Dawson College

Background/Objectives: The sanitary measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, although essential for limiting the virus propagation, hindered healthy behaviours and negatively affected mental health and quality of life. In immunosuppressed individuals at higher risk of COVID-19 complications, these measures may have influenced adherence to Canada’s Food Guide 2019 (CFG-2019). This study aims to describe whether changes in eating behaviours and food consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic were aligned with CFG-2019 and identify correlates of changes in immunosuppressed individuals and their relatives. Methods: A total of 210 participants completed an online questionnaire between May and September 2021. Changes in eating behaviours and food consumption were categorized as no change, change aligned with CFG-2019, or change not aligned. Multinomial logistic regressions examined the association between sociodemographic, lifestyle, clinical, and psychosocial characteristics and changes in eating behaviours and food consumption. Results: Participants reporting no change in eating behaviours, change aligned, and change not aligned with CFG-2019 were nearly equivalent (29.4%, 33.8%, and 36.8%, respectively). For food consumption, the proportions were 17.0%, 41.2%, and 41.8%, respectively. Reduced physical activity and elevated anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with a change in eating behaviours not aligned with CFG-2019. Perceived weight gain and decreased body image satisfaction were associated with a non-aligned change in food consumption. Conclusions: Dietary changes, aligned or not with CFG-2019, were observed among immunosuppressed individuals and their relatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying factors associated with these changes can inform future studies to support healthy eating among vulnerable individuals amidst stressful events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The City of Sherman, Texas, is in the midst of an infrastructure improvement program to support the recent growth of industry in the area. A significant element of the expansion program is the need for additional treatment of new industrial wastewater. After treatability studies concluded that a new industrial WWTP would be required, the City began the daunting task of delivering this new plant in less than 30 months with a design scarcely more than a concept. The team—including the City, Consulting Engineer, and Program Manager—sought collaborative delivery methods to bring a contractor on board. Based on Texas legal restrictions preventing the use of Design Build, the team selected Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) as the optimal method to deliver the project. With the CMAR engaged, the full team was set. To deliver this project, the team used several logistical and management tools. Tools used included early procurement of long lead equipment, early works packages to allow construction to begin while design was finalized, team collaboration in the form of regular partnering sessions and teambuilding exercises, proactive budget management to ensure funding was secured in time, schedule collaboration to adjust and react quickly to unforeseen circumstances, and detailed quality control to ensure field work matched design intent. A detailed evaluation of each of these tools is discussed. Major challenges that the team overcame included rapid cohesion of a diverse team, rapid construction pace, public bidding of all work and equipment packages, design progression after bidding, and maintaining high work quality (both design and construction). The project is currently under construction and is on target to be completed on schedule in order to serve the industrial customers.

Abstract The immune system is the primary defense against parasites. With the ever-increasing rate of disease, epidemiologic models considering geographic variation in immune responses could prove useful. Despite increasing interest in the macroecology of parasitism and infectious diseases, we know little about the macroecology of immune responses. Host characteristics, parasite exposure, and environmental factors can all affect immunity, but how these factors interact to shape spatial variation in the strength of immune responses remains unexplored. We captured odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) and their conspicuous ectoparasitic mites across a geographic area spanning the temperate and boreal forest biomes in eastern Canada. We then conducted immune response bioassays on 1,237 individuals from 63 odonate species. We used linear regressions and structural equation models to relate immune responses to host body size, parasite load, pH, temperature, and precipitation while accounting for evolutionary relationships among host species. We found significant differences in the strength of immune response among host individuals, and this variation was best explained by climatic conditions, specifically decreasing with precipitation and, to a lesser degree, temperature. While host species significantly differed in immune response strength, we found no effect of host body size, evolutionary relationships among hosts, or parasitism on immune response. Our study investigating the drivers of immune response across dozens of species spread across two biomes is the most comprehensive to date. Climatic conditions have a strong influence on host immune response, regardless of host characteristics or parasitism rates. In this specific case, strong immune responses were associated with low levels of annual precipitation, which could relate to the role of cuticular melanin content in desiccation resistance, and the melanin-based encapsulation response being a byproduct of this adaptation. A spatially-explicit understanding of the biological processes affecting immunity could improve epidemiological models of disease risk that inform disease management globally.

Practitioner knowledge is essential to the success of co-design teams.This case study reports on a teacher's role within a design-based research team, over four projects spanning a decade.Using a boundary crossing lens, the analysis describes the change from passive to active co-designer involving the use of boundary objects and agentic actions.Findings contribute to the growing literature on teachers as boundary spanners and their roles in making educational change sustainable.

The interactions between sugar maple (Acer saccharum, Marshall) and its microbial communities are important for tree fitness, growth, and establishment. Despite recent progress in our understanding of the rhizosphere and phyllosphere microbial communities of sugar maple, many outstanding knowledge gaps remain. This review delves into the relationships between sugar maple and its microbes, as climate change alters plant species distributions. It highlights the multifaceted roles of key microbes, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and pathogens, in affecting the distribution and establishment of sugar maple in novel habitats. Furthermore, this review examines how microbial communities in different compartments contribute to tree fitness. Finally, it explores how microbial dispersal and altered species interactions under changing environmental conditions can affect sugar maple's ability to migrate beyond its current range, emphasizing the different scenarios associated with such shifts. In the rhizosphere, AM fungi are known for their roles in nutrient acquisition and improving stress tolerance. Yet, key questions remain about how these fungi interact with other microbes, how soil chemistry and climate change alter these interactions, and how the presence of beneficial microbes influences sugar maple's establishment. Additionally, the role of dark septate endophytes (DSE) in sugar maple's fitness remains underexplored, emphasizing the need for more research on their diversity and functions. In the phyllosphere, microbial communities are subject to shifts due to rising global change, with potential impacts on sugar maple's fitness. These changes may influence the tree's resistance to pathogens, tolerance to environmental stress, and overall health. Yet, our understanding of these interactions relies mostly on short-read sequencing methods targeting marker genes (e.g., 16S, ITS, 18S), which often fail to identify microbes at the species level. Limitations in molecular techniques and poor microbial reference databases hinder our ability to fully characterize tree-associated microbial diversity and functions. Future research should thus prioritize advanced molecular tools such as shotgun, hybrid, or long-read sequencing. Controlled experiments are also needed to establish causal links between sugar maple fitness and microbial communities, and to study whether microbial communities change throughout the tree's lifespan.

MotivationThis work introduces the Neuropathological Function Estimations software, designed to facilitate the study of neuronal activity alterations in neurological disorders without requiring programming expertise. With its user-friendly interface, researchers can input various data types to generate subject-specific functional brain models and decode neuropathological influences.ResultsThe software’s capabilities are validated through its application to Alzheimer’s disease, providing insights into neuronal excitability and disease mechanisms. This tool has the potential to enhance our understanding of the biological basis of in vivo neural activity and contribute to the development of personalized therapeutic interventions.Availability and implementationThe latest version of the software and support are freely available for noncommercial users through the Neuroinformatics for Personalized Medicine Lab (NeuroPM Lab) website at McGill University (https://www.neuropm-lab.com/neuropm-box.html). The software is maintained by the NeuroPM team. This publication is linked to version 1.0.

This piece offers a conceptual framework for collective care as pedagogy in higher education, and a proposition of how to theorize its orientations within anticolonial and feminist work on affect in education. First, I spotlight work that helps to define collective care. Next, I call on the concept of affective individualism as a way to describe what is: the taken-for-granted affective governmentality (Zembylas, 2021) that shapes how we often come together in our classrooms. Finally, I ground collective care as pedagogy as the building of affective solidarity, an affective conceptual framework for what could be, grounded in the feminist work of Clare Hemmings (2012).

<p>This response piece engages in the conversation initiated by Maggie McDonnell and Teresa Strong-Wilson on professional identity. It ponders the question of my role as a college-level professor of art history. Whereas numerous academic institutions have started to decolonise curricula to promote diverse perspectives, certain students, believing multiculturalism applies to all across the board, show indifference in learning decolonised points of view. Here, I examine some of these challenges and the several sides of my role as teacher.</p>