honorary degree from UBC in 2002 – was instrumental in establishing programs to promote education and research throughout B.C. He had a life-long belief in the value of education and the importance of access to education, regardless of income, especially in remote communities of the province.

Dr. Barber remained closely involved with UBC both in Vancouver and in the Okanagan. The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, to which he donated $20 million in 2006, remains a world-leading facility and a hub of the Vancouver campus and accessible worldwide. In, 2004 he donated $10 million to establish the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Interface Program at UBC’s campus in the Okanagan.

He is survived by his wife Jean, whom he married in 1943, his three children, Linda (Brooke) Williams, James (Lynne) Barber and Gregory (Linda) Barber, nine grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren. A Celebration of Life service is planned for June.

A University of British Columbia researcher has developed a simple two-question test to screen kindergarten-aged children for future anxiety disorders – the most commonly reported mental health concern among children.

The screening questions, which ask parents about shyness, anxiety and worrying in their children, were found to be 85 per cent effective in identifying children who went on to be clinically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

“When children enter kindergarten, they are screened for hearing and vision problems and difficulty reading so that these issues can be identified and treated early,” says Lynn Miller, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver. “It only makes sense to screen for anxiety at this age too.”

Miller evaluated three questions in a study of 200 kindergarten children from the Lower Mainland. The two questions that Miller found to be most effective in identifying anxiety disorders in children are:

1. Is your child more shy or anxious than other children his or her age?
2. Is your child more worried than other children his or her age?

One in ten children is affected by a mental health disorder and the majority are anxiety disorders. Anxiety is associated with a number of psychological and educational difficulties such as impaired peer and family relationships, school avoidance, greater rates of depression, increased rates of alcohol and tobacco use, and development of related anxiety disorders.

“The good news is that anxiety disorders are among the easiest to treat and the best way to treat these disorders is when kids start school,” says Miller, of the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education.

Miller explains that parents, teachers and community members can teach children how to cope with anxiety in four steps.

Children are first taught to identify when they’re feeling anxious. They are taught a variety of techniques to cope with anxiety and learn which techniques work best when they feel scared or frightened. Children are taught to evaluate what makes them anxious and then begin taking steps to face their fears.

“We don’t talk about mental health disorders in children of this age but it is the best time to intervene and prevent future problems,” says Miller. “Anxiety has tendency to masquerade as other things – children who are anxious don’t have to suffer.”

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A University of British Columbia researcher has piloted a tool to help elementary and secondary school science teachers get the most out of new classroom technologies.

One of the most frequently used tools is the remote control “clicker.” Students use them to answer multiple-choice questions throughout their lesson, allowing for continuous feedback on their progress. This type of interaction has been found to increase overall student academic achievement, especially in the areas of science and mathematics.

“Technology has proliferated at an unprecedented rate and we tend to assume that by using new tools in the classroom, students will automatically gain a better understanding of the course material,” says Marina Milner-Bolotin, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who will be presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver.

“The reality is that many teachers aren’t taught how to get the most out of these tools and, in the case of the clickers, how to ask effective questions.”

“With information readily available online, there is less emphasis on memorizing facts,” says Milner-Bolotin. “Instead, students are increasingly being asked to put concepts together, solve problems, and analyze information and data.”

Milner-Bolotin and her colleagues built a tool, called the Elementary Science Questions Evaluation Rubric, that helps teachers develop and evaluate multiple-choice science questions to use with clickers, also known as electronic-response systems.

“It is easy to make up questions that test whether a student has memorized the facts. But if the goal is to ensure that students can synthesize and analyze the concepts learned, then we need to be asking different questions.”

Milner-Bolotin and her colleagues piloted the Rubric with a group of elementary teacher education students in the Bachelor of Education program at UBC. The students developed 83 clicker questions relevant to the science curriculum. Graduate students in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy then used the Rubric to evaluate these questions.

Although the tool was developed for clicker questions, Milner-Bolotin says it can be applied to other technologies too. Teachers who are starting their careers now will likely be using different technologies and teaching methods over the span of their careers.

“It is a skill to ask a good a question that will work with any technology,” says Milner-Bolotin. “By giving teachers tools like the Rubric, they will be more open and prepared to try new technologies in the future.”

In a unique role reversal, children in literacy programs for indigenous families are learning about Aboriginal culture and language and teaching it to their parents – many of whom are missing this knowledge because of Canada’s history of residential schools and child welfare removal policies. This reversal is identified in a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia.

UBC Faculty of Education researchers Jan Hare and graduate student Nicola Friedrich studied the role of family literacy programming for Indigenous children and families taking part in Canada’s national Aboriginal early intervention program, Aboriginal Head Start (AHS).

“This study suggests that for families from diverse cultural and linguistic communities, there are multiple pathways to learning,” says Hare, who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver. “Children become knowledge brokers, helping their parents navigate the expectations and norms within their families, schools and communities.”

Residential schools were established across Canada from 1850 to 1950.

“The residential school system disrupted the transmission of cultural knowledge and language from parent to child across the generations,” says Hare, an associate professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education. “Today, many Aboriginal parents living in urban areas are dislocated from their culture, language and identity.”

The AHS program in Canada serves Aboriginal children and families in more than 130 urban and rural communities and nearly 350 First Nations communities.

AHS focuses on health promotion, social support, nutrition, family involvement, school readiness and culture and language. The program was developed as an early intervention strategy to address the learning and developmental needs of young children living in urban, rural and First Nations communities.

Hare, who studied the outcomes of eight AHS programs in central and western Canadian cities, found that children were sharing what they learned about culture and language from AHS with their parents.

“The transmission of knowledge from child to parent is significant,” says Hare. “It flips the mainstream model that family literacy programs tend to be based on, where parents teach children.”

University of British Columbia research comparing traditional bullying with cyberbullying finds that the dynamics of online bullying are different, suggesting that anti-bullying programs need specific interventions to target online aggression.

“There are currently many programs aimed at reducing bullying in schools and I think there is an assumption that these programs deal with cyberbullying as well,” says Jennifer Shapka, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver.

“What we’re seeing is that kids don’t equate cyberbullying with traditional forms of schoolyard bullying.  As such, we shouldn’t assume that existing interventions will be relevant to aggression that is happening online.”

Shapka is presenting a study that involved 17,000 Vancouver, B.C. students in Grades 8 to 12 and a follow-up study involving 733 Vancouver, B.C. youth aged 10-18.

Results of the studies show that about 25-30 per cent of youth report that they have experienced or taken part in cyberbullying, compared to 12 per cent of youth who say they’ve experienced or taken part in schoolyard bullying. However, “Youth say that 95 per cent of what happens online was intended as a joke and only 5 per cent was intended to harm,” says Shapka. “It is clear that youth are underestimating the level of harm associated with cyberbullying.”

According to Shapka, the findings suggest that in cyberbullying adolescents play multiple roles – as bullies, victims, and witnesses – and “downplay the impact of it, which means that existing education and prevention programs are not going to get through to them.”

“Students need to be educated that this ‘just joking’ behaviour has serious implications.”

Being victimized online can have consequences for a person’s mental health, developmental wellbeing, and academic achievement, according to Shapka. In extreme cases, there have been reports of suicide.

Traditional bullying, or schoolyard bullying, is often associated with three main characteristics: a power differential between bully and victim, a proactive targeting of a victim, and ongoing aggression.

Shapka says, research is beginning to show that cyberbullying does not necessarily involve these three characteristics. Traditional power differentials – size and popularity – do not necessarily apply online. There also seems to be more fluid delineation between the roles youth play; it is not unusual for an individual to act in all capacities – bullies, victims, and witnesses – online.

Previous work by Shapka and her colleagues has shown that in contrast to traditional bullying, cyberbullying is rarely associated with planned targeting of a victim.

A number of Internet safety campaigns suggest parents keep an eye on their children’s online activity but Shapka says this kind of micro-managing can undermine healthy adolescent development.

“An open and honest relationship between parents and children is one of the best ways to protect teenagers from online risks related to cyberbullying, Internet addiction, and privacy concerns related to disclosing personal information online.”

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A new University of British Columbia study finds that the way individuals experience the universal emotion of pride directly impacts how racist and homophobic their attitudes toward other people are.

The study, published in the April issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, offers new inroads in the fight against harmful prejudices such as racism and homophobia, and sheds important new light on human psychology.

“These studies show that how we feel about ourselves directly influences how we feel about people who are different from us,” says Claire Ashton-James, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher in UBC’s Dept. of Psychology. “It suggests that harmful prejudices may be more flexible than previously thought, and that hubristic pride can exacerbate prejudice, while a more self-confident, authentic pride may help to reduce racism and homophobia.”

The findings build on research by UBC Psychology Prof. Jessica Tracy, a co-author of the study, who has previously shown that pride falls into two categories: “authentic pride,” which arises from hard work and achievement, and the more arrogant “hubristic pride,” which results through status attained by less authentic means such as power, domination, money or nepotism.

In this new study, Tracy and Ashton-James, a new professor at VU University Amsterdam, found that “authentic pride” creates a self-confidence that boosts empathy for others, which in turn reduces prejudices towards stigmatized groups. In contrast, the feelings of arrogance and superiority that result from “hubristic pride” reduce empathy, thereby exacerbating people’s prejudices against stigmatized groups.

The researchers found a direct link between pride and prejudice in both participants induced into “authentic” or “hubristic” pride states, and those with predispositions towards particular forms of pride. For example, those prone to “hubristic pride” exhibited greater levels of racism, while those prone to “authentic pride” harbored less racism.

With pride as a central emotion for people with power or high social status, the findings may offer important insights into the attitudes of political and economic leaders. “The kind of pride a leader tends to feel may partly determine whether he or she supports minority-group members or disregards them,” says Tracy, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar.

The study involved 1,400 participants in Canada and the United States.

To view the full study, Pride and Prejudice: Feelings about the self influence feelings about others, contact UBC Public Affairs or visit: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/38/4/466

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