UBC News Digest

The UBC News Digest is a weekly summary of news stories about UBC people, research, learning, community, and internationalization initiatives. News Digest past issues are also available on-line.

May 9, 2002

• BC Cancer Agency/UBC researchers investigate weight-lifting as therapy for prostate cancer patients
• UBC-led team uses new technique to date universe age
• New dean appointed to Faculty of Arts
• UBC to set up Centre for Study of Democratic Institutions
• UBC researcher finds genetic link to aggression

BC Cancer Agency/UBC researchers investigate weight-lifting as therapy for prostate cancer patients

A joint BC Cancer Agency and UBC research study will investigate whether weight training can improve muscle strength and muscle mass in men being treated with hormone therapy for prostate cancer.

Men undergoing hormone therapy describe a loss in both muscle strength and muscle mass, which can be attributed to a decline in the male sex hormone, testosterone.

Hormone therapy drugs work by blocking the production of testosterone, a hormone that can stimulate the growth of cancerous tumours.

"Hormone therapy can often accelerate the physical changes you would normally expect to see in men in their 50's, 60's and 70's," says Cheri Van Patten, BC Cancer Agency nutritionist and co-investigator of the study. "And for many men, self-image and quality of life are directly tied to their physical health and strength."

Researchers hope to recruit 60 men in the Lower Mainland to take part in the National Cancer Institute of Canada/Health Canada funded study. The study is limited to men with prostate cancer over the age of 50 who are not physically active, and who have begun hormone therapy.

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UBC-led team uses new technique to date universe age

An international research team led by scientists at the University of British Columbia has made a more reliable estimate of the age of the universe, placing it at 13-14 billion years.

Prof. Harvey Richer of UBC's Physics and Astronomy Dept., the study's principal investigator, discussed the group's research at a Space Science Update at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"The remarkable thing is that our estimate of the age of the universe, based on burned-out stars, agrees very well with the estimate based on the measured expansion rate. The two methods are absolutely unrelated to each other yet they give the same result - it's amazing," Richer says.

Previous research setting the age of the universe at 13 to 14 billion years was based on the rate of expansion of space, but the universe's birth date is such a fundamental quantity that astronomers have long sought other age-dating techniques to cross-check their conclusions.

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Richer's group uncovered the oldest burned-out stars in the Milky Way - in a globular star cluster 6,000 light years away in the constellation Scorpius. These extremely dim and old "clockwork stars" give a completely independent reading on the age of the universe.

Hubble photographed the ancient star cluster for a total of eight days between January and April 2001. The data from the 246 images were painstakingly analyzed at UBC by Richer and UBC postdoctoral student James Brewer over a 12-month period to yield the age estimate. The software for this analysis was written by group member Dr. Peter Stetson of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (NRC) in Victoria.

"We measured the brightness and temperatures of white dwarf stars - the burned-out remnants of the earliest stars which formed in our galaxy. These stars are wonderful cosmic clocks because they get cooler and fainter in a very predictable way. We measured the faintest, coldest stars in the cluster and used that data to analyze their age," Richer says.

Richer's group reached the estimate of 13-14 billion years by determining that the ancient white dwarf stars photographed by Hubble are 12 to 13 billion years old. Earlier observations show the first stars formed less than one billion years after the universe's birth in the Big Bang, so finding the age of the oldest stars puts astronomers well within reach of calculating the absolute age of the universe.

"This new observation short-circuits getting to the age question, and offers a completely independent way of pinning down that age," Richer says.

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New dean appointed to Faculty of Arts

Nancy Gallini has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts, effective Sept. 1, 2002.

Gallini, a professor of Economics, comes to UBC from the University of Toronto where she served in several administrative roles including Assoc. Chair of Graduate Studies in the Economics Dept. and Chair of the Economics Dept. from 1995-2000.

Gallini holds a B.A. in Mathematics, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and a Ph.D. form the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Innovation Law and Policy. The Centre, funded by public and private sources and housed in the Law School of the University of Toronto, supports academic research and policy debates on issues related to the law, economics and policy of technology, conducted by law schools and related disciplines in Ontario universities.

Professor Gallini has held visiting scholar positions at the University of California at Berkeley, the Yale Law School and Economics Department, and C.R.E.S.T. in Paris. Her primary research and teaching areas are the economics of industrial organizations and contracts, intellectual property and competition policy. For six years (1992-1998), Professor Gallini served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review.

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UBC to set up Centre for Study of Democratic Institutions

A gift of $1.25 million from the Montreal-based Jarislowsky Foundation will be the keystone for a new UBC Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The Jarislowsky Foundation is supported by financier Stephen Jarislowsky, his wife, Gail, and Jarislowsky, Fraser Limited.

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions will have at its core an endowed chair, made possible by the Jarislowsky gift which will be matched by UBC. The search for a world leader in the study of democracy to fill the Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair has begun.

"The democratic structure has to include checks and balances to curb power," says Jarislowsky, who has headed money management firm Jarislowsky, Fraser for more than four decades, "but at the same time attract the best people to serve and advance social and economic objectives. That can be a difficult balance for democracy to achieve."

"There is a sense of urgency to this initiative," says Anne Martin-Matthews, dean pro tem of the Faculty of Arts at UBC. "The events of September 11 illustrate the immediate need to generate research and international discussion on the importance of individual rights and effective democratic structures.

"The collapse of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and Latin America has strengthened the claims of democrats. But at the same time, democracy as it has been practised in many older regimes is fatigued. Globalization of trade, investment and immigration raise questions about how relevant national institutions are today. So the time is ripe for UBC to sharpen its focus on democracy in theory and practice."

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UBC researcher finds genetic link to aggression

A University of British Columbia geneticist and senior scientist at Vancouver's Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) has defined a link between mouse genes and pathological aggression which may lead to new understanding and treatment of violent behaviour and brain disease in humans.

Elizabeth M. Simpson, an associate professor of Medical Genetics, has discovered a genetic mutation, dubbed fierce, that produces violence in mice. Its effects are extreme aggression including killing of intended mates and sibling mice, significant brain defects and physical differences such as decreased size, body fat and eye abnormalities.

Simpson is the first Canadian researcher amongst a small group worldwide identifying genes linked to extreme aggression.

The mutation occurs in the gene Nr2e1, which is the first in a newly classified group of brain receptors known to exist in organisms ranging from fruit flies to humans. The mutation clearly demonstrates that in mice, violence has a genetic component.

"This discovery reinforces Dr. Simpson's leadership in research that combines genetic engineering with the study of the brain and mental health," says Dr. Michael Hayden, CMMT director. "By advancing the understanding of genetics and behaviour, scientists at the centre hope to contribute to new diagnostics and treatment for both physical and mental illness."

Simpson is principal investigator in the study, which was done in collaboration with U.S. researchers at Johns Hopkins University and The Jackson Laboratory. The findings will be published in this month's issue of Behavioural Brain Research.

"My approach is to develop mouse models of mental disease and use what we learn from mice to accelerate the understanding of human abnormal behaviour and to develop gene-based therapies to treat inherited mental illness," says Simpson, who is the Canada Research Chair in Genetics and Behaviour.