UofT Team races skyward
On August 7, U of T’s Blue Sky Solar Racing Team presented their sixth-generation solar racing car. The team is travelling to Australia in October to participate in the World Solar Challenge, tasked with building the world’s fastest and safest solar racing car. The car’s average speed is 80 km/h but can reach 140 km/h, which will help as they face over 20 countries on the 3000km race from Darwin to Adelaide.
PhD student crowdsources Fishbook
Devin Bloom never expected to be checking his Facebook feed while researching the fish species of Guyana’s Cuyuni River.
However, Bloom, a full-time researcher and PhD candidate at UTSC, found social media to be his most valuable tool when it came to identifying the river’s 5,000 different fish species.
The purpose of the survey, led by Dr. Brian Sidlauskas, assistant professor of fisheries at Oregon State University, was to inventory fish species for the Guyanese government. The team collected more samples than they had time to identify, and so Bloom consulted Facebook. His network of friends, many of whom hold PhDs in ichthyology, tagged the photos he uploaded, and in less than 24 hours, 90 percent of the fish were identified.
Fish in the area are endangered by ecological degradation from gold mining operations, where increasing sedimentation and the release of elemental mercury is directly affecting food chains.
In his results, Bloom says that the diversity and abundance were discouragingly low, which “isn’t good news for the region.”
With files from UTSC communications and the Toronto Star
U of T offers cheap plastic surgery
Patients needing cosmetic procedures can get plastic surgery at a discounted rate through the Academic Training Program at U of T’s Division of Plastic Surgery. The division operates out of the 199 Avenue Road hospital, in the office of Dr. Tom Bell, an internationally recognized Canadian cosmetic surgeon.
The program was founded in 1986 as an apprenticeship program for medical doctors in their final year of plastic surgery residency. The program’s mandate is “to provide training in plastic surgery, especially cosmetic surgery, and to provide affordable aesthetic surgery to the community.” It was modelled after a similar program at the University of Toronto’s School of Dentistry.
Dr. Bell and his colleagues oversee ATP residents on a compulsory four-month rotation as a pre-requisite for their final exams at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, the governing body that issue surgical certificates. They also mentor senior fellows who want to extend their training beyond the requisite residency.
Discounts of up to 70 per cent on the prices of procedures act as an incentive for patients to have plastic surgery done by apprentices.
With files from The Globe and Mail
U of T team takes a flush at the loo
Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, an international initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has universities worldwide looking to come up with sustainable sanitation solutions for developing countries across the globe. A U of T faculty has made the top eight.
The challenge calls for designing an off-the-grid toilet that runs independently of public utilities such as electricity, sewage systems, and running water. The toilet must be self-contained, with human waste going in and clean water coming out. A cost limit of five U.S. cents per user per day must be also met.
The Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at U of T was awarded over $400,000 as one of the eight schools chosen to participate in the initiative. Chemistry professor Yu-Ling Cheng, who will be leading the project, hopes to develop a prototype and conduct field tests in Bangladesh within the next year to ensure her team’s ideas are workable.
Currently, there are 2.6 billion people globally who do not have access to affordable sanitation, resulting in the spread of water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
Ex-prof: “house negro” not a racist term
Fired University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt is being sued for $1 million by a former colleague for “offensive, racist, and defamatory” statements on his blog, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
Rancourt had described law professor Joanne St. Lewis’ relationship with university president Allan Rock as that of a “house negro.”
St. Lewis, who is black, filed a statement of claim, saying the words implied she “acted in a servile manner toward Allan Rock (a white male) and the University of Ottawa,” that she “supports racism,” and “lacks integrity.”
Rancourt told Carleton University student paper The Charlatan that the term’s meaning is “accepted by scholars and historians.”
“I am not in any way attacking [St. Louis’] character. I’m making a statement about a specific report she wrote,” he said, alleging that the legal action is intended to punish, intimidate and silence him.
Rancourt was fired from the university’s physics department in 2009 after a number of controversies.
