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By: Anna Goshua and Arshia Javidan/ Meducator
Why do we get sick? Moreover, why do we get better? That essentially encapsulates the research being done by Dawn Bowdish and her team at McMaster University’s Immunology Research Centre. Bowdish is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, and her research focuses on pneumonia, the most costly bacterial infection in Ontario.
The bacteria that causes pneumonia is initially found in the nose, where no symptoms are observed unless it enters the lungs, bloodstream or cerebrospinal fluid. Bowdish specifically investigates why the bacteria leaves the nose in the first place, with a focus on the aging population.
“We’re particularly focused on older adults, as they contract pneumonia at much higher rates, and the consequences can be very serious,” Bowdish said. The long-term complications of contracting pneumonia include increased risk of dementia, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease later on in life. In order to shed light on why older individuals are more susceptible to contracting pneumonia, Bowdish researches age-related changes in the immune system that may be involved.
The data is compelling in demonstrating that as we age, our levels of inflammation increase. Inflammation is a cellular response to injury or infection that is carried out by the immune system. Many age-related diseases, such as conditions involving dementia, some forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease, are linked to inflammation.
“For reasons that we’re just beginning to understand, this increasing inflammation seems to impair white blood cell function. The bacteria is able to capitalize on these inflammatory changes in the immune system in order to thrive,” Bowdish explained.
“We think that we can target age-related inflammation as a way of improving immunity. We’re testing this in an animal model at the moment. By reducing their age-related inflammation, we can improve their outcomes from pneumonia, which is a finding we’re quite excited about,” she said.
If the preclinical testing phase determines that age-related inflammation is a viable drug target, then the next phase would be a drug-screening program that would further examine the effectiveness of anti-inflammatory drugs in improving immune function. This drug has the potential to decrease the risk of devastating illnesses such as pneumonia.
Bowdish has seen how older adults benefit younger generations. “I think grandparents are really important. There’s a lot of data to support the positive role of older adults in society. They volunteer more hours than younger people and they provide a lot of unpaid caregiving. So we want them to be as healthy as they can possibly be. Essentially, my research is about keeping grandchildren and grandparents together for many years to come.”
Photo Credit: Yung Lee/ Photo Reporter
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By: John Ruf
On Dec. 15 2015, the website IFLScience posted an article titled, “Study Claims Being Vegetarian Is WORSE For The Environment Than Eating Meat.” The study in question was written by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and was published in Environment Systems and Decisions. After reading the IFLScience article, and being unfortunate enough to stumble upon an argument in the comments section between Ivory Bill, The Exterminator, and Food Narc I felt the need to do what most commenters on the site clearly had not: read the research study. Here is my take.
We must take the opportunity to learn from new information, and not be so quick to reject it.
To begin, recognize the click-bait manoeuvre conducted by IFLScience; the article’s title was sufficiently provocative without capitalizing “worse.” The article was misleadingly controversial in an effort to get page views. Furthermore, the article itself was clearly written after only reading the study’s abstract — or if they did in fact read past the abstract, they forgot to include the fact that the authors of the research paper include several previously conducted studies all identifying vegetarianism as having a net benefit on the environment. To name a few: in 2013 Meier and Christen concluded that in Germany, switching to a low-meat diet would reduce energy use by seven percent, water use by 26 percent, greenhouse gas emissions by 11 percent, and land use by 15 percent. That same year Vanham et al. found that the EU could reduce their water footprint by 30 percent if meat consumption was halved. In 2014 Tilman and Clark concluded that sizeable shifts toward Mediterranean, pescetarian, and vegetarian diets have the potential to lower global agricultural emission and land clearing.
The Carnegie Mellon researchers acknowledge the overwhelming body of scientific research backing the stance that reductions in meat consumption benefit the environment. Their addition to the field focuses specifically on the United States and raises questions about the quality of dietary plan outlined by the United States Department of Agricultures. If existing research finds that low-meat diets in the European Union positively affects the environment then this new study is more telling of the quality of the USDA dietary plan than about the usefulness of limiting meat consumption.
Nevertheless, this study opposes the common belief about the environmental superiority of a plant-based diet. It is integral that those who have committed to cutback on their meat consumption must not a) use this research as reason to renege on their cutbacks, or b) simply dismiss this research because it does not align with their previously held beliefs. Science will always build upon itself — so we must take the opportunity to learn from new information, and not be so quick to reject it. To believe that our current diet is the best it can be — both for the environment and for our health — is fallacious and ignores potential areas for improvement.
The misinformation surrounding this topic is a great example of what I like to call ‘grapevine science’: the misrepresentation of findings by non-experts who choose to report on scientific studies. What started as research into the efficiency of various diets in the United States eventually morphed into the claim that vegetarian diets harm the environment more than meat-based diets. Those without a PhD should not feel that they are excluded from weighing in on the issue, however, everyone should be aware of articles reporting things that seem counterintuitive and read the scientific study before believing click-bait articles that make sweeping statements about scientific research.
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McMaster researcher Hendrick Poinar and an international team of researchers have uncovered telling secrets from the grave. The research focuses on the recovery of DNA from fossil remains such as teeth from individuals who died from the bubonic plague in Marseille, France. DNA sequences can be used to trace the past and answer questions about the evolution of infectious disease.
“We are very interested in how diseases emerge and then continually re-emerge. We want to know if reservoirs are local or more distant. Are these epidemics repeatedly stemming from trade routes like the Silk Road from China and the Golden Horn from Kazakhstan or are they a localized epidemic?” Poinar explained.
This involves tracing back to Europe in 1346, during the time of the Black Death, when the bacteria Yersinia pestis wiped out a third of the European population.
“That was an epidemic like we have never seen before and hopefully will never see again,” said Poinar.
After an initial flare, the plague seemed to disappear in Europe. What followed its supposed demise is a series of little outbreaks that Poinar labeled as the “shouldering effect.”
“We are very interested in how diseases emerge and the continually re-emerge. We want to know if resevoirs are local or more distant.
“If you look over the course of decades, you see relatively nasty outbreaks. You have basically 400 years of repeated epidemics in Europe, until it disappears. The question has been if these are repeated epidemics that occur every 30 to 100 years, is the source of these epidemics a migration of pathogen from the East to the West.”
By analyzing the global phylogeny, a method of relating disease sequences and strains to each other, researchers observed that rodents are at the start of many diseases that reach human populations. The aforementioned rodents seem to have these basal strains or ancestral strains appear in the highlands of Mongolia and China and Kazakhstan. These sources are farther east from the European outbreaks, supporting research that the initial flare of Black Death was brought from the East along trade routes.
At least in the case of the plague that overtook Marseille, the pathogen was found to be a descendant of the Yersinia pestis strain. Contrary to the constant dribble of plague down trade routes, the pathogen must have remained in a reservoir closer to home. What these reservoirs are thought to be is the next big question. Rats could be to blame, or soil, however no answer is currently known.
“We have had major outbreaks in Eastern Europe up until the 1800s. In mainland Europe, it hasn’t [popped up] since 1720. We have about 400 years that were clear of outbreaks.” This could be as a result of attenuation in the variance of the bug, or a rise in resistance among humans. One of Poinar’s students is working on just that, looking for signs of selection within the human genome. This involves searching for resistance to the epidemic in the genes of those of European descent whose ancestors survived to pass on their protective genes.
Interestingly, having resistance to the Black Death can also give someone resistance to various other pathogens. A genomic mutation known to give people resistance to the HIV virus by blocking the virus from entering the cell has been found in higher frequency in Europe, despite the virus’ origin in Africa. You would expect the exact opposite, where populations exposed to the virus in greater amounts would undergo greater selection and therefore greater resistance.
“When you try to date the [onset of resistance], most of those dates show up around the time of the Black Death. So there is the issue that those that underwent a selection against plague and survived because of this genomic deletion, they were protected from the bacteria of the plague and now protected from the virus of HIV,” explained Poinar.
Rising concerns about antibiotic resistance has shifted a focus towards what causes the reappearance of bacterial infections. By attempting to dig up the roots of infectious diseases, researchers like Poinar are looking to uncover more about pathogens and their fluctuating attacks.
Photo Credit: Jason Lau
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This semester the McMaster Museum of Art is infusing art and healthcare onto the same canvas. On display until March 26, Picturing Wellness is a two-part exhibition that concentrates on using a health-humanities perspective as a guide in understanding resilience through treatment, care and social action.
The first segment, Picturing Wellness I: From Adversity to Resilience, is currently on display at the museum. Coordinated by Christine Wekerle, Associate Professor of Paediatrics at McMaster, the didactic exhibition examines how visual literacy can be used by health professionals to develop their observational and empathetic skills.
The exhibition developed out of two collaborative courses at McMaster, offered by the Faculty of Health Sciences: “Engaging and Educating in Child Maltreatment” and “The Art of Seeing.”
“We really wanted to have that opportunity to engage the student community in what really is social action,” said Wekerle.
The scientific basis of healthcare is often thought of as being strictly separate from the arts. Yet, as Wekerle hopes to demonstrate with the exhibit, there is considerable overlap between the two fields. “Both in [visual] arts and in sciences, we rely on systematic observation, natural experiment, and interdisciplinary methods,” she explained. “Even when considering something such as surgery, the process of determining which actions to take and where to make incisions, these decisions can certainly be considered artful.”
The fact that art can enhance evidence-based healthcare practice is due to the observational skills gained from visual literacy. Specifically, visual literacy entails for perceptual accuracy of details and a template for systematically moving through a visual.
“[The exhibition] aims to show that art and science both have a lot of emphasis on detail,” explained Wekerle, “because much of the details [in healthcare] are open to interpretation, education in visual literacy provides practice in a no right-or-wrong situation.”
“Visual literacy means that you develop a language and tolerance for ambiguous situations,” Wekerle added, “when you encounter a distressful situation and you are capable to have a very systematic method which mimics the scientific method, you begin to realize that science and art are very closely aligned.”
Picturing Wellness I features a number of works from the McMaster collection, including those by David Blackwood, Blake Debassige, Michelle Bellemare and Betta Goodwin. The pressing issue of mental health and child-abuse resonates from a significant number of these works.
“Collectively we can play a part in alleviating the stigma for mental health, especially in men. The MSU Mental Health Strategy has a vision of different ways to encourage McMaster students to reach out, and reinforcing the notion that reaching out is resilience,” affirmed Wekerle.
“We know that child abuse is unfortunately also a common experience, and one that should be disclosed as soon as possible, to ensure better mental health as an outcome,” she added.
Picturing Wellness II: Museums and Social Engagement reflects on broader issues concerning trauma, body, memory, medicine, history, health and the museum. The opening reception will take place on Jan. 14 followed by a panel discussion on Feb. 25.
Photo Credits: Jon White/Photo Editor
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By: Steven Chen/News Writer
We never really outgrow our childhood dreams of walking alongside extinct creatures. This fantasy has been vividly imagined in popular literary works, television shows and movies. The only thing left is for scientists to undertake the daunting task of bringing it to reality.
On Oct. 27, the compelling question of whether extinct species can truly be revived was discussed in the talk, “Reviving Extinct Species — Fiction or Fact”, featuring Prof. Hendrick Poinar, current director of the Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University.
Prof. Poinar’s public lecture at the David Braley Health Sciences Centre marked the launch of the “Research in the City” series. The series, which was established by McMaster University in partnership with The Hamilton Spectator, aims to revitalize community interest in research done in Hamilton.
As an evolutionary biologist specializing in the genome of ancient species, Prof. Poinar offered a passionate recount of the work currently being done in the field. His team at McMaster has been investigating the DNA present in fossil remains for more than two decades — notably pushing research frontiers by using novel methods to sequence the genome of the extinct woolly mammoth.
The allure in uncovering the mystery to these extinct species has propelled Poinar to a life-long quest. “These are extinct creatures that once roamed the earth and then [simply] vanished. Why and what drives species to extinctions when they have managed well for so long?” Poinar asked.
The public lecture supported the prospect of reviving recently extinct species, such as the passenger pigeon and the Tasmanian wolf. It is reassuring that in the grand scheme of biological evolution, these species have only vanished in recent memory. Remarkably, specimens of the woolly mammoth, who last trudged the earth 10,000 years ago, are still preserved intact in the Siberian tundra. This offers immense potential for scientists to extract the genetic information to make clones of extinct creatures in the future.
With the rapid development of genome sequencing technologies, Prof. Poinar offers foresight on the possibilities and dangers. “We can expect genome analysis [to occur] in minutes,” he said . . . “Should gene therapy become a reality, I hope mostly for the better, but the changes surrounding the ethics need to occur now.”
Whether or not we will be able to witness the marvel of the woolly mammoth or glimpse the ferocity of the saber-toothed cat remains a question. What is more important to consider is how our aspirations for the future are invested in the research being done on a local and global scale.
The “Research in the City” series hopes to continue engaging the public with upcoming talks, ranging from topics on the life and death of hitchBOT to the Atacama Large Millimeter Array Radio Telescope.
Poinar mused, “Fascinating research is going on in Hamilton and the people have a right to know about what we do. The great thing about McMaster is that research is portrayed without the attitude, for the public to engage with at all levels.”
Photo Credit: Jason Lau/Photo Reporter
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Radiation and art history are typically not disciplines that feed off one another, but a new exhibit at the McMaster Museum of Art does just that.
The Unvarnished Truth, which opened on Sept. 5, seeks to find the hidden secrets of renaissance paintings. The exhibit uses modern screening and radiation technologies to examine painting technique, materials and even the hidden works of art under the famous paintings.
Nearly 30 researchers were involved with the project, from engineers to historians. Brandi Lee MacDonald is one of these researchers.
MacDonald conceived the idea for the exhibit in 2010. She studied anthropology throughout her undergraduate and graduate degrees at McMaster, eventually focusing on pigment and its use throughout human history.
Over the course of her work on the exhibit, she was also able to work with radiation. By combining radiation with anthropology and art history, she was able to discover the secrets of paintings within McMaster’s collection. MacDonald began working in the university’s nuclear reactor during her undergrad, and was excited to put that experience to use.
Through the exhibit, her painstaking research has finally come to life. The nine paintings in the exhibit all yield exciting new information about the work and the artist. MacDonald’s personal favourite is a Van Gogh painting which, when scrutinized using radiation, showed an earlier, incomplete portrait. “It was obvious he had scrapped [the portrait] and painted the landscape over top,” MacDonald said.
While the hidden treasures have been rewarding, MacDonald has also enjoyed seeing the real world applications of research techniques she was taught. She believes her research is important in the way it makes this newfound information accessible to the masses.
The Unvarnished Truth will remain in the McMaster Museum of Art until Dec. 19, after which it will tour other galleries across the country. While it remains in Hamilton, there will be numerous events focusing on the initiative, from tours to guest lectures to panel discussions, many of which will be lead by MacDonald.
Photo Credit: Jon White/Photo Editor
The Museum hours are as follows:
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Sulawesi is a small island in the Indonesian archipelago. Its geographic location makes it a hotbed of biodiversity, and it is home to species not found anywhere else on the planet. Many biologists have looked there to solve some of the mysteries of evolution, including McMaster’s Ben Evans.
“I’ve been interested in evolutionary processes in general and this has been an arena to explore things like how species disperse across marine barriers, how they compete with one another when they arrive in a novel habitat, and how adaptation occurs and what it depends on,” said Evans, whose work over the last 15 years has focused on endemic primate and frog species exclusive to Sulawesi.
The species garnering the most attention is the fanged frog, which Evans explained has been divided into subspecies based on body size. The larger frogs are found in fast-flowing water, while small frogs are found on land. These smaller frogs spend more time on land than in water, and have undergone a unique adaptation that Evans and his colleagues believe has occurred to combat predation.
Most frogs reproduce by laying eggs that are externally fertilized. One species of fanged frogs, however, gives birth to live tadpoles, while another lays eggs with jelly coats on leaves. Evans finds these discoveries fascinating, but he claims it is not the most interesting aspect of this adaptation.
“I think the more important message offered by this new species is that there’s a lot of diversity we don’t even know about and therefore that there’s a lot more research to be done,” he explained.
The unique reproduction of fanged frogs has been compared to that of placental and marsupial mammals.
“If you look at it coarsely, it’s quite similar in that internal fertilization and internal gestation in mammals is advantageous because it increases offspring survival,” Evans said.
However, there are still important distinctions to make between the two groups. The phenomenon of fanged frogs giving birth to live young has evolved separately from mammals’ ability to reproduce in the same way.
“It uses a distinct set of genetic tools and probably someway comparable to mammals but it’s an independent evolution of a similar characteristic,” Evans explained.
He added that a female fanged frog has been observed giving birth in standing water already containing tadpoles. He admits it cannot be confirmed yet whether or not the tadpoles came from the same female, though he believes it is unlikely.
“It’s probably the case that she doesn’t provision the tadpoles, so she doesn’t come and bring them food like a mammal would.”
This discovery opens many doors in the fields of evolutionary biology and genetics. Evans discussed his desire to better understand the specific details of how female fanged frogs are able to give birth to live tadpoles as well as the larger scale of species diversity on Sulawesi.
“That’s going to involve field work, genetic work, it’s going to involve careful ecological studies and comparison to other species of frogs, and even other vertebrates.”
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In 2014, Mick Bhatia and his team discovered that adult stem cells are hardwired to remember the type of cell they were originally. His breakthrough has not gone unnoticed. In December, the Canadian Cancer Society listed Bhatia’s research as one of the top ten discoveries of the year.
“We’ve known for several years now that you can take human skin cells and turn them into [pluripotent] stem cells that are almost identical to embryonic stem cells…[if] you’re taking cells from an individual, you can transplant those cells back in without fear of rejection,” Bhatia explained.
As he and his team learned however, the practice of reprogramming adult cells need not be restricted to skin tissue.
“We found…that you can take blood cells and turn them into pluripotent stem cells, but when you do that, it turns out these blood cells remember. So the stem cells derived from blood remember that they were blood,” Dr. Bhatia said.
When this observation was first recorded, Dr. Bhatia admits it was ignored.
“But then we started to notice a pattern and we started getting patients where we asked to take some blood and then asked to take some skin,” he said. By removing the patient as a variable, the researchers discerned that the cell origin determined how the new pluripotent stem cells would differentiate.
There are many areas in the medical field that will benefit from this advance in stem cell research; however the most prominent and immediately applicable is regenerative medicine. Since this work has only been done with blood so far, leukemia will be one of the first diseases to be treated in this manner.
“You give a drug like chemotherapy to kill the leukemia, but what happens is you kill the normal blood system. So if you can get a supply of the patient’s own blood cells and keep giving that to them at the same time as the chemotherapy, that actually allows the patient to undergo chemotherapy treatment for a longer period of time, which we know improves survival,” Bhatia explained.
Researchers can easily separate leukemic cells from healthy cells and reprogram the latter to stem cells capable of producing ten times as many blood cells.
Bhatia’s research can also be applied to cystic fibrosis. He explained that the complications associated with generating enough lung tissue would inhibit the process of testing new drugs to combat the disease. However, thanks to this development in stem cell technology, healthy lung tissue samples can be taken from CF patients and reprogrammed to lung-inclined stem cells.
Despite the implications of his work, Bhatia is as excited about his colleagues as he is about the research itself.
“What I love about this particular field that we’re in now is that…we’re working with chemists, we’re working with robotics specialists—these are people who don’t do anything with cell biology, but it’s so nice to work with people in other disciplines to solve a problem,” he said. “There’s nobody in the world doing this kind of work specifically.”
By: Rachel Katz
The Medical Radiation Sciences and Medical Physics programs are both under the microscope, but for different reasons. Changes to these science programs were proposed as part of the recent Faculty of Science planning document.
According to Robert Baker, Dean of Science, the Medical Radiation program is one of the faculty’s most popular. It is taught in collaboration with Mohawk College and the Juravinski Cancer Center.
“We’re not proposing any changes to the Medical Radiation Sciences program,” Baker said.
On the other hand, he claims the Medical Physics program needs serious reevaluation.
“What we are proposing to do is essentially rethink how we’re offering the general area of medical physics at McMaster. We don’t think there’s anything wrong with the program… our concern is that there’s just so few students taking it [and] we need resources to be used for some of our other programs,” Baker explained.
The Medical Physics program will continue to exist, but in a different way. Options include combining it with Biophysics or making it a stream in Life Science. However, specific details have not been confirmed.
“The bigger issue is really that we’re proposing to close the department…the administrative unit of the Medical Physics and Applied Radiation Science," he said.
This proposal is one of various proposed changes to the entire Faculty.
Baker is hoping for these changes will “be online…for September 2016. And I think that’s a reasonable date to set for,” he says. He is planning on setting up working groups to discuss this in the next two weeks.
Students either currently in or planning to be in these programs before September 2016 have no need for concern.
“Any program that a student has started in on, we make the commitment that that student will be able to complete the program as they started it,” said Baker. He explained that the only difference for students is that instead of going to the office of the Department of Applied Physics and Radiation Sciences, they would consult the office of interdisciplinary sciences, a new office also proposed in the planning document.
The course requirements will not change for these students either. The Faculty of Science will offer two versions of the same program until all the students in the old Medical Physics and Radiation Sciences programs.
The Faculty of Science has released its Academic Plan, which maps out the changes and improvements that will be made by the faculty from 2014 to 2019.
Five major initiatives for the Faculty of Science have been outlined in the report: improving undergraduate experience, reinvigorating and creating new graduate programs, focusing on research excellence, supporting faculty, and managing resources.
The first of the initiatives will improve undergraduate experience by establishing a new academic unit called interdisciplinary sciences that would house life sciences, medical radiation sciences, integrated science, and Science Career and Cooperative Education.
The interdisciplinary unit will be created as a result of many factors, especially the need for an academic home for life sciences students, who do not currently have their own department.
“We want to create a department of interdisciplinary science that would house the Life Science program,” said Robert Baker, Dean of Science. “There would be actual faculty appointed to it […] but still we would have a lot of contributions from other departments in teaching that program as well.”
The reorganization of the life sciences program into its own academic unit will also help with allocating resources to the program.
“Right now the director has to come to me, and come to various chairs to get enough resources to offer the [life sciences] program and that’s not the appropriate way to run a program," said Baker.
The life science program, under the direction of the interdisciplinary unit, will see some changes in the next five years. A review of the program conducted in 2012 found that class sizes were too large, courses overlapped, and students run the risk of graduating with an unfocused degree. To address these concerns, a working group will be established to look into creating specific streams of study, such as health policy or global health.
The Faculty also plans to create more research positions for undergraduate students, starting in second year. This could be achieved by encouraging professors to hire undergraduate students for their labs or by creating shared undergraduate research spaces for individual and group projects.
Additional ways to improve the undergraduate experience include lowering the entrance average to Honours programs to a cumulative average of five, hiring more undergraduate teaching assistants, and teaching stress management to first year students through Science 1A03.
For graduate students, the Faculty of Science plans to establish three professional Master’s programs by July 2015 in areas such as environmental monitoring, genomic analysis, and ergonomics.
Along with improving undergraduate and graduate programs, the Faculty of Science looks to improve research excellence through their Strategic Research Plan.
“The SRP makes it clear that to succeed during economically challenging times, the Faculty must focus its efforts to support leading edge research while managing expenditures prudently,” the report said.
As a result, science research will now be focused on four main areas: biological systems and health, environmental science, fundamental exploration, and materials discovery and characterization.
The report also highlighted the need to hire and maintain quality faculty members.
“Demographic analysis indicates that there may be many retirements in the Faculty over the next several years, allowing us to plan for faculty renewal. However, financial forecasts indicate the Faculty may need to decrease our faculty complement over the next five years,” the report said.
Despite these financial restrictions, the Faculty of Science is looking to hire more diverse candidates.
“Given the evidence that students benefit from being taught by role models with whom they identify, whether it be a woman professor or someone from a similar ethnic group, it is vital to the future of undergraduate and graduate teaching programs that the Faculty encourages the hiring of excellent candidates who reflect the diversity of our student population, particularly with the hiring of more female faculty members,” the report said.
The report also outlines the importance of both teaching and research excellence within the faculty, stating that all faculty must teach at least six units each year.
The last initiative examined is the management of resources. In particular, the lack of budget to fund incoming international students is addressed. Since international students make up only four percent of the science undergraduate population, the Faculty of Science must work to find new models of funding to support more international students.
With files from Rachel Katz
