Breaking Research

Artificial Intelligence

�鶹��Ƶ Scarborough

Subheadline

“AI doesn’t get tired ... It can offer consistent, high-quality empathetic responses without the emotional strain that humans experience”

By definition, robots can’t feel empathy since it requires the ability to relate to another person’s human experience – to put yourself in their shoes.

Yet, according to a new University of Toronto study, artificial intelligence (AI) can create empathetic responses more reliably and consistently than humans.

That includes professional crisis responders who are trained to empathize with those in need.

“AI doesn’t get tired,” says Dariya Ovsyannikova, lab manager in Professor Michael Inzlicht’s lab at �鶹��Ƶ Scarborough and lead author of the study.

“It can offer consistent, high-quality empathetic responses without the emotional strain that humans experience.”

The research, published in the journal Communications Psychology, looked at how people evaluated empathetic responses generated by ChatGPT compared to human responses.

Across four separate experiments, participants were asked to judge the level of compassion (an important facet of empathy) in written responses to a series of positive and negative scenarios that were created by AI, regular people and expert crisis responders. In each scenario, the AI responses were preferred and rated as more compassionate and responsive, conveying greater care, validation and understanding compared to the human responses.

How does a chatbot like ChatGPT outperform trained professionals? Ovsyannikova points to AI’s ability to pick up on fine details and stay objective, making it particularly adept at crafting attentive communication that appears empathetic.

Empathy is an important trait not only in fostering social unity, but in helping people feel validated, understood and connected to others who empathize with them, the researchers say. In clinical settings, it plays a critical role in helping people regulate emotions and feel less isolated.

But constantly expressing empathy has its costs.

“Caregivers can experience compassion fatigue,” says Ovsyannikova, a �鶹��Ƶ Scarborough alumna who has professional experience volunteering as a crisis line responder.

She adds that professional caregivers, particularly in mental health settings, may need to sacrifice some of their ability to empathize to avoid burnout and balance their emotional engagement effectively for each of their clients.

Humans also come with their own biases and can be emotionally affected by a particularly distressing or complex case, which impacts their ability to be empathetic. In addition, the researchers say empathy in health-care settings is increasingly in short supply given shortages in accessible health-care services, qualified workers and a widespread increase in mental health disorders.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we should cede empathy-derived care to AI overnight, says Inzlicht, a faculty member in �鶹��Ƶ Scarborough’s department of psychology who was a co-author of the study along with PhD student Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello.

“AI can be a valuable tool to supplement human empathy, but it does come with its own dangers,” Inzlicht says.

He adds that while AI might be effective in delivering surface-level compassion that people might find immediately useful, chatbots such as ChatGPT will not be able to effectively give them deeper, more meaningful care that gets to the root of a mental health disorder.

He notes that over-reliance on AI also poses ethical concerns – namely the power it could give tech companies to manipulate those in need of care. For example, someone who is feeling lonely or isolated may become reliant on talking to an AI chatbot that is constantly doling out empathy instead of fostering meaningful connections with another human being.

“If AI becomes the preferred source of empathy, people might retreat from human interactions, exacerbating the very problems we’re trying to solve, like loneliness and social isolation,” says Inzlicht, whose research looks at the nature of empathy and compassion.

Another issue is a phenomenon known as “AI aversion,” which is a prevailing skepticism about AI’s ability to truly understand human emotion. While participants in the study initially ranked AI-generated responses highly when they didn’t know who – or what – had written them, that preference shifted when they were told the response came from AI. However, Inzlicht says this bias may fade over time and experience, noting that younger people who grew up interacting with AI are likely to trust it more.

Despite the critical need for empathy, Inzlicht urges for a transparent and balanced approach to deploying AI so that it is supplementing human empathy rather than replacing it.

“AI can fill gaps, but it should never replace the human touch entirely.”

Single women are happier than single men, researchers find

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 19:36:08 +0000

Single women are happier than single men, researchers find

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/21/2025 - 14:36

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(photo by Hurdogan Guvendiren/Getty Images)

Josslyn Johnstone

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

“Ours is the first comprehensive study of how gender differences are tied to well-being in singlehood”

Single women are happier, on average, than single men.

That’s among the findings of a recent study by University of Toronto psychology researchers.

They say the results suggest that men may have more to gain than women in heteronormative romantic partnerships.

“Ours is the first comprehensive study of how gender differences are tied to well-being in singlehood,” says lead author Elaine Hoan, a PhD candidate in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“From here, we can begin to understand why exactly single women are doing better than single men, and how everyone can balance these elements to build their best lives.”

For the study, Hoan and Professor Geoff MacDonald examined four well-being outcomes of nearly 6,000 adults: how satisfied people are with their current relationship status; how satisfied they are with their life; how sexually fulfilled they are; and how much they want to be in a relationship.

Due to sample size limitations with non-binary individuals, the study focused on individuals who identified as men or women.

Overall, the researchers found that women fared better on their own than men. They are happier with their single status, the quality of their lives, the quality of their sex lives and they desire a partner less.

Hoan says the results build on existing research that shows men fear singlehood more than women do, and that they struggle to navigate the expectations of traditional masculinity.

“There’s the notion that to really ‘be a man,’ you must be the type that ‘gets girls’ – it’s a sign of status. But in the early stages of dating, men typically have a more difficult time obtaining a partner and therefore accessing sex.”

This connects to the finding that single women are more sexually fulfilled than single men. In addition, they may have more sexual freedom and can focus on their own pleasure instead of prioritizing a male partner’s.

The authors also looked at age and ethnicity in the context of gender. They found that older single men are happier than younger single men, which aligns with existing research showing that people tend to be happier with their long-term singlehood after the age of 40. They also noted that single Black women have a higher desire for a partner than single white women.

Hoan says the study serves as a jumping off point for contextualizing incels – a term used to describe extremist men who regard themselves as involuntarily celibate and blame women for their singlehood – within the broader population of single men. While incels are often studied as an isolated misogynistic subculture with unique issues, overall unhappiness in single men may lead some men to splinter off and join this group, the researchers say.

While the paper doesn’t provide direct evidence for why singlehood is a better experience for women relative to romantic relationships, the researchers say there are plenty of avenues for further investigation.

“For example, we know from existing research that in heteronormative relationship structures, women typically take on more than their fair share of domestic and emotional labour,” says Hoan. “As well, their sexual pleasure tends to be deprioritized and potentially reduced as a result of the unfair divisions of labour.”

She also notes that women may be more satisfied with their single lives overall because they usually have bigger social networks to rely on for support. They now also have more financial independence than was the case historically, meaning income as a traditional advantage of partnership is not as important as it used to be.

Next up, Hoan and MacDonald are examining the link between marriage and well-being around the world in an effort to shed light on the extent to which romantic relationships contribute to life fulfillment.

Hoan says the study offers validation for women who feel social pressure to jump into a relationship if it’s not what they want to do.

“If you want to stay single, you may be happier for it.”

Children learn even when they're not paying attention, �鶹��Ƶ psychologists find

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 15:30:10 +0000

Children learn even when they're not paying attention, �鶹��Ƶ psychologists find

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 01/16/2025 - 10:30

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Children learn just as much whether they're trying to or not, while adults tend to ignore information they aren't paying attention to, according to a new study led by University of Toronto psychologists (photo by Adobe Stock)

Michael Pereira

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

“Don’t get mad at the little boy who’s doing jumping jacks while you’re reading a book"

Are you a parent or teacher frustrated that the children in your life can’t seem to pay attention when you’re trying to teach them something? You don’t need to be, say psychologists at the University of Toronto.

New research from the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science finds children learn just as much whether they’re trying to or not – adults, on the other hand, tend to ignore information that they aren’t paying attention to.

The findings are outlined in a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.

“Don’t get mad at the little boy who’s doing jumping jacks while you’re reading a book,” says the study’s senior author Amy Finn, associate professor in the department of psychology who leads the Learning and Neural Development lab. “He’s probably still listening and learning even though it doesn’t necessarily look like it.”

For the study, the research team – which included �鶹��Ƶ alumni Marlie Tandoc, Bharat Nadendla and Theresa Pham – tested how much children and adults learned about drawings of common objects after two different experiments.

In the first, they told participants to pay attention to the drawings. In the second, participants were told to ignore the drawings and complete an entirely different task. After each scenario, participants had to identify fragments of the drawings they saw as quickly as possible.

They found that children learned about the drawings just as well across both scenarios, while adults learned more when told to pay attention to the drawings – in other words, the children’s learning wasn’t negatively impacted when they weren’t paying attention to the information they were tested on.

Children’s selective attention, or their ability to focus on a specific task and tune out distractions, develops slowly and doesn’t fully mature until early adulthood.

Previous research has found that unlike adults, a child’s brain treats information that they are told to pay attention to similarly to information they are not told to attend to. That is likely one of the reasons why children are so good at picking up languages spoken around them.

“As adults, we really filter what we’re learning through our goals and task demands, whereas kids are absorbing everything regardless of that – seemingly without even trying,” says Tandoc, former lab manager of the Learning and Neural Development lab and a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

Although returning to a child-like state of learning might sound appealing, selective attention does hold several benefits. Across experiments, attentional instruction was found to boost learning in adults. In other words, adults learn better when told what information is most important.

The research has the potential to influence how parents, teachers and curriculum designers think about how children and adults learn. For instance, for children, the findings underline the benefits of play and immersive learning. For adults, defining a clear task or goal at the beginning of a class or workshop is important for learning outcomes.

“For me, when I’m hanging out with my five-year-old, I’m less worried now than I was otherwise about whether or not he is learning something if it doesn’t seem like he is paying attention,” says Finn.

Researchers develop biodegradable electrodes that may help repair damaged brain tissue

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 14:57:52 +0000

Researchers develop biodegradable electrodes that may help repair damaged brain tissue

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/13/2025 - 09:57

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From left: Professor Cindi Morshead, PhD student Tianhao Chen and Professor Hani Naguib led research to develop a flexible, biodegradable electrode capable of stimulating neural precursor cells in the brain (supplied images, Chen by Qin Dai)

Qin Dai

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Subheadline

“Our plan is to further develop this technology by creating multimodal, biodegradable electrodes that can deliver drugs and gene therapies to the injured brain”

University of Toronto researchers have developed a flexible, biodegradable electrode capable of stimulating neural precursor cells (NPCs) in the brain – a device capable of delivering targeted electrical stimulation for up to seven days before it dissolves naturally.

By harnessing the body’s innate repair mechanisms, the researchers’ approach represents a potential step forward in the treatment of neurological disorders that are a leading cause of disability worldwide. While neurological disorders often result in irreversible cell loss, stimulating NPCs – rare cells capable of repairing neural tissue – has shown promise when it comes to expanding limited treatment options.

However, existing methods such as transcranial direct current stimulation lack precision and can damage tissue. The electrode developed by �鶹��Ƶ researchers, on the other hand, provides precise, safe and temporary stimulation without requiring subsequent surgical interventions.

“Our findings demonstrate that this electrode can stimulate neural repair in a controlled, temporary manner, which is crucial for avoiding complications associated with permanent implants,” says Tianhao Chen, a PhD student in biomedical engineering who is the study’s lead author.

The research, published in a recent issue of Biomaterials, was led by Hani Naguib, a professor in the departments of materials science and engineering and mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and Cindi Morshead, a professor of surgery in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine who is cross-appointed to the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

“Neural precursor cells hold significant potential for repairing damaged brain tissue, but existing methods for activating these cells can be invasive or imprecise,” Morshead says.

“Our biodegradable electrode provides a solution by combining effective stimulation with reduced patient risk.”

To design the biodegradable neural probe, the team focused on materials that provided both biocompatibility and tunable degradation rates.

Poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA), a flexible material approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was chosen for the substrate and insulation layer due to its predictable degradation based on monomer ratios and minimal inflammatory effects.

Molybdenum was selected for the electrode itself due to its durability and slow dissolution – both qualities essential for maintaining structural integrity during the intended one-week stimulation period.

The electrodes were implanted in pre-clinical models and demonstrated the ability to stimulate NPCs effectively, increasing their numbers and activity without causing significant tissue damage or inflammation. This testing ensured the electrodes’ safety and efficacy for neural repair stimulation within the targeted time frame.

“Our plan is to further develop this technology by creating multimodal, biodegradable electrodes that can deliver drugs and gene therapies to the injured brain,” says Morshead.

“We have exciting data to show that activating brain stem cells with our electrical stimulation devices improves functional outcomes in a preclinical model of stroke.”

Why do we prefer curves over straight edges? Researchers probe the brain for clues

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 17:06:08 +0000

Why do we prefer curves over straight edges? Researchers probe the brain for clues

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/10/2025 - 12:06

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Researchers found regions in the brain that are sensitive to scenes people perceive to be curvy, but only when they are judging its beauty (supplied image)

Michael Pereira

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

“Artists and designers are way ahead of scientists. They already use organic, curvy lines to evoke a sense of comfort, aesthetic pleasure and hominess”

For over 100 years, psychologists have known that most people prefer curviness over angularity in practically everything – from lines and shapes to faces, paintings and interior spaces.

Moreover, the phenomenon has been observed across cultures, in infants and even in great apes.

Yet, it remains unclear what it is about our perception of curvature that translates into this widespread preference.

“Now we have this advantage that we can probe the brain to see the mechanisms that are really driving this process,” says Oshin Vartanian, an associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto who is appointed to Defence Research and Development Canada.

Using brain imaging data and computational measures of curvature, Vartanian worked with �鶹��Ƶ PhD student Delaram Farzanfar, Dirk Bernhardt-Walther, a �鶹��Ƶ associate professor of psychology, and an international group of collaborators to solve the mystery.

For the study, published recently in Scientific Reports, participants completed two tasks when presented with images of curvy and angular interior spaces. They judged each as either “beautiful” or “not beautiful” and decided whether they would choose to “enter” or “exit” the space.

Researchers found that there are regions in the brain that are sensitive to scenes participants perceive to be curvy, but only when they are judging its beauty. When a participant is asked to decide whether they would enter or exit the space, those regions are not sensitive to perceived curvature.

This observation suggests that the context within which we perceive curvature makes a difference in how our brain responds to it.

The regions of the brain that lit up to scenes participants perceive to be curvy, in the fusiform gyrus, are involved in higher-order visual processing like object recognition. They are also sensitive to the perception of faces.

In other words, these findings suggest that the region of our brain that specializes in distinguishing one face from another might also be sensitive to processing curvature in other contexts – such as looking at architectural spaces.

Examples of the experimental stimuli (n = 200). The stimuli in the top and bottom rows were categorized as “curvilinear” and “rectilinear” respectively by the two experts in Vartanian et al. The number underneath each stimulus represents its associated computational curvature value (supplied image)

Researchers also found that images of spaces that participants perceived as curvy did not always match with computational measures of those same spaces. However, a region in the primary visual cortex shows sensitivity to computational curvature, regardless of the task.

“It’s entirely possible that when a person looks at an image, they form a mental representation that’s three-dimensional,” Vartanian says. Such a representation eludes mathematical measurements of two-dimensional images.

Bernhardt-Walther adds that, going forward, researchers need to have a broader view of what parts of an image translate into a sense of curviness that people perceive as aesthetically pleasant.

“Artists and designers are way ahead of scientists. They already use organic, curvy lines to evoke a sense of comfort, aesthetic pleasure and hominess,” says Bernhardt-Walther. “Our work provides a scientific underpinning for their intuitions and may guide them on using curvature more deliberately as a design element to generate aesthetically pleasing forms or, alternatively, to use angularity to challenge and engage the viewers.”

Farzanfar, meanwhile, says the research is not only relevant to the work of neuroscientists and psychologists, but to artists, designers, architects and city planners.

“I think as we understand how spaces impact our mood and cognition, we can create better environments for our health and enrich the experience of modern life for many people,” she says.

Timing exercise around meals can affect women's blood sugar, appetite: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:17:35 +0000

Timing exercise around meals can affect women's blood sugar, appetite: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/08/2025 - 14:17

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(photo by Milorad Kravic/Getty Images)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Subheadline

In healthy females, a post-meal rise in blood sugar was lower if they waited until after breakfast to exercise

Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that in healthy females, a post-meal rise in blood sugar was lower if they waited until after breakfast to exercise.

The researchers in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) also measured perceptions of appetite before and after exercise – and once every hour in the post-exercise period.

They found that study participants who exercised after eating breakfast had lower appetite immediately before and after the exercise session, compared to those who exercised before eating.

“It’s normal for blood sugar to increase after eating carbohydrate-containing meals,” says Alexa Govette, a PhD candidate in KPE who co-wrote the study published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism with Assistant Professor Jenna Gillen. “However, exaggerated spikes in blood glucose concentrations after eating are associated with increased risk for cardiometabolic diseases, like type 2 diabetes.”

While low-volume, high-intensity interval exercise has been shown to reduce the increase of blood sugar in laboratory settings, these protocols often involve specialized exercise equipment, says Govette. A novel aspect of this study was that the interval exercise protocol was equipment-free, consisting of only bodyweight movements such as jumping jacks, burpees and mountain climbers.

The timing of when you eat around exercise has also been shown to influence blood glucose concentrations and perceptions of appetite, but this has not been studied in the context of interval exercise or in an at-home setting.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how exercise-meal timing influences blood glucose responses to high-intensity interval exercise in females,” says Govette. “It is also the first study to assess the influence of exercise-meal timing on appetite perceptions in healthy females following bodyweight interval exercise.”

Govette says very few studies have examined the effects of exercise-meal timing in a female population, so this study in healthy young women provides much needed evidence for how blood glucose concentrations are influenced by the timing of exercise around meals.

From a practical perspective, the study offers new insight into the effect of exercising around meals on blood glucose regulation and perceptions of appetite in an at-home/non-laboratory environment.

“This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic when research restrictions precluded us from conducting in-person exercise studies in our laboratory,” says Gillen. “In the end, this allowed us to investigate how the timing of exercise around meals influences blood sugar control in an at-home setting, which hadn’t been done previously.

“Given the growing popularity of at-home and virtual workouts, our findings may be of interest to individuals who prefer to exercise at home or those that do not have access to exercise equipment.”

Next, the researchers hope to investigate the effects of exercise-meal timing on blood sugar regulation in females who are at-risk or who are living with type 2 diabetes, given that exercise-induced reductions in blood glucose increases have more clinical relevance in these populations.

“We currently have ongoing work that is comparing at-home bodyweight interval exercise to other forms of exercise in females with cardiometabolic risk factors to help address this question,” says Govette. “Additionally, it would be interesting to explore the influence of meal timing around bodyweight interval exercise over the course of several weeks to months, to assess the long-term effects on blood glucose regulation.”

FOMO is about who you're with - not what you're doing: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:35:17 +0000

FOMO is about who you're with - not what you're doing: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/08/2025 - 11:35

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Fans share a moment during a Taylor Swift concert in the Netherlands earlier this year (photo by Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

Ken McGuffin

Topic

Global

Rotman School of Management

�鶹��Ƶ Scarborough

Subheadline

Researchers say the idea of FOMO, or "fear of missing out," has more to do with potential for social bonding than it does with the opportunity to participate in a fun activity

Think of FOMO – fear of missing out – and you might think of missing the concert of the year, an epic party or a big family gathering.

But research published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that FOMO has far more to do with people, social status and belonging – and is not just a social media-fuelled phenomenon.

“FOMO refers to the anxiety that people feel when they miss out on a social group experience – and, specifically, the bonding that their group shared at the experience – because they worry that missing out will negatively affect their connection and future belonging with the group,” says Cindy Chan, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.

Cindy Chan (photo by Ken Jones)

Chan and fellow researcher Jacqueline Rifkin, assistant professor of marketing at Cornell University, say the study sprung from their curiosity about what was behind the acronym’s growing popularity in the early 2010s.

“The term FOMO was being used more often and we wondered what this meant,” says Chan. “What were people afraid of missing out on? What situations or events might make someone feel FOMO?”

Joined by University of Pennsylvania marketing professor Barbara Kahn, the group set up multiple experiments, including with teenaged summer camp attendees and online participants, using scenarios such as missed concerts, group retreats and group initiation events, as well as exposure to participants’ own social media feeds.

They found that while FOMO was initiated by worries about missing a social bonding experience with a valued group, it got its fuel from a sometimes exaggerated sense of the potential relationship consequences for missing out and was worse for people who already tended to be socially anxious. Distinct from disappointment about missing an enjoyable experience, FOMO could even be felt in relation to potentially unpleasant scenarios such as a team-building event with demanding, stressful activities.

While the researchers did not specifically study whether FOMO is a byproduct of social media engagement, they note that the key mechanism that underpins FOMO can be experienced without the use of technology like a mobile phone or social media platforms.

“It’s possible that social media may mean we are reminded more of social events we miss, because others may make social media posts about the event,” Chan says. “So this could mean we experience FOMO more, or more often.”

It may be possible to bring people back from the FOMO brink. Negative feelings were reduced for people whose FOMO was triggered by exposure to social media posts about events they had missed but who were then invited to reflect on a past valued group event they did attend, thereby reaffirming their sense of belonging.

“This research reveals how central social relationships are in people’s experience of FOMO and reinforces how important these relationships are to our personal and emotional well-being,” says Chan.

The researchers are currently working on a paper about how FOMO can enhance customer engagement with corporate brands.

One in four Canadian women unaware of folic acid's importance during pregnancy: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 20:10:40 +0000

One in four Canadian women unaware of folic acid's importance during pregnancy: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/07/2025 - 15:10

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(photo by Oscar Wong/Getty Images)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Subheadline

“We are currently experiencing a crisis of family doctors in the country. The shortage makes me worry about what may happen to awareness levels in the coming years”

Approximately one in four women in Canada are unaware of the benefits of taking folic acid before and during pregnancy to prevent certain birth defects – a percentage that has not improved in more than a decade.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, researchers at Sinai Health and the University of Toronto analyzed data from the Canadian Community Health Survey conducted by Statistics Canada in 2017 and 2018.

“We compare this data to the last national study on prevalence of folic acid supplementation awareness in 2006–2007, which utilized data from the Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey,” says Vrati Mehra, a fourth-year medical student in �鶹��Ƶ’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

“We see almost no change in awareness levels from then till now. The numbers have essentially remained the same.”

Mehra is lead author of the paper along with Ellen Greenblatt, John Snelgrove and Claire Jones – all clinicians in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Mount Sinai Hospital and faculty members in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology in �鶹��Ƶ’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. Professor Hala Tamim from York University also contributed to the study.

Researchers Claire Jones, left, and medical student Vrati Mehra are study co-authors (supplied images)

“Vrati had worked on a previous project of ours, a prenatal program design that involved interviewing pregnant participants,” says Jones, who is also the program director for gynecologic reproductive endocrinology and infertility residency at �鶹��Ƶ.

“Hearing many admit they did not know about supplementing with folic acid inspired her to look further into it – a good example of how anecdotal evidence can suggest fruitful research paths.”

In the early 1990s, researchers showed that folic acid could prevent open neural tube defects. The neural tube is formed in the third and fourth weeks of pregnancy and develops into the nervous system: the spinal cord and brain. Defects lead to higher incidence of miscarriages, or debilitating conditions such as spina bifida or anencephaly at birth.

“Although we typically get enough folic acid for daily functioning, the requirement increases significantly during pregnancy to support the development of a growing baby,” says Mehra. “So, in the early 2000s, the government mandated that companies fortify pasta, breads, cereal and other grain foods with folic acid.”

The folic acid fortification came with targeted public ad campaigns that successfully raised awareness levels among Canadian females from between 25 and 50 per cent in the early 2000s to between 70 and 75 per cent in 2007.

“However, since then, the public campaigns have become more passive,” says Mehra. “Posters by the Public Health Agency of Canada are available online for those seeking information about folic acid. However, to my knowledge, there are no active campaigns targeting people who might be completely unaware of its importance.”

The study also found that certain socioeconomic patterns had persisted over the decade. People who were younger were more likely to be unaware of folic acid, as were people with lower income or less education. Landed immigrants were three times more likely to be unaware, on average.

Some of the disparities may be explained by how health information circulates, says Mehra.

“People get info from their family doctors, or from a public campaign poster in a health-care provider’s office. Those who only see a doctor after finding out that they are pregnant, or don’t have regular follow-up, have fewer chances to learn about folic acid,” she says.

“We are currently experiencing a crisis of family doctors in the country. The shortage makes me worry about what may happen to awareness levels in the coming years.”

Possible solutions include incorporating information about folic acid’s benefits before and during pregnancy to the high school sexual health curriculum, which already covers content on contraception and pregnancy. The addition would emphasize the importance of folic acid for pregnant individuals and advise those planning to become pregnant to begin taking supplements at least three months prior to conception and during their pregnancy.

The researchers say it may also be beneficial to target newcomers to Canada.

“I was once an immigrant,” says Mehra. “I remember accompanying my parents to the ServiceOntario Centre to get our health cards. Including a simple line in multiple languages about folic acid, either in the paperwork or displayed on posters, could help.

“We also visited other public spaces like libraries and community centres, which are ideal for informative posters.

“A collective effort from the government, health-care providers, the education system and the immigration system would make a big difference.”

Forests may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 14:23:54 +0000

Forests may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/06/2025 - 09:23

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(photo by Photo Image Library)

Topic

Climate Change

Sustainability

�鶹��Ƶ Scarborough

Subheadline

An international team of researchers studied the combined effects of rising temperatures and increased nitrogen in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels

Forests may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought.

A team of international researchers have found that increased inputs from plant roots can keep carbon levels in soil stable even as temperatures and nitrogen deposits in the atmosphere rise.

The collaborative research project, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, looked at the effects of increased temperatures due to climate change and increased nitrogen in the atmosphere released by burning fossil fuels – two environmental threats that had been studied separately.

“There is a lot of uncertainty when these two antagonistic stressors are combined – which is why this study is so significant,” says Myrna Simpson, a professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough who collaborated on the research conducted in the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts.

Earlier studies showed that increased temperatures caused forests to lose carbon while increases in nitrogen can result in carbon buildup. And warming alone can cause soil to lose carbon since heat speeds up decomposition and decomposition converts the carbon into CO2.

But the research team – led by Melissa Knorr and Serita Frey of the department of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire – found when rising temperatures were coupled with higher nitrogen levels, the plants added more carbon to soil by increasing their growth, activity and root turnover (the rate that their roots grow, die and decompose), maintaining soil carbon levels.

Myrna Simpson (photo by Ken Jones)

Simpson, an associate director of the Environmental NMR Centre, has collaborated with Frey for many years on the effects of soil warming and nitrogen on the biogeochemistry of soil carbon in the Harvard Forest.

She says the research is unique because it includes both individual and combined treatments that represent combined impacts to temperate forests.

“Because of the advanced analytical capabilities in my laboratory and the Environmental NMR Centre at �鶹��Ƶ Scarborough, we can uniquely decipher how multiple stressors alter the chemistry and potential long-term stability of soil organic matter at the molecular-level.”

Despite the research being conducted in Harvard Forest, Simpson says that soil warming has been shown to cause carbon loss worldwide. Excess nitrogen has also been found to suppress the microorganisms that keep forests healthy, even in forests that are rich in nutrients.

“We found that the way in which carbon flows within the soil biogeochemical cycle cannot be predicted from one stressor alone,” says Simpson, who is Canada Research Chair in Integrative Molecular Biogeochemistry. “It is likely that these observations may occur in other forests too.”

When it comes to future climate change research, Simpson says that there is much more work to be done.

“We need more observational data because climate change’s impacts on ecosystems are complex and difficult to predict due to the diversity of ecosystem properties,” she says. “These ecosystems are influenced by more than one stressor, but we lack data to adequately predict the impacts.”

Simpson adds there is no single way to solve climate change in part because we don’t yet understand all of its effects.

She says that collaboration between researchers is critical.

“Each expert can contribute data that can then be integrated into a more comprehensive assessment of how ecosystems are responding to stressors.”

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Ammara Khan

Microfluidic device reveals how tumour shapes can predict cancer aggressiveness

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:46:03 +0000

Microfluidic device reveals how tumour shapes can predict cancer aggressiveness

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 12/18/2024 - 10:46

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Associate Professor Edmond Young of �鶹��Ƶ's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (left) and PhD alum Sina Kheiri co-developed the Recoverable-Spheroid-on-a-Chip with Unrestricted External Shape – or "ReSCUE" – platform (photos courtesy of Edmond Young and Sina Kheiri)

Safa Jinje

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