UVic enrollment is up. Can I credit my InDesign or my fractal skillz?
The challenge was to attract bright Grade 12 students to UVic. I designed these handouts to help students visiting UVic's open house to decide where they belonged and to choose UVic.
Check them out:
Biology
Biochemistry
Chemistry
Physics and Astronomy
Mathematics and Statistics
School of Earth and Ocean Science
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Recent Posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Exercise for your mind
A clear link between exercise and brain health holds promise for the treatment of neurological disorders
Published in the Times Colonist KnowlEDGE series and in the Ring in March 2009.
By Sheila Potter
In case you needed one, here’s another good reason to exercise—it can make you smarter.
University of Victoria neuroscientist Dr. Brian Christie was one of the first researchers to discover that exercise stimulates the growth of brain cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved with learning and memory.
The finding debunked the long-held belief that our brains aren’t able to produce new cells—known as neurons—as we age.
“We now know that new neurons are produced continually throughout our lives and that this process can be ramped up or dampened by our lifestyles,” says Christie. “In other words, the better we take care of our brains, the better they function.”
Christie studies the biological mechanisms in the brain that are activated by exercise. A deeper understanding of these mechanisms may ultimately result in new approaches to establishing, maintaining and even enhancing brain cells and their connections as we age.
The applications of Christie’s research are astonishingly broad. Exercise seems to reduce the impact of any stress on the brain, whether the stress comes from a hard day at work or from such neurological disorders as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, stroke or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
FASD refers to a spectrum of disorders associated with poor learning, attention, memory and behavioural problems.
“FASD is a tricky problem, because a lot of women don’t realize that they are pregnant in the early stages and can consume alcohol unwittingly, and they may not be aware of the toxic effects of alcohol on the developing fetus,” says Christie. “The bottom line is that no amount of alcohol is safe when you’re pregnant.”
The link between FASD and exercise first occurred to Christie at a medical conference. “The presenter was describing how children with FASD have fewer neurons in their hippocampus, and that these neurons are less branched,” he says. “This is the diametric opposite of the positive effects of exercise. It was a definite ‘aha’ moment.”
Using sophisticated microscopy and protein chemistry techniques, Christie and his team have demonstrated that exercise promotes the growth of new neurons in FASD brains, and that these neurons are better able to communicate with each other.
In fact, Christie was surprised by how big a difference exercise makes for FASD compared to other brain disorders he has studied. He believes daily exercise should be a key treatment for FASD, guessing that an hour a day, continuous or broken up, might be enough.
Christie notes that FASD can be very difficult to diagnose and children showing symptoms are often misdiagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These kids are typically discouraged from running around for fear they will get overexcited—clearly a bad strategy given his findings.
Christie and his team are now looking at the effects of different amounts of alcohol at various stages of pregnancy. They’re also investigating sex differences—it’s possible that testosterone makes developing brains more susceptible to alcohol damage, making FASD worse in boys.
Christie’s research is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Read more on this article...
Published in the Times Colonist KnowlEDGE series and in the Ring in March 2009.
By Sheila Potter
In case you needed one, here’s another good reason to exercise—it can make you smarter.
University of Victoria neuroscientist Dr. Brian Christie was one of the first researchers to discover that exercise stimulates the growth of brain cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved with learning and memory.
The finding debunked the long-held belief that our brains aren’t able to produce new cells—known as neurons—as we age.
“We now know that new neurons are produced continually throughout our lives and that this process can be ramped up or dampened by our lifestyles,” says Christie. “In other words, the better we take care of our brains, the better they function.”
Christie studies the biological mechanisms in the brain that are activated by exercise. A deeper understanding of these mechanisms may ultimately result in new approaches to establishing, maintaining and even enhancing brain cells and their connections as we age.
The applications of Christie’s research are astonishingly broad. Exercise seems to reduce the impact of any stress on the brain, whether the stress comes from a hard day at work or from such neurological disorders as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, stroke or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
FASD refers to a spectrum of disorders associated with poor learning, attention, memory and behavioural problems.
“FASD is a tricky problem, because a lot of women don’t realize that they are pregnant in the early stages and can consume alcohol unwittingly, and they may not be aware of the toxic effects of alcohol on the developing fetus,” says Christie. “The bottom line is that no amount of alcohol is safe when you’re pregnant.”
The link between FASD and exercise first occurred to Christie at a medical conference. “The presenter was describing how children with FASD have fewer neurons in their hippocampus, and that these neurons are less branched,” he says. “This is the diametric opposite of the positive effects of exercise. It was a definite ‘aha’ moment.”
Using sophisticated microscopy and protein chemistry techniques, Christie and his team have demonstrated that exercise promotes the growth of new neurons in FASD brains, and that these neurons are better able to communicate with each other.
In fact, Christie was surprised by how big a difference exercise makes for FASD compared to other brain disorders he has studied. He believes daily exercise should be a key treatment for FASD, guessing that an hour a day, continuous or broken up, might be enough.
Christie notes that FASD can be very difficult to diagnose and children showing symptoms are often misdiagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These kids are typically discouraged from running around for fear they will get overexcited—clearly a bad strategy given his findings.
Christie and his team are now looking at the effects of different amounts of alcohol at various stages of pregnancy. They’re also investigating sex differences—it’s possible that testosterone makes developing brains more susceptible to alcohol damage, making FASD worse in boys.
Christie’s research is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Read more on this article...
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
UVic website rich with strange and new science
This summer marked the satisfying end of a mammoth project: to create a research profile page for all thirty members of the University of Victoria's Centre for Biomedical Research.
The Centre for Biomedical Research's raison d'être is to bring together health researchers from disciplines normally so separated by research cultures, philosophies and methods (and yes, sometimes disdain), they don't naturally talk to one another. The centre is so multidisciplinary, I ended up talking to some intensely interesting people well outside of my own specialty of microbiology. Topics ranged from Arctic-bacteria vaccines to face-recognition research to rare genetic diseases. I learned what zebra fish, sea urchins, and whales can teach us about human health. I learned that soap can be bad for you, nicotine can be good, and that Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may be caused by a broken "pleasure of learning" mechanism.
In fact, I think these 30 interviews were the most fun I've ever had. But then came the hard part: digesting enough of each research area to give a knowledgeable, authoritative review. Part of the problem is that the Centre was trying to accomplish so much with these seemingly simple 700 word articles. First, members wanted to share this wealth of research with the general public. But they also wanted to attract grad students and collaborators, meaning that a newspaper-level language and level of detail wasn't going to cut it. So I adopted a style that I've admired from the New York Academy of Sciences Magazine, where they start out so simple anyone can follow, then get progressively more complex to cater to the experts.
Many of these profiles were posted online to coincide with Café Scientific, a Centre for Biomedical Research public lecture series that is becoming so popular you have to register well in advance. Sign up for the next one by Dr. Patrick MacCleod "The harsh reality of Rett's syndrome: from diagnosis to cure." Details are on the CBR's front page http://cbr.uvic.ca Read my profile on Patrick's work, here. Read more on this article...
The Centre for Biomedical Research's raison d'être is to bring together health researchers from disciplines normally so separated by research cultures, philosophies and methods (and yes, sometimes disdain), they don't naturally talk to one another. The centre is so multidisciplinary, I ended up talking to some intensely interesting people well outside of my own specialty of microbiology. Topics ranged from Arctic-bacteria vaccines to face-recognition research to rare genetic diseases. I learned what zebra fish, sea urchins, and whales can teach us about human health. I learned that soap can be bad for you, nicotine can be good, and that Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may be caused by a broken "pleasure of learning" mechanism.
In fact, I think these 30 interviews were the most fun I've ever had. But then came the hard part: digesting enough of each research area to give a knowledgeable, authoritative review. Part of the problem is that the Centre was trying to accomplish so much with these seemingly simple 700 word articles. First, members wanted to share this wealth of research with the general public. But they also wanted to attract grad students and collaborators, meaning that a newspaper-level language and level of detail wasn't going to cut it. So I adopted a style that I've admired from the New York Academy of Sciences Magazine, where they start out so simple anyone can follow, then get progressively more complex to cater to the experts.
Many of these profiles were posted online to coincide with Café Scientific, a Centre for Biomedical Research public lecture series that is becoming so popular you have to register well in advance. Sign up for the next one by Dr. Patrick MacCleod "The harsh reality of Rett's syndrome: from diagnosis to cure." Details are on the CBR's front page http://cbr.uvic.ca Read my profile on Patrick's work, here. Read more on this article...
