Campus News

The University of Guelph today unveiled seven additions to its dramatic "donor wall" in Rozanski Hall. The donor wall in the lobby of the classroom complex honours supporters and tells the story of the University’s BetterPlanet Project.

“It’s intended to be an evolving symbol of the issues and needs being addressed as we look to create change and make the world a better place,” said president Alastair Summerlee.

“Today we are adding to this work of art. The seven new pieces represent extraordinary giving to the University and the potential for growth via the new opportunities these gifts provide.”

Donors highlighted today are:

· Philip Gosling and Susan Gosling, Gosling Foundation: a second leadership gift to the BetterPlanet Project of $1.5 million to establish the Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation;

· Tony and Anne Arrell, U of G graduates: $1 million to support excellence in teaching and 20 annual scholarships for students across disciplines;

· Wolf Haessler, U of G graduate and founder of Skyjack Inc.: $1 million to enhance the University’s engineering facilities and to fund 20 new scholarships;

· Donald Pestell, Ontario Agricultural College graduate: $600,000 for the D.J. Pestell Student Service and Alumni Centre at the Ridgetown Campus;

· The late J.E. Blake Graham, Ontario Veterinary College graduate: $500,000 for the Blake Graham Fellowship Endowment Fund, supporting graduate studies in public health and zoonotic diseases;

· Bob and Gail Farquharson, a second leadership gift to the BetterPlanet Project of $537,000 to support individual preventive health-care research; and

· Scotiabank, $500,000 to support scholarships and case study competitions in the College of Management and Economics.

The 42-foot-long installation depicts a mural map of Canada painted by five local artists, along with four columns for the themes of the BetterPlanet Project: food, environment, health and community.

Launched publicly in fall 2010, the BetterPlanet Project aims to raise $200 million to help U of G improve research and teaching.

The donor wall was unveiled last September at the campaign’s halfway point; the campaign had raised more than $136.5 million.

The campaign is scheduled to end in 2014 during the University's 50th anniversary.

CCS will be migrating the Cisco wireless LAN controllers(WLC) to the 2nd generation of the WLCs during the following maintenance window:

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A study by University of Guelph researchers shows growing demand in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) for okra, Asian eggplant, bitter melon, bitter gourd and other “ethnocultural” vegetables (ECV) – a fresh opportunity now drawing interest from Ontario farmers.

Prof. Glen Filson, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development (SEDRD), hopes the new study will encourage local growers to produce vegetables favoured by recent arrivals from South Asia, who spend more than 30 per cent of their food budget on vegetables.

“The potential this niche market represents to Ontario’s rural economy is huge,” Filson said. “The soils north of Lake Erie, and of the Niagara Peninsula, the Holland Marsh, south Lake Simcoe and even the Ottawa Valley are suitable for growing certain ECV crops, and some, such as okra, will prove to be profitable.”

At about 800,000 people, Canadians of South Asian descent make up the largest cultural group in the GTA and spend $33 million a month on ECV – about half of the $61 million spent by the three largest ethnic groups (South Asian, Chinese and Afro-Caribbean Canadians) in the GTA each month.

Even though many vegetables decline in nutritional value and flavour within a week of picking, most of the ECV available in Ontario still come from overseas, many from as far away as China and India. Consumers are willing to pay extra for preferred produce.

“It’s unlikely for South Asians to totally abandon their traditional diet,” Filson said. “To the contrary, the demand for these vegetables is likely to increase with time as Canadians of European descent are beginning to enjoy tropical veggies along with their peas and carrots.”

Many ECV, such as okra and kaddu (Asian pumpkin), could be grown here. Ontario’s growing season may be shorter than the native climates for many of these vegetables, but some of this produce can be grown in greenhouses, or started there and finished in fields, says Filson. Although local production of ECV probably cannot guarantee supply all year long, the researchers say it would guarantee food safety, improve the nutritional value of the produce and enhance Ontario’s economy.

Meanwhile, agronomic research on crop spacing, the amount and types of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation systems required is taking place at FarmStart (the Guelph-based organization that helps new Ontario farmers gain access to affordable farmland), Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, U of G’s Simcoe Research Station and the Muck Crops Research Station in Toronto.

“Financial incentives such as tax credits would help local farmers who are willing to try growing ethnocultural vegetables,” says Filson. “We don’t know enough yet about the production costs.”

The researchers have received funding from the Ontario Market Investment Fund and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ Knowledge Translation and Transfer Program to study ECV demand, value chains, pricing and availability in mainstream grocery stores.

The paper appears online in the journal Appetite. Lead author Bamidele Adekunle, special graduate faculty in SEDRD’s capacity development and extension program, earlier studied agricultural economics in Nigeria. Co-author Sridharan Sethuratnam is FarmStart’s program manager.

Contact:
Glen Filson
School of Environmental Design and Rural Development
519-824-4120, Ext. 56231
gfilson@uoguelph.ca

The University of Guelph has received nearly $14 million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for research ranging from rare isotopes to the workings of the human mind.

The awards were announced today in Toronto by Gary Goodyear, minister of state (science and technology), and Suzanne Fortier, NSERC president. Across Canada, the government will invest $410 million to support 3,750 research projects.

Today’s announcement includes the 2012 competition results for NSERC programs, including Discovery Grants, Discovery Accelerator Supplements, and graduate and post-doctoral awards. Most research projects are supported for five years.

Guelph’s 46 projects span five colleges and numerous departments. U of G also received 18 graduate scholarships and a post-doctoral fellowship.

“This NSERC support will provide the stipends for the next generation of researchers and problem-solvers, and the equipment, technology and other resources that are vital to our researchers’ ability to leverage their work into new knowledge and applications,” said Kevin Hall, vice-president (research).

“Not only do we want to make discoveries, but we also want to put those discoveries to use finding solutions to challenging issues.”

Nearly half of U of G’s funding went to a project headed by physics professor Carl Svensson. His research team received more than $6 million for studies in the emerging field of rare isotopes. The project involves state-of-the-art research facilities across the country, including TRIUMF, the national subatomic physics laboratory in Vancouver. Svensson leads a team of scientists building advanced detector systems at TRIUMF to probe nuclear structures and processes.

"We are deeply appreciative of the research support received through the NSERC grants programs,” Svensson said. “These programs are crucial to Canada's fundamental discovery research enterprise across all fields of natural science and engineering.”

He added that the NSERC support will enable groundbreaking research and ensure that undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral researchers continue to receive research training at the forefront of their field internationally.

The U of G-based International Barcode of Life (iBOL) project received $300,000 in NSERC funding for continued work on DNA barcoding. Directed by integrative biology professor Paul Hebert, iBOL is the world’s largest biodiversity genomics initiative using DNA barcoding to create a digital ID system for all life on Earth.

Food scientist Rickey Yada received more than $250,000 for continued research on more efficient use, control and design of food-related proteins with desired functions.

How skin receptors control posture and help in standing and walking is the goal of work by Prof. Leah Bent, Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, who received more than $125,000 for continued research into balance control problems.

Prof. Paul McNicholas, Mathematics and Statistics, will use a $125,000 grant to develop novel approaches for grouping data intended to allow varied researchers to better interpret statistical results.

Psychology professor Naseem Al-Aidroos will use a $150,000 grant to study “attentional mechanisms” in the brain to focus attention and filter out distractions. He will look at how aging affects this process and how to overcome challenges.

University of Guelph research that involves cloning elm trees that are resistant to Dutch elm disease is making headlines. A story about the breakthrough appeared on CBC’s online news site this weekend and a TV news report aired on CBC’s The National Wednesday. (Read the story and watch the TV news clip here)

A research team led by Praveen Saxena and Alan Sullivan in Guelph’s Department of Plant Agriculture has found a way to successfully clone American elm trees that have survived repeated epidemics of their biggest killer. More than 95 per cent of the population in Eastern Canada and the United States has now been wiped out by Dutch elm disease.

It is the first known research to use of in vitro culture technology to clone buds of mature American elm trees. The study also involved Guelph post-doctoral researchers Mukund Shukla and Maxwell Jones; Chunzhao Liu, professor, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing; and Susan Gosling of the Gosling Foundation, which funded the project. Read more

U of G recently announced the establishment of the Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation (GRIPP). Here scientists will hone cutting-edge technologies to protect and conserve the world’s endangered plant species.

CCS Managed Server will be performing a maintenance on vCenter Service on Tuesday 6-8AM, May 22. Access to vCenter server may not be available during the maintenance. All running virtual servers should not be impacted.

For any query, please contact CCS Help Center at 58888.

During the maintenance window on 22-May-2012, (6AM-8AM) the university's mail routing will be updated to incorporate filtering through an additional security appliance. This appliance assists in removing spam and viruses from the mail delivered to the Gryph Mail. There will not be a service outage as a result of this change.

This initial change should be transparent to end users but if anyone does see issues or has concerns they should contact the service desk at x58888 or 5888help@uoguelph.ca.

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Accounts of users hosted on one of the Gryph Mail servers are not generating auto-reply (out of office) messages or read receipts. The support team is investigating the root cause and will attempt to restore this function as soon as possible.

This issue affects approximately 25% of Gryph Mail users.

For further quesitons or concerns, please contact the service desk at x58888 or 58888help@uoguelph.ca.

NASA astronaut Mike Good and Bob McDonald, host of CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks, will speak at the launch of the first space-themed open house at the University of Guelph. “Bringing Space Down to Earth” will take place June 2.

The family-friendly event will showcase “out-of-this-world” research in various disciplines across campus, said organizer Leah Bent, a professor in the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences.

Geography professor Aaron Berg will discuss space-based monitoring of climate change and impacts on water supply. Visitors may tour the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility for growing plants in space, run by Prof. Mike Dixon, School of Environmental Sciences. Attend a talk and video demonstration about a device on a Mars rover bound for the red planet that was developed by an international group of scientists led by physics professor Ralf Gellert.

“It’s exciting to be able to share this interactive science experience with the community,” said Bent. “The university’s Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support and Ph.D student Catherine Lowrey were pivotal in putting this special day together. Our hope is that others will become as fascinated with space as we’ve become and realize how findings from space research can be applied right here on Earth.”

By studying skin receptors in astronauts’ feet after space flight, Bent hopes to help improve balance in Earth-bound seniors. Her “hyper-sole” study is funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

The daylong event in Rozanski Hall will begin with a welcome by Michael Emes, dean of the College of Biological Science, and a keynote talk by McDonald.

An internationally renowned science communicator for more than 30 years, McDonald chairs Geospace, a new environmental centre and planetarium planned for the Toronto waterfront. He has received six honorary doctorates, including one from U of G; he was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011.

He and Good will discuss the future of space research.

Good was a crew member during space shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 and the International Space Station in 2010. He has spent 25 days in space and almost 30 hours on four space walks.
The U of G event will also feature graduate Kris Lehnhardt, who is studying to become an astronaut.
Let’s Talk Science, a national charitable organization for improving science literacy, will run hands-on science activities for youth at the event. Since 2008, a U of G chapter has run activities for local schools and youth groups.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.coles.uoguelph.ca/space/.

Contact:
Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support
519-824-4120, Ext. 55000
info@coles.uoguelph.ca

Using agroforestry to enhance livelihoods in resource-poor communities is the goal of a six-year-old collaboration by scientists from the University of Guelph and Ghana, backed by a $3-million Tier 1 grant from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

The project partners hope to improve income generation and food security, and strengthen Ghana’s vision of becoming West Africa’s centre of excellence in agroforestry.

Researchers from U of G and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, will discuss the project during a public meeting May 22, 7 p.m., in Rozanski Hall, Room 102.

Much of Ghana is plagued by poverty, chronic food insecurity, and poor health and nutrition. “The increasing degradation of the natural resource base relied upon by rural communities is a major contributor to a persistently low quality of life,” said Naresh Thevathasan, an adjunct professor in the School of Environmental Sciences (SES) and manager of U of G agroforestry research. He oversees the project with SES professor Andy Gordon.

Agroforestry land-use technologies (farming crops along with trees and/or animals) were identified in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy among the most important aspects of environmentally sustainable cropping practices.

The U of G team has helped train students of agriculture and natural resources management in Ghana, established research projects, and supported sustainable farming practices to improve rural economies and community health in partner villages.

Speakers at the public meeting will discuss the project and promote further dialogue on international development, Thevathasan said.

The Ghana project marked the first time U of G had received Tier 1 funding. Tier 1 projects are managed by CIDA’s universities and colleges program and promote major development and institution-building projects.

As part of our vSphere 5 Upgrade project, CCS Managed Server has scheduled to upgrade
vCenter 5 server this Thursday, May 17 from 6-8 a.m. During this time, access to vCenter
may not be accessible, but all the running virtual servers should not be impacted.

Update: (8:15AM) We have encoutered some issue with the database during the migration, we are currently investigating the issue. However, service is up and running right now on the new server(without upgrade). We will have update later.

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Animal imagery from the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (MSAC) and the University of Guelph art collections will be featured in an MSAC exhibition, “Nature of the Beast,” May 17 to July 8. The event coincides with the 150th anniversary of U of G’s Ontario Veterinary College.

From 19th-century romanticized views of animals to more challenging contemporary perspectives, the exhibition includes painting, sculpture and works on paper showing how artists help shape our assumptions about connections between animals and humans.

“This exhibition reveals the breadth of the collections, which form a wonderful resource for the campus and the community,” said MSAC director Judith Nasby, who curated the exhibition. “It’s an opportunity for us to show off the treasures in both collections, ranging from rare 16th-century European etchings to transformation subjects by Aboriginal artists, as well as works by regional artists such as Robert Howson and Ken Danby.”

The MSAC collection focuses on contemporary Canadian art, especially outdoor sculpture, Inuit art and Canadian silver. The U of G collection, established in the 1870s, surveys Canadian art over three centuries with examples of European historical prints. Together, the two collections comprise more than 7,000 works by regional, national and international artists.

Aidan Ware, MSAC co-ordinator of education and development, said: “The catalyst for this show was to examine how animals are depicted in art.

“It is truly amazing to think about how animals have impacted many of our social, environmental, and personal histories. The exhibition addresses a really diverse set of topics ranging from agriculture to gender, and presents some of our finest pieces to the public in a completely new context. ‘Nature of the Beast’ is truly a celebration of this legacy.”

The collections continue to grow through national and international donations and bequests of artworks, and through purchases and commissions supported by individual donors, federal grants and funds raised by MSAC volunteers.

The opening reception will take place May 17, at 7 p.m. The exhibition will be opened by OVC Dean Elizabeth Stone and there will be a gallery talk May 22 at noon.

Contact:
Aidan Ware
Co-ordinator of Education and Development
Macdonald Stewart Art Centre
519-837-0010, Ext. 2.
aware@msac.ca

(Updated: 10:00 by Rob Foster) To resolve the slowdown issues, a service restart was executed successfully at approximately 9:45. By 10:00 the initial imapct of users logging in, etc. was resolved and service has returned to normal. 

Details of the root cause have been collected for submisison to the software provider to help prevent future occurences. Again, we apologize for any inconveniences and problems this may have caused.

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A new study by University of Guelph researchers offers hope for recovery of an endangered marine snail on Canada’s West Coast that has been depleted by overfishing, mostly for foreign sushi restaurants.

Genetic analysis suggests that northern abalone snails spawned in hatcheries can survive and repopulate depleted waters off the British Columbia coast, said integrative biology professor Elizabeth Boulding.

She and her former Guelph students Kaitlyn Read, Stephanie Acheson and Matthew Lemay authored a paper published last month in the journal Conservation Genetics.

The team found that hatchery-reared snail larvae and juveniles released, or out-planted, along the coast thrived, although not at high enough densities to restore populations. The endangered snail lives in shallow intertidal areas from Alaska to the California Baja.

“There’s merit in reintroducing abalone to some of these areas, and our study shows that out-planting can happen at the larval stage,” said Boulding.

Northern abalone snails are considered a delicacy in Japan. Their ear-shaped shells are lined with mother-of-pearl and are used in traditional carvings by First Nations.

Not only have natural populations dwindled, but also the remaining male and female snails are so dispersed that spawning is difficult, further threatening survival.

Despite fishing bans, poaching of lucrative abalone is a continuing threat. Natural predators include sea otters and invertebrates such as starfish and crabs.

The researchers worked at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Between 2002 and 2005, Bamfield volunteers released hatchery-raised larvae and juveniles into Barkley Sound. Before the Guelph project, they didn’t know whether the out-planted snails had survived.

The researchers took small tissue samples from snails collected from those areas before returning them to the ocean floor.

At Guelph, the team used DNA from the samples to match the animals with hatchery parents and siblings. Hatchery-reared stock made up about one-quarter of the sampled snails.

The researchers recommend more frequent out-planting to increase population density and raise the odds of mating success. New out-planting methods are needed to improve abalone survival, including use of cages and cobble substrates to favour abalone and deter predators, said Boulding.

She remembers collecting abalone shells while growing up on eastern Vancouver Island. “Whenever you went for a walk after a big storm, you found their iridescent shells washed up on the beach.”

Boulding’s abalone studies were funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under a project with researchers from Thompson Rivers University, the University of British Columbia, and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Former U of G graduate student Kaitlyn Read and her dive buddy from TRU, Christine Hansen (left)

Women’s rugby player Jacey Murphy has been named the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) female Athlete of the Year. She received the honour at the 2012 OUA Honour Awards banquet Thursday night.

Murphy, a fifth-year B.Sc.(Agr.) student, was also named U of G’s female athlete of the year and was nominated for the prestigious Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) athlete of the year award in 2012. She is only the fourth University of Guelph athlete ever nominated for the CIS honour.

Murphy has been a dominant force on the Gryphon women’s rugby team throughout her career and especially this season en route to the team’s OUA and CIS championships. She was named CIS Player of the Year and received the OUA Most Valuable Player award. She led the OUA conference this season with 12 tries in the five-game regular season and placed third with 60 points. Murphy also earned all-Canadian status and was named a CIS championship all-star.

Political science professors Dennis Baker and Troy Riddell were featured in the May 11 issue of the National Post. The two professors, who are part of U of G’s Criminal Justice and Public Policy Program, wrote an opinion article about the case against accused child-killer Michael Rafferty and how the case against him is affected by Supreme Court of Canada decisions in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Baker's research focuses on the separation of powers, particularly the relationship between the courts and the representative branches. His book, Not Quite Supreme, considers the limits of the Supreme Court of Canada’s power to settle political controversies. Riddell teaches and researches about constitutional and judicial politics and public policy/administration. His current t research projects investigate how the Charter of Rights and Charter decisions by the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, impact public policy and administration.

Prof. Alfons Weersink of the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics is quoted in numerous news reports today on the changing nature of Canadian agriculture, including in the Vancouver Sun and Winnipeg Free Press. He was interviewed by the Canadian Press about new 2011 census data Statistics Canada released Thursday, which reveal that there has been a shift from small farms and plentiful livestock to larger operations focused on crop production. Weersink says the change is due to more farmers wanting to capitalize on the strong crop market.

Weersink’s research focuses on the effects of technology and government policy, particularly environmental policy; on decisions made by firms in the agri-food sector; and on the resulting structure of the sector. He was raised on a cash crop/dairy farm near St. Marys and continues to be involved with the farm.

Plant agriculture professor John Cline is quoted in numerous articles and news reports Wednesday on the effect of the early thaw and late freeze on Ontario’s orchards. He told the Globe and Mail that the weather is having a significant economic effect; the apple industry alone is estimated to be around $300 million to $400 million. Several other news outlets picked up the story, including the Winnipeg Free Press and radio stations around the country.

Cline is interested in physiology and plant growth. He looks at substances that regulate the crop level, or the number of apples on the tree. He also studies orchard systems. Read more

More than $30,500 was raised for the Guelph Jazz Festival during the seventh annual “Sounds Provocative Jazz Art Auction." University of Guelph faculty, staff and alumni were among the artists whose work was auctioned.

The auction featured works by some of Canada’s finest emerging and established artists, including Prof. John Kissick, director of the School of Fine Art and Music; Pat Eaves-Brown, a U of G librarian; and fine art professor Will Gorlitz.

The show, held April 29 at Cutten Fields, also featured works by many U of G alumni, including Phil Irish, Eileen MacArthur, Jessica Masters, Christian McLeod, Linda O’Neill, Pearl van Geest, Don Russell and Annette Twist. The exhibit’s curator was Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art.

The art auction is the largest annual fundraiser for the Guelph Jazz Festival, begun in 1994 by U of G English professor Ajay Heble.

The festival, which will be held Sept. 5 to 9, offers jazz performance and education and is considered among the most visionary musical events in Canada. It has received the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for the Arts and the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

The Single Sign On issue has been resolved - access to Pay and Pension has been restored and  we are currently waiting for Courselink  to switch back to allowing login via the University of Guelph Single Sign On service - right now access is by Guest Login (login with your Central Login username and password). CCS will continue to investigate the root cause of the outage.

BlackBerry Enterprise (BES) service has returned to normal.

One of our BlackBerry Enterprise (BES) servers was unavailable between approximately 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM, affecting 1/6 of BlackBerry devices. Devices connected to the affected server did not receive wireless synchronization updates during this time.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the CCS Help Centre at 58888help@uoguelph.ca or extension 58888.

 

CCS will be migrating the Cisco wireless LAN controllers(WLC) to the 2nd generation of the WLCs during following maintenance windows:
Sunday, May 13, from 7:00am to 1pm
Sunday, May 27, from 7:00am to 1pm

This migration enables us to continue to receive vendor's support on the platforms. The 2nd generation WLC also supports larger number of clients and provides higher throughput.

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