Canadian Seafood Labeling

Click on the image below and take a quick look at the three different labels. Do any of those labels concern you at all? Why is it that, out of the three below, Canadian seafood labels provide consumers with the least amount of information?

image from: http://www.seachoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Are-you-Eating-in-the-dark-FINAL.pdf

In fact, the only labeled information “Rockfish”,  is only a common name used for over 100 different species. The scientific name, geographic origin, and production methods are no where to be found. If Europeans are able to provide consumers with all the above details, why shouldn’t Canadian seafood labels show such information?

Enforcing regulations on seafood providers to have proper labeling will not only help consumers determine exactly what they’re buying, but will also help make environmental and economical friendly choices. For instance, knowing that a product is locally farmed will help increase support for local businesses.

image from http://action2.davidsuzuki.org/seafood-labelling

Another benefit mentioned on SeaChoice.org, was that providing information on production methods will help make friendlier environmental decisions; consumers will less likely to pick up a product knowing that its method of production have negative impacts on the ocean.

To help the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in rethinking Canadian Seafood Labeling needs, please head on here to sign the petition show your support for proper labelings before February 23rd 2017!

Lisa Liang

Waste Resourcing

What exactly do we consider “waste”? Could what we are flushing down the toilet be more important than we realize? We are constantly in search of supplies to burn for energy and grow to eat, but what leaves our body we tend to want to overlook. New technology is developing that may be able to take advantage of that we currently label as waste, which holds both nutrients and biomass. Recycling of these resources can help mediate the depletion of natural supplies from our energy and agriculture demands.

image by Olearys via Flickr

Nutrients which are necessary for plant growth–such as nitrogen phosphorous and potassium– are all excreted after we consume those plant foods. Humans use raw deposits of these minerals for fertilizers, which have been estimated to contribute to 30-50% of crop yield. Before this discovery humans were using guano (sea bird and bat excrement) in crops to promote growth. These nutrients are essential for our ever growing agricultural industries. Meanwhile, their natural deposits are quickly declining due to our own demand. The following video discusses the problem of diminishing phosphorous:

Similar problems are faced for other nutrients such as potassium; while having a longer projected depletion time of 330 years this estimate does not account for accelerated use for grain crops or depleted soils. Potassium as well as nitrogen prices are estimated to steadily incline over the next 10 years.

Another depletion that can be mediated though waste sourcing is fossil fuels, which we use as an energy source. Organic material (also known as biomass) in sewage can be converted into methane gas and used as a fuel source which can serve as a green source of energy for our growing demand. As fossil fuels also have a diminishing raw supply it is imperative that reliable alternate energy sources are found. Potentially using waste biomass as a carbon source would provide a sustainable and economical source of energy. Although sewage biomass will not be able to replace fossil fuels, it is still a completely green fuel source that can make a contribution to our demands.

Are these recoveries realistic? There are two leading processes for waste treatment: Lower Energy Mainline (LEM) and Partition-release-recover (PRR).

image by Montgomery County Planning Commission via Flickr

Both processes target nutrient preservation while recovering energy. LEM is by far more cost efficient and results in net energy recovery and full phosphorous recovery, but very low nitrogen recovery. However, due to it’s cost efficiency it is likely to be used in the near future. PRR on the other hand results in large enough concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous for extraction of both, but it more energy intensive.

As our technology advances the field of waste treatment will become more and more efficient. Resource availability is a serious threat, but being able to take advantage of our waste can create a much more sustainable society. Slowly implementing these advancements can bring us closer to a circular economy; one that does not depend on sources being depleted from natural deposits.

The Zika Virus: Are we done with it yet?

Zika virus transmission. Imagine courtesy of World Health Organization (WHO).

In April 2015, an epidemic of the Zika virus disease took Brazil by storm , quickly spreading through South America and parts of North America. The disease was relatively unknown but it was associated with causing microcephaly, a brain defect where a baby’s head is significantly smaller than normal in fetuses of pregnant women with the Zika virus. As time passed with nearing proximity to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the possibility of contracting the disease caused so much concern that many athletes withdrew from competition.

But the Zika virus is not new.

It was first discovered in 1947 in monkeys of the Zika Forest in Uganda. Since then, there have been small outbreaks in the equatorial Africa and Asia. Unfortunately, due to the mild symptoms of the disease and it’s similarities to dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya, it was often overlooked and underreported until its recent outbreak.

The virus is mainly spread by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus common, namely A. aegypti and A. albopictus. Transmission to a fetus during pregnancy increases the risk of many birth defects such as microcephaly in the newborn child. If that doesn’t sound scary enough, it can also be spread from sexual activity and blood transfusions!

Microcephaly in newborn infants as a result of the Zika virus. Image courtesy of the Boston’s Children’s Hospital.

So what are the symptoms? Infections from the Zika virus will only display mild symptoms at most, including fever, rash, joint pain, pinkeye (conjunctivitis), muscle pain and headache. Symptoms typically subside after a week. Travellers and pregnant women who have recently visited affected areas should be tested for the disease.

The Zika virus is no longer an epidemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) as of November 2016 and it seems like something of the past. But why should we still be concerned about it?

Sadly, just because it is no longer an epidemic doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be worried. Right now there is no cure for the Zika virus. Vaccines are being developed as we speak, but they probably won’t be available for another 10 years. For now all we can do is take precautions against mosquito bites and avoid travelling to places affected by Zika, especially if you are pregnant.

The problems Zika poses are far from solved. The Zika virus outbreak highlights the just one of the detrimental effects that poor sanitation has on our population. If we don’t solve the problem of managing mosquito populations and inventing new vaccines, we will have persisting human vulnerabilities to mosquito-spread diseases. We will always be at risk of infection to a disease we haven’t cured.

In the meantime, be mindful of your travel plans and check out this video on the Zika virus!

  • Florence Ng
Video

Is time traveling fiction or reality?

The wormhole in the movie “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. Source: Live Science.

I’m sure the question “What if I had studied more for my exams?” crossed your mind at least once during your time in university. In order to answer this question we would have to travel to the past and check if studying more would have helped us. However, is time travelling possible?

There are many theories suggesting that time travelling is possible because time is relative. Einstein showed that there is a strong relationship between time and space as one cannot exist without the other. Since time is relative in different locations of the Universe, a being can be in a place where time passes slower than on Earth.

Traveling to the future can be made possible since velocity and force affect the normal state of time. In other words, if people would be able to travel approximately at the light velocity, they would be traveling to the future. The time on Earth would be a lot faster compared to the time passed when traveling at light speed. Additionally, a strong force of gravity could also alter time. For example, if we could be able to stay close to a black hole, a strong force of gravity would try to pull us. If we do not let this force pull us, we would experience that time goes slower than on Earth.

We can also think of Einstein’s theory of special relativity as a cube. There are many ways to cut a cube. When we think about our present, an event that everyone on Earth can perceive that happens at the moment, represents a vertical 90 degrees cut on our cube. However, what if someone far away in the universe is not at our same time line? This activity would create an angle between what the distant being considers the present and what is considered the present on Earth. Furthermore, this movement would allow this individual to presence the past or the future of the human society. Therefore, future, present and past are real in what we consider our present. For this reason we could think about the Novikov self-consistency principle ,  which explains the possible existence of parallel dimensions. If this principle happens to be true, we could say that traveling to the past is also possible.

There are other theories that explains the possibility of travelling to the past through wormholes. Simply put, a wormhole is a passage that connects two points in space and any object that goes through it can travel faster than the speed of light. They are predicted by Eisten’s theory of general relativity but there is no empirical evidence on wormholes existence and it would be extremely hard to manipulate them.

Therefore travelling in time is possible in theory, but I think it is not yet practicable with our current technology and knowledge of the physics of the Universe. Unfortunately we can’t count with time travelling to solve our studying problems yet!

Dengue Fever Virus: What Is it?

One day, while you are on a tour through India, you notice that mosquitoes have bitten you several times while you were unaware. You disregard it, thinking that these bites have never amounted to anything more than an annoying itch on a bump in the past. However, several months after returning home, you begin to feel fatigued, nauseous, as well as sporting a severe headache. At this point, you may have been infected with Dengue fever virus.

General cross-section view of a Dengue virus particle. From Wikimedia Commons.

According to an article published by Anne Gubler in Trends in Microbiology, Dengue fever virus originated from the tropical regions of the Earth during the 18th to 19th centuries. The virus is mainly spread through a species of mosquito referred to as Aedes aegypti, which still populate the tropical and some subtropical regions today. However, as human population continues to rise in these areas, the risk for another epidemic outbreak further increases. This is due to the ease at which a mosquito can travel from host to host, spreading the virus at a much higher speed.

General cross-section view of a Dengue virus particle. From Wikimedia Commons.

The structure of a Dengue viral particle consists of a core, an envelope, and proteins attached to it. The core contains the genetic information of the Dengue virus. This genetic information codes for the eventual production of a new viral genetic strand, as well as the creation of a new core, envelope, and envelope proteins. The viral envelope can fuse with a host cell membrane, and also allows for the attachment of proteins. The envelope proteins are used to attach the virus to the receptors located on the outside membrane of a host cell.

A study done by Karen Clyde sheds light on how the virus uses a replication cycle that involves entering a healthy host cell and hijacking numerous cell mechanisms to complete replication. Firstly, the virus binds to a host cell using its envelope proteins. Secondly, the host cell internalizes the virus, resulting in the release of the viral package inside the cell. The next step involves the generation of a viral replication enzyme using host cell structures before the virus genome can be replicated. This eventually results in the production of a chain of viral proteins, which are cleaved apart to form the final product of a core surrounded by an envelope with proteins.

Next time you travel through a country at risk of Dengue infection, make sure to coat yourself in bug repellant. As there are no known vaccines or treatments for Dengue, once infected, it will accompany you for the rest of your life. Therefore it is up to you to take appropriate precautionary measures to protect yourself.

-Angus Lee

Artificial Intelligence: A Friend or Enemy of Humanity?

During the most recent decade, there have been a lot of movies showing humans fighting against robots. Most of these movies have a background that the robots massively destroying human society, such as The Matrix and The Terminator series. This makes some people worry about the future of human society: Will scientists eventually develop an artificially intelligent machine that can outsmart human in every aspect, and will this machine likely declare a war to overthrow the domination of humans?  Unfortunately, according to some leading scientists such as Stephen Hawking, both of these worries have a high possibility to occur soon.

The revolution? — From Wikimedia Commons

Artificial intelligence (AI), which is defined as the machines or software that are designed to perform tasks, is extremely beneficial to the current society. Therefore, techniques that create advanced AI are developing at a staggering rate nowadays. Some AIs that exist today can even outsmart humans in certain aspects since AIs’ components provide AIs a processing rate that no human being can reach. For example, a well-known AI that is designed to play Go (encirclement chess) defeated the top Go player in 2016 because this AI can always calculate the move that has the highest win chance. Moreover, developers have developed a machine that has the functionality to self-code in order to generate new algorithms for new questions. Using this technology, with enough time and memory space, building an AI that could learn more than any people and outsmart humans in every aspect will become highly possible. In 2013, a research survey asked hundreds of AI experts about the approximate time to achieve a human-level AI. The results were that with the current trends of the development of artificial intelligence, AI experts expect the first human-level AI to be developed in 2022 at the earliest.

What is likely to be the consequence of this development? Although it sounds impossible that a piece of code or a metal machine will declare a war on human beings, a lot of professors have expressed their worries about that a high-level AI, such as a human-level AI, may declare a war on its creators, human beings. The following video shows the details about their worries:

https://youtu.be/LjWc2vtbn9M

To sum up, a genuinely smart AI is likely to be invented by humans in the coming future as technology develops, and such an AI will have the high potential to spell the end of humanity. However, this should not be a reason for stopping the development of AI, as AI has brought so many benefits to humans. From my perspective, as long as the developers have the overall control of any of its developments, such as inserting a self-destruct function triggered by anti-human thoughts for every AI, humans will never lose control to AIs.

-Zhaolin Deng

Fatal Fentanyl: The Pill that Kills

Imagine this house party scene: I’m stuck at my best friend’s house for his birthday, and everyone is either passed out or wasted. My best friend comes up to me, insisting that I try fentanyl for the first time.

“Just one pill. It won’t hurt,” he says persuasively, and places the green pill on my palm.

Fentanyl is often crushed into powder using a pedicure file and then snorted for rapid ingestion. Image Credit: CalgaryPolice.ca

Peer pressure  gets the best of me, and I reluctantly swallow the green pill. “It can’t be that bad, could it?” I question myself.
As it turns out, swallowing that fentanyl pill was one heck of a big mistake!

Image illustrating that less than a dime-sized amount of fentanyl can fatally harm a person. Image Credit: abbypd.ca

A single green pill contains merely 50mg of fentanyl, which was more lethal than I thought! A deadly dose of fentanyl is just 2mg, which is equivalent to 2 grains of salt. Fentanyl works by binding to opioid receptors in the brain, which control a person’s breathing rate, emotions, and pain. This produces a state of peaceful happiness for the user, making fentanyl a highly addictive drug. However, fentanyl can stop a person’s breathing as a side effect, which can lead to death. Fentanyl is an opioid drug that is up to 100 times stronger than morphine! The high potency in a small amount of fentanyl misleads users to take a higher dosage, and greatly increases overdose risk.

Recreational drug use is on the rise, and many street drugs are unknowingly laced with fentanyl. Fentanyl’s potency makes it attractive for drug traffickers to smuggle many doses into a small package, but proves to be deadly for users.

Barcharts illustrating the number of deaths caused by fentanyl overdosage in BC. The number of deaths 2015 was ten times more than the number of deaths in 2012.
Image Credit: cbc.ca

B.C’s drug overdose crisis continues to take a terrible toll, and most are fentanyl-related deaths. Since July 2016, every 4/5 drug testings in Vancouver were positive for fentanyl. Teenagers and young adults aged 16 to 21 are the most vulnerable to drug abuse because of their high tendency for experimentation.

An important tool to help fight against B.C’s fentanyl crisis is the Naloxone kit, which contains medication that reverses the effects of opioid overdose. BC‘s Take Home Naloxone (THN) Program provides training and resources for overdose emergencies. Naloxone is now available to the public without prescription. It is easy to use, has small side effects, and provides a life-saving solution! Increasing access to naloxone is the fastest way to reduce the dramatic number of fentanyl-related deaths.

BC’s Naloxone Program distributes lifesaving kits and trains people to use overdose-reversal medication. This video shows how to recognize and respond to an overdose. Video Credit: towardtheheart.com/

Poster outlining the dangers of drugs cut with fentanyl. Image Credit: knowyoursource.ca

As I mentioned before, fentanyl binds to opioid receptors, which puts the person in a state of ‘suffocating happiness’. Naloxone works by knocking out fentanyl from opiate receptors in the brain and restores normal breathing rate. Without Naloxone, brain cells die without proper oxygen circulation, and the drug user receives serious brain damage and memory loss.

If you decide to take recreational drugs, be sure to carry a Naloxone kit with you. In addition, don`t be afraid to call 911 if you sense that someone is overdosing. Don’t let either you, or your friend, become another fentanyl victim.

-Anna Tam

 

Brain is Smoking Tobacco.

“Let’s smoke, I am stressed out” may be what you have said, but you had smoked two packs for the past 15 hours.  This might describe a life of some university students. Through education and experience, you have learned that the substance abuse certainly leads to bad endings in every way. Low GPA is not only the result that would stir every student on a personal level, but also it is a destructive disorder that ruins your health, your social life, and your brain function.

Drug addiction is a chronic disorder that involves the compulsive drug-seeking and -taking behaviors. Now, you are determined to quit because it is 2017 now, and all your friends are stopping. Soon all your friends have quit, but your addiction even worsens because drug withdrawal strengthens your dependence. You wonder why because you have used same methods.

Addiction has many variables: personal and biological elements. Various reasons such as pleasure, stress, peer pressure , or curiosity may have started this behavior. It might be a matter of morale or willpower. Later, an addiction becomes a mental problem because an addiction hard-wires our brain to yearn and take more and more. Addiction involves modifying our brain chemistry. Brain is a center of our consciousness and it is composed of interconnected network of neuronal cells. The cells process and relay signals so we can respond to the environmental stimuli. A reward system in brain chiefly incorporates the release of the neurotransmitter (NT) called dopamine.

TED talk by Nora, Volkow, talk on effect of addiction on brain

Dopamine is a messenger chemical that infuses motivation and directs a set of behaviors towards a rewarding experience. The cells would carry a motivation signal as electrical signal by receptor-NT relationship. One cell receives NT by its specific receptor and carries an electrical signal to other cell, releasing a NT. Nicotine, bona-fide  psychoactive agent, reinforces the reward system leading to addiction. A sustained tobacco use desensitizes the effect of chemical in the brain, hence weakening the a self- regulation. Mental disorder has a deep link with the genetics, not only with the environment. Since biology is dictated by the DNA, there would be some credibility to study the effect of gene in smoking behavior pattern. According to 2003 review article in reputable NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), Drs. Jordi Cami and Magi Farre have pointed out that nicotine dependence is linked to one version of dopamine receptor gene, named to be TaqIA D2.

In conclusion, a chemical influences our behavior because a brain is composed of cells. We have different susceptibility to this chemical cue because we all carry different DNA, even identical twins!!

-Jiwon Kim-