Monday, April 4, 2022

Register for early career researcher and faculty training on April 6

A message from the Office of Research.

You still have time to register for the upcoming webinar, “Planning your research trajectory: Strategies for success,” hosted by the Office of Research. This training is geared towards early career researchers (in the first three years of a tenure-track appointment) but open to any faculty member who would like to learn how to develop a dynamic research strategy. 

Please register to receive a link for the online event taking place this Wednesday from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. via MS Teams.

Volunteers needed for Spring Convocation

A message from Community Relations and Events.

Want to be part of the most exciting time on campus and grow your UWaterloo network?
Join the growing group of convocation volunteers who will bring this celebration to life.

With 18 ceremonies taking place from June 11 to 18, we need over 200 volunteers to make it a success.

Staff, faculty and students are encouraged to get involved, and managers are encouraged to promote this opportunity to their teams; there are many different roles and shifts available, providing new professional development opportunities and the chance to grow your network across campus. Training and meals are provided.

Want to learn more and sign up? Visit the convocation website for role descriptions and available shifts.

Stabilizing low blood sugar in infancy prevents long-term brain damage

This article was originally published in Waterloo News.

Low blood sugar in infancy is serious, but treatment can ward off long-term brain damage in infants, a new study has found.

The study from the University of Waterloo and the University of Auckland is the first research of its kind to declare stabilizing blood sugar levels in newborns with hypoglycemia prevents brain damage.

Low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycemia, occurs when the level of glucose in the blood is too low. Low blood sugar is very common, affecting more than one in six babies. As glucose is the main source of fuel for the brain and the body, untreated low blood sugar can cause adverse effects on a child’s neurodevelopment up to the age of 4.5 years old.

While it’s known that exposure to hypoglycemia alters the shape of the early developmental course, there has been a significant gap in our understanding of how hypoglycemia can alter a child’s development after early childhood. The team’s new study examined the long-term consequences of a child’s brain development in mid-childhood–nine to 10 years old–and found that there was no significant difference in academic outcomes for children exposed to hypoglycemia as newborns, as compared to their peers.

“Rich pre-school and school experiences may help a child’s brain to re-organize and improve their academic abilities up to the developmental milestones of their peers,” said Ben Thompson, a professor from the School of Optometry & Vision Science at Waterloo, CEO of the Centre for Eye and Vision Research in Hong Kong, and part of the team working on the groundbreaking research.

Following 480 children born at risk of neonatal hypoglycemia, researchers assessed each child at aged nine to 10 in five key areas: academic achievement, executive function, visual-motor function, psychosocial adaptation, and general health. All child participants were involved in previous studies, providing researchers with information on their neuro-development outcomes at two and 4.5 years old.

The research team says that this catch-up in neuro-cognitive function could be because of brain-plasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt, change and mature as a result of experience.

“It’s a big relief to know that babies who are born with and treated for a condition as common as hypoglycemia are not likely to suffer long-term brain damage,” Thompson said.

Over the past decade, the research team has continued studying the efficacy of dextrose gel to treat low blood sugar in the first 48-hours of a newborn’s life, avoiding the need for babies to go to newborn intensive care units immediately after delivery. Dextrose is a sugar that comes from corn or wheat that is chemically identical to blood sugar.

In an additional study published in the Journal for the American Medical Association, the team assesses the later risks of dextrose gel as a treatment for hypoglycemia in infancy, and found it caused no significant difference to the risk of neuro-sensory impairment at age two. This treatment continues to be widely used outside of New Zealand in a growing number of countries, including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The studies, Association of neonatal hypoglycemia with academic performance in mid-childhood and Prophylactic oral dextrose gel and neurosensory impairment at 2-year follow-up of participants in the hPOD randomized trial, were published in the Journal for the American Medical Association last month.

MFA thesis exhibitions begin April 7

The Department of Fine Arts and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery (UWAG) will be exhibiting the MFA thesis work of Ashley Guenette and Sarah Galarneau from April 7 to April 23.

Ashley Guenette
Put a finger down if you’ve ever been personally victimized by social media algorithms

Put a finger down if you’ve ever been personally victimized by social media algorithms is a collection of generative artworks created in response to algorithmically-determined social media content. Using TikTok, I have deliberately engaged with viral trends that serve as digital microaggressions, such as body and slut shaming, the glorification of mental health disorders such as ADHD, depression, anxiety and eating disorders, and ‘it girl’ routines in order to carefully curate an endless stream of content. Using a variety of mediums, I reinterpret this content in order to offer the viewer a glimpse into this playful yet hateful side of social media, which has been normalized in pop culture and to acknowledge the negative impacts of this content on women-identified and BIPOC individuals and other marginalized groups.

Ashley Guenette is a Franco-Ontarian artist from rural Northern Ontario. Her recent work draws from algorithmically-generated social media content in order to reveal their hidden forms of oppression and reframe them in critical, feminist contexts. Using analogue methods to interpret digital content, her drawings, paintings, and multiples challenge aesthetic conventions of painting while engaging in an ongoing dialogue with its histories.

Sarah Galarneau
Seedlings

Seedlings is a bio-structural, garden-like environment in which the boundary between the architectural and the vegetal begins to blur. The conceptual fabric that runs through this body of work is a rhizomatic mesh of ecological, science-fictional, and socio-political themes, forming the theoretical basis of a constructed world of printed, recuperated, and reconstituted modular objects that creep and crawl across the gallery’s surfaces. Seedlings fuses philosophies of ecology with a sense of visionary, liberatory futurity. What stories, theories, actions, and matter will comprise the building blocks of a more ecologically sustainable and socially just future? In this world, the seeds of potentiality emerge from the compost to become the seedlings of versatile structures. Tending to the seeds of radically hopeful ideas means bridging the gaps between fiction and science, between concept and construction. Seedlings are ideas that have taken root and are growing–perhaps in unconventional ways.  

Sarah Galarneau is an artist from Tiohtià:ke/Montréal," says a note from UWAG. "Primarily working in print media, she is currently extending this practice into the creation of print-based paper sculptures and installations. With one foot in ecological philosophies and the other in visionary fiction, her work explores notions of interconnectivity, cyclicality, biomimicry, potentiality, and futurity; as well as the socio-political implications of such subjects." 

An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, April 7 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at UWAG on the University's East Campus. Visitors will be required to show proof of vaccination and comply with campus safety guidelines.