Rebecca Tyson, associate professor of mathematical biology.

Research links polarization, echo chambers to the spread of disease

Understanding how disease is passed from one individual to another has long been key to protecting populations from diseases like COVID-19. But new research from UBC’s Okanagan campus suggests that polarized opinions and apathy towards taking action can move through society like a virus and can seriously endanger efforts to contain a pandemic.

Rebecca Tyson is an associate professor of mathematical biology at UBC Okanagan and study lead author. She says that opinions and behaviours—like engaging in frequent hand washing, avoiding physical contact, or taking the threat of a pandemic seriously—can themselves spread throughout society and play an important role in how disease is transmitted during an epidemic.

“While we didn’t have COVID-19 specifically in mind when we conducted our research, we did try to imagine an epidemic that didn’t have a vaccine and that was best prevented by hand washing and other relatively simple actions,” says Tyson. “Behaviours like these can have extremes on either end of the spectrum, from denying the problem and doing nothing to completely isolating oneself.”

Using a mathematical model for both the spread of opinion—or opinion dynamics—and the spread of disease, she and her team were interested in how the presence, distribution and transmission of extreme behaviours can influence the epidemiology of a pandemic. They were particularly interested in how quickly a pandemic can take hold, the infection peak, the final number of those infected and the risk of a second peak.

“Our results show that opinion dynamics have a profound effect on the progression of disease in a population,” says Tyson. “In particular, the state of public opinion at the onset of a pandemic can have enormous influence—either dramatically reducing the fraction of the population that will be infected and the peak epidemic size, or making the epidemic worse than it would be otherwise.”

Tyson points to Hong Kong as an illustrative case of a population that was quick to adopt physical distance rules and were highly compliant with government regulations to eliminate spread, noting that COVID-19 is largely under control there. She adds that other countries, where compliance with government regulations was lower or slower, are having a much harder time.

While she’s quick to point out that her research is focused on mathematical models, she adds that the current COVID-19 outbreak is already showing some of the same outcomes she predicted in her models.

“Our models show that when faith in opinion influencers, like public health officials, is high, extreme preventative behaviours like quarantine and social distancing spread quickly through the population and the pandemic slows,” says Tyson. “This is exactly what we’re seeing in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.”

On the other hand, Tyson says that populations that are politically polarized can see the disease spread much more quickly. Extreme behaviours, like disbelief in the problem, are amplified through influencer ‘echo chambers,’ which include mainstream or social media, creating pockets where the disease can spread more quickly.

“I believe this is part of the issue in the United States, where faith in government and public health officials is perhaps weaker than it is elsewhere and where there has been mixed messaging from different levels of government,” Tyson adds.

Looking to the future, she says her model shows that sustained and extreme physical distancing and hygiene behaviours are necessary to keep a highly-infectious disease at bay.

While the research provides a useful model for explaining the evolution of a pandemic, Tyson says that there are limitations.

“We assume things like a well-mixed population and we’re simplifying very complex human behaviour,” she says. “But there are definitely lessons in how opinion can shape the course of a pandemic and how we can leverage media and influencers to help keep public opinion from making a difficult problem worse.”

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in 2005 in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose territory the campus resides. As part of UBC—ranked among the world’s top 20 public universities—the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

New role will create clean technologies for municipal wastewater treatment

UBC Okanagan announced today that Engineering Professor Cigdem Eskicioglu has been named the Senior Industrial Research Chair (IRC) in advanced resource recovery from wastewater.

The IRC role, awarded in partnership with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Metro Vancouver, will focus on developing the next generation wastewater sludge treatment technologies that recover energy and resources from what we pour down the drain.

“Dr. Eskicioglu is an internationally-recognized researcher in the area of waste reduction and resource recovery. Her use of innovative bioreactor technologies has advanced the field considerably,” says Phil Barker, vice-principal and associate vice-president, research and innovation at UBC Okanagan. “Her research is making wastewater treatment cheaper, safer, cleaner and more sustainable and is likely to have a significant impact for cities across the globe.”

Eskicioglu leads the Bioreactor Technology Group on UBC’s Okanagan campus where she develops treatment systems that produce cleaner wastewater byproducts and that repurpose those byproducts for sustainable uses, such as the production of bioenergy. Her group also develops technologies that minimize human-produced toxic chemicals, like pharmaceuticals, personal care products and pesticides, to reduce risks of treated wastewater sludge use in agriculture.

“NSERC’s research partnerships support collaborations that allow new scientific evidence to be created which economically, socially or environmentally benefits Canada and Canadians,” says Marc Fortin, NSERC vice-president, research partnerships. “This chair in collaboration with Metro Vancouver will have a significant impact on adopting new technologies by municipalities across the country, and will potentially create a strong ecosystem of innovation in wastewater treatment in Canada."

Metro Vancouver began collaborating with Eskicioglu in 2013 after a Canada-wide search to identify top researchers studying more efficient ways to remove excess ammonia from treated wastewater. The success of the initial partnership led to additional research collaboration that has already resulted in a provisional patent on an advanced bioreactor concept to boost renewable natural gas production.

“Dr. Eskicioglu is a leader in bioreactor technologies and has a strong record of successfully completing research projects for Metro Vancouver. We are thrilled that this Industrial Research Chair expands into thermal-chemical reactors that promise even greater resource recovery opportunities,” explains Paul Kadota, Metro Vancouver’s program manager of collaborative innovations.

The IRC funding will lead to laboratory testing and pilot programs to help evaluate emerging wastewater sludge conversion processes. These research findings will be considered by Metro Vancouver as they invest billions in capital infrastructure over the next decade to upgrade the region’s wastewater treatment facilities.

“I’m thrilled to step into this new role and further the potential of wastewater treatment and resource recovery technologies,” says Eskicioglu. “My research will help inform and improve Metro Vancouver’s treatment plant upgrades and provide valuable lessons to municipalities with similar challenges across Canada and around the world.”

UBC Okanagan Engineering Professor Cigdem Eskicioglu has been named the Senior Industrial Research Chair (IRC) in advanced resource recovery from wastewater.

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in 2005 in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose territory the campus resides. As part of UBC—ranked among the world’s top 20 public universities—the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

UBC Okanagan researcher argues against relying only on charismatic species the like grizzly bear for gauging habitat health.

Menagerie of several species to monitor habitat health offers better conservation outcomes

With habitat loss threatening the extinction of an ever-growing number of species around the world, many wildlife advocates and conservation professionals rely on the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’—monitoring and protecting a single representative species—to maintain healthy wildlife biodiversity.

But new research from UBC’s Okanagan campus suggests that habitats are better served if conservation efforts focus on a collection of species rather than a single ‘canary.’

“Efforts around the world are going into countering a decline in biodiversity,” says Adam Ford, study author and Canada Research Chair in Wildlife Restoration Ecology at UBC Okanagan. “While we would love to be able to protect all habitats for all species, organizations tend to focus their efforts on a few species and not everyone shares the same priorities.”

That, he says, is where the idea of surrogate species—or the canary in the coal mine—comes into play. But it’s not without its drawbacks.

“The problem with surrogate species is that people rarely agree on which species that should be,” says Ford. “And there is a tendency to favour charismatic species like grizzly bears and wolves, over lesser-known but equally-important species. These preferences are deeply rooted in cultural norms.”

To address that imbalance in selecting surrogate species, Ford and his team began looking at how to group species together to present a more objective and representative sample of the habitats that need protecting.

By combing through a public dataset of over 1,000 species and 64 habitats in British Columbia, they were able to compare the surrogacy value of each species—a numerical score based on the association of two species through their use of shared habitats.

They found that a mixture of five to 10 game and non-game species offered the best value as surrogates for biodiversity conservation.

“We discovered what we called an ‘all-star’ team of species for each of the province’s nine wildlife management units, as well as an all-star team for the province as a whole,” says Sarah Falconer, graduate student at Laurentian University and study co-author. “Our findings suggest that if we commit to preserving these collections of species rather than just the charismatic megafauna, we’re likely to achieve much better conservation outcomes.”

Ford is quick to point out that the mixture of game and non-game species in their all-star teams mean that seemingly disparate groups, ranging from hunters to bird-watchers to hikers, have a vested interest in working together to protect each of their species for the benefit of all.

“Perhaps we should not be focusing on figuring out which species is the best conservation surrogate, but which groups of species bring the most people together to protect the most biodiversity,” he says.

The study was published recently in the Canadian Journal of Zoology with funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canada Research Chairs program.

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in 2005 in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose territory the campus resides. As part of UBC—ranked among the world’s top 20 public universities—the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

When wine grapes absorb compounds from smoke, the grapes react by coating the compounds in sugar using their enzymes.

A common agricultural spray may be the key to preventing smoky flavour

It’s a problem plaguing grape-growers worldwide—in an ever-changing climate, how can they protect their crops from the undesirable effects of wildfire smoke exposure.

A recent study by a team of UBC Okanagan researchers has led to the development of a preventative strategy for protecting grapes from volatile phenols—flavoured compounds present in smoke that may be absorbed into ripening grapes and subsequently impact wine flavour.

“It’s definitely one of, if not the, biggest concern wine-making communities are facing today,” says Wesley Zandberg, assistant professor in chemistry at UBC Okanagan and study author.

“When you look at the catastrophic wildfire seasons California and British Columbia have experienced in recent years, and the season Australia is experiencing now, I don’t think a solution can come quickly enough,” he says. “Winemakers are under a lot of pressure to find a way to protect their crops.”

Zandberg and his team tested multiple substances and found that applying an agricultural spray composed of phospholipids—typically used to prevent cracking in cherries—to wine grapes one week before exposing them to simulated forest fire smoke significantly reduced the levels of volatile phenols measured in smoke-exposed grapes at commercial maturity.

“The results are encouraging,” says Zandberg. “This strategy has shown potential in its ability to protect crops.”

According to Zandberg, when wine grapes absorb compounds from smoke, the grapes react by coating the compounds in sugar using their enzymes. This sugar coating masks the smoky odour and taste of volatile phenols until it’s released again by yeast during the fermentation process.

“Many grape-growers don’t have the means to pay to test their crops, so since smoke-taint can’t be reliably detected until grapes are fermented, producers have to wait weeks to know whether their plants are suitable or not,” explains Zandberg. “Meanwhile, costs and risks mount as their crops sit on the vine.”

Zandberg adds that smoke-tainted crops can have a more devastating effect for some wine producers than others.

“A lot of wineries in the Okanagan Valley only use local grapes, so they don’t have the option of purchasing grapes from Washington or Oregon, as they wouldn’t be considered local,” explains Zandberg. “When your whole business model is fermenting what you produce, you’re in big trouble if your grapes are tainted.”

For Zandberg, it’s the people and their livelihoods that keep him determined to find a solution.

“In 2003, the wildfires in Australia cost their wine industry $300 million dollars in lost revenue, and I imagine they’ll experience a similar loss this year, if not more,” he says.

“Our team has developed a strategy that’s proven to be successful, but there’s still a long way to go,” admits Zandberg. “Now, we need to work on replicating and refining these results to alleviate crop losses experienced globally by the wine industry.”

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in 2005 in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose territory the campus resides. As part of UBC—ranked among the world’s top 20 public universities—the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

UBCO researcher Jonathan Little suggests ketone supplement drink may help control blood sugar.

Ketone supplement may control glucose by mimicking some aspects of a ketogenic diet

With more people with diabetes and pre-diabetes looking for novel strategies to help control blood sugar, new research from UBC’s Okanagan campus suggests that ketone monoester drinks—a popular new food supplement—may help do exactly that.

“There has been a lot of excitement and interest in ketone drinks and supplements, which have really only been on the market and available to consumers for the last couple of years,” says Jonathan Little, associate professor at UBC Okanagan’s School of Health and Exercise Sciences and study lead author. “Because they’re so new, there’s very little research on how they can influence metabolism and we’re among the first to look at their use in non-athletes.”

Little says that Type 2 diabetes is a disease whereby the body is unable to control the level of sugar in the blood because defects in the functioning of a hormone called insulin.

“It’s a disease that’s becoming alarmingly common in Canada and approaching what many would consider epidemic levels,” he says. “While Type 2 diabetes can be controlled with medications or injectable insulin, many people are looking to options that don’t require taking pills every day or that are less invasive.”

Ketone supplements are proving fertile ground for research into Type 2 diabetes because, according to Little, ketones are the natural fuel source of the body when it’s in ketosis—the metabolic byproduct of consuming a low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet.

“There is mounting evidence that a low carbohydrate ketogenic diet is very effective in controlling blood sugar and even reversing Type 2 diabetes,” says Little. “We wanted to know what would happen if artificial ketones were given to those with obesity and at risk for Type 2 diabetes but who haven’t been dieting.”

To test the idea, Little and his team asked 15 people to consume a ketone drink after fasting overnight. After 30 minutes, they were then asked to drink a fluid containing 75 grams of sugar while blood samples were taken.

“It turns out that the ketone drink seemed to launch participants into a sort of pseudo-ketogenic state where they were better able to control their blood sugar levels with no changes to their insulin,” explains Little. “It demonstrates that these supplements may have real potential as a valuable tool for those with Type 2 diabetes.”

Little is quick to point out that ketone supplements are not a magic bullet in managing the disease.

“There are a number of problems that we still have to work out, including the fact that we still don’t know what the long-term effects of consuming ketones are,” he says. “And not to mention that the drink itself tastes absolutely terrible.”

“But for those that aren’t able to follow a strict and challenging ketogenic diet or for those that are looking for a new way to control blood sugars, this may be another strategy in helping to manage Type 2 diabetes.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition with funding from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

New course seeks to make the operating theatre safer and more efficient

UBC Okanagan student Hafsah Khan is immersed in an operating room at the Hospital for Special Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York where a spine surgery is currently underway; although she is not physically there. The fourth-year mechanical engineering student is wearing a virtual reality headset to observe the surgery as part of an innovative new clinical engineering course being offered by UBCO.

“Clinical engineering is a field few people have heard of but it’s one that is likely to impact them directly if ever they find themselves in an operating room,” explains Sabine Weyand, an instructor at UBC Okanagan’s School of Engineering. “Our goal as clinical engineers is to make an operation as safe and efficient as possible.”

Weyand compares surgery to a complex and well-choreographed dance with everything in its place and everyone with a role to play.

“Our job is to analyze every step of that dance, from the tools surgeons use to the lighting design to where people stand and how they interact,” she says. “It’s all dissected and analyzed to improve the mechanics of the procedure and, above all, patient care.”

During the course, three types of surgeries are viewed including a hip replacement, a robotically-assisted knee replacement and a transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion back surgery.

Weyand says local experts at the Interior Health Authority were key developing the course content and shaping the virtual reality labs.

“I wanted the experience to be as realistic as possible and to help students understand the real-world design challenges that they might encounter right here in the Okanagan,” she adds. “The clinical engineering course exposes students to clinical environments, a variety of diagnostic and treatment tools, as well as the complex human factors and regulatory requirements that accompany any surgical intervention.”

According to Khan, the reports are challenging because they require students to incorporate medical and anatomical vocabulary while understanding the procedure itself.

“It is definitely a big challenge, but fun to step outside of the traditional engineering lab environment and find ways to improve how these medical procedures are done.”

Interior Health also sees the value in providing UBC Okanagan engineering students with virtual reality experiences.

“These students, as future clinical engineers, need to have the latest information and technology at their fingertips,” says Aaron Miller, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Interior Health. “Virtual reality operating room observations are providing hands-on experiences to see how different healthcare providers work and provide direct patient care.”

He says that students that understand the needs of healthcare providers are better able to support healthcare teams and improve patient outcomes.

Meanwhile back in the lab, Khan adjusts her eyes after removing her virtual reality headset. She says the course has already made a lasting impression.

“After this course, I am way more interested in pursuing a career in biomedical engineering.”

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

UBC Okanagan engineer says not all body types are taken into account

As technology advances in the things we use every day, it’s generally accepted they also become safer. But according to one UBC engineer, that may not be true for a large portion of the population.

New research from UBC’s Okanagan campus has developed an innovative model to map the impact of trauma on a pregnant woman and her uterus if she were involved in an accident—with the hopes of making everything from airbags to seatbelts safer for all.

“I became an engineer because I firmly believe we have an incredible ability to make the world a safer and better place,” says Hadi Mohammadi, an assistant professor at the UBC Okanagan School of Engineering and lead author on the study. “But unfortunately a large portion of the world around us is designed and built excluding a group representing 50 per cent of the population—women.”

Motor vehicles, explains Mohammadi, are a prime example. He says that things like seatbelts, airbags and even the vibrations of the suspension are designed with the male body in mind, largely ignoring the physiology differences between men and women or women who are pregnant.

Hadi Mohammadi is an assistant professor at UBC’s School of Engineering.

“A pregnant woman’s body is under very unique stresses that absolutely must be taken into account when designing safety equipment—especially in something she’s going to be using every day, like a car or a bus,” says Mohammadi. “Our intention was to create a model of how different mechanical traumas, like those you’d see in a car accident, impact a woman’s uterus specifically.”

It’s an area that he says has very little research behind it.

“Medicine spends a lot of time seeking to keep fetuses healthy on the inside but we don’t know much on the impact of exterior traumas to maternal and fetal health,” he adds.

The model is the first of its kind to use CT-scan data—a tool to visualize the interior of the body in real-time—to map out and compare trauma on pregnant and non-pregnant abdomens. Mohammadi and his team were able to gauge the impact of different amounts of force and penetration into the abdominal area.

“We found that a pregnant women’s abdomen responds similarly to a non-pregnant abdomen during events involving less force, but the pregnant abdomen responds more rigidly when faced with greater impact,” he says. “This is an important factor in the risk of injury for both mother and fetus during a traumatic event like an airbag going off.”

Mohammadi hopes his model can help future engineers rethink how they design safety equipment and sees this kind of research as just the tip of the iceberg.

“While our research looked specifically at pregnant women, the reality is that humans come in all different shapes, sizes and with different abilities,” he says. “Thinking about the safety and other needs of everyone—no matter their height or weight—really needs to be part of engineering and design right from the beginning.”

The study was published last month in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering.

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

Brodie Sakakibara is an assistant professor with the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management based at UBC Okanagan.

Greater efforts to improve lifestyle identified as a solution

A lack of physical activity, a poor diet and too much stress are taking their toll on the health of Canadians, says a new UBC study.

Researchers from UBC’s Faculty of Medicine caution that too many Canadians live with a number of health issues that impact their ability to lead healthy lifestyles.

Brodie Sakakibara is an assistant professor with the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management based at UBC Okanagan. He, along with colleagues Adebimpe Obembe and Janice Eng from UBC's department of physical therapy, recently published a study examining how common it is for Canadians to have multiple—and serious—health conditions.

“Inactivity, poor diet and more than optimal amounts of stress combined with an aging population are resulting in increasing numbers of Canadians with cardiometabolic conditions, and thus increasing their risk of poor health,” says Sakakibara.

Stroke, heart disease and diabetes are three of the most prevalent chronic diseases worldwide, he says and they have a substantial social and economic burden. They are cardiometabolic diseases—affecting the heart and blood vessels—mostly caused by lifestyle behaviours and are the leading causes of health resource use, hospitalizations, morbidity and mortality in Canada.

Cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CM) is having a diagnosis of at least two of those conditions. Using data from a 2016 Canadian Community Health Survey with 689,300 respondents, the researchers investigated CM and its connection to physical activity, diet and stress.

The study reports that the number of Canadians with CM or at risk of CM is high, and an increasing onset of cardiometabolic conditions is associated with higher chances of physical inactivity and stress.

“We found that people with all three diseases had four times the chance of reporting zero minutes of physical activity per week than people with none of the conditions. And similarly, they had four times the chance of reporting high levels of stress,” says Sakakibara. “These lifestyle behaviours are clearly associated with bad or even dangerous health outcomes.”

The issue, he adds, is that healthcare management for people with multiple chronic diseases is traditionally based on disease-specific strategies often independent of one another—a person with diabetes is treated for that chronic illness and not others. This leads to fragmented care with multiple care providers and systems.

“Often most patients with multiple chronic conditions develop complications that are clinically complex and become unique healthcare challenges. These complexities are often poorly understood, which means these patients have unmet health care needs,” says Eng.

While getting more active, lowering stress and eating well won’t cure all ailments, Sakakibara says it would certainly be a step in the right direction. The study suggests the time has come for greater efforts to prevent CM in individuals at high risk (i.e., those with one cardiometabolic condition), as well as efforts to help people with CM better manage their health and well-being.

“Lifestyle behaviour modification is an important strategy for the management and prevention of future heart or stroke events,” he says. “Physical activity several times a week, combined with a healthier diet, can manage risk and complications, while at the same time helping to lower stress.”

This study, partially funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Michael Smith Foundation, was published recently in BMC Public Health.

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

Associate Professor of History Brigitte Le Normand is the academic director of UBCO's public humanities hub.

Researchers bring reasoning into scientific, often polarizing, issues

In an era when divisions in society seem more prevalent than ever, two UBC humanities professors are using the power of arts, history and philosophy to build bridges and address the world’s most pressing issues.

UBC is putting a spotlight on the human side of research through the creation of a public humanities hub on both the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses. Associate Professor Brigitte Le Normand, director of the Okanagan hub, says this initiative is designed to bring the university’s brightest thinkers from the humanities together to explore emerging public policy questions.

“We’re faced with a number of critical problems and we have a tendency to turn to scientists and engineers for the answer,” says Le Normand. “Technology certainly has a lot to contribute, but humanists can step in by asking how can we even frame the problems in the first place and how does that shape the solutions we develop.”

Le Normand, a history professor, says research from the Public Humanities Hub will be interdisciplinary, bridging connections in faculties across both campuses. While it supports UBC’s research culture it will also publicize and organize humanities research and amplify the work of humanists on the Okanagan campus.

Adding critical thinking and reasonable voices to those solutions is part of the humanities mandate, says Greg Garrard, a professor of environmental humanities at UBCO. There is a need for different voices when it comes to research and problem solving, he says. Sometimes adding a humanist voice to the conversation can help change hearts and minds on issues that can polarize society.

“We might turn to technology to solve our issues but it may be that technological solutions are not the best for addressing the problem,” says Garrard. “Perhaps the problem is bigger than that and you need to find an opening for other kinds of conversation. This is a great example of where humanists can step in and change the terms of the discussion.”

While there are specific pillars of interest the hub will focus on—medical ethics, the environment, digital humanities and public history—both Garrard and Le Normand cite several examples of everyday situations where humanities can play a significant role in scientific conversations and resolutions including medically assisted death, justice by social media and climate change.

“One of the biggest challenges of our day is the climate emergency,” she says. “It’s polarizing and that very polarization prevents us from addressing problems. If you can step around that inherent conflict, you can change the very terms of the conversation. Suddenly the doors open for a productive conversation that didn’t previously exist.”

Over the next year, the Okanagan public humanities hub will host a speaker series, inviting the public to learn from experts about a number of topics. There are also plans for a conference in July where the researchers will highlight some of the work taking place at UBC. More information about the hub can be found at: public-humanities.cms.ok.ubc.ca

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca

UBCO Associate Professor John-Tyler Binfet, whose research focusses on measuring kindness in schools, children and adolescents, practices what he preaches. Binfet poses with his new rescue dog Craig.

UBCO researcher seeks to understand the good things that people do

World Kindness Day takes place on November 13. For some, it’s a time to focus on and promote the power of positivity. For others, it’s a day to celebrate the thoughtful acts performed by friends, family, neighbours and strangers.

For UBC Okanagan researcher John-Tyler Binfet, a professor in the School of Education, recognizing and celebrating kindness happens throughout the year. For the last eight years, he has dedicated himself to researching how children and adolescents think about and enact kindness.

With World Kindness Day approaching, Binfet shares his research experiences and highlights the importance of nurturing pro-social behaviours in children and adolescents.

Binfet is currently working on a book for University of Toronto Press that will focus on the ways parents and educators can support traits like compassion and sympathy in children and adolescents. The book will be released in late 2020.

Why research kindness in schools?

Parents and educators typically have high expectations that children and adolescents are kind, but there is little research that shows how they are. The work I do sheds light on how children and adolescents define, demonstrate and receive kindness, especially within the context of schools.

I hope my work counterbalances the bullying literature and that it elevates the discussion of kindness.

What challenges did you face when you started your research?

Initially, there was no way to measure kindness in schools. So, the first foray into my research was to develop a scale. I worked with two UBC colleagues, Anne M. Gadermann, a specialist in the social determinants of health, and Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl, an applied developmental psychologist. Together we developed the School Kindness Scale which asked students to what extent their school and the people in it are kind based on a five-point scale.

After more than 3,000 interviews with Okanagan-based kindergarten to grade nine students, what have you learned?

Not all kindness is the same. According to children and adolescents there are different types, which include:

• Intentional, where you make a plan. For example, when you know a friend is sad and you decide to do something to cheer them up.
• Random, where the act is spontaneously performed or reactionary, like picking up a dropped book for someone.
• Quiet, where the thoughtful act doesn’t draw attention to the initiator. Like leaving change in the vending machine for the next student.

Being kind doesn’t necessarily come easily to all students, however, and there are some who need extra support to understand the concept. When asked, some students struggled with defining kindness and generating examples of what they could do to show it.

What was a highlight for you during your interviews?

I think one of my key takeaways was what I learned about how students see kindness in their teachers. When asked to describe a teacher being kind, overwhelmingly they will describe a teacher teaching—providing support to children to advance their learning. It wasn’t the big fieldtrips or guest speakers in the class that they identified, it was teachers showing they care about students through instruction.

How can we help children and adolescents cultivate kindness?

Ask yourself: ‘How am I kind? How do I show that I’m thoughtful, courteous or compassionate?’ Parents, educators and community members can all help children and adolescents develop strong social and emotional skills by modelling pro-social behaviour—basically, the type of behaviour they wish to see exhibited by others.

About UBC's Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world.

To find out more, visit: ok.ubc.ca