The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified wifi as a group 2B “possible carcinogen.” In group 2B, it joins gasoline engine exhaust, lead, welding fumes, and talc-based powders as agents that could possibly cause cancer in humans. Though it is probably a good idea to steer clear of many of the 287 substances on this IARC list, some, like talcum baby powder, seem pretty harmless. Surely this reclassification of RF field-emitting devices as yet another thing that causes cancer is nothing more than public fear mongering?

“There are numerous studies on cells and animals that show that low doses of [RF] fields can impair biological processes.”

Not true, University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health Professor Anthony Miller tells The Daily. “There are numerous studies on cells and animals that show that low doses of [RF] fields can impair biological processes,” he says in an email. Miller believes wifi and RF fields should in fact be classified as group 2A “probably carcinogenic to humans,” putting it on par with inorganic lead compounds and DDT.

Miller cites findings published in 2011 by the International Journal of Oncology and other journals in recent years that indicate a relationship between exposure to RF fields and cancer. “I would ask [the public] to carefully reconsider,” he responds when asked about those who dismiss warnings that wifi might be dangerous.

A primary concern is wifi equipment being installed in many public places, as this will mean an increase in the amount of RF fields the general public is exposed to. Due to this fear, France banned wifi in nursery and primary schools at the end of January. Frank Clegg, the chief executive officer of Canadians for Safe Technology (C4ST), a group aiming to raise awareness about public health issues, tells The Daily that this concern is well founded following “significant consultation with scientists.” He refers to a C4ST declaration signed by over 50 international scientists expressing concern over Canada’s current tech safety guidelines.

“We cannot confirm they are safe, [so] people should reduce their exposure to as low as reasonably achievable.”

The research of neurologist Martha Herbert from Harvard Medical School indicates that radiation from cell phones penetrates deep into children’s heads and can damage cells. Her research has also indicated a likely link between autism and RF field exposure.

Even so, many people still don’t take these concerns seriously. As U3 McGill student Joseph Yang puts it, “It’s fear mongering for sure. These days apparently anything can give you cancer, so I’ll take my chances.” There is general cynicism about the classification of certain agents as “possibly carcinogenic” even among scientists. A 2013 article called “Is everything we eat associated with cancer?” published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition references other compounds listed under the 2B classification of the IARC. The paper found that while most of the food ingredients studied were associated with cancer risk by individual studies, when looked at more broadly, many of the studies contradicted one another, with one saying an ingredient was carcinogenic and another documenting its benefits. Not to mention, opponents of the reclassification of wifi point out that most research looks at the correlation between cell phone use and gliomas, or malignant tumors, and say the links drawn by most of these studies are negligible or have problems with their design.

Miller suggests the reclassification of wifi to a group 2B carcinogen and the proposed visible warning labels by Young have the effect of educating the public and taking precautionary measures. “What is needed is a change of culture on RF fields. We cannot confirm they are safe, [so] people should reduce their exposure to as low as reasonably achievable, the same precautionary principle we have used for ionizing radiation [such as X-rays] for decades.” Even if strong links between RF field-emitting devices and cancer have not yet been fully established, erring on the side of caution seems in the best interest of the general public until the long-term effects of RF field exposure, and its link to cancer, are established.

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Enter e-cigarettes, also known as electronic cigarettes; battery-powered, reusable devices that mimic the use, and often appearance and taste, of conventional cigarettes. They do not contain tobacco, and only emit a nicotine vapour, often flavoured, instead of the smoke from tobacco combustion. Therefore, theoretically, they supply the user with nicotine while avoiding the toxic chemicals associated with conventional cigarettes.

E-cigarette companies have capitalized on the negativity surrounding conventional smoking, marketing themselves as a clean delivery device that satisfies nicotine cravings. Packages are covered with labels that say “Vapour–not smoke,” or “Less tar & more taste.” And it has worked. ‘Vaping’ has been featured on pop-culture sensations like House of Cards. Vaping cafes are popping up across Canada and the globe. Given the current growth, Wells Fargo predicts that the retail sales value for e-cigarettes worldwide will surpass $10 billion by 2017. Bloomberg Industries has projected that e-cigarette sales will exceed those of traditional cigarettes by 2047.

This growth has largely been attributed to the growing popularity of e-cigarettes in a younger generation of users. Groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US (CDC) have expressed concern that these products will lead to more nicotine addiction in youth and serve as a gateway for non-smokers to smoking tobacco. The problem of youth nicotine addiction has thus been central to the regulation debate surrounding e-cigarettes. Other major concerns include the fact that no long-term studies have been conducted to corroborate the claims that e-cigarettes have helped people quit smoking, and that the health risks of inhaling propylene glycol – a liquid in the cartridge of most e-cigarettes –remain unclear.

People are also concerned that these products will undermine hard-won progress in tobacco control such as workplace smoking bans. As big tobacco companies such as Lorillard and Altria enter the e-cigarette market, some express suspicion at what their long-term strategic goals may be. Are they recognizing that e-cigarettes are their future, or encouraging their use as a gateway product to cigarettes?

On August 26, the WHO called for strict regulation of e-cigarettes, and called on governments to implement a ban on selling Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) to minors, and a ban on use indoors. The report says, “The fact that ENDS exhaled aerosol contains on average lower levels of toxicants than the emissions from combusted tobacco does not mean that these levels are acceptable to involuntarily exposed bystanders.” The WHO also called for the restriction of e-cigarette advertising. Many worry that current campaigns romanticize smoking and make it appear as a normative and even desirable behaviour, paving the way for a new generation of smokers.

The sale of e-cigarettes is currently prohibited in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Singapore, and Switzerland, and allowed in most others. Health Canada last issued guidelines for e-cigarette use in 2009, stating that the products had not yet been fully evaluated for “safety, quality and efficacy,” and that consumers should hold off on buying them until more information becomes available. Currently, e-cigarettes that claim health benefits and are intended for nicotine delivery are regulated under the Food and Drugs Act. Those that do not make such claims are neither approved nor banned in Canada. 

From a regulatory standpoint, it seems that the greatest difficulty lies in deciding how to classify e-cigarettes. Should they be treated as tobacco products (even though they contain no tobacco), or medicines? The Electronic Cigarette Trade Association of Canada does not think they can be classified as either, and should be treated separately. The group supports further study into the safety and regulation of these products, and the regulation of contaminants in the e-cigarette liquid.

Groups like the Canadian Lung Association (CLA) and Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) want to see much tougher federal policies on e-cigarettes in line with WHO and CDC recommendations. The CLA would like to see an all-out ban on e-cigarette sales until their safety is properly researched. The CCS has called for national bans on sale to minors and controls on e-cigarette advertising.

Where the federal government has been dragging its feet, provinces and municipalities look poised to make changes soon. Nova Scotia plans to pass legislation to regulate e-cigarettes like tobacco. Similarly, in Quebec, Lucie Charlebois, the minister for Rehabilitation, Youth Protection and Public Health, wants to put e-cigarettes under Quebec’s Tobacco Act, and wants the same rules to apply to both e-cigarettes and real cigarettes. It is likely that if they move ahead with regulations, other provinces will follow suit. Montreal Public Health has also called for more regulations, releasing five different recommendations for lawmakers; Toronto City Council is banning their use in city workplaces.

Given the lack of long-term scientific research on e-cigarettes, and their growing popularity, some legislative guidance on their production and consumption seems reasonable. It remains to be seen how the federal government will react, if it reacts at all, and who it will consult in developing its policy. In the meantime Canadians will have to decide for themselves whether e-cigarettes are a solution or a key to Pandora’s box.

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Paleobotany is the branch of paleontology concerned with the Earth’s earliest plants. It involves the recovery and analysis of ancient plant remains and fossils, and using these to predict what entire plants would have looked like. It can also be used to reconstruct past environments.

In the talk, the speaker gave William Dawson’s previous description of the Archeopteris type specimen, a tree from the Devonian period (around 400 million years ago). A type specimen is the original specimen from which a description of a new species is made. This presents a problem when attempting to study and characterize extinct plants.

Different kinds of plant fossils will provide specific information about the plant. Impressions can provide good morphological detail of flattened plant parts such as leaves. Petrifactions (like petrified wood) where organic material has been converted to stone, can provide insight into the cell anatomy of the plant tissue. Moulds (which are similar to impressions) can provide information on the three dimensional form of the plant. Paleobotanists can predict what the entire specimen would have looked like by combining the information collected from different fossil types of the same species.

John William Dawson was McGill’s principle from 1855-93. At the time, he was referred to as a “natural philosopher” and is considered one of the founders of the science of paleobotany. During his time with the Geological Survey of Canada, he described fossil plants from the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous eras. As a professor of geology at McGill, he taught with the aid of what are now his famous bedsheet drawings – large-scale representations of what he thought different plants would look like. Though some of these representations have now been disproved, it is interesting to consider how Dawson arrived at his conclusions with the tools at his disposal.

McGill campus is also littered with a number of living fossil trees. Living fossils are a live species that appear similar to a species otherwise believed to exist with no other known living relatives. One example is the ginkgo in front of Chancellor Day Hall, an unusual non-flowering plant that is only found in the wild in China but has been cultivated worldwide. The evolutionary history and phylogenetic place of gingko is still a mystery to botanists but it is believed to have first appeared around 250 million years. Another is the Metasequoia redwood on the grounds of the Stewart Biology building. This redwood was believed to exist only in the fossil record until 1941 when it was found by a Chinese botanist. It has since become a popular ornamental.

The living fossil trees around campus prove that you don’t need to be Indiana Jones to appreciate fossils. For those interested in more ancient plants, living fossil trees can provide a window into the ancient past.

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Quantum physics considers physical phenomena at a microscopic level, providing a framework for understanding energy and matter at the molecular, atomic, and subatomic scale. Measuring at the quantum scale make it possible to make very precise measurements and has become crucial to the development of new technologies. Michael Hilke, a physicist at McGill, and his quantum nanoelectronics lab at McGill is looking at a number of different quantum physics applications in technology.

One such technological advancement is the quantum computer – a machine capable of computations magnitudes faster than conventional computers – which has the power to crack more complicated codes and run more complex simulations.

The chips in today’s computers – like the one you are currently using – process information in binary. This means that bits can exist in one of two states: 0 or 1. In contrast, quantum chips store information in quantum bits (qubits) that have the ability to be both 0 and 1 at the same time. What the qubit represents ‘spin state,’ which is essentially information about how an electron is spinning. These qubits are what give quantum computer chips the potential to store and process information at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than the ordinary silicon computer chip.

Quantum dot technology is one of the proposed ways that quantum computing will come to light. A quantum dot is essentially an “electron trapped in a cage of atoms.” Using light, this electron can be in an excited state (1) or ground state (0) – the same 0 and 1 that were referred to in the previous paragraph. Using this technology, one can take precise measurements of the electron’s spin, which is useful to quantum computing. One of the materials that can be used in quantum dot technology is graphene – and is one of the areas of study in the Hilke lab.

Graphene is a material with some remarkable properties. It is a crystalline form of carbon (like diamond or graphite) that is a one-atom thick. It is impermeable to gases and liquids and is the thinnest and strongest material known to date; it is also an extremely efficient conductor of electricity. Graphene’s physical properties give it the potential for many practical applications.

Up close, graphene’s carbon atoms make up a honeycomb shaped hexagon lattice. These layers of graphene can combine to form superlattices, forming symmetrical, snowflake-shaped crystals. This property of graphene means that these crystals have a larger surrounding perimeter than internal area. This enhanced surface area means that a graphene can be made more chemically efficient and reactive. Graphene’s impermeable nature make it a very good filter for small molecules when perforated with very small holes. It also has possible applications in radiofrequency detection, electricity generation, and organic displays. The Hilke lab is now is constructing single hexagonal crystals to make graphene at high qualities and for use at large scale.

The story of graphene isolation is an interesting one. It was the result of the so-called “Friday evening experiment” – tried for fun and separate from the ‘serious’ research that the lab was receiving funding for. Hilke noted that this is an exciting aspect of fundamental research – though there is a high risk of failure and a low chance of achieving good results, when they do, they can be transformational and have many important applications.

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Madrenas’ story begins in Barcelona during his medical residency in nephrology, the division of medicine concerned with kidney diseases. He noticed that patients who had lost kidney function and required dialysis suffered from poor quality of life, most often due to immune reactions against materials used in dialysis machines. Dialysis filters your blood through an artificial membrane, ridding the body of wastes, extra salts, and water.

This inspired his first venture into research, in Paris – studying the compatibility of patients’ blood and the dialysis membrane. In particular, Madrenas studied a molecule called platelet activating factor (PAF). He found that the patients’ undesirable response to dialysis was due to this molecule. By depressing the molecule’s activity, he hoped to improve dialysis for patients. “This really got me into research,” he said, noting the realization that a good idea could go a long way in improving the quality of life of his patients.

After returning to his practice in his hometown, Madrenas felt that dialysis, although improved from earlier versions, was still not ideal. The better option was transplantation, then a newly emerging practice. The desire to study this process took him to Alberta, where he studied kidney transplantation under John Dossetor, a father of the field.

During his time in Alberta, Madrenas became interested in organ transplant rejection. Recognizing that rejection was immunologically mediated, he sought a better understanding of the immune system, on a PhD in Immunology with Dr. Phil Halloran. After obtaining his PhD, he made the full transition into research, abandoning medical practice and moving to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.

At the NIH, Madrenas delved into the study of T-cell activation. T-cells are a type of white blood cell that help the body fight disease and infection as part of the immune system. T-cells recognize foreign harmful substances via a T-cell receptor (TCR). Madrenas’ research revealed that the TCR does not work in an on/off manner, but instead modulates its signalling and action according to the quality of ligand, or foreign molecule, that it recognizes. He identified different antagonists and partial agonists of the TCR in addition to different signalling patterns that are set off upon recognition of a harmful substance.

Madrenas’ current research focuses on the mechanisms of regulation employed during T-cell activation. Broadly speaking, he seeks to understand what makes T-cells turn on or off. This is of special clinical relevance as transplant rejection, and a number of autoimmune diseases including Type I diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, and Psoriasis, are attributed to undesirable T-cell activation.

At McGill, he studies the interactions between a prevalent superbug Staphylococcus aureus and the immune system. Using a variety of systems biology techniques, including proteomics and metabolomics, his lab seeks to understand the mechanisms that make this bug a health threat while being a common microbe in healthy individuals. In learning about this dichotomy, his lab hopes to discover alternatives to antibiotics to be used in the treatment of infections.

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Many current fertilizers release compounds such as carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane (CH4) – otherwise known as greenhouse gases – into the environment. In large amounts, these greenhouse gases are harmful to the climate and cause ozone depletion. Large amounts of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus find their way into runoff from agricultural land masses and have been associated with eutrophication, the process where excess nutrients in water bodies stimulate excessive plant growth. Eutrophication has many ecological consequences, including toxic effects on the environment and decreased biodiversity.

Efficiency is of special concern when looking at nitrogen fertilizers. Soil systems tend to be leaky in their retention of nitrogen. Therefore, tools that enable the prediction of nitrogen release by the soil nutrient cycle would be useful in determining when, and how much, nitrogen fertilizer is needed for crops with high nitrogen demands, lowering costs as well as environmental risk.

By addressing these questions, the Whalen lab is seeking to reduce the amount of nutrients released into waterways and the atmosphere, while increasing their efficiency by finding a comprehensive solution to the drawbacks of current fertilizers.

In addition to investigating nutrient cycling in soil cycles, the lab also studies soil microbiology. While examining the reason certain soil environments are more prone to losing nitrogen than others, the Whalen lab has found that manure and inorganic sources are cycled through the soil biomass quite rapidly. This has resulted in a very significant amount of nitrogen runoff, and nitrogen loss to the atmosphere.

The lab also utilizes the earthworm to study nutrient cycles. Earthworms create a habitat suited to microbial nitrifiers (microorganisms that oxidize an ammonia compound in nitrates and nitrites) and denitrifiers (microorganisms that convert nitrogen oxides such as nitrous oxide to molecular nitrogen). This is valuable because testing the nutrient flux of an area provides more practically useful information for developing precise farming and land management techniques than testing nitrogen composition in isolation.
The lab also looks at a number of other soil-related environmental issues such as the toxicity of nanoparticles and the economic benefits of temperate tree-based intercropping systems. With their research, the Whalen lab hopes to find ways to make fertilizers more economically and environmentally efficient.

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The lab is currently studying how bilinguals – particularly English-French bilinguals – manage their knowledge of multiple languages.  To address this question, Titone and her students have investigated cross-language competitors.  Cross-language competitors, as Titone explains, are words that overlap across languages as to how they look or sound, but vary in meaning (‘chat,’ in English and French).

While it is perhaps easy to imagine that a bilingual’s brain switches off one language when using the other, there is evidence that both languages are active simultaneously.  At the Titone lab, researchers monitor behavioural changes such as eye movements to understand how the brain resolves such ambiguities during reading, listening, and production activities.

They also investigate how factors such as second language proficiency and cognitive capacity play a role, and whether bilingual experience produces structural brain changes. Using neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging – a tool used to measure brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow – they look at whether bilingual experience produces structural changes in the brain.

One may often think of the single word as the functional unit of language; however, written or spoken language often comes in multiword chunks. To address this, the lab looks at the extent of a bilingual or monolingual person’s sensitivity to formulaic sequences (the chunks of speech) during comprehension and production including how they respond to idioms or other figures of speech.

A look at language-impaired populations also provides important insights. Schizophrenia is classified as severe neurophysiological disorder that is obviously very different from dyslexia. By contrasting language and basic reading skills in people with dyslexia and schizophrenia, Titone has found evidence to suggest that similar regions of the brain implicated in reading are affected in both disorders. As a result, language processing may be similar as well.

The Titone lab also conducts bilingual and monolingual research on other aspects of language, such as emotional word processing and language processing in healthy, older adults. Ultimately, they hope to contribute to a more holistic understanding of our language production and comprehension.

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There were 12 panelists from different professional backgrounds, from industry to think tanks to academia. Speakers included the principal of Earnscliffe Strategy Group, the director of health economics at the Conference Board of Canada, and an associate professor in the Integrated Studies in Education department at McGill. The day focused largely on the economic, social, and political sides of science. The science academics – the biologists, chemists, and physicists – were, to my surprise, missing in action.

Though there were enough differences in opinion to keep things interesting, the day wasn’t filled with dramatic ideological clashes. Panelists, in large part, agreed on  solutions to the major issues faced by Quebec and shared a general idea of what successful healthcare or science education would look like.

The subject of the 2014 healthcare reform was probably the most contentious topic of the day. Because the federal government’s current funding plan is due to expire in 2014, all of the provinces are reevaluating their healthcare systems to attempt to improve efficiency. There was some disagreement at the conference on the nature and scope of the role that private corporations should play. Panelists also had disparate opinions on whether existing healthcare and health policy research has yielded any palpable results.

Louis Thériault of the Conference Board of Canada, a nonprofit applied research organization, supported involving private corporations in healthcare as long as they were efficient. He maintained that corporations could play a positive role within the proper regulatory environment. Thériault also asserted that while healthcare research is in progress, and has been for a long time, there are few results to show for it. The two other panelists disagreed with both points – Dr. Astrid Brouseilles of Université de Sherbrooke, responded that when it comes to research, the question is “not what…the results [are] – the results are there – but how to put those results into action.” Brouseilles and Dr. Lee Soderstrom, a former economics professor at McGill, agreed that a universal, public option would be most effective, with Soderstrom pointing out that most research shows privatization of healthcare does not improve the efficiency or quality of care.

The panel also noted that moving forward, Quebec’s healthcare challenges may be very different from the rest of Canada – the aging population may not present as significant a challenge here as it will elsewhere. In addition, while many Canadians are familiar with both the Canadian and American healthcare systems, panelists noted that it may be worthwhile to also study successful models in Europe and learn from them.

The panel that followed highlighted the issues facing the different stages of science education. It was agreed that generally, high school teachers must become more knowledgeable in science and CEGEP teachers must improve their teaching methods. The panel thus emphasized the importance of reaching and engaging teachers. Panelists pointed to the presentation of science as a list of facts rather than an appeal to natural curiosity as the reason for the decline in scientific interest in the student body; instead, they encouraged a “big ideas” approach to scientific teaching.

All in all, the conference successfully raised new questions about the economics and politics of science and provided a platform to discuss existing policies. Next year, it would be nice to hear what academic scientists think, in addition to policy-makers’ opinions. Only they can help to address the issue of scientific necessity, in addition to those of costs and policy.

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