Research and Innovation

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Research & Innovation

Virtual Reality

Subheadline

'We wanted to understand if the way our brains and bodies adapt to these digital environments changes how accurately we can move and interact with real objects"

Researchers at the ��Ƶ have found that using virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) can temporarily change the way people perceive and interact with the real world – with potential implications for the growing number of industries that use these technologies for training purposes.

The study, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports, not only found that people moved differently in VR and AR, but that these changes led to temporary errors in movement in the real world. In particular, participants who used VR tended to undershoot their targets by not reaching far enough, while those who used AR tended to overshoot their targets by reaching too far.

This effect was noticeable immediately after using VR or AR, but gradually disappeared as participants readjusted to real-world conditions.

“Our study explored how using mixed reality (MR) technologies, like virtual reality and augmented reality, affects our ability to perform everyday physical tasks once we return to the real world,” says Xiaoye Michael Wang, a research associate in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education who co-authored the study with Professor Tim Welsh.

“Specifically, we wanted to understand if the way our brains and bodies adapt to these digital environments changes how accurately we can move and interact with real objects after using VR and AR.”

Research associate Xiaoye Michael Wang fits a VR display onto study participant Colin Dolynski (photo by Molly Brillinger)

The researchers say they were surprised by two findings: first, that movement patterns in VR and AR transfer to real-world movements; and second, by how quickly the effects of AR wore off compared to VR, with study participants readjusting to real-world conditions faster after using AR.

The difference between VR and AR, they suggest, might be because people in AR can still see and interact with their actual surroundings, which helps them maintain a more accurate sense of depth and distance.

“These findings are crucial because they highlight a potential challenge in transferring skills learned in VR or AR to the real world,” says Welsh. “As more industries and training programs adopt these technologies for skill development, it's important to understand how they might affect real-world performance.

“For example, this could be relevant for training surgeons, pilots or even everyday skills like driving. Knowing the limitations and effects of VR and AR helps ensure these technologies are used effectively and safely.”

The researchers will next be exploring how different types of VR and AR experiences, like those involving more complex or immersive scenarios, affect real-world performance. They’re also interested in seeing how training duration and individual differences such as prior experience with these technologies, influence adaptation and readjustment.

“This research will help us better understand how to design VR and AR systems that minimize negative after-effects and maximize their potential for training and skill development,” Wang says.

Supermassive black hole mergers could be explained by dark matter: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 15:35:00 +0000

Supermassive black hole mergers could be explained by dark matter: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 08/06/2024 - 11:35

Cutline

A visualization of two supermassive black holes in orbit around each other (image by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Noble; simulation data, d'Ascoli et al. 2018)

Chris Sasaki

Topic

Department of Physics

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Space

Subheadline

A team of researchers that includes a U of T postdoc may have solved the "final parsec problem" of astrophysics

A team of astrophysicists that includes the ��Ƶ’s Gonzalo Alonso-Álvarez has shown that pairs of supermassive black holes can merge together into a single, larger black hole – a major breakthrough in addressing what is known as the "final parsec problem."

Gonzalo Alonso-Álvarez (supplied image)

The longstanding astrophysics problem refers to a discrepancy between the detection of gravitational signals permeating the universe – which astrophysicists previously hypothesized had emanated from millions of merging pairs of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) – and theoretical simulations which showed that the approach of SMBHs stalls when they’re roughly one parsec (about three light years) apart.

Not only did the final parsec problem conflict with the theory that merging SMBHs were the source of the gravitational wave background, it was also at odds with the theory that SMBHs – each billions of times more massive than our Sun – grow from the merger of less massive black holes.

The new research, published in Physical Review Letters, has shown that pairs of SMBHs can indeed break through the one-parsec barrier and merge into a single black hole. This is demonstrated by calculations showing that SMBHs continue to draw closer because of previously overlooked interactions with particles within the vast cloud of dark matter surrounding them.

“We show that including the previously overlooked effect of dark matter can help supermassive black holes overcome this final parsec of separation and coalesce,” says Alonso-Álvarez, a post-doctoral fellow in the department of physics at U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science and the department of physics and Trottier Space Institute at McGill University, who is first author on the paper. “Our calculations explain how that can occur, in contrast to what was previously thought.”

SMBHs are thought to lie in the centres of most galaxies. When two galaxies collide, the SMBHs fall into orbit around each other; as they revolve around each other, the gravitational pull of nearby stars tugs at them and slows them down, causing them to spiral inward toward a merger.

Previous merger models showed that when the SMBHs approached to within roughly a parsec, they begin to interact with the dark matter cloud or halo in which they are embedded. These models indicated that the gravity of spiraling SMBHs throws dark matter particles clear of the system.

The new model introduced by Alonso-Álvarez and co-authors James Cline, a professor at McGill University and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, and Caitlyn Dewar, a graduate student at McGill, reveals that dark matter particles interact with each other in such a way that they are not dispersed. The density of the dark matter halo remains high enough that interactions between the particles and the SMBHs continue to degrade the SMBH’s orbits – clearing a path to a merger.

“The possibility that dark matter particles interact with each other is an assumption that we made, an extra ingredient that not all dark matter models contain,” says Alonso-Álvarez. “Our argument is that only models with that ingredient can solve the final parsec problem.”

The background hum generated by these colossal cosmic collisions is made up of gravitational waves of much longer wavelength than those first detected in 2015 by astrophysicists operating the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Those gravitational waves were generated by the merger of two black holes, both some 30 times the mass of the Sun.

The background hum has been detected in recent years by scientists operating the Pulsar Timing Array. The array reveals gravitational waves by measuring minute variations in signals from pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit strong radio pulses.

In addition to providing insight into SBMH mergers and the gravitational wave background signal, the new result also provides a window into the nature of dark matter. “Our work is a new way to help us understand the particle nature of dark matter,” says Alonso-Álvarez. “We found that the evolution of black hole orbits is very sensitive to the microphysics of dark matter and that means we can use observations of supermassive black hole mergers to better understand these particles.”

For example, the researchers found that the interactions between dark matter particles they modeled also explains the shapes of galactic dark matter halos.

“We found that the final parsec problem can only be solved if dark matter particles interact at a rate that can alter the distribution of dark matter on galactic scales,” says Alonso-Álvarez.

“This was unexpected since the physical scales at which the processes occur are three or more orders of magnitude apart. That’s exciting.”

U of T Engineering student team wins international prize with sustainable wind turbine

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:44:46 +0000

U of T Engineering student team wins international prize with sustainable wind turbine

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 08/06/2024 - 09:44

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From left to right: UTWind team members Robert Zhao, Joeun Yook, Micheal Jing, Dhara Patel, Alexis Terefenko, Justin Ding, Andre Li and Alex Chen (photo by Niels Adema)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

Sustainability

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

It’s the UTWind team’s second victory at the International Small Wind Turbine Contest, following their win in 2022

A team of students from the ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have earned top spot in the International Small Wind Turbine Contest with a design that utilized components from recycled pop bottles and plant-fibre composites.

The competition, which is hosted annually at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen in the Netherlands, challenges student teams to design and build a small-scale wind turbine for deployment in sub-Saharan Africa. Teams are evaluated on the overall energy yield of their turbine, the sustainability of their design, the quality of their construction and the presentation they give to the judges.

The UTWind team's first-place finish saw them outcompete seven other teams from countries including Denmark, Poland, the Netherlands and Spain. This is the second time the team won the contest, following their debut performance in 2022.

Justin Ding, a second-year mechanical engineering student and incoming co-lead of UTWind's mechanical and manufacturing team, says the team made improvements to the pitch system for this year’s design and implemented more sustainable materials.

“For example, we used plant-based flax fibre composites to make the blades, which makes them lighter. The nose cone was made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate, or PET plastic, which is more sustainable than using new material,” Ding says.

“We gathered plastic pop bottles from around campus, including the student-run Hard Hat Café,” says third-year mechanical engineering student Elena Sloan, the other co-lead of the mechanical and manufacturing team. “We then cut these bottles into strips and extruded them through a heated nozzle to make 1.75 mm diameter filament, which we could use in our 3D printer.”

Once the turbine was complete, it was disassembled and packed into four bags of checked luggage for the flight to the Netherlands. The team’s first stop was Delft, where their turbine underwent testing in a wind tunnel at Delft University of Technology’s Open Jet Facility.

The testing showed that the team was able to harvest about 36 per cent of the available energy at a wind speed of 8.5 metres per second, a solid, but not outstanding result.

From there, the team members took a three-hour train ride across the country to Groningen, where they gave their technical presentation, followed by the awards ceremony.

“We didn’t really expect to win best overall, but we thought we had a decent chance at winning for the most sustainable design,” says Dhara Patel, incoming co-president of UTWind and a second-year electrical engineering student.

“When we found out we didn’t win that award, we were pretty devastated, but it was a complete shock to then find out that we won the whole competition – our mouths just hung open for a while.”

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A post shared by UTWind (@utwindclub)

Going forward, Patel says the team would like to try building a vertical-axis turbine in addition to their standard horizontal-axis version. “Vertical-axis turbines look really cool, and they are structurally simpler and have a lower profile than horizontal-axis ones,” she says.

“Only one other team has tried that. We’d like to take on that challenge, and ultimately put one on our own campus buildings to generate clean wind power.”

Patel was a high school student when UTWind won their first competition in 2022, and says reading about their success was one of the things that inspired her to study engineering at U of T. The team she eventually came to co-lead now includes more than 50 engineering students as well as some from the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Students are divided into five sub-teams: aerodynamics, mechanical and manufacturing, control systems, power systems and sustainability.

The team members say they’re energized by their win, and have big plans for next year.

“We’ve learned so many lessons – before, during and after the contest,” says Robert Zhao, UTWind's other incoming co-president and an undergraduate student in the department of physics.

“But our competitors have also learned those lessons, and there are more of them than ever before. We need to improve our winning design, making it more robust and more mature to better defend our title.”

Pharma companies sponsored over a million events for U.S. health professionals in a single year: Study

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:01:47 +0000

Pharma companies sponsored over a million events for U.S. health professionals in a single year: Study

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 07/18/2024 - 13:01

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(photo by fluxfoto/Getty Images)

Rebecca Biason

Topic

Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Subheadline

A new study from U of T’s Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing examines the scale of industry-sponsored events targeting health professionals

Research led by the ��Ƶ’s Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing is shedding light on the scale of pharmaceutical industry-sponsored events that target health professionals responsible for prescribing medications.

Promotional events attended by prescribers such as physicians and nurse practitioners are a key component of marketing campaigns for new drugs and devices. But there is little transparency around their scope and extent.

In a bid to increase transparency on industry-prescriber interactions, researchers led by Assistant Professor Quinn Grundy examined data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments, a public database of payments made by drug and medical device companies to medical professionals.

Their study, published in JAMA Health Forum, found that there were over 1.1 million industry-sponsored events in the U.S., one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical markets, in 2022 alone. The top 10 products – based on number of sponsored dinner events – were the focus of over 16,000 dinners sponsored by seven companies.

“Identifying over one million of these events in one year alone – and their tendency to be for specific products – should give us pause and indicate that we need to understand the prevalence of these events from a systems perspective, considering their impact on prescribing practices,” says Grundy, who is also the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Governance, Accountability, and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector.

Grundy notes that there is already a large body of evidence on the relationship between payments and physician prescribing outcomes. Receipt of industry payments, including low-value payments for food and beverage, is often associated with physicians prescribing higher quantities of promoted and higher-cost drugs, such as brand name drugs over generics.

The Open Payments database was established under the Affordable Care Act in 2012 in the hopes of creating greater transparency around the relationships between clinicians and the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

Using the database, researchers were able to examine records of payments from pharmaceutical and device companies to clinicians for food and beverage and to link these across matching variables to identify – and quantify – in-person sponsored events for specific products. Excluding conferences and virtual events, the numbers indicated that these industry-sponsored events were quite widespread, across various states.

What this shows, Grundy says, is that while individual health professionals may only attend a few of these events, pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring hundreds of them nationwide.

“When you think of the number of events and the number of health professionals attending these events, what emerges is a picture of a campaign that is able, at a national scale, to amplify perspectives about a promoted drug that are likely favourable to the sponsor,” says Grundy.

The study did not reveal a particular pattern in terms of the types of products that were more likely to be promoted using industry sponsored events. However, there was evidence that two of the top 10 products, both mental health-oriented drugs, had more events for nurse practitioners than physicians, indicating their importance as prescribers in the pharmaceutical market.

In 2021, the first data on industry payments to prescribing nurses was released in the U.S. Grundy says this was an important and positive step towards transparency (Canada lags behind in this regard: there is currently no data or mechanism that requires pharmaceutical or device companies to report payments to physicians or nurse practitioners).

This study, funded by the Greenwall Foundation’s Making a Difference Grants program, is part of a multi-phase project that aims to analyze the new data on industry payments to advanced practice nurses in the U.S.

Grundy says she hopes the research “sparks some conversations in professional circles about how to interact with industry in ways that are in the best interests of population health” – and leads to more research on best practices in prescribing.

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U of T welcomes federal budget's investments in research and innovation

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 18:39:56 +0000

U of T welcomes federal budget's investments in research and innovation

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 04/16/2024 - 14:39

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(photo by Matthew Dochstader/Paradox Images)

Topic

The ��Ƶ is welcoming measures in Tuesday’s federal budget that boost research programs and support a new generation of talent across Canada, strengthening the country’s innovation ecosystem and knowledge economy.

The spring 2024 budget, announced by Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, allocates more than $3 billion in investments in Canada’s research ecosystem over the next five years.

This includes increases to the tri-council funding agency budgets, additional support for master’s and PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, and more money for major research infrastructure projects – a clear recognition that universities are drivers of economic growth and can find solutions to the challenges facing Canada and the world.

“Today’s budget is a very significant and welcome recognition of the critical role the research ecosystem plays in driving Canada’s productivity and prosperity,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“It builds on this government’s earlier investments in research and innovation, and helps secure Canada’s global competitiveness for future generations.”

The budget’s key elements for the post-secondary sector include an increase of 30 per cent, across five years, in Canada’s three research funding agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

The budget also invests $825 million in support of master’s and PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, boosting the value of these scholarships and fellowships significantly, and adding a further 1,720 students or fellows each year.

“In the knowledge economy, the global market for ... ideas is highly competitive and we need to make sure talented people have the right incentives to do their groundbreaking research here in Canada,” the budget document states.

In addition, the budget lays out a plan for the creation of an advisory Council on Science and Innovation, which will be tasked with setting priorities and boosting the impact of federal investments in science and innovation. And it proposes the creation of a new capstone research funding organization to optimize the impact of the federally funded research councils.

The budget also earmarks $2.4 billion, previously announced, to consolidate Canada’s competitive edge in AI – a field where U of T researchers are playing a leading role.

The measures come as post-secondary institutions in Ontario grapple with a challenging financial environment and follows growing calls across Canada for reinvestment in research and innovation.

U of T is a member of the Coalition for Canadian Research, which has urged the federal government to increase support for research to enhance Canada’s competitiveness as a destination for top talent and accelerate Canadian researchers’ efforts in tackling pressing national and global challenges.

“Canada has many strengths in this new strategic race, including unparalleled access to talent, an increasingly successful commercialization pipeline from researchers to business, and a federal government focused on developing the industries of tomorrow,” Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, noted in a May 2023 column for The Hill Times.

In October, the coalition – whose members include post-secondary institutions as well as research hospitals, life sciences companies, charities, students and early-career researchers – released an open letter calling for “ambitious reinvestment” to support Canada’s research and innovation ecosystem amid an increasingly competitive global landscape and rising societal and economic challenges.

U of T astronomers discover first population of binary stripped stars

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 15:22:31 +0000

U of T astronomers discover first population of binary stripped stars

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 12/20/2023 - 10:22

Cutline

Artist's impression of a massive star stripping the hydrogen envelope of its companion star in a binary system (illustration by Navid Marvi, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science)

Michael Pereira

Topic

Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Space

Subheadline

New findings confirm the existence of hot helium stars long thought to be at the heart of hydrogen-poor supernovae and neutron star mergers

Astronomers at the ��Ƶ have discovered a population of massive stars that have been stripped of their outer hydrogen layer by companion stars.

For over a decade, scientists have theorized that approximately one in three massive stars are stripped of their hydrogen envelope in binary systems (systems where two stars are gravitationally bound to one another). Yet, until now, only one possible candidate had been identified.

The findings, published in Science, shed light on the hot helium stars that are believed to be the origins of hydrogen-poor core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers.

“If it turned out that these stars are rare, then our whole theoretical framework for all these different phenomena is wrong, with implications for supernovae, gravitational waves and the light from distant galaxies,” said Maria Drout, assistant professor in the David A. Dunlap department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the ��Ƶ and an associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“This finding shows these stars really do exist.”

It also opens up possibilities for more detailed research going forward. “For example, predictions for how many neutron star mergers we should see are dependent on the properties of these stars, such as how much material comes off of them in stellar winds," Drout says. "Now, for the first time, we’ll be able to measure that, whereas people have been extrapolating it before."

Assistant Professor Maria Drout with the Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory (photo by Tom Holoien/Maria Drout)

Drout and her colleagues propose that these newly discovered stars will eventually explode as hydrogen-poor supernovae. These star systems are also thought to be necessary to form neutron star mergers.

In fact, the researchers believe that a few objects in their current sample are stripped stars with neutron star or blackhole companions. These objects are at the stage immediately before they become double-neutron-star or neutron-star-plus-blackhole systems that could eventually merge.

“Many stars are part of a cosmic dance with a partner, orbiting each other in a binary system. They’re not solitary giants but part of dynamic duos, interacting and influencing each other throughout their lifetimes,” says Bethany Ludwig, a PhD student in the David A. Dunlap department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and third author on the paper. “Our work sheds light on these fascinating relationships, revealing a universe that is far more interconnected and active than we previously imagined.

“Just as humans are social beings, stars too, especially the massive ones, are rarely alone.”

(Left to right): Bethany Ludwig, Anna O’Grady, Maria Drout and Ylva Götberg (all authors on the paper) at the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile (photo by Ylva Götberg)

As stars evolve and expand to become red giants, the hydrogen at the outer edges of one can be stripped by the gravitational pull of its companion star – leaving a very hot helium core exposed. The process can take tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Stripped stars are difficult to find because much of the light they emit is outside of the visible light spectrum and can be obstructed by dust in the universe or outshone by their companion stars.

Drout and her collaborators began their search in 2016. Having studied hydrogen-poor supernovae during her PhD, Drout set out to find the stripped stars thought to be at the heart of these supernovae during a NASA Hubble postdoctoral fellowship at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The researchers, who include co-author Ylva Götberg, assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, later designed a survey to look in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum where extremely hot stars emit most of their light. Using data from the Swift Ultra-Violet/Optical Telescope, they collected brightness data for millions of stars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two of the closest galaxies to Earth.

Ludwig, who developed the first wide-field UV catalogue of the Magellanic Clouds, used UV photometry to detect systems with unusual UV emissions – signaling the possible presence of a stripped star.

The researchers used this ultraviolet dataset of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two closest major galaxies to our own, to identify the candidate systems (image by NASA/Swift/S. Immler (Goddard) and M. Siegel (Penn State)

The team carried out a pilot study of 25 objects, obtaining optical spectroscopy with the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory between 2018 and 2022, and demonstrated that the stars were hot, small, hydrogen-poor, and in binary systems – all consistent with their model predictions.

Currently, the researchers are continuing to study the stars identified in the paper and expanding their search to find more. They will be looking both within our own Milky Way and nearby galaxies with approved programs on the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Telescope, the Magellan Telescopes and the Anglo-Australian Telescope.

As part of this publication, all theoretical models and data used to identify these stars have been made public and available to other scientists.

Collaborating institutions include the ��Ƶ, the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and Steward Observatory.

Researcher’s startup receives federal support to make solar-energy-control windows

siddiq22 — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 21:15:00 +0000

Researcher’s startup receives federal support to make solar-energy-control windows

siddiq22 Thu, 03/16/2023 - 17:15

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Right to left: U of T researcher Nazir Kherani co-founder of 3E Nano Inc., with chairman and cofounder Dan Shea, CEO Steve Ferrero and MP Yvan Baker after the presentation of $5 million in federal funding for the startup (photo by Shaun Mitchell)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Advanced Manufacturing

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Solar

Startups

Sustainability

U of T researcher Nazir Kherani and his collaborators at the startup 3E Nano Inc have one goal: to design the perfect window.

That includes a nano-thin window coating that can more than double the thermal protection for residential and commercial windows. That technology is now on its way to commercialization, thanks in part to $5 million in new federal funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada.

“Windows are the weakest energy link in any building,” says Kherani, a professor in the department of material science and engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering who is jointly appointed to the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering.

“Think of heat escaping in the winter months and heat entering the cool, ventilated space during the summer months," says Kherani, who co-founded 3E Nano in 2015.

Kherani explains that a window’s resistance to heat flow is measured by the R-value, which increases based on its ability to prevent heat from flowing into or escaping from a building. Currently, 3E Nano windows – in prototype as well as in pre-alpha deployment – rate R8 and higher.

"This compares remarkably to an average window whose R-value lies in a range from R1 of a single pane, to R3, a dual pane.”

How was 3E Nano able to achieve this breakthrough? In its simplest configuration, the 3E Nano coating comprises a nano-thin metallic film sandwiched between two sapphire-like nano-thin films. This three-layered stack is opaque to certain wavelengths of light, but not others. As a result, the coating can control the flow of light entering and leaving the building over three parts of the solar spectrum: the visible, the near-frequency infrared and the mid-frequency infrared.

Both near-infrared light – which accounts for almost half of the sun’s total energy – and mid-infrared light can be reflected away. This keeps the sun’s heat from penetrating indoors, but it also keeps room heat inside the building from escaping through the windows, achieving low emissivity. At the same time, natural visible light is allowed through the window to the interior, reducing the need for artificial interior lighting.

Kherani believes 3E Nano’s coating is poised to become a mainstream product. He credits the industry experience of 3E Nano’s team with a critical pivot in the research.

“Combining earth-abundant aluminum and nitrogen results in a coating material similar to sapphire in its optical and structural properties,” he says. “The stability and multi-functional character of the sapphire-like structure is suited to low-cost, high-volume manufacturing.”

The coating is applied by sputter deposition – a process which hurls argon atoms into an aluminum target in a vacuum system, knocking the aluminum atoms like billiard balls into a lightweight polymer substrate.

After adding nitrogen gas, the resulting chemical reaction forms a colourless film only tens of nanometres thick (approximately one-thousandth of the thickness of a hair strand). This combined with a nano-thin silver layer results in a robust coating that can be tuned for optical and electrical properties.

Kherani and his team envision other aspects of the perfect window as integrated functionalities ranging from metamaterial structuring to dynamic systems that maintain ideal temperatures and daylighting (the practice of placing windows so that sunlight can provide effective internal lighting) within buildings.

“In the lab, we’ve created a metamaterial that retains low emissive and solar-control properties but has high transparency in the gigahertz range critical for communication – nature-inspired with near-invisible hexagonal honeycomb patterns,” Kherani says.

“Professor Kherani has his eye on sustainability solutions that remain scalable,” says Professor Deepa Kundur, chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering. “His startup 3E Nano is a shining example of how industry can shape and direct research, and he’s given 3E Nano every chance at a positive impact in the green marketplace.”

Kundur also points out that it's because of researchers like Kherani that U of T was recently named a top-10 research institution for global innovation.

Kherani is encouraged by 3ENano's progress and optimistic about the company’s ability to help transform the building sector, which ranks a close second to transportation in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

“Although the shortest distance from point A to point B is a straight line, finding that straight line is not a simple matter," he notes. "On the other hand, we are in a promising place today, and we can clearly see where we need to be.”

Can restricting blood flow to athletes' limbs while training boost performance? U of T researchers investigate

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 17:58:12 +0000

Can restricting blood flow to athletes' limbs while training boost performance? U of T researchers investigate

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 12/15/2022 - 12:58

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Liam O'Brien, left, works with study participant to see if restricting blood flow to the arms can boost athlete performance (photo by Ira Jacobs)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Our Community

Sport

Ischemic preconditioning (IPC), a technique used to prepare an organ or tissue for a lack of blood or oxygen supply, was originally developed for use in clinical settings where there is an expected lack of blood and oxygen supply, for example during surgery or after an adverse event like a heart attack.

But could it be used to enhance athletic performance?

“IPC has been shown to have a protective effect on the body’s tissues to subsequent ischemic episodes – events where there is inadequate blood supply and, therefore, oxygen supply to a tissue or organ – that would typically cause cellular damage,” says Liam O’Brien, a first year PhD student at the ��Ƶ Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE).

“So, when exercise researchers caught wind of it, they theorized it may be useful for enhancing exercise performance, seeing how our capacity to exercise is limited in part by the inability to deliver enough oxygen to the working muscles.”

The technique involves inflating blood pressure cuffs around one or multiple limbs at pressures that completely stop the flow of blood into or out of the limbs. The cuffs remain inflated for a brief period of about five minutes before being released for about five minutes, allowing for normal blood flow to resume through the limb. The process is repeated three to four times.

Researchers have speculated that if IPC improves the muscle’s ability to tolerate lack of oxygen supply, then perhaps this feature could be beneficial for prolonging exercise performance.

“Several studies have shown IPC to improve exercise performance, but there is little evidence as to why,” says O’Brien, who explored the question in his master’s thesis. “I wanted to fill in some of the gaps.”

While most of the studies had measured the effects of IPC on lower body exercises such as running or cycling, O’Brien was interested in investigating the effects of IPC on arm cycling exercise. He was also curious to see whether it might be useful for supramaximal intensity exercise – where the participants exercise as hard as they possibly can for the entirety of the test as opposed to pacing themselves.

“I theorized that if IPC works for upper body exercise, it may be useful for unique populations such as para-athletes or paddlers to help enhance their performance,” he says. “I was also interested in whether IPC was useful for supramaximal intensity exercise as most of the studies had investigated IPC during endurance exercises.”

O'Brien also wanted to investigate whether IPC works due to the placebo effect, a phenomenon whereby a treatment works due to the psychological expectations that it will work, as some researchers have speculated.

Working under the supervision of Professor Ira Jacobs, O’Brien recruited 18 athletic participants who completed three 45-second-long sprints using an arm cycle ergometer on separate visits to the lab. The first sprint served as a control trial, where the participants did not receive the IPC treatment, and instead lay passively for 30 minutes before exercise. During the other two visits, the participants completed their sprint after receiving either IPC (five minutes applied to both arms four times) or the placebo treatment. The placebo treatment consisted of the same protocol as the IPC trial, only at a low cuff pressure that did not interfere with their blood flow. The participants were told that the placebo treatment was also expected to enhance their performance through a similar mechanism to the high pressure treatment despite there being no actual benefit.

“We found that the average power outputs generated by the participants in our study were significantly higher after both the IPC and placebo treatments compared to the control trial,” says O’Brien. “However, the power outputs were not different between IPC and the placebo condition.”

While this result can be seen as an indication that IPC is in fact a placebo effect, O’Brien believes it is more likely that the changes in performance were due to the order that the participants completed the trials.

“Because the arm ergometer exercise was foreign to our participants, and the participants completed the control trial first, we believe that the second and third sprints were improved due to a learning effect rather than a performance enhancing effect of the IPC or placebo conditions,” he says. “This was supported through our statistical analyses as well as our lack of evidence of changes in the physiological variables such as oxygen consumption, heart rate, muscle blood flow or blood chemistry.”

While the study did not find clear evidence of a performance enhancing effect of IPC, these findings help to add information on the growing research area of ischemic preconditioning and exercise performance, says O’Brien.

“Research in this area has been active for over a decade, however much is still unknown about how IPC works in relation to exercise,” he says. “Our study is a small but important contribution toward building an improved understanding of the nuances of how IPC influences exercise performance.

“In the end, we hope to help illuminate the effects that this treatment has on exercise to help support athletes of all capabilities to achieve their full potential.”

A night of big ideas: Celebrating 50 years of the Connaught Fund at U of T

mattimar — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 19:15:26 +0000

A night of big ideas: Celebrating 50 years of the Connaught Fund at U of T

mattimar Mon, 12/12/2022 - 14:15

Cutline

From left: Renée Hložek, Maydianne Andrade and Ronald Deibert discuss the importance of university research and the next big ideas to influence our society, with journalist Mary Ito (all photos by Polina Teif)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Department of Biological Sciences

Leah Cowen

Vice-president of Research and Innovation and Strategic Initiatives

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Citizen Lab

Connaught Fund

Political Science

President Meric Gertler

U of T Scarborough

The dangers of international digital espionage. The earliest moments of the universe. How scientists can also be activists and changemakers.

These were some of the topics ��Ƶ researchers delved into at a recent event celebrating the impact of the Connaught Fund, which has supported research excellence and innovation across the university for 50 years.

Members of the community gathered at Convocation Hall to hear Ronald Deibert, Renée Hložek and Maydianne Andrade discuss the impact of their research and the role of university researchers in society. A professor in the department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Deibert is also director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Hložek is a cosmologist and associate professor at the Dunlap Institute and the David A. Dunlap Department for Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Andrade, a University Professor in the department of biological sciences at U of T Scarborough and an expert on the black widow spider, is a leading advocate for equity and inclusion.

Over the years, the Connaught Fund has supported the pathbreaking work of all three researchers – part of what President Meric Gertler called the fund’s “extraordinary legacy” in his opening remarks.

“Not only does the Connaught Fund support research excellence from diverse disciplines and across different career stages it also supports inclusive excellence,” he said.

President Gertler said the Connaught Indigenous Funding Stream, which supports Indigenous community-driven research at U of T, and the Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers, which will strengthen the research capacity of U of T’s Black academics, are two initiatives that deepen the university’s commitment to education and discovery.

Created in 1972 from the sale of the Connaught Laboratories, the Connaught Fund has since given out more than $179 million to researchers across myriad disciplines – and is Canada’s largest internal university research funding program.

“The program supports global challenges, community partnerships and offers dedicated funding streams to help increase the research impact of PhD students, Black and Indigenous researchers and U of T-led startup companies,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

Andrade, renowned for her research on sexual selection, mating behaviour and the biology and ecology of black widow spiders, focused her presentation on activism in science and how she has leveraged her platform to create change.

“Scientists should stay in their lane – I’ve heard this a lot,” she said. “Our job is to create solutions and knowledge that other people who understand policy will then apply. But of course, advising solutions is not the same as solving a problem.”

As the co-founder and president of the Canadian Black Scientists Network and founder and co-chair of the Toronto Initiative for Diversity and Excellence, Andrade has worked to increase inclusion within institutions across Canada through education and advocacy.

Deibert, meanwhile, has contributed to the publication of more than 120 reports covering research on cyber espionage, commercial spyware, internet censorship and human rights. His talk explored Citizen Lab’s research into targeted digital espionage against civil society, outlining major cases that have received international attention and have prompted scandals in countries such as Greece, Spain and Mexico.

In her work, Hložek uses statistical methods and precise observations to answer cosmic questions.

“I’m interested in what the universe is made of, how it’s changing over time and then eventually how it’s going to end,” she said.

Hložek presented some of the observations used to put together the puzzle pieces of the universe and emphasized the importance of telescopes in her research.

The presentations were followed by a roundtable discussion hosted by broadcast journalist Mary Ito. Audience members had a chance to ask questions and the researchers discussed the importance of university research and the next big ideas to influence our society.

“I’m really encouraged by the growth of the field which I’m a part of,” said Deibert. “We are seeing a healthy community worldwide of people who are involved in this type of digital accountability work. The hope I have is that the field continues to grow.”

“I think it’s a responsibility of the universities to do this type of public accountability research.”

‘That object has a story’: Alexandra Gillespie on CBC’s Metro Morning

lanthierj — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 20:37:23 +0000

‘That object has a story’: Alexandra Gillespie on CBC’s Metro Morning

lanthierj Fri, 12/09/2022 - 15:37

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Professor Alexandra Gillespie heads the Old Books New Science Lab at ��Ƶ Mississauga (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic