Deana Korsunsky Staff Writer

Monnet welcomed as McGill’s first Indigenous Artist in Residence

In her Artist Talk, Monnet discusses her art and inspiration

Deana Korsunsky

Staff Writer

Continued from page 1.

One of her goals as an artist, Monnet suggests, is to examine society, and highlight what she sees.

“I see artists a little bit like sociologists, because our role is to respond to the world around us,” Monnet said.

With nearly 100 people in attendance, Monnet discussed her inspiration and motivation for her work, and walked the Zoom attendees through some of her films and visual artwork. She began with a viewing of Ikwé (2009), her first officially released film. Translating to “woman” in Cree, Ikwé is a personal reflection on the importance of connection to one’s past, showing interspersed images of Monnet and of a moon, representative of Monnet’s eldest grandmother. Monnet explained her interest in the moon’s control over the tides of bodies of water, and how it affects environments and migration patterns.

“I was interested in how we physically shape and impact our environment and how [it] influences the people that we are,” Monnet said, referencing the motif of both physicality and metaphor that is so often present in her work.

A skilled multidisciplinary artist, Monnet’s work extends beyond film. “Like ships in the night”—her art installation that features video, concrete, copper, and a triptych of photographs— details a 22-day journey across the Atlantic that Monnet took in 2012, in which she left a Dutch port on a steel-carrying cargo ship and traveled to Montreal. Monnet documented her journey with a video camera, examining the emotions of fear and serenity as she traveled, while also noting the Atlantic Ocean as a medium for colonial trade.

“I wanted to challenge colonial organization of land, body, and time by exploring how communication and the cycle of the moon and tide can actually bridge physical and psychological divides,” Monnet said.

In an interview with The McGill Tribune, Monnet spoke on her new position as Indigenous Artist in Residence, noting the importance of artists and Indigenous voices in academia.

“I think institutions like McGill are starting to see the role they can play in giving more space to Indigenous students and Indigenous representation within their institution,” Monnet said. “ I believe this type of initiative can be a transformative experience, expanding knowledge, nurturing critical thinking and inspiring new ideas, creativity and innovation. It is surprising that it took this long, until 2021, to have such initiatives, but it’s better late than never.”

Despite the virtual nature of her position at the moment, Monnet hopes to actively engage with the McGill community.

“I’m hoping to exchange as much as possible with faculty and students [and] to be able to share as much as possible, to be available for students or anyone that wants to talk to me or learn more about my practice,” Monnet said. “I’m starting to see a few people reaching out and wanting to chat about art or Indigenous issues and I just think that’s what’s important right now, [to] have conversations.”

Identifying as both Algonquin and French, Monnet aims to bridge cultures together in her artwork. (mcgill.ca)

While also working on her first feature film, Monnet has an upcoming exhibition that will be presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in April 2021.

Librairie Drawn & Quarterly - Launch of Tawhida Tanya Evanson’s debut novel “Book of Wings”

Join avid readers to celebrate the release of the Antiguan-Québecoise poet’s debut novel “BOOK OF WINGS.” Feb. 18, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. Youtube

Festival Art Souterrain 2021 : Chronométrie

36 artists and performers present Chronometry themed contemporary pieces. Feb. 20 – Apr. 30 Ville Souterraine de Montréal, 747 Rue du Square-Victoria #247, Montréal, QC H2Y 3Y9 Free

An Orchestral Rendition of Daft Punk: Greatest Hits: Montreal

Jam out to Orchestral renditions of Daft Punk’s greatest hits. Feb. 20, 9:30pm Online Free

Black Theatre Workshop and Segal Centre present light installation “Liberation’s Radiance”

Beautiful light installation by the BTW’s Artist in Residence, Tim Rodrigues, to commemorate Black History Month. Feb.1 - Feb. 28, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Segal Centre, 5170 chemin de la CôteSainte-Catherine Free

Winnie Ho and Charo Foo Tai Wei push the boundaries of dance

The dancers’ virtual performances captures the essence of their craft

Emilia Chavanne

Contributor

When we think of dance, we often think of grace, rhythm, and elegance. In its most traditional sense, dance is a beautiful artistic expression of the body. However, dance has been challenged to push its boundaries and reach new limits. Indeed, that is the objective of contemporary dance, as realized through Winnie Ho and Charo Foo Tai Wei’s performances.

The virtual event, CanAsian Dance, was presented by Tangente, a Montreal-based contemporary dance company that encourages dance to be innovative and imaginative. The goal of CanAsian Dance, created by Festival Acces Asie, was to encourage each choreographer to create a piece that challenged them to take a new direction with their work. Through contemporary dance, the dancers experiment onstage, performing without rhythmic melodies, using a mixture of everyday sounds like raindrops for music, or even dancing in complete silence. This experimental genre seems like the most apt to adapt to this virtual context, allowing for dancers to find new ways to perform. Ho and Charo Foo successfully took on the challenge of dancing despite the absence of an inperson audience.

The first performance was Winnie Ho’s aWokening, in which she attempted to reconnect with her roots from Hong Kong. Ho’s choreography revolved around a wok, a traditional Chinese cooking instrument. The wok is special to Ho as she clutches it close to herself, and it remains attached to her while she performs. Ho’s choreography seems surprising at first, as she dances naked with a wok and with no music. However, as we learn about Ho’s approach and her connection to the Chinese diaspora, her performance becomes a deeply personal, authentic and unmediated expression of her cultural roots. During the intermission, Ho told the audience that her main challenge was to perform inside a theatre, as she has a strong spatial sensitivity and usually dances in open spaces. Ho attempted to create her own environment in the enclosed setting, considering it a new open canvas—effectively using the indoor space to convey her interior world to the viewers.

The second performance was Charo Foo’s The Golden Stick Ritual. The piece was inspired by her aunt, who practiced healing rituals throughout her childhood. Charo Foo seeks to recreate the intensity and energy her aunt possessed in her rituals, combining the technical precision of classical training with the complete fluidity of contemporary dance. In linking her background in classical Chinese dance to this new style, she defies traditional form and moves in entirely new directions. Charo Foo’s choreography imitates the healing ritual’s force through the strength of her gestures and articulate facial expressions. Her performance is a voyage through herself, a transcendent experience where Charo Foo’s different emotions—resistance, pain— are embodied in her movement. She is able to synthesize these sensations into something beautiful and to share these feelings with the public.

Through their innovative performances, Ho and Charo Foo examine their pasts and interior selves, merging these concepts of identity to form a new, innovative style. Contemporary dance does not commit to the elegance and structure that this art may provide in its conventional sense, but rather searches for a new path. Eschewing the prescriptions of grace and conventional rhythm, both dancers instead sought out inner experience for all its raw intensity, rendering emotion completely physical. Ho and Charo Foo’s performances pushed dance to transcend across cultures, across genres, and across screens.

Ho and Charo Foo’s performances were part of ‘Festival Acces Asie.’ (tangentedanse.ca)

Disappearing giants: How warming oceans are suffocating large fish

Large fish have reduced oxygen consumption in warmer waters

Margaret Wdowiak

Staff Writer

Since 1981, the mean global ocean temperature has risen at an average rate of 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade. This has had serious impacts on the health of marine species; as oceans warm across the world, fish that are unable to cope with climatic changes, such as cardinalfish, are disappearing at a staggering rate.

A new study conducted by an international team of researchers from McGill, the University of Montana, and Radboud University examines this alarming trend. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the study explores how water temperature and oxygen availability affect the metabolism as well as survival fitness of fish. The research team was particularly interested in how rising ocean temperatures impact oxygen consumption.

“We investigate how water temperature and oxygen availability together affect aerobic metabolism (i.e., the rate of oxygen consumption) of fish,” Juan Vicente Gallego Rubalcaba, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology and author of the study, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.

In order to achieve their goals, the researchers developed a model based on the metabolic theory of ecology.

“We build on the equations of [the] metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) to include physical mechanisms of oxygen transfer,” Rubalcaba wrote. “This theory explains how metabolic rate increases with temperature and body mass, but does not account for oxygen uptake or availability.”

Metabolic rate refers to the rate at which an animal burns calories to produce energy. This updated metabolic-based model evaluates how water temperature and body size affect oxygen consumption and diffusion. The model assesses how oxygen is extracted from water and distributed by a fish’s gills throughout its body.

“We developed a model based on physicochemical mechanisms of gas diffusion to calculate oxygen consumption rates as a function of water temperature, oxygen concentration, gill morphology and fish body size,” Rubalcaba wrote.

Oceans absorb most of the excess heat from greenhouse gases. (Taja de Silva / The McGill Tribune)

The model predicted that oxygen limitation would impose more constraints on the metabolism of larger and more active fish. To support their hypothesis, the scientists compared their predictions against actual measurements of metabolic rates in 286 fish species. The oxygen consumption rates of fish of different body sizes were studied at different water temperatures.

The results of this comparison were consistent with their predictions. Indeed, the researchers found that increased oxygen limitation, tied to the temperature increase caused by climate change, had a greater impact on larger fish.

“Metabolic rate (especially active metabolic rate) increases with temperature to a greater extent in small [fish] than in large fish,” Rubalcaba wrote. “This means that smaller species are able to increase their metabolic demand for oxygen in warmer waters, while larger species may not be able to do so.”

Since larger fish have more difficulty adapting to temperature increases, species already in decline are at greater risk. The Manaaki tuna of New Zealand, for example, experience low oxygen availability due to polluted waters that could be exacerbated by rising temperatures.

“Constraints may be especially important in large fish, because they have small gills relative to their body size (although this is a muchdebated hypothesis),” Rubalcaba wrote.

The decrease in oxygen levels caused by increased ocean temperature has massive impacts on the physiology and behavioural patterns of large fish. Fishes’ inability to extract enough oxygen from warmer water through their gills leads to shifts in body size and changes in reproductive behaviour.

“Water temperature is already rising worldwide as a consequence of climate change and many fish species need to cope with this rapid temperature change, either migrating toward colder regions or adopting different life strategies such as growing smaller to avoid respiratory constraints,” Rubalcaba wrote.

Fortunately, actions such as limiting greenhouse gas emissions and restoring marine and coastal ecosystems can be taken to mitigate oceanic warming. Given that approximately three billion people depend on fish as a primary source of nutrition, protecting fish from warming oceans must be a priority.

How precision medicine and artificial intelligence can reshape cancer care

Personalized treatments can change cancer therapy

Cyril Kazan Contributor

Cancer treatment is one of the most intricate challenges of contemporary medicine. One complication that often arises is the trial and error prescription of drugs that are often ineffective against a given type of tumour or for a particular patient. Moreover, these treatments often produce exhausting side effects.

The ability to identify the type of tumour and develop targeted treatment unique to each patient can dramatically increase both their survival rate and quality of life. This approach to treating patients based on individual characteristics is called precision medicine.

A recent initiative by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and MEDTEQ, a major Canadian medical technology organization, aims to integrate current treatment methods like immunotherapy and chemotherapy, precision medicine principles, and artificial intelligence to achieve a personalized approach to cancer treatment.

“Cancers of all types are heterogeneous,” Dr. Peter Metrakos, head of the Cancer Research Program at the RI-MUHC, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “Every tumour [has] a unique set of mutations and a unique set of drivers. If we want to be successful, we are going to have to be able to stratify them and uniquely target them.”

To achieve this, researchers are looking for biomarkers in patients’ blood that are linked to Through new AI-based methods, doctors will be able to identify the type of tumour from a blood sample. (dailysabah.com)

specific types of tumours. Cancer cells release extracellular vesicles into the bloodstream that contain proteins and genetic material such as DNA and RNA. Examining the content of these vesicles can indicate tumour identity and help doctors develop targeted treatment plans.

However, once the components of these vesicles are extracted from the blood sample and their protein and genetic content is sequenced, a significant challenge arises. Protein, DNA, and RNA sequences, in addition to a patient’s medical history, constitute a tremendous amount of data to be analyzed. No scientist presented with this amount of information could detect patterns, but a computer can. This is where developments in artificial intelligence come into play.

“The algorithm sees trends and is able to call them out,” Dr. Anthoula Lazaris, a scientist at the RI-MUHC who co-leads the project, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

My Intelligent Machines (MIMs), a Montreal-based leader in artificial intelligence, plans to use machine learning algorithms to perform a high-level analysis of protein and genetic sequences combined with clinical information. This method may uncover links between specific tumour types and biochemical signatures in the blood. Then, CellCarta, a company specializing in biomarker development, will develop tools to identify the presence of these signatures from a simple liquid biopsy taken from the patient.

This collaborative research initiative could transform cancer care by reducing precious diagnostic time and ensuring more targeted treatment.

“The patient walks into the clinic [where] we take a blood sample, run an assay, find a signature and identify the unique features of the tumour,” said Lazaris. “Combined with the patient’s clinical profile, [we use this information to] tailor the treatment accordingly,” Lazaris said.

It would seem the current process of trying different drugs and readjusting prescriptions based on the outcomes will soon become obsolete. Doctors will be able to better identify the most effective treatments based on signatures identified in the patient’s blood, increasing the chance of successful treatment and making cancer care less debilitating for the patient.

Metrakos explained that the findings of their study represent an important milestone towards a major shift in cancer treatment strategy.

“What we should go towards is a tumouragnostic approach, which means that you don’t care where the tumour comes from,” Metrakos said. “You look at its mutations, you look at its drivers, you look at its protein makeup, and you target that, rather than where it comes from.”

When feelings don’t care about the facts

Dr. Christiane Northrup spreads dangerous health misinformation on Instagram

Zoe Karkossa Contributor

The rise of the Information Age has enabled widespread public access to scientific research, but it has also disseminated a dazzling array of misinformation. Distinguishing fact from fiction during a pandemic can be difficult, particularly for the significant number of Canadians that struggle with literacy.

Dr. Christiane Northrup is one of many health-oriented online presences that has capitalized on social media’s wide reach. Despite a steadfast commitment to astrology and vaccine denialism, she has successfully leveraged her training as an obstetriciangynecologist into a career focussed on women’s health spanning multiple decades. Her Instagram posts alternate between advertisements for her ebooks and short videos, during which she casually chats about her cats, fan mail, and harmful pandemic misinformation.

In a recent article for McGill’s Office for Science and Society, science communicator and molecular biology master’s student Jonathan Jarry described how people tune out scientific experts in favour of influencers like Northrup.

“As science and technology become more and more complex, when we lose touch with it, it’s very easy for us to fall back to our intuitions, to believing things because they make us feel good, not because they are true,” Jarry said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

When scientific information is poorly communicated, people tend to fall back on the assumptions they already hold, often confusing personal experiences and compelling falsehoods with proven facts. The human tendency towards irrationality is only furthered by modern media distrust and times of crises that decrease trust in public authority.

Northrup’s platform was initially built on her bestseller Women’s Health, Women’s Bodies, which combines relatively accurate health information with more dubious mysticism. Her straightforward advice about dealing with hot flashes and the proven issues with mammograms is easily accessible to women with doubts about the medical system.

People with poorer health are more likely to distrust the medical system, leaving them particularly vulnerable to false health information online. (oprah.com)

However, Northrup is no stranger to dangerously inaccurate health information. Her recent content resolutely ignores reality, actively discouraging people from getting vaccinated, spreading unfounded claims about the danger of the COVID-19 vaccine, and going so far as to brazenly deny the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Northrup has carefully crafted her persona to target female audiences, focussing on keeping her audience engaged rather than providing factual insight or analysis. The impressive social media following that she has garnered shows that health beliefs are often grounded in emotion rather than reason.

“Feelings don’t care about facts,” Jarry said. “If somebody’s irrational beliefs are based in emotions, in values, no amount of saying [that] the science is true whether you believe in it or not […] will really make a difference if you’re trying to […] change their mind about something.”

Although Northrup’s talk of intuition and vitamin supplements may seem relatively inconsequential, other messages she spreads have the potential to cause significant harm. Efficient and widespread vaccination against COVID-19 is essential to halting the spread of the disease. Misinformation on social media can have damaging effects on trust in health institutions and can affect people’s likelihood of getting the vaccine.

Scientists and policymakers have a duty towards society to disseminate science in an accurate and accessible way. Developing a vaccine is important, but educating people, reducing transmission, and preparing our society for future risks are also crucial to maintaining public health. Accomplishing these goals cannot happen without establishing reliable communication and public trust.

“The first thing that I think we should do is to listen to these concerns, because by listening to them, we can better understand where this person is coming from,” Jarry said. “It also shows that we care about their anxieties and their fears, and this is how you build a relationship of trust.”

Among the proliferation of untrustworthy sources, there is a growing movement of science communicators striving to deliver accessible and accurate health information. Through online initiatives such as ScienceUpFirst, they aim to reclaim the social media narrative surrounding COVID-19 and to help people understand scientific information. Effective science education is fundamental to public health, and it can only be achieved through the dedication and compassion of scientists and educators.

McGill research study finds fisheries may save humans after nuclear war

How well-managed fisheries may be a key food source after a catastrophic event

Laurie Chan Contributor

When thinking about the aftermath of a nuclear war, fisheries are not the first things that come to mind. However, in a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), a team of McGill researchers revealed that marine fishery supplies could be vital to sustaining human life by providing food security after a nuclear war or other abrupt climatic shocks. Among other catastrophic effects, such as immediate destruction of cities and firestorms, nuclear war would result in the release of soot into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and leading to a plunge in atmospheric temperature. Consequently, there would be an unprecedented reduction in agricultural production, posing a risk to worldwide food security. “I think it’s very important to study what the potential effects of a nuclear war could be so that we are well informed when we, or our decision-makers, decide rules for whether or not we should have these weapons,” Kim Scherrer, a PhD student in McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. Alongside Scherrer, a team of researchers evaluated the effects of nuclear war on the worldwide food system through six “war scenarios,” modelling how fishing worldwide would change depending on rapidly increased fish demand or decreased ability to fish. These were done through the state-of-the-art Community Earth System Model. Each scenario simulated a war-like event, followed by the socioeconomic response of the fishing industry, pertaining to the simultaneous fishing demands. Based on existing global tensions, the study simulated five conflicts between India and Pakistan with increasing quantities of soot release, and one substantially larger U.S.-Russia war injecting 150 teragrams of soot into the atmosphere. The industry responses included a range of fishing demands, from business-as-usual, or no change, as a control scenario to very large increases or complete collapse. The main findings from these climate models showed that well-managed fisheries are key to maintaining fish and seafood as stable food sources. In practice, this means implementing strict quotas on fish catches. While fisheries may appear as a short-term solution, they can be instrumental to global nutrition in the immediate years following a nuclear war, especially as the climate restabilizes itself in the following five to 15 years.

10 per cent of people worldwide depend primarily on fisheries as a food source. (The Future Economy)

“It’s a good idea to monitor gear types and details of the fishing to prevent destructive practices, but the most important thing is simply to fish less,” Eric Galbraith, a professor at McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, wrote in an email to the Tribune. “This ends up giving us more fish to eat, [being] more profitable, and producing [fewer] emissions.” According to Scherrer, while the research revolved around the potential outbreak of a nuclear war, the findings are equally applicable to other possible climatic shocks, such as volcanic eruptions. The results are also relevant to more subtle changes, such as unmitigated climate change, which has already started to put pressure on the fishing industry. “I think that’s a really important finding, that being prepared for the worst should be the same as just avoiding overfishing and maintaining abundant fish stocks, so it’s not like [we] have to do something completely different,” Scherrer said. The study found that the U.S.-Russia war scenario and business-as-usual fishing would be closest in predicted magnitude to the end-of-century fishing declines under unmitigated climate change. In the future, Scherrer hopes to uncover the links between other food sources that might be important in a climate disaster resulting in a food emergency. In particular, she hopes to gain a better understanding of the relationships between the farmed crops and the animals that we eat. “We can’t run our lives or societies thinking that nuclear war would happen tomorrow,” Scherrer said. “The urgent thing that we find in the study is that when it comes to fisheries, you don’t have to be doing something very different to be prepared.”