A University of Alberta clinical trial will screen 1,500 people with point-of-care dual HIV and syphilis test kits in an effort to combat the syphilis outbreak in Edmonton and northern Alberta. Alberta Health Services declared the outbreak last year after 12 stillborn births and 1,753 newly diagnosed cases of syphilis, 68 per cent of them in the Edmonton area.…
Ensuring physical accessibility is only the beginning of creating places where people can ‘be who they are,’ says design consultant and PhD student Lara Pinchbeck
When designing spaces for people living with disabilities, there’s more to consider than whether they’re physically accessible. A greater challenge is making sure the environments we work and live in accommodate ‘invisible’ or ‘hidden’ disabilities – a long list of conditions that range from hearing impairment to autism to anxiety disorders. Understanding the space requirements of…
Guiding researchers and scientists to commercialize their intellectual property
A little more than 20 years ago, MIT developed a mentorship program that challenged notions about competition in the world of business. They called on local titans of business to volunteer to guide the school’s researchers and scientists in commercializing their intellectual property. Within a decade, this in-house service was drawing so much praise from schools around…
Discovery may help explain cases of sudden infant death syndrome
At the moment of birth, the essential role of delivering life-saving oxygen to the baby switches from mom and her placenta to the baby’s lungs and brain. That the timing of this happens so precisely is miraculous, but how it happens remains largely a mystery. New research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, in…
Archeologist believes unearthing evidence is the best way to change public perceptions – and public policy
Maggie Spivey-Faulkner lives to shatter misconceptions of Indigenous people with the power of science. “As an undergrad, I saw that a lot of American public policy was built on incorrect ideas of native cultures,” said the American archeologist, who joined the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Arts this fall after a stint as a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of…
When RunWithIt Synthetics set out to apply synthetic modelling to predict the impact future disruptions might have on energy grids – such as uptake in electric vehicles, greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, energy efficiency, better battery storage, cybersecurity threats, photovoltaics and even disasters – they turned to the University of Alberta. More specifically, they turned to electrical…
Donated lungs viable for up to six times longer than storing them in ice before transplant
A University of Alberta-led trial has demonstrated the potential of the Ex-Vivo Organ Support System (EVOSS) device to increase life-saving opportunities for patients waiting for a lung transplant. The study, published in Nature Communications, confirmed the efficacy of the device in using negative pressure ventilation ex situ lung perfusion (NPV-ESLP) to assess and reclaim donor lungs that were…
Findings hoped to lead to new biomarker to identify patients at higher risk
An impaired count of natural killer (NK) immune cells and reduced ability to destroy infected cells are key characteristics of severe COVID-19 infection, according to newly published research in the journal Blood Advances. A team of researchers at the University of Alberta and University of Calgary followed 12 patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms at hospitals in Edmonton. They…
More than one-third of kids who have COVID-19 are asymptomatic, according to a study that suggests youngsters diagnosed with the disease may represent just a fraction of those infected. “The concern from a public health perspective is that there is probably a lot of COVID-19 circulating in the community that people don’t even realize,” said Finlay…
Use of less hazardous materials, personal protective equipment and regular health checkups recommended
Construction workers who work with hazardous insulation materials are much more likely to be affected by repeated chest infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to new research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The study followed 990 insulators over six years. Participants underwent regular pulmonary function tests and chest radiography…