University Of British Columbia Research Articles

First person – Eli Matsell

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Eli Matsell is first author on ‘ Functional and in silico analysis of ATP8A2 and other P4-ATPase variants associated with human genetic diseases’, published in DMM. Eli is a PhD student in the lab of Dr Robert Molday at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, investigating the role that the P4-ATPase ATP8A2 plays in severe neurological disease.

Prediction of Postoperative Urinary Tract Infection Following Benign Gynecologic Surgery.

The objective was to develop a prediction model for urinary tract infection (UTI) after pelvic surgery. We utilized data from three tertiary care centers of women undergoing pelvic surgery. The primary outcome was a UTI within 8weeks of surgery. Additional variables collected included procedural data, severity of prolapse, use of mesh, anti-incontinence surgery, EBL, diabetes, steroid use, estrogen use, postoperative catheter use, PVR, history of recurrent UTI, operative time, comorbidities, and postoperative morbidity including venous thromboembolism, surgical site infection. Two datasets were used for internal validation, whereas a third dataset was used for external validation. Algorithms that tested included the following: multivariable logistic regression, decision trees (DTs), naive Bayes (NB), random forest (RF), gradient boosting (GB), and multilayer perceptron (MP). For the training dataset, containing both University of British Columbia and Mayo Clinic Rochester data, there were 1,657 patients, with 172 (10.4%) UTIs; whereas for the University of Calgary external validation data, there were a total of 392 patients with a UTI rate of 16.1% (n = 63). All models performed well; however, the GB, DT, and RF models all had an area under the curve (AUC) > 0.97. With external validation the model retained high discriminatory ability, DT: AUC = 0.88, RF: AUC = 0.88, and GB: AUC = 0.90. A model with high discriminatory ability can predict UTI within 8weeks of pelvic surgery. Future studies should focus on prospective validation and application of randomized trial models to test the utility of this model in the prevention of postoperative UTI.

Dental students' reflective learning from a geriatric interview assignment.

As part of geriatric education at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Dentistry, undergraduate students are required to interview an older adult over 65 years old and critically reflect in writing on the meaning of this interview to themselves and their professional lives in not more than 2000 words. They are also encouraged to use a life grid. This study explored the impact of this assignment on the students as learners and on their views about their profession. Interview assignments were collected from the entire cohort of 54 third-year students in 2021 and analyzed in 5 stages, using an exploratory thematic analysis, including an interactive coding process to identify patterns (themes) within the assignments using NVivo R1 software. Two researchers coded assignments individually and met to reach a consensus about the codes, to mitigate potential biases. Five main themes were identified, including communication, life course journey, person-centered care, social determinants of health, and access to care. A wide range of ideas emerged under each theme, including several practical suggestions to improve future practice as an oral health professional. A little over 40% of the students used the life grid in their interviews. Modifications on the interview assignment are suggested. Students' reflections highlighted their observations on a wide range of ideas within each theme, many pertaining to their future profession. They also discussed how this knowledge would inform their future practice in terms of their interactions with, and providing care to, patients with similar situations.

To Learn but Not Live Together? The Early History of the University of British Columbia’s International House

Abstract The University of British Columbia (UBC) opened Canada’s first International House (I-House) in 1959 after a decade of activism from students and faculty. Students had demanded an I-House to help them find housing, and to ensure that “brotherhood may prevail,” as the I-House motto promised. The I-House campaign received support from community groups that raised the funds to build the UBC I-House. UBC’s administration wanted I-House as a social center that could coordinate fledgling international student services and resisted the residential I-House model. Ultimately, UBC’s administrators won out and the residential component was never built. This paper examines the conflict about building a residence to house international and domestic students together, chronicling the competing visions of international student policy and services that were circulating at one of Canada’s largest universities in the early days of the Cold War.

Silencing Voices: Indigenous day schools and the education section of the 1958 Hawthorn report for British Columbia

In 1954, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration commissioned anthropologist Harry Hawthorn to investigate problems faced by Indigenous people in British Columbia. This article focuses on Hawthorn’s report, The Indians of British Columbia (1958) and compares its recommendations with the original source questionnaire responses found at the University of British Columbia’s Archives and Special Collections. The responses examined, collected near the peak of day school enrollment in British Columbia, offer new insights directly from educators about their perspectives on the problems faced by Indigenous children attending day schools, and more broadly Indigenous communities as a whole. Key changes apparent in the questionnaire responses and 1958 report showcase the absence of Indigenous voices in any of the questionnaires and a lack of interest from educators in the communities, though such interest is claimed in the report. Both the questionnaires and Hawthorn’s resulting report recommend a consistent antithetical juxtaposition of Indigenous versus western, the discouragement of family ties, and the limitation of formal education to school-aged children. Such findings work to balance Hawthorn’s status as an advocate of Indigenous rights with the damaging realities indicated through and supported by his report. Through this analysis, we aim to further understandings of the impact of day schools on communities in British Columbia, and to view kinship within a reality of resilience and survival.

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

PROVIDENCE AND SCIENCE IN A WORLD OF CONTINGENCY: Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Divine Action by Ignacio Silva. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022. 170 pages. Paperback; $52.95. ISBN: 9781032002781. *Ignacio Silva (DPhil, Oxford) is an Argentinian theologian who specializes in the dialogue between science and theology. This book is a proposal for fellow scholars and others to reconsider the contribution of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics as a means of resolving the question of divine action in the light of science. Although Aquinas is the thirteenth century's most famous friar and Catholicism's most renowned theological authority alongside Augustine, he is often viewed today as contributing few insights as regards an allegedly "modern" argument. *Silva argues that Aquinas supplies a way of getting beyond two mistaken views held by people today: (1) on the one hand, that God needs the natural world to be fundamentally open to outside influence; and (2) on the other hand, that God causes things to exist in a way that is similar to the way other natural causes cause things to occur. *Silva's goal is to get beyond the current situation in which "many today find it necessary to search for a lack of natural causation so as to find a space for God to act" (p. 139). According to this way of thinking, God's actions are only localized occasions, hence the school of thought known as occasionalism. Conversely, another tendency is for believers to argue that God's powers are self-restricted in order to account for natural powers. The latter point of view is sometimes stipulated in terms of the biblical concept of kenosis ("Christ ... emptied himself," Phil. 2:7). *Silva's main point concerns a correct notion of causation such that we not restrict divine providence to an inadequate understanding of causation: "the idea of requiring insufficient causation for God to act depends on a deterministic notion of causation that, ultimately, renders God to act as a cause among causes" (p. 49). Silva holds that much causation is subject to chance contingencies. Thus, Silva's strategy is to think of causation in the context of potency and act. This allows a fresh and fuller way of dealing with the four parameters of divine providence: God's omnipotence, God's involvement with nature, nature's autonomy, and the success of science. The scope of the inquiry is enormous and Silva's handling of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is, unsurprisingly, difficult, yet hugely beneficial. *On the one hand, readers must be prepared for a dense tutorial in accounts of causality, powers, natures, and other metaphysical categories in order to appreciate the argument of this book. On the other hand, the argument over the relationship between God as the creating cause of the world and the secondary causes that act to create other effects in the world, is startlingly simple. It is best understood as a form of instrumental causality according to Silva. It is analogized (as so much of Aquinas's theology is) as follows: "The knife is moved by the man to cut, and to do it in such a manner. Without the man's power, the knife could not cut, but without the edge of the knife, the man could not cut in this manner ... the effect is both produced completely by God and by the natural agent ... (p. 129)." *Thus, without God, nature would not have the necessary powers to cause the effects it possesses. Without those natural efficient causes, God's power could not be effective. There is no split between divine and natural causation in any given effect; both are completely causal of any given effect. It is analogically helpful, although Silva does not discuss this idea, to invoke here the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: he is both fully divine and fully human, not half of each. *God acts in three ways: through creation itself, through natural (secondary) causes, and through three types of miracles--although, sadly, the latter do not receive much attention in this book. But the threefold action of God is intended to counter, on the one hand, the view that causality is always deterministic and, on the other hand, that God's action in the universe endangers nature's autonomy. *For some readers, the most difficult aspect of the argument will be the presentation of natural entities' powers of operation in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. The key is to think of causation in context. From Aristotle, change is a key feature of contingency. Change is organized into potency and act, essence and accident. These categories explain how causation results in real life. Moreover, theologically speaking, for Aquinas, "affirming that natural things do not operate, and that it is only God who does, diminishes the divine power" (p. 98, quoting the Summa contra Gentiles III, c 69). This is the counterintuitive power of the Thomist position. It opposes the view that attributes all natural causes to God's intervention. Holding that view would mean, in the end, that God actually does not create anything apart from God. But for God to create a world means to distinguish something apart from God and to allow contingency to exist in the spatio-temporal realm. The key point about the distinction between the eternal and the temporal realms is to ask why God creates in this way. Silva casually mentions that "God acts through natural causes because of the immensity of his goodness ..." (p. 101). So, it is not a matter of metaphysical necessity that lies behind the Thomist view, it is God's goodness that is the key. *The position that created natural things are themselves creative needs to be exactingly well laid out; otherwise this position will be perceived as a way of extracting God from the world altogether. Here, Silva stipulates that "God's causality penetrates most intimately the causality of created natural things," while God upholds the creation "in its being" (p. 99). This is uncontroversial, but the provision for miracles is bound to raise questions about why God would act in this way. What Silva could have used are some examples of why some philosophers dissent from Aquinas on miracles, with responses to those dissents. *Silva covers an enormous amount of reflection on the notion of causality, including some original and highly potent insights. He claims that final causality is the "cause of the efficient cause in terms of its causality" (p. 71). This relationship, as well as the relationship between the material and formal cause, as first demarcated by Aristotle, is laid out in dense, logical prose. The book ends with some subtle yet significant comments on the differences between Aquinas's views and those of twentieth-century thinkers such as Austin Farrer, who referred to Aquinas in proposing a double agency account of creation while resorting to fideism. Farrer refused to suggest any explanation for the causal joint between God's creation and the world's operation. This analysis is original and should have been given more prominence. There is, indeed, a great deal of difference between fulsome and evasive double agency accounts of created causality; however, Silva ignores almost completely the medieval development of the theorem of the "supernatural," which came about because of the theoretical stance taken by Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236). This lapse is not critical, but it does exemplify the lack of a historical dimension to the book's argument. *Another quandary concerns the book's form of exposition. It is largely descriptive. While its argument details Aquinas's metaphysics of causal relations and the universe's created dependency on God, it lacks a dialectical edge. Although the argument is sufficiently sound, it is in need of an engagement with the open theists and others who would contest the account of divine power that Thomas Aquinas developed. There are quite a few references to other contemporary positions on providence and causality, especially in the final chapter. The names of William Carroll, Robert Russell, and Michael Dodds appear, but there could have been a more probing engagement of these contemporary voices. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is treated in the light of the proposed view of moderate determinism in contrast to the non-interventionist, objective (NIODA) view of divine action in Robert Russell. Here, I'm unsure whether NIODA has been properly interpreted. Although I think Silva's position is correct, is Russell's understanding of God's causality really reducible to natural causality as Silva contends? The textual citations for this allegation are not convincing. *Finally, despite what I take to be a largely satisfying account of God's creative action, the issue of evil and theodicy are not dealt with in this book. Aquinas makes contingency (and accidents in general) central for the notion of creation. Silva sees contingency as a sign of the perfection of divine providence, but this contradiction (between created contingency and the fact of natural "evil") is a real difficulty for God's involvement with evil or deficient effects in creation. Regardless, altogether this is a provocative, dense volume that could easily have been double the length if key problems had received more comprehensive treatment. *Reviewed by Paul Allen, Academic Dean, Corpus Christi College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1J7.

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

PROVIDENCE AND SCIENCE IN A WORLD OF CONTINGENCY: Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Divine Action by Ignacio Silva. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022. 170 pages. Paperback; $52.95. ISBN: 9781032002781. *Ignacio Silva (DPhil, Oxford) is an Argentinian theologian who specializes in the dialogue between science and theology. This book is a proposal for fellow scholars and others to reconsider the contribution of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics as a means of resolving the question of divine action in the light of science. Although Aquinas is the thirteenth century's most famous friar and Catholicism's most renowned theological authority alongside Augustine, he is often viewed today as contributing few insights as regards an allegedly "modern" argument. *Silva argues that Aquinas supplies a way of getting beyond two mistaken views held by people today: (1) on the one hand, that God needs the natural world to be fundamentally open to outside influence; and (2) on the other hand, that God causes things to exist in a way that is similar to the way other natural causes cause things to occur. *Silva's goal is to get beyond the current situation in which "many today find it necessary to search for a lack of natural causation so as to find a space for God to act" (p. 139). According to this way of thinking, God's actions are only localized occasions, hence the school of thought known as occasionalism. Conversely, another tendency is for believers to argue that God's powers are self-restricted in order to account for natural powers. The latter point of view is sometimes stipulated in terms of the biblical concept of kenosis ("Christ ... emptied himself," Phil. 2:7). *Silva's main point concerns a correct notion of causation such that we not restrict divine providence to an inadequate understanding of causation: "the idea of requiring insufficient causation for God to act depends on a deterministic notion of causation that, ultimately, renders God to act as a cause among causes" (p. 49). Silva holds that much causation is subject to chance contingencies. Thus, Silva's strategy is to think of causation in the context of potency and act. This allows a fresh and fuller way of dealing with the four parameters of divine providence: God's omnipotence, God's involvement with nature, nature's autonomy, and the success of science. The scope of the inquiry is enormous and Silva's handling of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is, unsurprisingly, difficult, yet hugely beneficial. *On the one hand, readers must be prepared for a dense tutorial in accounts of causality, powers, natures, and other metaphysical categories in order to appreciate the argument of this book. On the other hand, the argument over the relationship between God as the creating cause of the world and the secondary causes that act to create other effects in the world, is startlingly simple. It is best understood as a form of instrumental causality according to Silva. It is analogized (as so much of Aquinas's theology is) as follows: "The knife is moved by the man to cut, and to do it in such a manner. Without the man's power, the knife could not cut, but without the edge of the knife, the man could not cut in this manner ... the effect is both produced completely by God and by the natural agent ... (p. 129)." *Thus, without God, nature would not have the necessary powers to cause the effects it possesses. Without those natural efficient causes, God's power could not be effective. There is no split between divine and natural causation in any given effect; both are completely causal of any given effect. It is analogically helpful, although Silva does not discuss this idea, to invoke here the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: he is both fully divine and fully human, not half of each. *God acts in three ways: through creation itself, through natural (secondary) causes, and through three types of miracles--although, sadly, the latter do not receive much attention in this book. But the threefold action of God is intended to counter, on the one hand, the view that causality is always deterministic and, on the other hand, that God's action in the universe endangers nature's autonomy. *For some readers, the most difficult aspect of the argument will be the presentation of natural entities' powers of operation in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. The key is to think of causation in context. From Aristotle, change is a key feature of contingency. Change is organized into potency and act, essence and accident. These categories explain how causation results in real life. Moreover, theologically speaking, for Aquinas, "affirming that natural things do not operate, and that it is only God who does, diminishes the divine power" (p. 98, quoting the Summa contra Gentiles III, c 69). This is the counterintuitive power of the Thomist position. It opposes the view that attributes all natural causes to God's intervention. Holding that view would mean, in the end, that God actually does not create anything apart from God. But for God to create a world means to distinguish something apart from God and to allow contingency to exist in the spatio-temporal realm. The key point about the distinction between the eternal and the temporal realms is to ask why God creates in this way. Silva casually mentions that "God acts through natural causes because of the immensity of his goodness ..." (p. 101). So, it is not a matter of metaphysical necessity that lies behind the Thomist view, it is God's goodness that is the key. *The position that created natural things are themselves creative needs to be exactingly well laid out; otherwise this position will be perceived as a way of extracting God from the world altogether. Here, Silva stipulates that "God's causality penetrates most intimately the causality of created natural things," while God upholds the creation "in its being" (p. 99). This is uncontroversial, but the provision for miracles is bound to raise questions about why God would act in this way. What Silva could have used are some examples of why some philosophers dissent from Aquinas on miracles, with responses to those dissents. *Silva covers an enormous amount of reflection on the notion of causality, including some original and highly potent insights. He claims that final causality is the "cause of the efficient cause in terms of its causality" (p. 71). This relationship, as well as the relationship between the material and formal cause, as first demarcated by Aristotle, is laid out in dense, logical prose. The book ends with some subtle yet significant comments on the differences between Aquinas's views and those of twentieth-century thinkers such as Austin Farrer, who referred to Aquinas in proposing a double agency account of creation while resorting to fideism. Farrer refused to suggest any explanation for the causal joint between God's creation and the world's operation. This analysis is original and should have been given more prominence. There is, indeed, a great deal of difference between fulsome and evasive double agency accounts of created causality; however, Silva ignores almost completely the medieval development of the theorem of the "supernatural," which came about because of the theoretical stance taken by Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236). This lapse is not critical, but it does exemplify the lack of a historical dimension to the book's argument. *Another quandary concerns the book's form of exposition. It is largely descriptive. While its argument details Aquinas's metaphysics of causal relations and the universe's created dependency on God, it lacks a dialectical edge. Although the argument is sufficiently sound, it is in need of an engagement with the open theists and others who would contest the account of divine power that Thomas Aquinas developed. There are quite a few references to other contemporary positions on providence and causality, especially in the final chapter. The names of William Carroll, Robert Russell, and Michael Dodds appear, but there could have been a more probing engagement of these contemporary voices. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is treated in the light of the proposed view of moderate determinism in contrast to the non-interventionist, objective (NIODA) view of divine action in Robert Russell. Here, I'm unsure whether NIODA has been properly interpreted. Although I think Silva's position is correct, is Russell's understanding of God's causality really reducible to natural causality as Silva contends? The textual citations for this allegation are not convincing. *Finally, despite what I take to be a largely satisfying account of God's creative action, the issue of evil and theodicy are not dealt with in this book. Aquinas makes contingency (and accidents in general) central for the notion of creation. Silva sees contingency as a sign of the perfection of divine providence, but this contradiction (between created contingency and the fact of natural "evil") is a real difficulty for God's involvement with evil or deficient effects in creation. Regardless, altogether this is a provocative, dense volume that could easily have been double the length if key problems had received more comprehensive treatment. *Reviewed by Paul Allen, Academic Dean, Corpus Christi College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1J7.

First report of Gymnotelium blasdaleanum causing Saskatoon serviceberry rust in Canada.

Saskatoon serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) is a tall shrub native to the western regions of North America. In British Columbia, serviceberries are a resource for Indigenous communities, used in cooking and for medicinal purposes (Turner et al. 1990). The Saskatoon serviceberry is popular for ornamental and food purposes, with increasing demand for commercial production in British Columbia. (FLNR, 2003). In June 2023 leaf and fruit samples displaying signs of a rust fungus were collected from three ornamental Saskatoon serviceberry shrubs on the University of British Columbia's campus in Vancouver, BC (49°15'35.0"N 123°15'05.6"W). Morphological characteristics were taken from six leaves and berries. Infected leaf tissue was misshapen due to the development of aecia on the abaxial side of the leaves. Approximately 80% of the berries were enveloped in aecia, while infected leaf tissue constituted only around 5% across all three shrubs. Aecia were aecidioid (aecidium type) 0.25 to 0.35mm in diameter, hypophylous and, fructicolous. Peridial cells had a rhomboid shape measuring 21-29 × 18-23 μm (average dimension 25 × 20 μm, n = 30). Aeciospores were globoid with yellowish walls, verrucose and the dimensions ranged from 16-24 × 12-15 μm, (average dimensions 19 ×15 μm, n = 30) (Fig. x). These morphological features fit well with description of Gymnotelium blasdaleanum (Dietel & Holw.) Arthur (= Gymnosporangium libocedri (Henn.) F. Kern) (Arthur 1934). Judging from U.S. National Fungal Databases (https://fungi.ars.usda.gov/) G. blasdaleanum has never been reported in Canada, thus this discovery represents the first report of G. blasdaleanum in the country, specifically in the province of British Columbia. G. blasdaleanum is a hetero-demicyclic rust fungus with a broad aecial host range which includes several Rosaceous genera such as Amelanchier, Crataegus, Cydonia, Malus, Pyrus, and Sorbus (Farr & Rossman 2019). The telial host range is limited to California incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) and was not observed on nearby trees, some located within one kilometer of the serviceberries. To confirm morphological identification, DNA was extracted from infected leaves and fruits from all three plants using a modified protocol (Russell et al., 2010). The D1/D2 region was amplified using primers LR6 and 2Rust1R (Beenken, et al., 2012). A BLASTn search of all three sequences revealed 99.52 to 99.62% identity to available sequence in GenBank from Gymnotelium blasdaleanum (AF522168). Newly generated sequences were submitted to the GenBank under accession numbers OR567878, OR568568, and OR654105. Specimens from three Saskatoon serviceberry plants were provided to the UBC herbarium (Beaty Biodiversity Museum) and deposited in their fungarium (F35820). Infected fruits undergo deformation and premature dropping, posing a significant threat to ornamental and fruit production varieties of serviceberries (EPPO, 2006). The spread and establishment of the G. blasdaleanum is highly dependent on the presence of C. decurrens because of its limited range. However, California incense cedar is planted outside its natural range in suitable environments for G. blasdaleanum to thrive such as southern BC allowing the rust pathogen to spread to Canada. To prevent potential spread into other agricultural industries, particularly the 256-acre pear cultivation, continued planting of C. decurrens in British Columbia should be closely monitored. (BC MFLNRO, 2003).

Transitions in development - an interview with Nika Shakiba.

Nika Shakiba is a group leader at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where she applies synthetic biology techniques to explore the basis of stem cell competition. We met with Nika over Zoom to discuss her career path so far. She explained how her engineering background led her to approach stem cells as programmable units and helped establish her research niche. We also discussed her passion for mentorship, both within and beyond her lab.

Oral Probiotic Supplementation in Pregnancy to Reduce Group B Streptococcus Colonisation (OPSiP trial): study protocol for a double-blind parallel group randomised placebo trial

IntroductionGroup B streptococcus (GBS), or Streptococcus agalactiae, remains a leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Canadian guidelines advise universal maternal screening for GBS colonisation in pregnancy in conjunction with...

Expressive Freedom and Ethical Responsibility at Canadian Universities

This article reviews recent government incursions on questions of free speech at universities and colleges in Ontario and Alberta and presents the challenge they pose to university autonomy. Inherent in university autonomy is the possibility—or the obligation—that universities make decisions based on ethical responsibilities that can extend beyond the limits of current law. As a case study of university autonomy in matters of expressive freedom, I highlight events at the University of British Columbia, which leads me to a discussion of how questions of ethical responsibility have been raised particularly in relation to the speech protection of transgender members of the university. A central issue is the need for universities to adjudicate when free speech rights meet related responsibilities with which they can conflict. I detail how, for instance, the invitation of some anti-trans speakers can pose such a conflict and should lead university communities to consider adjusting their responses in extreme cases so as to be able to more autonomously regulate hateful speech beyond applicable law.

Cultivating educational adaptability through collaborative transdisciplinary learning spaces

Empowering students and scholars to effectively address complex societal challenges frequently entails embracing unconventional pathways to foster transdisciplinary (TD) education. This empowerment is further facilitated by collaborative efforts supported by the TD experience. This paper examines one such initiative: a student-centered, experimental design of a TD doctoral pilot program for environmental sustainability at the University of British Columbia, a large, research-intensive public university in Canada. In this study, we documented shifts in participants’ development and assessed the impact of TD collaboration conditions on the educational design process. The findings indicate that engaging in collaborative TD experiences yields substantial pedagogical benefits, introducing novel opportunities for design and experimentation. This TD space appears to offer conducive conditions for students and faculty to more effectively navigate adaptive and innovative contexts within higher education. Pedagogical experimentation of this nature provides insights that are challenging to derive from theoretical speculation alone, offering potential pathways for today’s learners and educators as they confront complex societal challenges.

Bibliometric analysis of myelin imaging studies of patients with multiple sclerosis (2000-2022).

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition that can impact the central nervous system (CNS) and cause damage to the myelin, which is responsible for facilitating the normal transmission of electrical impulses along the nerves. We performed a bibliometric analysis of the scientific publications on myelin imaging in MS to reveal the development trends in this field and to evaluate research trends in myelin imaging in MS. The Web of Science Core Collection was searched for articles related to myelin imaging in MS published between January 2000 and December 2022. CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and R language were used to evaluate and visualize contributions by and co-occurrence relationships among countries and institutions, authors, journals, citations, keywords, and so on. A total of 1,639 articles addressed the topic of myelin imaging in MS. The United States had the largest number of annual publications. The University of London was the institution with the highest number of publications (n=118) and citations (n=9,885). The top 3 productive authors were all from the University of British Columbia in Canada. An article published by Mackay et al. in 1994 had the most citations (n=272). Neuroimage [impact factor (IF) =7.40, Journal Citation Reports quartile 1 (Q1)] was the most productive journal in terms of the number of articles relating to myelin imaging in MS (n=149). In recent years, myelin water imaging, synthetic magnetic resonance imaging (SyMRI), inhomogeneous magnetization, positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, and aquaporin-4 (AQP4) have been researched hotspots of myelin imaging in MS. With advancements in the pathophysiological research on myelin changes in MS, myelin imaging is playing an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of MS. In addition, the use of new sequences of myelin imaging to distinguish MS from other inflammatory demyelinating diseases is a future development trend in this field.

Co-designing action-oriented mental health conversations between care providers and ageing Canadians in the community: a participatory mixed-methods study protocol

IntroductionThe mental health of ageing Canadians is a growing concern, particularly post-pandemic. Older adults face systemic ageism and mental health stigma as pervasive barriers to seeking needed mental health support,...

Examining language and racial attitudes in an L2 French learning context

ABSTRACT This is a quantitative study on language and racial attitudes among learners of French in the English-dominant context of British Columbia (Canada). Such attitudes matter because they can have an impact on students’ learning outcomes in and outside the classroom and they reflect linguistic and racial ideologies that exist in society. A verbal guise test was used to gather data from 83 participants who were taking intermediate and advanced French courses at the University of British Columbia (UBC) at the time of this study. Five varieties of French (from Montreal, Moncton, Vancouver, Abidjan and Paris) and two races (Asian and White) were included. The objectives were to investigate the effect of accent and race on the participants’ language attitudes. The results revealed a clear preference for European French and Quebec French, but these findings can be challenged by the participants’ difficulty in distinguishing among the different varieties. Interestingly, L2 French was evaluated more positively than the L1 varieties from Moncton and Abidjan – a finding that points to the importance of having exposure to non-standard accents in order to enhance positive attitudes. Finally, the participants also demonstrated a preference for the accents of Asians (compared with Whites) in evaluating spoken French.

Pathways: A guide for developing culturally safe and appropriate patient-reported outcome (PROMs) and experience measures (PREMs) with Indigenous peoples.

Members of the Indigenous Health Program, BC Children's and Women's Hospitalsand the University of British Columbia embarked on a joint project to describe best practices to support the creation of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) with Indigenous peoples. The project involved a review of previous research on patient-reported measures (surveys) that had been specifically developed for Indigenous populations. It also involved interviews with key stakeholders-Indigenous and non-Indigenous academic researchers, and Indigenous community leaders and community members. Themes from the interviews and the literature review were combined and synthesized into pathways/a framework for survey development. The pathways document consisted of 13 protocols and associated teachings for guiding processes and framing survey questions. These encompassed building relationships, community engagement and consultation, benefits to community, ceremony and storytelling, two-way learning, participatory content development, governanceand accountability. Findings emphasized the criticality of Indigenous leadership in setting priorities for PROMs and PREMS and establishing relationships that honour Indigenous experiences through all phases of a study. Assessment of the framework's validity with select research participants and the Project Advisory Committee was positive. This is the first framework to guide development of PROMs and PREMs with Indigenous peoples and communities. It addresess both process and outcome and includes concrete steps that collaborators can take when establishing a partnership that is respectful and inclusive of Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

What We See as One River is a Convergence of Many: Three Convergence Commitments in University Teaching


 Michael Marker knew we are never just one thing. He often wrote about concepts that gesture toward convergence: To converge as a way of blurring boundaries; To converge as a challenging process of coming-together; to converge educationally in a murky, “alluvial” place of relationality that is only navigable through artistic and storied methodologies (Marker, 2017). Marker steadfastly resisted colonial structures that attempted to tidily delineate knowledge and compartmentalize the unknowable. In this article, I reflect upon Marker’s scholarship through the idea of convergence, and I outline three conceptual spaces of convergence that I have observed in his work. Through analysis of Marker’s body of work, and an attunement to his loving and poetic forms of resistance, I articulate my commitments in my role as a relatively new, non-Indigenous faculty member in his former department at the University of British Columbia. I think of convergence commitments as relational meeting places that can be at once joyful and also tension laden; they are necessary practices that help me to decentre and “muddify” Western ways of knowing that I have been socialized to enact in institutional spaces. 
 
 
  

Implementation and impact of the global access principles at the University of British Columbia: current successes and future challenges.

In 2007, the University of British Columbia (UBC) was the first university in Canada to establish and adopt global access (GA) principles. Toward implementing these principles, UBC then identified a set of strategies for providing affordable access to new UBC-developed technologies throughout low- and middle-income countries and among vulnerable populations. In this perspective, we provide an update of UBC's progress over the past 15years made on several technologies that fall under the GA principles. The technologies reported on are wide-ranging, including an oral medication for the treatment of leishmaniasis; peptides for potential use against malaria, and various bacterial, viral and fungal infections; a portable vaccine cooler; a diagnostic technology to detect severe sepsis; and an SMS Messaging System to monitor and support patients with HIV, TB and COVID-19. We identify challenges faced by the researchers in implementing the GA principles for these technologies and potential solutions for overcoming them through creative licensing and partnerships with public and private sectors, governments, local companies, and communities. As the UBC example illustrates, universities across the globe have an opportunity to make a significant social impact on improving global health of vulnerable populations and on supporting local infrastructures for sustaining these improvements.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ADOLESCENTS WITH ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR

The article discusses the psychological features and the relationship of illegal behavior of adolescents with psychopathic traits. The state of juvenile delinquency in Russia causes reasonable concern in society. The data of criminal statistics inexorably indicate the intensifi cation of illegal activities of minors. One of the key issues of the problem of juvenile delinquency is the characterization of the personality of a juvenile off ender. The analysis of personality characteristics makes it possible to understand what signs and properties a juvenile off ender diff ers from his law-abiding peer and, accordingly, some antisocial patterns of behavior can be detected up to the age of fi fteen. And this, in turn, opens the way for in-depth understanding of which categories of adolescents have the greatest criminogenic potential or are more susceptible to negative infl uences than others. Currently, the most popular tools for identifying criminal psychopathy are the List of Psychopathic Traits of Robert D. Haer, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Doctor of Philosophy. This list is intended for use in law enforcement activi-ties, in the activities of civil and judicial institutions, where it is useful to have information about possible psycho-pathic characteristics of people. It has been translated into sixteen languages and is distributed all over the world. And there was also developed a PPP for minors intended for screening, in order to identify psychopathic traits.

PTau181 plasma biomarker performance as an inclusion criterion for Alzheimer’s Disease clinical trials

AbstractBackgroundAdvances in ultrasensitive detection techniques for blood biomarkers allow the quantification of AD‐specific phosphorylated Tau proteins, including Tau phosphorylated at threonine 181 (pTau181) in patient plasma. pTau blood‐based biomarker have shown great promise as inclusion criteria and secondary endpoint evaluation in clinical trials.MethodThe University of British Columbia (UBC) CARD biobank plasma samples from clinically diagnosed AD and non‐AD patients were used to establish clinical and analytical validity of the pTau181 plasma assay per FDA fit‐for‐purpose guildelines (Neurcode USA, Inc.). We assessed the analytical measurement interval, clinical reportable range, linearity, intra‐laboratory precision, specimen stability, interference, and clinical performance.ResultThe pTau181 plasma assay provides a robust and accurate biomarker approach for independent determination of AD, with an AUC of 0.9 in our validation study cohort. The cut‐point (≥ 30 ng/L) had 100% sensitivity and 88% specificity for AD diagnosis in autopsy‐confirmed samples. The plasma pTau181 assay appears to be performing well as additional screening metric for inclusion of mild‐to‐moderate AD subjects in Phase 3 clinical trials (i.e. RETHINK‐ALZ and REFOCUS‐ALZ). 89% of the clinical sites participating in the REFOCUS‐ALZ study and 80% of sites participating in the RETHINK‐ALZ had at least 70% of screened subjects meeting this criterion.ConclusionAD plasma biomarker (pTau181) quantified using an RUO assay has great potential both as a diagnostic tool and to streamline clinical trials in AD.