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If Izumi Sakamoto isn’t careful,
she’ll put herself out of a job.
Instead of studying how
social workers can help their
clients, the assistant professor of social work has
made a career thinking about how disadvantaged
people can and do help themselves.
“I’m interested in how people in marginalized
situations help each other or empower themselves,”she
says.She’s worked with homeless women and international
students and her latest project is on employment
challenges faced by immigrants.
“The assumption is that three years after initial
settlement, you’ll be fine. Because skilled immigrants
are chosen for their skills and educational background,
it’s assumed they can just pick up and run in
their new society. But when that doesn’t happen,
what’s gone wrong?”she asks.
“There are things we can nail down.We can have
seminars on how to write a resumé or how to do
interviews. But what about the things that can’t be
spelled out?”When immigrants don’t get a job, it’s
often unclear why or employers give vague reasons
like lack of Canadian experience.
“The purpose of this project is to tease out and
identify the tacit dimensions of Canadian experience.
Do you really need to have certain behaviour patterns
or knowledge or skills to be a successful
employee in a certain industry?”
Like all her projects, this one involves collaboration
with community groups. She doesn’t just share
her findings with these groups, they all collaborate
on the research itself.
As an undergraduate in Japan,Sakamoto volunteered
with children with multiple disabilities and credits the
experience with shaping her perspective.“I saw such
determination and commitment among family members
and from some of the children themselves.That got me
thinking about self-advocacy and empowerment,and
in seeing things from the other side.”
And while she isn’t likely to literally put herself
out of a job, Sakamoto is challenging the traditional
perspective of the researcher.
“It’s important for academics to produce knowledge
that’s relevant to the general public and to the
people we work with — especially for social work. If
our knowledge doesn’t reflect their experiences,we
are not going to be relevant, either as a profession
or an academic discipline.”
— Jenny Hall
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 We all know now that the 20th century’s most influential innovation — electronic communications by way of your computer — has given rise to a whole new breed of criminals.They are the computer hackers who find nefarious ways to use information technology to rob you.
Thankfully,computer scientists like Stefan Saroiu of the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) are preparing to do battle with these IT pickpockets.His target — hackers who practice a form of illegal information access called phishing.
Phishing involves the luring of unsuspecting Internet users to a fake website — often one that mimics a financial institution — by using authentic-looking e-mails in an attempt to steal passwords or gain financial or personal information.
While you might scoff at the idea of anyone falling for scams like these,Saroiu says that phishers can achieve a surprising authenticity in setting up phony e-mails and websites.
Even more unsettling is the fact that phishing is simple. He demonstrates by visiting a bogus PayPal site. “It takes about two minutes to come up with something like this. Any second-year undergraduate in computer science has the skills to do it.”
It is difficult for security researchers to know how
widespread phishing is because of user privacy. Using the
UTM community’s Internet use for its research, Sariou’s
team is employing “passive measurement” to monitor
Internet traffic exchanged so that no personal or identifiable
information is recorded. They are recording whether
phishing attacks occur but will not be able to identify the
victims or the attackers.
They have already made progress, developing an antiphishing
tool that is being used on the FireFox web
browser and was recently ranked as one of the top 10
such programs.
In addition to using tools like this,Saroiu recommends
that users follow one simple but effective rule. “Don’t respond to any e-mail that requests personal information,
no matter who it’s from.”
And he notes that the best computer security is the
password.“Despite all our advances,the password is still
the best information security tool.The key is how you
protect that password.”
—Paul Fraumeni (with files from Nicolle Wahl) |
Deep inside your brain are cells that secrete a chemical called dopamine. It really is quite a wonder,this substance.
As a neurotransmitter,dopamine is like a sparkplug in your car’s engine — firing out messages through your nervous system that enable you to control your movements.
For some people,however,the cells carrying the
dopamine begin to die,usually after the age of 50 or 60.
And when the cells die,the dopamine disappears. The
result is Parkinson’s disease.
Joanne Nash,assistant professor at the University of
Toronto Scarborough,has brought her skills as a bright,
young neurobiologist from England to investigate why
those cells die and how the symptoms, like rigid posture
and muscle tremors,might be eased.
“Parkinson’s disease can be treated effectively with a
drug called L-dopa,which lessens the symptoms.But it
also creates disabling side effects (such as hallucinations
and extreme emotional states).L-dopa is not the only
way forward. We can do better.”
That’s why Nash and her team are focusing on finding
the molecular roots of the disease.
“We need to understand how motor control works in
our bodies.To do that,we must determine the precise
sequence of molecular mechanisms that occur to enable
us to move.If we can do this,more effective targets for
treatment of neurological disorders will be revealed.”
One of the challenges is the fact that by the time most
people are diagnosed with Parkinson’s,more than 80 per
cent of the dopamine cells are gone.So Nash is using rats
to study healthy brains and those affected by Parkinson’s.
It’s complex research that could easily lead to frustration.
There is no definitive evidence about factors that
can cause Parkinson’s, as, for example, cigarette smoking
leads to lung cancer.There are clues — perhaps the
head trauma boxers (like Muhummad Ali, a long-time
Parkinson’s sufferer) experience.But there is nothing
concrete — yet.
Still, this challenge doesn’t bother Nash.She finds
it motivating.
“The great thing about working in brain research is that
you can go as far as your imagination goes.Forty years ago,
the brain was a black box.We knew very little.But there
have been great advances since then.We’re in a superb
position now to make major discoveries in neuroscience.”
— Paul Fraumeni
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