SMU Researcher Part of New Federally Funded Global Indigenous Health and Biodiversity Project

Biodiversity decline. Reconciliation and the empowerment of Indigenous peoples. Both are prominent themes in Canada and around the world. These two important themes come together in Ărramăt, a newly launched Canadian-based project, and led by Indigenous peoples, in response to the global biodiversity and health crisis.

 Funded for 2021-2027 by Canada’s New Frontiers Research Fund Transformations Program, Ărramăt involves over 150 Indigenous organizations, universities, and other partners – including Saint Mary’s University’s Dr. Tony Charles – who will work together to highlight ways to counter biodiversity loss and address its implications for health and well-being.  

The project will be inclusive of many worldviews and methods for research in its activities across 70 different kinds of ecosystems that are spiritually, culturally, and economically important to Indigenous Peoples. 

As one of the project leaders, Mariam Wallet Aboubakrine, notes: “The Ărramăt Project is about respecting the inherent dignity and interconnectedness of peoples and Mother Earth, life and livelihood, identity and expression, biodiversity and sustainability, and stewardship and well-being.” 

The participants, knowledges, and interdisciplinary expertise in the project will address 150 different activities, with over half of the $24 million research budget going directly to Indigenous governments and organizations. They will lead their own work in ways that respect, protect, and elevate Indigenous knowledge and ways of life. Key topics include how food security can be secured for Indigenous Peoples, how Indigenous-led approaches to conservation can support wild species and agrobiodiversity, and how to engage in best practices for decolonizing education and science.   

Dr. Tony Charles emphasizes that having the project led by Indigenous scholars and communities is a crucial element.

“Biodiversity conservation is a key issue around the world, and one we’ve seen can be tackled effectively through Indigenous approaches,” says Dr. Charles. “That’s a message of the Community Conservation Research Network, based at Saint Mary’s, and one that is bound to be fundamental to the new Ărramăt Project.”

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SMU-TRIUMF Research on Rare Isotope of Helium Challenges Traditional Rule of Nuclear Structure

L-R: Sebastien Roy-Garand (SMU Undergrad student), Preetinder Jassal (SMU Ph.D. student), Greg Hackman (TRIUMF Scientist), Dr. Rituparna Kanungo (IRIS project leader & SMU Professor), Matthias Holl (SMU-TRIUMF IRIS PDF), Conor Waterfield (SMU student). Photo credit: TRIUMF.

From the wood in your desk to the stars in the sky, atoms and their inner core – the nuclei – are building blocks of the matter we see around us. Yet the traditional knowledge of the structure inside an atomic nucleus might need rethinking, according to new findings from Saint Mary's University researchers.

“This new finding challenges our traditional knowledge of nuclear shells, the onion-like structure inside a nucleus that organizes the building blocks of visible matter in our universe,” says Dr. Rituparna Kanungo, principal investigator of the research, IRIS project leader and Professor at Saint Mary’s University.

A recent paper by Dr. Kanungo, IRIS post-doctoral research fellow Matthias Holl, and the IRIS collaboration team of national and international scientists combines high-precision and high-statistics experimental data gathered with the Saint Mary’s University-led IRIS facility, and theoretical calculations by TRIUMF’s Theory Department and international teams, to unveil an unexpected shape deformation in the heaviest helium isotope, Helium-8 (He8).  

"These results were only possible to obtain due to the unique capabilities of the IRIS station,” said Matthias Holl, IRIS post-doctoral research fellow. “They show that unexpected phenomena can occur even in the lightest neutron-rich nuclei."

Our understanding of the stability of the elements is founded in a model of how protons and neutrons in their nuclei combine to stay bound, the so-called “shell model” of nuclear structure.  As the elements in the universe are largely formed in the nuclear furnaces of stars, the modern shell model theory has extremely important predictions both for the relative abundance of elements in the universe, and for the stability of stars to evolve, collapse or even explode.  

This shell model properly predicts that the most abundant and strongly bound elements are those containing certain particular “magic” numbers of protons and/or neutrons. The current understanding of the shell model implies that nuclei with magic numbers of protons or neutrons have spherically shaped distributions of those neutrons or protons.  

This assumption underlies much modelling of how elements are created in stars. Isotopes made with a very high numbers of neutrons relative to protons are unstable, and must eventually decay down to become less neutron-rich, and thus more stable.   

But it remains unclear whether this traditional, relatively simple, shell model description can be applied for nuclei of all elements. For example, what if we consider elements that contain lots more neutrons than protons? The new investigation led by Holl and Kanungo considered Helium-8 which has three times as many neutrons as protons, nature's most neutron-rich nucleus known till date. A new magic number seemingly appears for this, with the lowest two conventional magic numbers being 2 and 8, and He8 having 2 protons and 6 neutrons. The result: the distribution of neutrons was not spherical as expected! Instead, the neutrons were distributed more like a rugby-ball.  This calls into question parts of the current theory of how elements might be created and destroyed in stars, since this theory relies on the shell model and its spherical magic-number nuclei. We don’t fully understand how we’ve come to see the distribution in abundance of all elements in the Universe, and so we know there’s more to be discovered – this new shape measurement of He8 may be giving a clue towards some of our missing understanding.

Matthias Holl, IRIS post doc. in Dr. Kanungo’s team and lead author said ,“These results were only possible to obtain due to the unique capabilities of the IRIS station. They show that unexpected phenomena can occur even in the lightest neutron-rich nuclei.”

"This intriguing result about the shape of such a light, yet extremely neutron-rich, isotope is providing a new and important contribution to our understanding of how all of the elements in the universe were created in just the relative amounts we observe” said Dr. Adam Sarty, Associate Vice-President Research at Saint Mary’s University. “Coming to a clearer understanding of why the universe contains just exactly the relative abundances that we observe will rest on improving our understanding of whether the simple shell model can be used when nuclei have extreme compositions – and, if not, understanding how to adjust that model.”

“The finding begs further questions on the nature of the new sub-shell closures in neutron-rich nuclei,” said Dr. Kanungo. “This has the potential to influence and inform new understanding on the properties of heavy neutron-rich nuclei that create nature's heavy elements.”

“Nuclear shells are imprinted in nature in the abundance pattern of elements. They govern how nature creates matter through nuclear reactions and decays. The nuclear burning of the heavy neutron-rich nuclei creates the majority of the heavy elements such as gold, silver, platinum, and uranium, that we find on Earth.”

“Our work with Helium-8 is at the international forefront of research in nuclear structure, with Saint Mary’s University as the lead institution,” says Dr. Kanungo. “TRIUMF and the IRIS facility gives a huge opportunity to Saint Mary’s students at all levels, from undergraduate to graduate, to be a part of world-leading research. I look forward with excitement in anticipation of what the future holds with the confluence of ARIEL, CANREB and IRIS at TRIUMF together with our international team.”

The research paper, titled Proton inelastic scattering reveals deformation in helium-8, was published in November 2021 in Physics Letters B. The team’s next steps will be further investigation on the Helium-8 with different reaction probes, as well as exploring the heavy neutron-rich terra incognita.

Looking for more on the Helium-8 findings of the IRIS group? Click here to read more from TRIUMF.

Ryan Francis Returns for Two-Year Indigenous Research Fellowship at Saint Mary’s

Ryan Francis

A familiar face to the Saint Mary's University community is back to continue working on projects that foster the potential of sport and recreation to bring people together for intercultural understanding.

Ryan Francis, the university’s first Indigenous Visiting Fellow, recently returned for a two-year fellowship with the Faculty of Arts and the Centre for the Study of Sport and Health (CSSH). His first fellowship was  a four-month term from January to April 2020, coinciding with the onset of the global pandemic.

“A lot of our plans and programs involved people gathering and coming together, so it was very challenging to do that,” says Francis. “We highlighted in the previous fellowship that there is a lot of work that can be done. With a longer runway, we’ll be able to implement a lot more of those meaningful opportunities for the university community.” 

Part of the fellowship includes working with Saint Mary’s and organizers of the North American Indigenous Games, postponed in 2020 but now scheduled to take place July 15-23, 2023 in several locations in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) and Millbrook First Nation. NAIG 2023 will include competitions in 16 sports, bringing together 3,000 local volunteers with more than 5,000 athletes, coaches and team staff from 756 Indigenous Nations.

“SMU’s commitment to being a part of the Games, through facility use and accommodations, is really significant,” says Francis. “It will be really neat to think about how we can play a role, and factor in how to support the participants coming to campus, and make this environment feel especially welcoming to them.”

One idea already in development is the creation of “Brave Spaces” – spaces on campus where athletes and attendees can gather to share and learn more about each other’s cultures, since the Indigenous athletes will be attending from across Turtle Island.

During his first fellowship in 2020, Ryan was also a key player in the university’s inaugural Red Tape Game, working with Athletics and Recreation and the men’s Huskies hockey team. The growing movement across Canada and the U.S. aims to promote inclusion in ice hockey. The initiative was started and inspired by Logan Prosper of Whycocomagh First Nation – now an Arts student at Saint Mary’s – and his father Phillip, to create awareness of racism in hockey and encourage players to take responsibility for combatting racism. SMU’s second Red Tape Game is in the planning stages for this winter. Francis and Dr. Cheryl MacDonald, Associate Director of Outreach for the CSSH, hope to build on the idea and expand it to other teams.

“Ryan has been such a wonderful contributor to the Centre,” says Dr. MacDonald, noting he has provided guest lectures in the Health, Wellness and Sport in Society program, and participated in the international Hockey Conference hosted by the Centre.

“The Centre’s mandate is very much to facilitate and disseminate research on sport and health,” she adds. “We’re also committed to community outreach and interdisciplinary approaches. I think what we are creating here is meaningful opportunities to combine research and education with community.”

The fellowship builds on Saint Mary’s ongoing initiatives to engage with Indigenous communities, strengthen intercultural research and curriculum, and respond to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

Francis grew up in Cole Harbour and is a member of Acadia First Nation. He is currently the Manager of Provincial Outreach & Coordination for the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage, in its Communities, Sport, and Recreation Division. He has a Master of Physical Education degree from Memorial University, and majored in sport management for his Bachelor of Science degree at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Follow him on Twitter at @RyanFrancis58.     

Pet Photos: A Key to Successful Online Dating for Men According to New Study

Dr. Maryanne Fisher

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and in the case of a new research study from Saint Mary’s University, the right picture may be worth a lifetime of love.  The research shows that women see men who care for pets and children as good potential long-term partners, says evolutionary psychologist Dr. Maryanne Fisher.  

The recent study, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science by Saint Mary’s University's Mackenzie Zinck, Dr. Laura Weir, and Dr. Fisher, shows that men who care for dependents are perceived as high-quality mates, displaying the ability to invest in a long-term mate. This investment may be exhibited through financial and social status, and the ability to care for a mate and any resulting children. 

Online dating profiles were used to test the prediction, and as expected, men seeking long-term mates displayed dependents — primarily dogs and children— more than men seeking short-term mates, but both men and women seeking long-term mates displayed dependents similarly. Men, though, showed more dogs while women showed more children.  

“The inclusion of dependents represents a way for daters to advertise that they can, and are willing to, invest in a living being,” said Dr. Fisher.  “Men’s photos are really telling. Those interested in short-term relationships showed their body, their fancy trucks, the big fish they caught in the summer. Meanwhile, those seeking a relationship posted photos with their dogs and children. Whether or not women show the same difference remains to be seen. There weren’t many women dating online in the summer of 2020 openly advertising that they were seeking short-term relationships only.” 

Dr. Maryanne Fisher, a researcher and professor of Psychology at Saint Mary’s, is an expert on the evolutionary foundations of human interpersonal relationships. Her primary research areas include the evolutionary foundations of human interpersonal relationships and women's mating strategies and indicators of female physical attractiveness. 

Dr. Fisher recently discussed the study in an article she wrote for the Conversation.

First observation of light from behind a black hole

Researchers observed bright flares of X-ray emissions, produced as gas falls into a supermassive black hole. The flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, short flashes of X-rays were seen – corresponding to the reflection of the flares from the far side of the disk, bent around the black hole by its strong gravitational field. (Image credit: Dan Wilkins)

Fulfilling a prediction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, researchers report the first-ever recordings of X-ray emissions from the far side of a black hole. 

Saint Mary’s University researcher Dr. Luigi Gallo contributed to the analysis and interpretation of this collaborative research project, which was recently published in Nature. 

“While we have seen X-ray flares before and we have seen them “reflect” off the accretion disc around the black hole, this is really the first time we have been able to isolate individual events (flares) as originating from behind the black hole,” said Dr. Gallo, who has been working on this type of research for 20 years.  

“This is really important because these regions are so small in size and dynamic on such rapid time scales that it is impossible to take an image.  Events like this allow us to determine what the region closest to the black hole looks like,” he said.

Watching X-rays flung out into the universe by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 800 million light-years away, Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins noticed an intriguing pattern. He observed a series of bright flares of X-rays – exciting, but not unprecedented – and then, the telescopes recorded something unexpected: additional flashes of X-rays that were smaller, later and of different “colors” than the bright flares.

According to theory, these luminous echoes were consistent with X-rays reflected from behind the black hole – but even a basic understanding of black holes tells us that is a strange place for light to come from.

“Any light that goes into that black hole doesn't come out, so we shouldn’t be able to see anything that's behind the black hole,” said Wilkins, who is a research scientist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It is another strange characteristic of the black hole, however, that makes this observation possible. “The reason we can see that is because that black hole is warping space, bending light and twisting magnetic fields around itself,” Wilkins explained. 

The strange discovery, detailed in a paper published in Nature, is the first direct observation of light from behind a black hole – a scenario that was predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity but never confirmed, until now.

“Fifty years ago, when astrophysicists starting speculating about how the magnetic field might behave close to a black hole, they had no idea that one day we might have the techniques to observe this directly and see Einstein’s general theory of relativity in action,” said Roger Blandford, a co-author of the paper who is the Luke Blossom Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Stanford and SLAC professor of physics and particle physics.

 How to see a black hole

The original motivation behind this research was to learn more about a mysterious feature of certain black holes, called a corona. When material is falling into a supermassive black hole, it powers the brightest continuous sources of light in the Universe, and as it does so, forms a corona around the black hole. This light – which is X-ray light – can be analyzed to map and characterize a black hole.

The leading theory for what a corona is starts with gas sliding into the center of the black hole where it superheats to millions of degrees. At that temperature, electrons separate from atoms, creating a magnetized plasma. Caught up in the powerful spin of the black hole, the magnetic field arcs so high above the black hole, and twirls about itself so much, that it eventually breaks altogether – a situation so reminiscent of what happens around our own Sun that it borrowed the name “corona.”

“This magnetic field getting tied up and then snapping close to the black hole heats everything around it and produces these high energy electrons that then go on to produce the X-rays,” said Wilkins.

For this project, the researchers trained two space-based X-ray telescopes, NASA’s NuSTAR and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, on the galaxy known as I Zwicky 1. The two bright flares that they observed are only the second example of flares that can be associated with a corona being launched away from a black hole.

They processed the observations with a new technique, which takes advantage of the fact that the immense gravity around the black hole shifts the wavelength of light. By accounting for that shift and the time delay between the initial flash and when it bounces off the spinning disc of superhot gas encircling the black hole – known as an accretion disk – the researchers were able to translate the X-rays into a map of the environment just outside the event horizon of the black hole.

As Wilkins took a closer look to investigate the origin of the flares, he saw the series of smaller flashes. These, the researchers determined, are the same X-ray flares but reflected from the back of the disk – a first glimpse at the far side of a black hole.

“I've been building theoretical predictions of how these echoes appear to us for a few years,” said Wilkins. “I'd already seen them in the theory I’ve been developing, so once I saw them, I could figure out the connection.” 

Future observations

The mission to characterize and understand coronas continues and will require more observation. Part of that future will be the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory, Athena (Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics). As a member of the lab of Steve Allen, professor of physics at Stanford and of particle physics and astrophysics at SLAC, Wilkins is helping to developing part of the Wide Field Imager detector for Athena.

“It's got a much bigger mirror than we've ever had on an X-ray telescope and it's going to let us get higher resolution looks in much shorter observation times,” said Wilkins. “So, the picture we are starting to get from the data at the moment is going to become much clearer with these new observatories.”

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Co-authors of this research are from Saint Mary’s University (Canada), Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), University of Amsterdam and The Pennsylvania State University. 

This work was supported by the NASA NuSTAR and XMM-Newton Guest Observer programs, a Kavli Fellowship at Stanford University, and the V.M. Willaman Endowment.

Note: This story originally appeared on Stanford University’s website.

Canada-U.S. scientists to hunt for genetic clues to help struggling North Atlantic right whales rebound

Project co-lead Dr. Timothy Frasier (centre) with students.

Are clues to improved conservation of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales lurking in their genes? 

Genome Atlantic and Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, together with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, Boston, are teaming up on a $6 million, four-year study to find out. The Large-Scale Applied Research Project, funded by Genome Canada and managed by Genome Atlantic, is expected to get under way between July and September this year. 

It is hoped the project’s findings will help conservation efforts become “more effective and efficient,” said Dr. Tim Frasier, one of the project’s two co-leads.  A specialist in genetic analyses and marine mammal behaviour, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology, Saint Mary’s University.  

 “Our work is focused on using genomic data to quantify the impact of inbreeding on reproductive success and species recovery, and to identify if there are long-term negative consequences of non-lethal entanglements in fishing gear,” he said. Genetic implications of non-deadly vessel strikes will also be investigated.

Given current failures to stop or reverse the right whale’s continuing decline, it is anticipated insights from the project could prove critical. 

The North Atlantic right whale has been on endangered species’ lists in Canada and the United States for years. Yet today there are estimated to be less than 400 left, of which fewer than 100 are breeding females. In addition to having a high mortality rate from entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes, the species’ reproductive rate is also compromised. It is about three times lower than their known potential. A relatively high percentage of females have either never given birth or have had only one calf. Those females with multiple calves reproduce on average every six-to-10 years, as opposed to the expected three-year cycle.  

With this low reproductive rate comes greater risk of the species’ extinction. Dr. Frasier’s project counterpart, Philip Hamilton, a leading expert on right whale biology and Senior Scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, New England Aquarium, wouldn’t hazard a guess at how long that scenario might take to play out on the current trajectory. However, he said, the North Atlantic right whale, though long-lived, could become “functionally extinct” sooner than later, “because reproductive females are killed at a faster rate.”  

Project co-lead Philip Hamilton and his team of scientists from the New England Aquarium photograph a social group of North Atlantic right whales. (Photo: New England Aquarium, Brian Skerry)

“The important point, is that this species can survive and potentially thrive again, if we stop wounding and killing them with ropes and vessels,” he said. Encounters with fishing gear and vessels, coupled with declining reproduction rates, constitute a triple threat to North Atlantic right whale survival. 

The genomic probe into these phenomena will benefit from complementary databases. Dr. Frasier’s lab maintains the archival tissue and DNA bank for the species, while Mr. Hamilton curates a photo database that contains all data on right whale health and reproduction. 

Dr. Moira Brown, Senior Scientist at the Canadian Whale Institute, Welshpool, N.B., and a member of the project team, has noted big strides in molecular analysis of these mammals over her 40-year career. For her PhD thesis in 1988, she said, “I started the skin biopsy sampling program in the Bay of Fundy. Using a small stainless tip attached to a bolt launched from a crossbow, I sampled 25 whales that first year. The initial goal was to be able to identify males from females and to determine the sex ratio of the population using DNA analyses. Fast-forward three decades. Scientists have since learned a great deal about right whales from molecular analyses.” 

Today, she said, 80 per cent of the whale population has been sampled, equipping researchers to address “the burning question: what, if any, is the impact of inbreeding on reproduction and how does that affect species recovery?” It is a question shipping and fishing industry representatives repeatedly ask her, and she hopes soon to have the answer. 

The North Atlantic right whale research community is “extremely collaborative,” and has been so for decades, said Dr. Frasier. That factor made it easy, he said, to recruit researchers to this international project. He pointed out that the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium – a data- and research-sharing group dedicated to the recovery of the species – has been active, since 1986, bringing together Canadian and American researchers, policy makers, fishing and shipping industry representatives and educators in an effort to conserve the species. 

On another level, though, Mr. Hamilton pointed out right whales’ international movements between American and Canadian waters have complicated their plight. “Ideally,” he said, “right whales would be equally protected in both countries–a goal that is complicated by the two countries’ very different regulatory frameworks.” 

Consequently, the research team is hoping to produce persuasive, actionable, scientific data for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the U.S. to better manage North Atlantic right whale conservation in their respective jurisdictions. Researchers also hope their study’s findings can promote changes in fishing and shipping industry perceptions and behaviours to help the struggling right whale population rebound.

 To ensure the project’s conclusions resonate in those circles, Dr. Randle Hart, a specialist in the sociology of science and, more particularly, in the way scientific information is chosen for incorporation in policy development, has been recruited to the research team from Saint Mary’s University. 

Dr. Frasier described Dr. Hart’s role as “key to the success of this project.” He explained, “understanding how best to use the data available to result in the most effective and efficient conservation actions is a social science, and this is the work that Randy will be conducting.” 

At the data-gathering end, the scientific team will measure the impact of inbreeding on reproduction and species recovery and attempt to fill a major knowledge gap on the role of genetic factors in wildlife conservation. Also, on the agenda are assessment of the long-term genetic impacts on whales that have had non-lethal encounters with vessels and fishing gear, and an evaluation of the team’s findings for North Atlantic right whale conservation.  

Apart from the multi-million-dollar whale watching industry that has grown around them, whales play a vital role in stabilizing marine ecosystems by helping to regulate a wide spectrum of marine organisms with their presence. Their nitrogen-laden fecal matter, released when they rise to the ocean’s surface to defecate, for instance, is known to stimulate plankton growth and other microorganisms that form the foundation of the oceanic food chain, critical to the existence of marine life and for the maintenance of the fishing industry.  

For seasoned right whale researchers, such as Mr. Hamilton, with more than 30 years in the field, these gigantic creatures remain endlessly fascinating. 

Having studied these animals so long, he says he knows “almost every individual” and he has followed some of them “consistently year-to-year and habitat-to-habitat,” and yet, he said, so many questions are unanswered: “How do they locate their patches of prey? What do the loud, percussive ‘gunshot’ sounds they make signify? And how do they produce the sounds? Why do some whales make such long-range explorations, like Mogul, and how do they decide where to go?” 

He added, “this species has been the underdog for most of my career. For the first two decades, the general public didn’t even know the species existed. People thought I was saying ‘white whale’ not ‘right whale.’ They had heard of belugas. Fighting for the underdog feels instinctive to me.  

“Finally, every birth, every death, every injury has a face and a story behind it. Many of the whales alive today, I saw as calves. To watch them weather the many hardships of living in an urban ocean is heartbreaking. They can’t advocate for themselves. It’s up to those of us who know and care about them to speak for them.” 

Others on the Frasier-Hamilton team besides Dr. Brown, all keenly committed to right whale welfare, include Dr. Angelia Vanderlaan, Research Scientist, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dartmouth, N.S.; Dr. Linda Rutledge, a bioinformatics expert and Assistant Professor in the Biology Department, Trent University, Peterborough, Ont.; Dr. Michael Asaro, Economist, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole, Mass; Dr. Robert Schick, Independent Research Scientist, Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Nicolas School of Environment, Duke University, Durham, S.C.; and R. Clay George, Senior Wildlife Biologist, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Nongame Conservation Section, Brunswick, Ga. 

Besides Genome Canada funding, the project is being supported by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Research Nova Scotia in Canada, and by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the US National Marine Fisheries Service, and the New England Aquarium in the United States.

This article first appeared in on the Genome Atlantic website and has been republished with permission.

New Book Examines British Political Turbulence Through Novels of the 1970s

In his latest book, Dr. J. Russell Perkin explores one of the more tumultuous decades in modern British politics – as chronicled in popular novels of the time. Like much of the British music of the 1970s, these seminal bestsellers have endured over the past 50 years, reflecting the fascinating political history of the era but also playing a meaningful role in it.

While writing Politics and the British Novel in the 1970s, Dr. Perkin was struck by how “urgently contemporary” these stories remain: the environmental fable Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Ice Age by Margaret Drabble, Daniel Martin by John Fowles, John le Carré’s Cold War spy thrillers, V.S. Naipaul’s studies on post-colonial displacement, and works by Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Doris Lessing and others.

As Perkin conducted his research for the book, the Brexit controversy echoed the U.K.’s 1975 referendum on joining the European Economic Community. The Saint Mary’s English professor observed many other recurring and continuing issues of nationality and citizenship, race and immigration, right-wing extremism, social disparity, gender, and the environment.

Finishing his manuscript during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, “I often felt as though one of Doris Lessing’s dystopian visions was playing itself out in reality,” he remarked in the preface of the book, which was released in June by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Lessing’s “apocalyptic visions and bleak view of existing society” also resonated with students in his 2019 honours seminar on the same topic as the new book, Perkin added in a campus news interview.

“Her great novel, The Memoirs of a Survivor, was about a society that was collapsing for reasons that aren’t really clear,” he says. “It might be an environmental disaster or a failure of organization, but all the normal infrastructure of life is just failing. She captures that world, and I imagine it was partly from having lived through wartime that she was able to do it so powerfully.”

Though he specializes in 19th and 20th-century British literature, writing the book was also quite a personal trip down memory lane for Perkin. Born in England, he moved to Canada at age eight and returned overseas to study at Oxford University in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected, the national health service and public housing were in jeopardy, students were marching for nuclear disarmament, and many felt Britain was losing its global influence.

Back then, the big social novels by Fowles and Drabble particularly stood out for Perkin, as both authors were diagnosing the state of the nation in their fiction. Years later, he found himself still thinking about these stories.

“One of the things a lot of novelists explore is this nostalgic idea of the good old days of Britain when things were simpler, which is a myth that has been there as long as British literature,” says Perkin. “It has always been reproduced in popular culture but also questioned. Certainly, Fowles’ novel Daniel Martin does both of those things. It has incredible nostalgia for an idealized past, but at the same time recognizes that it’s a construct and that for many people it wasn’t in fact such a great time.”

We Can: A Community Research Lecture Series Launches

Researchers at SMU and their community partners are sharing their work with the Saint Mary’s University community in a new series of presentations and discussions on Zoom We Can: A Community Research Lecture Series. The new series is the creation of Dr. Adam Sarty, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, and Associate Vice-President, Research, and Ray MacNeil, Network Manager CLARI, who want to demonstrate how research at Saint Mary’s is often a very close collaboration with community partners.

Research featured in the first session covered the connection between the agri-food business and immigration and will lead to recommendations about how to ensure the succession of family farms, grow small businesses, and encourage young entrepreneurs including Black Nova Scotians. A second team of researchers revealed their findings around the pre-contact use of copper among ancient civilizations here in Mi’kma’ki. A centerpiece of their work is the partnership and sharing with Mi’kmaq groups around Nova Scotia without whom their work would not be possible. Stay tuned for more sessions in Fall 2021.

Sociology Professors Mining Text Data to Cover Wider Ground in Immigration Research

Dr. Evie Tastsoglou

Dr. Eugena Kwon

Two Saint Mary's sociology professors are on a Halifax research team that has received a grant from the national Exploration competition of the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF). The federal funding has an objective of supporting “high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research” to strengthen Canadian innovation. 

Dr. Evie Tastsoglou and Dr. Eugena Kwon will investigate the changing public perceptions and social constructions of immigrants and refugees in Canada, starting from the time of Confederation to the current COVID-19 era. The research will also examine how these perceptions are systematically connected to specific economic, demographic, and political developments in the ongoing making of the Canadian state.

Titled “Visual analytics for text-intensive social science research on immigration,” the project will also introduce and evaluate a new artificial intelligence methodology for text-intensive social science research.

“The game changer in this research will be the consolidation of a new interdisciplinary way of working with disciplines that are far removed from social science,” explains Tastsoglou, who received the 2020 President’s Award for Excellence in Research at Saint Mary’s in February.

She and Kwon are collaborating with Dr. Evangelos Milios, a researcher from Dalhousie’s Faculty of Computer Science, who is the project’s co-principal investigator along with Tastsoglou. They will be pioneering new applications for natural language processing (NLP) and visual analytics (VA) systems, in hopes of enabling social scientists to retrieve and analyze much larger document sets than ever before.

This research will focus on news content going back to the mid-1800s in two national newspapers, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star (and their antecedents). It will also use the technology tools and a number of keywords to sift through court decisions, parliamentary debates and 21st century social media data.  

“In the social sciences in general, it’s hard to cover mass amounts of information,” explains Kwon, co-applicant in the funding competition. “One of the main strengths of our project is, by collaborating with computer scientists and using visual analytics, it will help make it feasible for us to cover massive amounts of information.”

Without the visual analytics tools, it would be nearly impossible to manually collect and analyze historical texts spanning nearly two centuries. Input from the sociologists will be key to helping the computer scientists design and refine a text-retrieval system that will collect data that is most relevant to their immigration research.

“As social scientists, there’s no limit to what we can do if this is successful,” adds Kwon.

According to the team’s funding proposal, “Canada’s humanitarian tradition has been a pole of attraction to new immigrants and refugees and a source of pride for all Canadians. Understanding the changing, and often contradictory, perceptions/constructions of immigrants/refugees in Canadian history … will be of great benefit to scholars, policy-makers and the broader public. It may debunk certain taken-for-granted ‘truths’ about Canada but it can also help shape more informed policy to cope with economic and social challenges of the 21st century.” 

The project will receive $250,000 over two years. This year’s NFRF awards, announced May 31, are supporting 117 research projects across Canada with “the potential to yield game-changing results in social, cultural, economic, health-related or technological areas”.

The New Frontiers in Research Fund is administered by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat on behalf of Canada’s three research granting agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Saint Mary’s University Anthropologist Investigates Former Shubenacadie Residential School Site

Dr. Jonathan Fowler.

An investigation of the former Shubenacadie Residential school site grounds has begun as the result of a partnership between Sipekne'katik First Nation and Saint Mary's University. 

"This has been top of mind for Sipekne'katik for many years and the tragic discovery in Kamloops brings a renewed sense of urgency to our work," says Sipekne'katik First Nation Chief Mike Sack.

The Sipekne'katik Council and management and Sipekne'katik Grand Council have been working directly in recent years with Dr. Jonathan Fowler, an Associate Professor with Saint Mary's University’s Anthropology Department. Dr. Fowler is one of the country's leading researchers in archaeological geophysics and remote sensing. His investigation on the former Shubenacadie Residential school grounds is to determine if there is any burial evidence on site. Using several techniques, including ground-penetrating radar (GPR) Dr. Fowler is working directly with community member and Mi'kmaq cultural heritage curator for the Nova Scotia Museum, Roger Lewis as a co-investigator. 

"This urgent and essential work must be undertaken thoroughly and to the highest standard," says Dr. Fowler. "We will examine the site carefully and with the most powerful technologies available." 

Dr. Fowler's GPR research has successfully mapped burials associated with the 1873 sinking of the SS Atlantic and identified nearly 300 unmarked graves in the pre-Deportation Acadian cemetery at Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada.    

Undergraduate Students Earn Paid Summer Research Positions

 With hard work and dedication to their studies, top undergraduate students at Saint Mary’s have won the opportunity to do paid research with their professors this summer. Some will be in labs, others in the field or working remotely.  

Research at Saint Mary’s University has an impact on our community and globally. These students are placed across the campus in Science, Arts and Business faculties. Research topics include applying human resource concepts to sports teams, analyzing data and images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the shift in approach to feminist policy in Canada, and analysing case studies on the collapse of fish stocks and fisheries worldwide.  

Canadian and International students are eligible for four award programs:

• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Undergraduate Student
  Research Awards (NSERC USRA);

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Explore Summer Research Awards; and,

• Dean of Science Undergraduate Summer Research Awards

• First Year Undergraduate Awards

Working with professors whose research is making positive changes in the world guides students on their educational path to become the next generation of researchers.  

“Saint Mary’s University faculty members excel at engaging undergraduate students in their research efforts, and these experiences are a transformational positive experience for every student that has the opportunity,” said Dr. Adam Sarty, Associate Vice-President, Research and Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.  

“The one-on-one attention from our faculty members and teamwork with peers is a perfect complement to an undergraduate degree, and provides an exceptionally strong foundation for career entry, or future professional/graduate studies,” said Dr. Sarty.  

The Awards

USRA awards, open to Canadian students who have completed at least a year of a bachelor’s degree, are meant to help students develop their potential for a research career in the natural sciences and engineering.

SSHRC Explore awards are open to students studying social sciences and humanities. With these two award programs that are supported by our federal funding councils, combined with the Dean of Science and First Year awards, all Saint Mary’s University students, Canadian and international, have an opportunity to apply for summer research award positions, even after their first year of study. 

This year are students are working on these exciting and inspiring research projects:

Humaid Muhammad Agowun (Mathematics & Computing Science; Supervisor: Paul Muir) 

Tanisha Ballard (Chemistry; Supervisor: Clarissa Sit)

Continuing certain projects already initiated, my lab partners and I will be looking at improving plant growth, and potentially, pest control in crop production. This summer, hopefully we will be able to conduct field trials on various crops, as well as additional greenhouse and green roof trials this summer to investigate this.

Abigail Battson (Astrophysics; Supervisor: Vincent Hénault-Brunet)

I will be working on high-velocity stars in globular clusters. These stars are far too fast to have been produced by the typical cluster dynamics, and are likely produced by interactions between a binary star system and a black hole. My work involves finding these stars using the GAIA proper motion data and confirming that they are likely members of the cluster, with plans to apply this process to all the globular clusters I can. Eventually, I hope to analyze the three-body interactions that cause the star's high speed to discover what kind of black holes would produce the results observed.

Samantha Bennett (Environmental Science; Supervisor: Erin Cameron)

This summer I am going to be studying soil biodiversity and the effects of global change, climate change and invasive species on species distribution. I will spend part of the summer researching earthworms, looking into their distribution and dispersal. I am hoping to get the opportunity to go to Western Canada later in the summer to study the distribution of earthworms in Saskatchewan.

Hannah Birru (Economics; Supervisor: Joniada Milla)

Labour economics in Chile.

Abby Brouwer (Biology; Supervisor: Anne Dalziel)

Testing how freshwater tolerance evolves in stickleback or study the factors influencing hybridization rate and direction in killifishes. This work will involve collecting fish from the field, caring for fish brought back to the aquarium facilities, and conducting molecular and biochemical analyses in the lab.

Chloe Champion (Biology; Supervisor: Anne Dalziel)

Continuing field and molecular work in the Dalziel Lab on “Mechanisms affecting rates and directions of hybridization in killifish species producing asexual hybrids.”

Jakob Conrad (Mathematics; Supervisor: Mitja Mastnak)

The study and classfication of hopf algebras, using computational methods and tools, and studying the simultaneous triangularization of linear transformations and their corresponding chains of invariant subspaces.

Katrina Cruickshanks (Biology; Supervisor: Sean Haughian)

Analyzing lichen species of old growth forests of Nova Scotia to assist land managers with prioritizing conservation decisions. 

Myles Davidson (Psychology; Supervisor: Skye Stephens)

I am working with Dr. Skye Stephens on a prevention project for adults at risk of sexually offending against children. We are working on identifying what is considered best practice for preventing offending amongst this demographic.

Bryn de Chastelain (Political Science; Supervisor: Alexandra Dobrowolsky)

My research is supporting the development of an article by Dr. Dobrowolsky on the topic of feminist policy and gender equality in Canada. Specifically, I will be analyzing speeches and policy approaches under Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his son Justin Trudeau, demonstrating the shift (or lack thereof) in approach to feminist policy in Canada. This will inform a comparative analysis of the different political eras to showcase the realities of feminism and gender equality in Canada. 

Matthew Fancy (Marketing; Supervisor Tiffany Vu)

Helping to develop and test various theories in marketing pertaining to charitable giving and sustainability.

Mark Funnell (Geography & Environmental Studies; Supervisors: Matthew Novak & Khan Rahaman)

I am a first-year Geography undergrad working with the Wicked Problems Lab to assess the pandemic’s effect on local governance. This looks to answer how municipal government has been affected in Halifax and elsewhere in Canada through using qualitative data analysis software and other research methods.

Justin Gray (Mathematics and Computing Science; Supervisor: Stavros Konstantinidis)

A regular expression is a pattern that is used to match desirable word(s) in a text. Given a regular expression and a word, there are algorithms to determine if the regular expression matches the word; this is called the membership problem. This is often solved by converting the regular expression into an automaton, but can also be solved using other direct algorithms. My research will focus on algorithms and implementation of the membership problem for multi-dimensional word/regular expression tuples, which are studied in the area of what is formally known as rational word relations. This type of regular expressions is of current interest both in the theory of rational relations and their applications in areas like databases and computer security.

Samantha Henneberry (Chemistry; Supervisor: Rob Singer)

This summer I will be working with Dr. Singer and his team on a green chemistry project involving ionic organocatalysis. These ionic organocatalysts can potentially provide more green alternatives to traditional organic liquids. Another project involves the N-demethylation of opioids, using sonochemical / ultrasound methods. This project falls under the medicinal side of organic chemistry, and may even be published by the end of the summer.”

Jacob Hoare (Chemistry; Supervisor: Rob Singer)

Sam Julien (Chemistry; Supervisor: Christa Brosseau)

I am a 4th year chemistry honours student. I will be developing a novel biosensor for rapid detection of cardiac biomarkers. This technology may be useful for the early evaluation of heart attacks before the onset of physical symptoms.

Amy Kehoe (Engineering; Supervisor: Adel Merabet)

Maggie Kelly (Biology; Supervisor: Laura Weir)

I will be working with Dr. Weir and her study of the mating behaviour of Japanese Medaka fish.

Madison Kieffer (Modern Languages and Classics; Supervisor: Sveva Svavelli)

Processing artifacts and organizing documentation from the archaeological excavation at the Oenotrian-Greek site of Incoronata “greca” (Pisticci-Basilicata-Italy) (8th- 6th c. BCE). Current investigation of the site focuses on the relationships formed between Indigenous populations in southern Italy and incoming Greeks in the wider context of Greek colonialism and imperialism in the ancient Mediterranean.

Mayara Mejri (Biology; Supervisor: David Chiasson)

Nam Nguyen (Accounting; Supervisor: Vasiliki Athanasakou)

I am super passionate about working in the accounting and taxation field. I am currently participating in the research project of Professor Athanasakou to perform analysis on corporate reporting, and I am working full-time as an Excise Tax Examiner at the Canada Revenue Agency.  I am interested in this topic as I have the opportunity to review and evaluate annual reports and information forms from many different companies. Working with Professor Athanasakou and learning from her stories and experience will allow me to learn and gain more handy skills and knowledge, and this would help in pursuing my CPA designation.

Narmeen Oozer (Mathematics & Computing Science; Supervisor Mitja Mastnak)

Bibek Parajuli (Psychology; Supervisor: Arla Day)

Gwen Pearson (Women & Gender Studies/Criminology; Supervisors: Byers/Collins)

Collecting existing data and research on the subject in the media, including television shows and documentaries. I will examine the content relating to many different aspects like story arc, genre, and how characters are portrayed. I also expect to learn skills relating to criminology, media studies, and research, that will likely benefit me as I complete my degree. 

Bernice Perry (History; Supervisor: Heather Green)

Working alongside Professor Green and her collaborators on the Northern Borders Project, researching first and secondary sources for developing an open access online teaching module, surrounding aspects of borders and boundaries in the North. This project entails looking at physical borders and cultural and racial boundaries using scholarly and local perspectives. There is also an opportunity for independent research surrounding the project themes, which may be featured in the teaching module.

Grace Robertson (Environmental Science; Supervisor: Tony Charles)

I will be compiling and analysing case studies and other information from around the world on the collapse of fish stocks and fisheries, leading to a published report. I will also be working with simulation modelling of the impacts of marine protected areas on fisheries and marine biodiversity. Lastly, I will be engaging in the work of the Community Conservation Research Network through research and outreach activities.

Jacqueline Shaw (Psychology; Supervisor: Kevin Kelloway)

Working with Dr. Kelloway and his research group to study organizational response to the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as psychological injuries at work, stress interventions, and the relationship between personality and organizational outcomes.

Jaylynn Skeete (Psychology; Supervisor: Nicole Conrad)

I will be assisting Dr. Conrad with her research on the relationship between spelling and reading comprehension, and with statistical input and analysis as well as creating my own research study and design. 

Ashley Ta (Management; Supervisor: Terry Wagar)

Applying human resource concepts to sports teams, coaches, and athletes. I will also be assisting in writing literary reviews, assembling data, and conducting interviews. 

Devin Williams (Astrophysics; Supervisor: Marcin Sawicki)

Analyzing data and images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other giant ground-based telescopes to study galaxy morphology, and learn how galaxies form, grow, and evolve in the early Universe.

Study shows long-lasting impacts to lake health from old gold mines

Water on the tailing fields of the historical Montague Gold District transports contaminated materials towards Mitchell Brook, which flows into Barry's Run, and then into Lake Charles. Wind is also a mechanism of tailings transport. Credit: Linda Campbell

New findings of a multi-university team of researchers show that pollution from historical gold mining in Nova Scotia, Canada, persists at levels that impact the health of aquatic ecosystems, despite mine operations closing nearly a century ago.

“Mining activities from 100 years ago can still impact freshwater ecosystems today. Our work reveals that lakes may show signs of recovery from those impacts,” notes Saint Mary’s University Professor and co-author Dr. Linda Campbell. “Even so, we must remain vigilant about understanding and monitoring the legacy of those contaminated tailings in our modern ecosystems to support recovery processes.”

Over 350 gold mines operated throughout Nova Scotia between the mid-1800s and 1950. Urbanization and land development has taken place nearby some historical mining areas and people sometimes use these areas for recreational activities. Waste tailing materials with elevated and potentially toxic levels of arsenic and mercury often are associated with historical gold mining sites in Nova Scotia. The tailings can contaminate soil and aquatic sediments through water and wind movement.

This study used dated sediments from the bottom of two urban lakes located near one of the region’s largest historical mining operations. Lake sediments are a well-recognized and information-rich natural archive of past environments which allow the assessment of geochemical and biological conditions of lakes and their watersheds before, during, and after pollution has occurred.  

The study was recently published in the peer-reviewed international journal Science of the Total Environment and highlights how pollution from past gold mining combined with contemporary stressors such as climate change and urbanization may contribute to prevent complete lake recovery from century-old mining pollution.

“Past mining activities that occurred throughout Nova Scotia introduced considerable amounts of arsenic and mercury into the environment,” says lead author Allison Clark, from Mount Allison University. “Although the Montague Gold District closed to mining 80 years ago, lakes nearby still remain severely impacted.”

Currently, arsenic levels are still very high in the lake sediments—300 times above levels that are known to harm aquatic organisms. Mercury has returned to levels observed before gold mining began. This suggests that arsenic is behaving differently than mercury within the sediments at the bottom of tailing-impacted lakes.

“Mining is both a blessing and a curse,” notes Mount Allison University Associate Professor and co-author Dr. Joshua Kurek. “Society benefits but past mining activities practiced throughout Nova Scotia continue to harm ecosystems and citizens are now left with the clean-up costs.”

Additionally, invertebrates that live on and interact with the lake’s sediment have become less diverse compared with a similar reference lake, likely due to the mining pollution as well as other recent watershed stressors. Loss of key organisms may affect lake food webs, leading to issues with water quality.

Funding for this research was provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Genome Atlantic.