University of Guelph News

Researcher Aims to Create 'Super' Tomatoes

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:11:56 -0500

Tomato products such as ketchup and sauce may soon be even healthier for you. A University of Guelph researcher is working to increase the amount of lycopene in new tomato varieties.

Enhanced levels of this powerful antioxidant found in tomatoes will further elevate the health virtues of this nutritious food, said Steven Loewen, who is developing the new tomato plants at U of G’s Ridgetown Campus.

His goal is to create the ultimate “healthy” tomato for processing. “Dietary lycopene availability is increased by processing tomatoes into paste or sauce,” he said, “so processed is actually more nutritious than fresh.”

The new varieties will benefit farmers’ bottom line and exceed consumers’ nutritional expectations for tomato products, he said. “Boosting the nutritional value is the focus now for the tomato processing industry, and consumers will be reaping the benefits.”

Loewen has been working with the tomato’s crimson and high-pigment genes, which are capable of increasing a tomato’s lycopene levels. Studies have shown the genes could give up to a 200-per-cent boost in lycopene, as well as the nutrient beta-carotene, a source of vitamin A.

But there are challenges, he said. The high-pigment traits diminish seed germination, plant development and yield. So Loewen is aiming for the “super lycopene” plant varieties to have superior traits all around that will produce the best functional properties without sacrificing growth and overall crop yield, he said.

Along with significantly boosting lycopene levels, he’s finding ways to develop earlier maturity and increase rot resistance, which will mean a longer harvesting season and improved yields.

He’s also breeding in durability, so the tomatoes will be able to weather the many processing stages: harvesting, peeling, dicing and canning.

“This research is going to help sustain the processed-tomato industry, by helping farmers produce a highly nutritious product for the consumer’s benefit,” Loewen said.

Others involved in this research are Richard Wright and Jennifer Newport from Ridgetown and Rong Cao of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Funding is provided by the Ontario Tomato Research Institute, in association with the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers and the Ontario Food Processors Association, as well as the sustainable production system section of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) and the U of G/OMAFRA partnership.

City Update on College Ave Project

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:45:52 -0500

The City of Guelph has updated the University regarding ongoing infrastructure improvements along College Avenue. There will be new openings and closures starting Monday, July 13, that will affect access.

Powerhouse Lane and parking lot P19 (located west of the Cutten Club) will be open and accessible to local traffic.

The intersection at College Avenue and East Ring Road will be closed, along with the entrances to the Cutten Club’s parking lot. The Cutten Club may be accessed via Gordon Street and College Avenue through P19. To access facilities off East Ring Road, including the Child Care Centre, Alumni House and the W.F. Mitchell Athletics Centre, you are advised to enter campus via a Stone Road entrance.

The City of Guelph plans to keep portions of College Avenue closed for much of the summer for reconstruction. Plans call for the installation of bike lanes, sanitary sewers, storm sewers, curbs, gutters and sidewalks from Powerhouse Lane to Dundas Lane. The project is scheduled to end by mid-August.

Guelph Transit routes that use College Avenue and East Ring Road continue to be affected. Specifically, bus 52 will run along Gordon Street to South Ring Road. Please refer to the Guelph Transit website for more information.

For more information, contact John Vanos at Ext. 56079 or jvanos@pr.uoguelph.ca.

U of G Prof In the News

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:18:46 -0500

Environmental biology professor Keith Solomon was on Global Television's evening news Monday discussing the City of Toronto's decision to spray its temporary garbage dumps with pesticides. Toronto has been dealing with concerns about an increasing number of flies and maggots at many of its temporary garbage sites, which were set up after city workers went on strike nearly two weeks ago.

He was also quoted in a story in today's Toronto Sun on the same issue.

Solomon, director of U of G’s Centre for Toxicology, is the co-author of Pesticides and the Environment. The 2007 book looks at the potential benefits and risks for past and present pesticides, as well as the underlying science involved.

He also teaches courses in toxicology and pesticides and studies the fate and effects of pesticides and other substances on people and the environment. A Fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences, he received the SETAC Europe Environmental Education Award and the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Founders Award in 2006, and the American Chemical Society International Award for Research in Agrochemicals in 2002.

U of G Business Program Earns Top 10 Ranking

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:08:04 -0500

The University of Guelph's business program has vaulted into the top 10 for integrating corporate social responsibility into the school experience, according to rankings by Corporate Knights magazine.

The annual survey by the independent national business magazine ranks business schools for incorporating environmental concerns and issues of social justice, human rights, professional conduct and cultural diversity.

Julia Christensen Hughes, dean of the College of Management and Economics (CME), said she is thrilled by Guelph’s ranking.

“CME has been working hard at embedding sustainability across the B.Comm. curriculum as well as offering students unique corporate social responsibility (CSR)-focused learning opportunities in our MBA and MA (Leadership) programs,” she said.

Faculty throughout CME's four departments have been pursuing CSR-related initiatives for some time, Christensen Hughes said, but with last year's hiring of Profs. Elizabeth Kurucz and Rumina Dhalla, the college is now in a position to give this important area dedicated focus.

Recent initiatives include attracting funding for sustainability-focused research, the launch of the Net Impact student club, developing a website for sustainable commerce at Guelph, and involvement with Impact!, The Co-operators Youth Conference for Sustainability Leadership, to be held at U of G in September.

“Without question, sustainability has become an increasingly important component of our curricular and research activity, and I am personally committed to ensuring that it continues to help define what makes management and economics education at Guelph unique,” Christensen Hughes said.

Corporate Knights publishes the world’s largest-circulation magazine with an explicit focus on corporate responsibility. It also publishes the annual “Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada” as a Globe and Mail insert and the annual “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.”

U of G Hosts Course in Ecohealth

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:28:42 -0500

The University of Guelph will host the second instalment of a pioneering course in ecohealth, an emerging field that promotes a holistic approach to solving complex human, animal and environmental issues.

The intensive course in ecosystem approaches to health takes place at U of G July 6 to 18. Twenty-five graduate students and health practitioners will take part in the course, which is taught by internationally renowned researchers in disciplines spanning family medicine, veterinary medicine, sociology, philosophy, political science and geography. The course takes an integrative approach to health that grapples with complex systems through a combination of in-class theory and an unfolding field-based case study.

The mammoth challenges facing society as a result of climate change and zoonotic pandemics have led to a growing demand for ecohealth research and practice, said Bruce Hunter, a professor in the Department of Pathobiology.

“Ecohealth has developed in response to the recognition that human health and well-being is embedded within the health of the ecosystem,” said Hunter, who is part of the course design team that includes researchers at the University of British Columbia and Université du Québec à Montréal. Other Guelph members of the team are Profs. David Waltner-Toews, Population Medicine, and Karen Houle, Philosophy, as well as co-ordinator Cheryl Massey and project facilitator Suzanne McCullagh.

The course is one of the initiatives of the Canadian Community of Practice in Ecosystem Approaches to Health (CoPEH –Canada), funded by the International Development Research Centre. This year’s course is the second in a series of three. The inaugural course took place last summer at UBC, and next year the course will be held in Quebec. The goal is to turn the short course into an accredited graduate course.

“New global problems require new ways of thinking and doing,” said Waltner-Toews. “This course is a first step towards helping these new approaches find a home in academic and public institutions built to respond to very different challenges.”

Two lectures from this course will be open to the public:

McMaster University anthropologist Dawn Martin-Hill will talk about indigenous ecological knowledge July 7 at 8 p.m. at Belwood Hall in Belwood. Hill, who is academic director of the indigenous studies program at McMaster, is a mother of four living at the Six Nations of the Grand River. She is interested in developing a curriculum with recognition of aboriginal thought. Her research interests include indigenous knowledge and aboriginal women, spirituality and indigenous medicine, the contemporary practice of indigenous traditionalism and global cross-cultural comparisons of indigenous people.

David Hall will discuss agriculture and animal disease as part of the Café Scientifique public lecture series at the eBar in Guelph July 16 at 7 p.m. Hall is a graduate of the Ontario Veterinary College and has a PhD in agricultural economics from Texas A&M. He has practised veterinary medicine in Canada and internationally, with much of his work related to animal production, economics and policy, particularly bovine and more recently poultry systems.

“Combatting newly emerging infectious diseases continues to require more integrated approaches to health management, not only at the level of agricultural resources but also at the level of institutional co-operation,” said Hall. “Avian influenza in Asia serves as an example, but the lessons are important for other diseases and countries.”

Geography Prof Featured in Globe and Mail

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:02:26 -0500

Geography professor Barry Smit is featured on the opinion pages of Friday's Globe and Mail. Smit, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Change, discusses the implications of the drought that is ravaging crops on the Canadian Prairies. In the piece titled “Climate Change in the Land of Great Drought,” Smit says modern farming practices made it possible to grow crops in the challenging and naturally variable moisture conditions of the Prairies. But there is strong scientific consensus that the severity and frequency of droughts are increasing due to the effects of climate change, making it essential for governments, scientists and farmers to work together to adapt the agricultural system to the new reality, he says.

U of G Becomes Full TRIUMF Member

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:30:10 -0500

It's a TRIUMF for the University of Guelph. On Canada Day, U of G will become a full member of the cross-country university group that runs the TRIUMF national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics in Vancouver.

Operating the world's largest cyclotron, TRIUMF allows scientists to study everything from health and medicine to materials and fuels to the origins of the universe.

Guelph will become one of eight full members in the TRIUMF collaboration. Since 2003, it has been one of six associate members.

Within TRIUMF, U of G physics professor Carl Svensson leads an international group that has designed and built a detector called TIGRESS. The device — funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council — acts as a giant microscope that allows scientists to peer into atomic nuclei for clues to how stars form the chemical elements and how nuclear forces hold the atomic nucleus together.

Svensson has gained international renown for his work in subatomic physics and for his leadership in designing and building tools needed to probe the inner workings of atoms. In June, he and Guelph physicist Paul Garrett received more than $4.2 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to build a new detector at the national lab called GRIFFIN (Gamma-Ray Infrastructure for Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei).

"This is a tremendously exciting development for the University of Guelph,” Svensson said. “Together with our scientific operation of the TIGRESS facility and the recent Canada Foundation for Innovation funding announcement for GRIFFIN, it could not have come at a better time.”

Kevin Hall, U of G’s vice-president (research) said the move to full membership “establishes the fact that the University of Guelph has excellent credentials in subatomic physics. It also allows us to pursue bigger opportunities for our physicists and opens up a number of doors for funding for collaborations and facilities to strengthen what's already a strong group of subatomic physicists."

More than 350 scientists, engineers and staff work at the TRIUMF site. The lab attracts about 500 researchers each year from Canada and worldwide, and provides research facilities and opportunities to 150 students and post-doctoral researchers.

Those researchers study nuclear and particle physics, molecular and materials science, and nuclear medicine. Opened in 1969, the laboratory also promotes the advancement of particle accelerators and detection technologies, trains researchers and commercializes research.

"We see TRIUMF as a bridge between universities and industry, particularly in areas such as nuclear medicine and accelerator applications," said Nigel S. Lockyer, TRIUMF director.

"With Guelph as part of the leadership team, we can expect to be more skilled and more effective at steering basic research to have great impact for Canada.”

New Exhibit Celebrates Canadian Theatre

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:30:26 -0500

An exhibit curated by a University of Guelph professor that celebrates the career of a renowned stage designer and the evolution of Canadian theatre opens this week using works from U of G's theatre archives.

"Risking the Void: The Scenography of Cameron Porteous," co-curated by Pat Flood of the School of English and Theatre Studies, will be at the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre July 4 to Aug. 31. It will make its way to Guelph’s Macdonald Stewart Art Centre early next year after a stop at the Design Exchange in Toronto.

The exhibit is a comprehensive retrospective of Porteous’s 40-year career and his contributions to theatre in Canada. Flood worked on the project with Sean Breaugh using artwork from private collections and work donated by Porteous to U of G’s L.W. Conolly Theatre Archives.

The exhibit offers a glimpse into the creative process of making theatre today and provides a historical perspective on how professional theatre in Canada has evolved in the past four decades. It’s a collaboration among U of G, Theatre Museum Canada and the Shaw Festival.

The L.W. Conolly Theatre Archives is the largest collection devoted to professional Canadian theatre and Shaw-related materials in Canada. It holds 130 collections, with an electronic theatre guide providing access to these resources. The collection focuses on Bernard Shaw, modern Ontario theatre companies and playwrights, actors, directors, and designers active in Ontario theatre life.

The Cameron Porteous exhibit is funded in part by grants from The Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Ontario Arts Council's Touring and Collaborations program.

Psychology Professor Featured in National Newspaper

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:45:31 -0500

Psychology professor Hank Davis is profiled in Saturday’s National Post in a feature-length article that focuses on his new book, Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World. The book explores the powerful influence in our daily lives of what Davis calls irrational and delusional thinking anchored in humans’ Pleistocene-era brain circuitry. Davis, an evolutionary psychologist, strives to explain why in the modern world, more people believe in ESP, ghosts and angels than in scientific theories such as evolution.

Mitch Moffit didn’t get The Best Job in the World but he’ll still be putting his creative talents to work promoting tourism in Australia. According to the Guelph Mercury, the fourth-year biological sciences student will be working for Tourism Victoria as well as continuing his studies on an exchange with James Cook University in northern Queensland.

U of G Community Honoured at Guelph Awards of Excellence

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:44:03 -0500

The University of Guelph community's commitment to helping those in need was recognized with two awards at the 10th annual Guelph Awards of Excellence on Thursday night.

The awards celebrate the accomplishments of the many individuals and groups who have gone above and beyond the call in leading, inspiring and giving back to the local community, said David Gray, chair and CEO of the Guelph Chamber of Commerce.

The College of Management and Economics (CME) received the chamber President’s Business Recognition Award in the public-sector category for a new course that opens the minds of students to the struggles of low-income families in the housing market. The “Service Learning in Housing” course, a required part of the B.Comm. major in real estate and housing, helps students understand how the private sector is not able to meet the housing needs of lower-income households.

Marketing and consumer studies professor Jane Londerville said the course includes volunteer service and a reflective learning component that allow students to take a step back and look at the issues from a different point of view.

“You can see how their thinking changes as a result of the course,” she said. “It also gives them a taste of volunteering and how it can be rewarding and fun, and hopefully that will carry over into their lives beyond university.”

U of G’s United Way campaign received the President’s Campaign Award from the United Way of Guelph and Wellington for its exemplary efforts over the past five years and the enthusiasm and commitment of organizers and volunteers. The U of G campaign is the largest in the region, raising $491,000 last year and involving more than 200 volunteers.

Campaign co-chair Jennifer Beehler said it’s the campus volunteers who continue to make the U of G effort so successful. “It is an honour to be associated with such an inspirational group of people and I look forward to working with them during the 2009 campaign,” she said.

In addition to being recognized for its community-building efforts, the CME also presented an award. Geosyntec Consultants International Inc., an environmental engineering and science consulting services firm, received the CME's Workplace Education Award. In order to continue attracting and retaining exceptional employees, Geosyntec places a strong emphasis on working with universities to provide internship opportunities and fellowship grants to support the next generation of engineering and science leaders.

U of G Students Make Top 40 List

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:23:50 -0500

Eight University of Guelph students are among '40 under 40' Guelph residents recognized for their personal successes and community contributions.

Kyle Boorsma, Lindsay Carson, Paul Demarco, Nick Fitzgibbon, Nigel Gough, Mitchell Moffit, Robert Murray and Stephanie Pellizzari are featured today in a special supplement published by the Guelph Mercury.

The newspaper started the awards in 2008 as a way of recognizing the efforts of outstanding people who are making a difference in Guelph.

Winners range in age from eight to 39 and include athletes, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, business people, health care workers and public servants.

Boorsma, a fourth-year biomedical sciences major, helped lead the U of G men’s cross-country team to its third consecutive Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championships where he earned an individual silver medal. In previous years, he has been the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) champion and meet MVP. He is also a coach for Xtreme Team, an after-school program for children interested in track.

Fellow runner Carson just completed her second year in biological engineering. She was the CIS Female Track Athlete of the Year and captured three gold CIS medals. She won a gold and silver medal at the OUA track championships, was the female MVP, and helped the Gryphon women's track team capture its first OUA title. She also won a silver medal at the OUA cross-country championships and a bronze medal at the CIS cross-country championships.

Demarco and Murray were recognized as two of Guelph’s small business ambassadors. They own and operate Intrigue Media Solutions, which creates digital advertising for clients and places the ads on LCD monitors in high-traffic locations. The fifth-year commerce students created the company as a part-time start-up so they could get some practical business experience for a couple of semesters. They now have more than 25 monitors in Guelph and 15 in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Fitzgibbon, a fourth-year sociology student, is the tailback for the Gryphons. He is credited for helping U of G win two playoff games in 2007, the year Guelph also hosted the Western Mustangs in the 100th Yates Cup. He was the OUA’s leading rusher last season (fourth overall in Canada). He also speaks at local high schools and takes part in numerous charity events.

Drama student Nigel Gough made the list for being accepted into the world-renowned master's program at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England. The school is one of the colleges of the University of London and has maintained a reputation for the finest theatre arts training in the world for more than a century. Gough also is active in numerous community organizations, and aspires to use theatre as a tool to engage youth.

Moffit helped put Guelph on the map as one of the top 50 candidates for a dream job in Australia. A President's Scholar, the now fourth-year biological sciences student was shortlisted for The Best Job in the World competition to become a caretaker on Hamilton Island in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. His inspirational video application became a source of University and community pride.

Pellizzari was honoured for her work with the Guelph and District Multicultural Festival. Previously a volunteer, she is now a full-fledged board member and is known for being an inspiring role model for youth. Pellizzari is also a teacher’s assistant with the International Languages Program and volunteers for numerous church and community organizations.

'Make it Seven' Campaign Has U of G Tie

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:02:47 -0500

There's a University of Guelph connection to Jim Balsillie's efforts to bring a seventh national hockey league team to Canada.

The GMOs, a band featuring Owen Roberts of the Office of Research, Prof. Doug Larson of the Department of Integrative Biology, U of G graduates Len Kahn and Rob McLean and longtime University supporter Rob Hannam, penned a song that captured Balsillie’s attention.

Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion, is trying to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and move the NHL franchise to Hamilton. He has launched a national “Make it Seven” campaign to support his initiative.

The GMOs, which stands for Genetically Modified Orchestra, wrote and recorded a song, Make It Seven, about Balsillie’s ongoing efforts. They posted a video of the song on You Tube, where it’s closing in on 12,000 hits.

The song and video caught Balsillie’s eye and are now part of his official campaign, appearing on the “Make It Seven” website.

“I'm proud that our band could contribute to something as 'Canadian' and as fun as helping our neighbours in Hamilton try to get a hockey team,” said Roberts, who organized the band in 2000.

“In the lifetime of a band, opportunities at this level are extremely rare, especially for a just-for-fun band like us.”

The song is receiving a lot of attention. Last week, the GMOs performed it a rally in Hamilton that drew more than 5,000 people in support of Balsillie’s campaign.

During the rally, band members were interviewed by numerous television media outlets, including CBC, CTV, Citytv CH-CH and TSN, about the song's role in fanning the flames of support for Balsillie's initiative.

Band members have discussed the importance of the seventh team to the infrastructure of southern Ontario and the connections between scholarship and athletic development, Larson said.

“Outside of the lecture hall and outside of normal outreach, our university has pulled it off again in ways that were neither planned nor imagined,” he said.

The song features Larson, an ecologist and Canada's pre-eminent authority on ancient vegetation, on slide guitar; Roberts, who specializes in agriculture communications, on lead guitar; McLean, a hospitality and tourism management graduate, on bass and vocals; Kahn, an Ontario Agricultural College grad, on drums; and Hannam, owner of Synthesis Agri-Food Consulting, on keyboards. Hannam’s daughter, Rebecca, is a second-year U of G student.

“I hope Hamilton succeeds,” Roberts said. “And I hope we get to accept the organizers' offer to join them on opening night and play this song again.”

Engineering Prof Gets $5 Million for Groundwater Research

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:14:53 -0500

More than a million people living in some of southern Ontario's fastest-growing communities rely on bedrock aquifers for their water, including Guelph, which draws its water from fractured dolostone.

As demand for water increases, so do potential risks associated with contamination of the water-yielding underground layers of porous fractured rock. Yet there is minimal understanding about the threats posed by contamination moving through the overburden soil into the bedrock below.

University of Guelph environmental engineering professor Beth Parker is on a mission to change that. Backed by a recent $5-million, five-year investment from the Ontario government, she is heading an international team of 16 researchers intent on developing technologies to secure safe and sustainable groundwater supplies.

“Ontario’s population is growing relentlessly, along with concerns about the presence of water contaminants,” said Parker. “The biggest uncertainties and the greatest risks for adverse impacts are in communities drawing part of all of their water from bedrock aquifers.”

In addition to Guelph, Ontario’s “bedrock communities” in and near the Grand River basin include Fergus, Orangeville and Cambridge.

According to Parker: Bedrock aquifers are particularly prone to contamination, preliminary studies have shown. The uncertainties and risks associated with bedrock aquifers are especially serious because water flows in fractures at exceptionally high velocity and can rapidly spread contaminants, including human viruses. But there is little information about how and why, relative to other aquifer types such as sand and gravel, Parker said.

With this new grant from the Ontario Research Fund, Parker and her team will study everything from how contaminants travel through groundwater in fractured rock and how they affect well-water supplies to whether they can be easily removed or destroyed underground.

They’ll also develop new conceptual models, tools and methods to help government and companies solve groundwater contamination problems.

The ultimate goals are to better understand the risks posed by contaminants and to develop predictions of future uncertainties, as well as protection and remediation plans.

The research has important implications for all types of industrial and municipal waste-derived contaminants, including chemicals and pathogens.

“Once we understand the nature of the problem in more detail, we can learn to factor this into the decision-making process,” said Parker, who was involved in investigations and remediation of contaminated industrial sites before entering academia.

The City of Guelph will serve as the field laboratory for the project. With a population of more than 120,000, it’s Ontario’s largest community supplied by bedrock groundwater. A strong collaboration is developing between the academic researchers and the water-focused staff at the City of Guelph, Parker said.

“Guelph will act as a surrogate for other groundwater-based communities,” she said, adding that this is the first time an urban bedrock aquifer system has been subjected to such comprehensive and multidisciplinary investigations.

As part of this project, a fractured rock field research facility is being established on the U of G campus, which also draws water from the bedrock aquifer. This will become one of the most advanced research facility concerning bedrock aquifers in North America.

“What we learn here will help advance our understanding of entire urban water systems and help bridge gaps between researchers and professionals,” Parker said.

Learning to use the most advance scientific information in the management of groundwater supplies is essential for growing municipalities, Parker said. Advantages of achieving sustainable groundwater use include saving money and energy by avoiding long-distance conveyance and treatment of water from the Great lakes.

“Water is an important resource. It’s scarce around the world, and locally it can also be very scarce, especially if poorly managed. We have a culture where we think we’ll never run out of water, but our mindset needs to evolve so that water sustainability is achieved.”

This is just the latest of Parker’s groundwater research projects. She received a Leaders Opportunity Fund grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation last December for lab and field equipment to study organic chemical contamination in fractured rock beneath industrial sites. She came to U of G in 2006 as a Senior Industrial Research Chair with more than $5 million in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Parker’s research initiatives are part of UOG’s plan involving water as major research thrust.

The new Ontario Research Fund project lead by Parker involves a team of scientists and engineers spanning a broad range of different types of expertise and includes professors from U of G, the University of Waterloo, McMaster University and Quebec’s Laval University, as well as researchers in the United States and Switzerland. Other Guelph faculty involved in the project are Emmanuelle Arnaud and Gary Parkin of the Department of Land Resource Science; Aaron Berg, Department of Geography and Andrea Bradford, John Cherry, Bahram Gharabaghi and Edward McBean of the School of Engineering.

Profs, Staff Make Headlines

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:15:09 -0500

Pathobiology professor John Prescott was featured in an article published in The Epoch Times this week on the role of agriculture in antibiotic resistance. Prescott is chair of the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance. The Epoch Times is a New-York based independent newspaper that is distributed in 30 countries with editions in English, Chinese and nine other languages.

Economics professor Ross McKitrick had a two-part editorial series published in the Financial Post today and Wednesday. The commentaries looked at the U.S. economic crisis, proposed recovery plans and potential implications. The Financial Post covers Canadian business news and is published as part of the National Post.

Family Relations professor Kerry Daly, who runs the national Fatherhood Involvement Research Alliance, was featured in a story in Saturday's National Post about how advertising often continues to reinforce negative behaviours associated with fathering and men's behaviour. Daly discussed the negative repercussions and father’s efforts to combat stereotypes.

Physics professor Diane Nalini de Kerckhove is featured in this month’s Innovation Canada, the online newsletter published by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The feature story highlights how she has combined her physics work with her jazz singing and/songwriting and her new album of songs inspired by people's fascination with the sky, stars and moon. It's part of CFI's ongoing "i2eye" feature.

Cyndy McLean, director of U of G’s Health and Performance Centre, is featured in the latest issue of Chatelaine magazine (currently available to subscribers and soon to be at newsstands). The article tells the story of how McLean went from being a former marathon runner and elite-level athlete to suffering a fall in 2003 that left her paraplegic to becoming an ambassador for the Rick Hansen Foundation and promoting education and research about spinal cord injury. It’s part of the magazine’s ongoing “Road to Wellness” feature.

Guelph Researcher Awarded Grant From Brain Tumour Foundation

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:16:09 -0500

A University of Guelph scientist examining how signalling pathways between cells can go awry and lead to cancer and other ailments has received a grant from the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada.

Nina Jones, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, received $25,000 toward brain tumour research, one of six grants awarded across the country by the foundation. The grant will support her investigations into the role of a specific protein in the formation of tumours and its implications for potential treatments.

“Our preliminary results have found that a particular gene is up-regulated or overexpressed in a variety of different types of brain tumours compared with normal brain tissue,” said Jones. The same protein has been identified in melanoma cancers of the skin, where it helps to spread malignant cells to other parts of the body, she added.

The funding will pay for samples of different types of brain tumours supplied by the Brain Tumour Tissue Bank in London, Ont.

The project builds on research by Guelph PhD student Melanie Wills, this year’s recipient of the W.C. Winegard Medal, the university’s top undergraduate convocation award. Wills, a President’s Scholar and the first B.Sc. graduate to move straight into the PhD program in molecular and cellular biology, reported findings on the overexpression of the signalling protein in brain tumours while still an undergraduate working in Jones’s lab. The funding will help support her PhD research.

“Cancer can occur when various communication pathways in the cell operate at the wrong time or place,” said Wills. “Understanding the molecular signalling components of these pathways and how they behave under normal and cancerous conditions gives us a better picture of how cells communicate messages and how the normal process can go awry in disease.”

Jones’s lab is supported by a five-year $520,000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Last fall, she was awarded more than $300,000 in infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, including provincial and University contributions. In 2007, she received an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.