Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies

Individuals and organizations are increasingly making, storing and accessing records in the highly networked, easily hacked environment of the Internet.  They trust banks, phone companies, hospitals, government, etc. to maintain their digital data/records on their behalf.  Where they actually reside, how they are being managed, how long they will be available to them...they have no idea!  Some organizations are concerned about a liability they did not know they were assuming.  Others are amassing huge volumes of data, 'big data,' which they may use to provide services focusing on marketing and securing competitive advantage, or to foster demoratic objectives, from government transparency to research.

Pervious research has identified the issues that should concern us: Can these data be trusted? Are the records from which the data are derived reliable or event traceable?  Are they compelete?  Are they authentic?  How were they generated and by whom?  How are they stored and under what jurisdiction? Who has access to them?  How secure are they? 

This workshop will bring together an international group of researchers in the disciplines that are called to address and solve these issues - information science, law, law enforcement, and journalism - to explore them focusing on the relationship between organizations and client groups (citizens, customers, etc.), in order to form an understanding of the meaning of trust in the context outlined above that can lead to the identification of the instruments we need to protect
the balance between conflicting rights, such as privacy and access, secrecy and transparency, the right to know and the right to oblivioin, in globally connected networks.

This workshop aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of clinical, natural and social scientists to describe their different approaches of exploring sleep behaviour related phenotypes
and to gain new understandings in regards to sleep behavioural phenotypes and their functionality for genetic and pharmacogenetic diagnoses.

The team's aim is 1) to achieve an agreement on an interdisciplinary approach to describe sleep behaviours in individuals with NDD and how this can be utilized for genomic and pharmacogenomic studies; 2) to develop a research agenda and funding application outlines through the PWI facilitated international multidisciplinary research network; and 3) publish the proceedings of the presentations and discussions at the workshop, portraying novel approaches of phenotyping sleep behaviours. Through phenotyping of sleep/wake behaviours and medication reaction patterns, the team may be able to decode the genomic/pharmacogenomic basis of some sleep disturbances leading to insomnia. This activity will also set stage for a disease ontology concept at UBC.

Online virtual groups formed through social media to support health and wellness can conceivably be beneficial to patients, caregivers, and health professionals if used as a tool to enhance communication, however the power of such groups may be harmful if inaccurate or misleading health information is disseminated.  Studying the dynamics of online groups for health and wellness promotion is both important and timely.

This workshop invites a mutli-disciplinary group of UBC and international researchers and their graduate students who have expertise in sociology, library science, health science, business management, computer science, engineering, education, media and communication, and other fields explore social media to support health and wellness.  The interdisciplinary exploration will focus on six research themes: i) Individual information acquisition and application, ii) Community genesis and sustanability, iii) Technological design issues, iv) Stakeholders' mutual influence towards wellness, v) Knowlege management, dissemination, and renewal, and vi) Research designs to address these themes.

The outcomes of the workshop will include 6 key papers that address above themes.  The workshop will also result in the identification of interdiscipliary groups who will work together to write grant applications to fund the further study of this phenomenon so as to uncover the most beneficial ways of using social medical to promote healthy living.

Cooperation is a fundamental feature of all biological systems and is thought to be at the root of all major transitions in the history of life on earth. For example, the formation of the first cells through integration of molecular pathways, the evolution of multicellular organisms from single-celled ancestors, and the evolution of complex societies are all based on cooperation. Humans have formed the most complicated societies, and cooperation is at the very basis of this complexity: without widespread cooperation, large-scale human societies could not exist. But every form of cooperation faces the fundamental dilemma of cheating. In classical evolution, the Darwinian problem of cooperation is that defectors who reap the benefits but do not pay the costs of cooperation appear to have a fitness advantage. A similar phenomenon occurs at the cultural level in human societies, and every human being knows the temptation to defect in many different circumstances. Because cooperation is of paramount importance for the long-term sustainability of human societies (e.g. in terms of nutrition, energy consumption, climate change, wars, etc.), it is therefore of central importance to understand the mechanisms, processes and social structures that generate and maintain cooperation among humans.

The proposed workshop serves the purpose to bring together leading scholars from a wide array of academic disciplines to initiate a comprehensive study of cooperation in humans by addressing the following main questions:

1. What are the general mechanisms, processes and structures that promote cooperation in
humans? This question should be addressed both theoretically, using mathematical  models for cultural evolution, and experimentally, using experimental and comparative approaches.

2. How can mechanisms and structures promoting cooperation among humans be implemented in the real world, e.g. through ethical decision making, law and legal frameworks, and dispute system design?

UBC is in the unique position to have a number of world-renowned scientists and academics working at the forefront of studying and implementing human cooperation. By inviting the top international scholars in the field to the Exploratory workshop, the team will attempt to lay the foundations for a research agenda addressing the main questions about human cooperation over the next decade.

Prescriptions for second generation antipsychotic drugs (SGAs) to Canadian children and adolescents with mental health disorders have skyrocketed in the past 10 years.  From 2005 to 2009, their use to treat a variety of mental health disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, and mood disorders increased by 114%.  Currently, over 6000 children in the province of BC alone are believed to be taking antipsychotic medications.  Despite the rapid growth rate, none of these medications have been adequeately studied in children for safety or efficacy, and none have been approved by Health Canada for use in this population.  This workshop is designed to bring together leading UBC and international experts to examine the ethical controversies surrounding recent increases in the off-label use of antypsychotic medications to treat mental health disorders in Canadian children. 

The team will invite clinicians, researchers, ethicists, and advocates from a vareity of disciplinary backgrounds to identify ethical concerns, gaps in knowledge, and the strategize on how to move forward to address challenges.

Violence ruptures social relations between intimate others: neighbours turn against neighbours; teachers betray their pupils; clergy transgress their congregations; mothers doubt their sons, nephews fight their uncles. How do people, families and communities restore their relationships when the bases of ‘the social’, ‘family’, and ‘community’ have been frayed? What does social repair mean in these everyday contexts and within the extraordinary circumstances of displacement, separation, war and disappearance? How can the field of transitional justice consider these everyday processes to better their theoretical and practical approaches?

To address these questions, this exploratory workshop brings together leading UBC, national, and international scholars from Law, Anthropology, Political Science, Social Work, Indigenous Governance Studies, History, Performance Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Regional and Community Planning. The academic objectives of the workshop are threefold: 1) to conceptualize micro-level memory and reconciliation practices, and performances of social repair; 2) to develop a framework of how such micro-level practices interact with national and international processes of transitional justice and; 3) to examine the implications of these ideas to the field of transitional justice.

The workshop brings into conversation different disciplines to examine micro-level practices enacted by survivors and witnesses of mass violence. Taking these practices as an epistemological axis for the development of a theoretical and practice framework, and bringing together scholars from various regions of the world, collapses the South-North divide characteristic of the transitional justice field to date (wherein transitional justice scholars and practitioners are largely Western, and the countries and subjects of study are largely ‘non-Western’). Theoretically then, this workshop is an important challenge to the dominance of transitional justice by Western scholarship, and a critical advancement in the study of the micro-level processes and performances in the field of transitional justice.

This exploratory workshop features two public events and four private working sessions. It will work towards the publication of a Special Issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice, will develop the Liu Institute’s for Global Issues’ Transitional Justice Network, and will lay a strong foundation for the development of a Peter Wall Major Thematic Grant.

This Exploratory Workshop will advance UBC’s mission of ‘education for global citizenship’. Fairness informs the development of shared public policy in an increasingly globalized world. It engages legal frameworks, notions of social interaction and community, and our collective understanding of transparent and accessible processes. Fairness extends beyond process and outcomes; it engages our basic norms of how to interact with one another.  We cannot expect to become global citizens without understanding how fairness informs social, political and legal choices.  We need to know how fairness is culturally, linguistically, socially and economically formed, including what is recognized and what is discounted.  In this, there are both historical and contemporary insights to draw on.
   
This exploratory workshop is aimed at advancing our collective notions of fairness by encouraging participating scholars to look beyond the lens of their own discipline to find new and innovative ways that a deeper understanding of fairness might inform their scholarship. Some linkages are immediately clear, others need the benefit of an intensive discussion that the Exploratory Workshop would provide the opportunity for.

Ecosystems play a dual role in relation to humanity: (i) they are on one hand critical contributors to life-support services and benefits that simultaneously give meaning to human life; and (ii) they are subject to diverse and escalating drivers of change operating at local- to global scales and deriving from a multitude of human activities. Regarding (i), the science of understanding the benefits of ecosystems has progressed mainly through a framework of ‘ecosystem services’, defined as the processes whereby ecosystems render benefits for people, and has been largely the province of ecologists and environmental and resource economists. Meanwhile regarding (ii),, the stewardship of ecosystems, including at planetary scales, has been largely the province of ecologists, conservation biologists, and environmental activists. The narrowness of endeavors on both fronts is stark in light of the complexity of both ‘service’ and ‘stewardship’ kinds of relationships, and the necessity of capturing not just ecological and social processes separately, but together in the context of complex adaptive social-ecological systems.

This workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary group of ecologists, economists, psychologists, anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and terrestrial and marine management practitioners to address two thorny questions. 1. How can research in your field contribute to an understanding of how ecosystem change might result in changes in well-being, be that defined socially, culturally or economically? And, 2. How can research in your field contribute to an understanding of how we at this meeting might contribute to bold and large-scale change toward greater environmental security and social equity in a rapidly changing world? This project will provide a re-envisioned conceptual framework for understanding ecosystems’ contributions to human well-being, and a suite of interdisciplinary insights to guide the design of stewardship initiatives at different scales.

The effects of global warming are most obvious in the Arctic, both on land and at sea. On land, ice sheets, glaciers and permafrost are melting, the flow of rivers is increasing and their chemical composition is changing. In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is receding and the hydrography, circulation, chemistry and ecosystems are changing rapidly. Locally, these changes affect the livelihood of northern communities. Globally, they affect climate as a result of altered greenhouse gas emissions, ocean circulation and heat transport. As these perturbations accelerate, there is an increasing sense of urgency to document their extent and to understand their consequences. The three-day exploratory workshop assembles a group of Canadian and international Arctic experts with various backgrounds to foster inter-disciplinary collaborations and to initiate a large-scale research program investigating the biological, chemical and physical responses of the Arctic Ocean to climate changes. The workshop consists of public lectures on the rapidly evolving changes occurring in the Arctic (terrestrial ecosystems and landscape dynamics; permafrost; hydrology; sea ice; ocean circulation, productivity and chemistry), discussions of the impacts of these changes on First Nations communities, and a series of closed door plenary sessions and thematic working groups devoted to developing an international, multidisciplinary research program and delineating funding strategies. The Workshop dates are May 2-4, 2012.

This exploratory workshop will bring to Vancouver international specialists in anthropology, history, the history of science and art history, including scholars and curators at UBC, to discuss methodological issues and recent thinking on the role of artefacts, broadly construed, in encounters between different peoples across space and time. In conjunction with academic staff from the “Artefacts of Encounter” project at the University of Cambridge, as well as members of the Reciprocal Research Network of museums and First Nations bands (of which MOA is an active and prominent member), the workshop  explores the kinds of objects that emerge in situations of “cross-cultural contact,” with a focus on late-eighteenth-century encounters in the Americas and the Pacific and their still-unfolding legacy. Texts, objects and images of the kind found in museums, cultural centres, and archives function both as artefacts and agents of these complex historical processes, as things that at once move through and bring into being different worlds. Participants will explore the role of such “artefacts of encounter” as mediating devices in human relationships and as instantiations of other ways of being – whether ancestors that endure in the form of woven cloaks and carvings or embodiments of pre-Modern purity for primitivist Europeans. In such contexts, issues surrounding historical evidence, notions of property, questions of classification and scale (time, space, entities that exist) and the kinds of qualities attributed to people(s) encountered by Europeans, as well as the differences these people attributed to others and themselves, will be explored. Particular attention will be paid to the significance these collections currently have for indigenous communities and scholars alike, including questions of physical and “virtual” repatriation. The four thematic rubrics will include: re-thinking cross-cultural encounter; collections and artefacts as evidence; disjunctures in the study of travel and exploration; and the still-unfolding legacy of early encounters. The workhsop spans three days of discussion at the Peter Wall Institute, including presentations, round-table conversations, and at least one public lecture, as well as a field-trip to the U’Mista Cultural Society Museum in Alert Bay following the events at UBC.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entered into force on May 3, 2008.  Article 12 affirms the rights of persons with disabilities to receive recognition as persons before the law and calls on State Parties to recognize that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life and to take appropriate measures to provide access to the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity.

The idea that all persons with disabilities (including those with cognitive impairments) be recognized as persons before the law and enjoy legal capacity challenges one of the fundamental tenets of western moral and legal philosophy: that moral, and by extension legal status, is dependent on having a certain level or type of reason.  In essence, Article 12 challenges the basis of law related to all those who have significant cognitive impairments, including those with dementia and those with intellectual and mental disabilities.  As this centuries-old divide between legal capacity and incapacity becomes more porous, little is understood about how to recast the criteria of moral and legal personhood and capacity.  Knowledge is lacking about appropriate legal, political, and programming responses impacting governments, the justice system, the human services, and the health, financial and legal professions.  

This workshop will bring together leading national and international scholars from  Law, Disability Studies, Gerontology, Social Work, Ethics, Medicine, Psychology and Philosophy along with key civil society representatives to examine from a ‘ground up’ perspective the issues raised by Article 12.  

Assistive technologies have potential to significantly improve the lives of people with disabilities by enabling independence and facilitating social connections, however research in assistive technologies creates several challenges. Some of these challenges include the inherent heterogeneity of the user population, privacy concerns in data gathering and analysis, and ethical concerns in the use of the technologies. Often, designing technology for individuals with disabilities is done without full attention to the myriad needs it must satisfy. One method to remedy the situation is to improve collaboration between technology designers, users, and researchers in disability health, such that systems are designed with the privacy, ethical, social, and clinical concerns in mind. The proposed ICICS-PWIAS workshop aims to address the interdisciplinary gap that exists in assistive technology research, by bringing together researchers from computer science, engineering, social science, humanities, medicine, rehabilitative and clinical fields to address specific research topics and research themes of mutual interest and paramount importance to effective research in assistive technologies. The research topics span evaluation, sensing, networking, and mobility, while the research themes span customization, privacy, ethics, and integrated end-user involvement. We anticipate that an Exploratory Workshop in assistive technologies will capitalize upon a critical mass of researchers at UBC and take advantage of the momentum in funding opportunities currently available to strong teams of researchers in assistive technologies.

We believe there is a critical knowledge gap in biology that needs to be addressed: cytoplasmic nanospaces biophysics. Nanospaces are intracellular domains found in all eukaryotes and prokaryotes where selected molecules and ions are positioned so as to convert random thermal motion into directed flow to enable reactions that would otherwise be thermodynamically unfavourable. They vary from a few to a few hundred nanometers in size and can be both mobile and transitory. They're usually situated between apposing membranes, but are contiguous with the cytosol, which differentiates them from membrane delimited organelles. Some examples of critical cellular processes occurring in nanospaces are excitation-contraction coupling in muscles, cell division, proliferation, intracellular trafficking, the stabilization and control of multiprotein complexes such as cellulose synthases, focal adhesion turnover in cell migration, calcium homeostasis and intracellular signaling. While the traditional deterministic view of these processes is inaccurate, it dominates hypothesis generation in the research community as well as both graduate and undergraduate education. Our goal is to develop appropriate probabilistic models that can be quantitatively analysed to guide future research into both healthy and diseased states, and to provide more accurate visualization tools necessary for research and education.

This interdisciplinary workshop aims to explore ways of creating an integrated environmental and social history of the marine ecosystem of the Strait of Georgia, and to determine how to draw up credible, detailed, scientifically-supported future scenarios for the Strait using insights from this history. Because the field of historical reconstruction is a relatively new one, suitable interdisciplinary methodologies are far from established. Moreover, ways of using insights from the past to influence policy are controversial and speculative. We plan to discuss more robust approaches to creating future scenarios. Finally we will explore means, such as a web-based system, of obtaining community-led feedback and evaluation of these futures.

People have long believed that certain thoughts and feelings are toxic for their health, and in recent decades convincing scientific evidence has emerged to support this view. These effects can be large in magnitude, in some cases doubling or tripling the risk of adverse outcomes, so they have important ramifications for public health, the economy, and society. Nonetheless, little is known about the underlying mechanisms, or how thoughts and feelings

Global economic competition poses significant challenges for our understanding of the world of work. An exemplar case for examining how global competition is re-organizing work is found in the service sector. The service sector encompasses work that involves the provision of services to customers (e.g. business services, banking, healthcare, tourism). As a consequence of globalization, service work is being outsourced both locally and, in some cases, globally transcending national borders through offshoring arrangements. Despite the pervasiveness of these trends, relatively little is known about whether national institutions (e.g. unions, labour and employment laws) are still meaningful as technology facilitates the seamless transfer of work from one geographic location to another. Beyond institutions, not much is known about how the re-organization of service work is affecting job quality (e.g. wages, job security, and mobility) and labor market outcomes for the service workforce. An exemplar case for examining how global competition is re-organizing work is found in the service sector. The service sector encompasses work that involves the provision of services to customers (e.g. business services, banking, healthcare, tourism). As a consequence of globalization, service work is being outsourced both locally and, in some cases, globally transcending national borders through offshoring arrangements. Despite the pervasiveness of these trends, relatively little is known about whether national institutions (e.g. unions, labour and employment laws) are still meaningful as technology facilitates the seamless transfer of work from one geographic location to another. Beyond institutions, not much is known about how the re-organization of service work is affecting job quality (e.g. wages, job security, and mobility) and labor market outcomes for the service workforce. In sum, the first goal for this workshop is to develop a deeper understanding of how global competition is re-organizing different types of service work and in turn, the effects on job quality by generating debate across national boundaries, disciplinary lines, and industries within the service sector. Second, we will consider the ability of employment, labour and social policies to regulate service work and shape outcomes for the service workforce. Third, we will evaluate how traditional forms of collective representation (e.g. unions) are responding to globalization.

Left-leaning Latin American parties and movements have enjoyed a series of successes in the past few years. The election of Hugo Ch

While there have been recent advances in knowledge and research in the area of close relationships and health, many questions remain about the processes of couple and family coping with stress and adversity, the effects of such adversity on health, and therapeutic means to aid couples and families. With this workshop, we propose an in-depth examination of recent theoretical perspectives and cutting edge research on how couples cope with stress, including acute and chronic stress, stresses within and outside the family, stress caused by physical and mental illness, and how such stressors impact on the health and well-being of both the dyad and the larger social units in which they are embedded. Those scientists whose work most directly addresses these questions have relied largely on a stress framework, in which the role of social relationships in health has been primarily assumed to be via social support. However, there are several other highly fruitful approaches to the study of close relationships that have great potential for increasing understanding of the role of social relationships in health.

This workshop will bring together leading experts in two new rapidly developing areas of physics and chemistry: coherent control of molecular dynamics and ultracold molecules. The goal of this multidisciplinary workshop will be to delineate research directions, possible fundamental discoveries and novel technological applications, which the coalescence of these two fields may lead to. Introducing techniques of coherent control to low-temperature physics may result in the development of conceptually new methods for the production, study and exploitation of ultracold molecular matter with many diverse applications in fundamental science and technology. The workshop is expected to generate a new perspective of these two fields and an abundance of research ideas that may have high impact on several different areas of physics such as condensed matter-physics, physical chemistry, high precision spectroscopy, quantum computation, astrophysics and cosmology.

The Krever Enquiry into the tainted blood scandal identified a need for both natural and social scientific blood-related research. UBC investigators responded by developing a CFI funded multi-disciplinary Centre for Blood Research bringing together natural and social scientists to examine both the blood system and the sociological, psychological, cultural and ethical issues related to blood research, utilization and donation. The Exploratory Workshop will bring world leaders in transfusion science together with experts in medical sociology, risk assessment, and ethics to identify the challenges facing today's blood system The goal is to identify key research issues, appropriate methodologies, and the interdisciplinary awareness required in this critical scientific, social and medical area. The workshop will involve UBC investigators (including graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) and outside world experts, participating intellectually in thematic talks and breakout groups aimed at identifying the appropriate direction for future research. Besides new research collaborations, the goal is to develop awareness by all participants of the complexity of the research issues involved in a field that spans basic science, cultural values, social structures and moral/ethical issues.

Evolutionary biology, phylogenetics, palaeontology, and physical geology all share a fundamental goal of illuminating the history of the planet. Each of these fields is developing a history of the Earth based on different kinds of data as diverse as genetic sequences, fossilised remains, or isotope ratios. Despite their common goal, each of these fields is isolated from the others because each is developing a planetary history with data that are not easily compared across fields. Here we will discuss the possibility of calibrating the most basic measurement in any historical inquiry: Time. We will examine the prospects and drawbacks of aligning the "histories of the Earth" by several synergistic means. First, we will examine the prospects of aligning fossil and genetic data by comparing the evolutionary "clock" of several genes from several microbial lineages with established fossil records. Second, we will explore the possibility of aligning physical data with genetic and palaeontological histories, and determining the biology that might underpin these physical characteristics. Answering such questions will provide unique insights into the evolution of key molecules, as well as the biochemical, ecological, and physical interactions between Life and the Earth.

This workshop explores maps from four distinct but overlapping viewpoints. Mapping is a fundamental component of human cognition; it is a representational medium that both has a history and is part of the practice of history; it is a mode of spatial thinking and a reflection of cultural norms that are externalized in the design and use of space; and mapping lies at the interface between technology and human cognition and action. While there is now an established body of research on maps, scholars have yet to consider the relationships between all four viewpoints and what can be learned about each viewpoint by taking the others. Maps: Here, Then and Now brings a team of nine international experts in philosophy, geography, history, architecture, landscape architecture, and information theory together with top researchers at UBC whose work touches on aspects of mapping. This collaboration is designed to launch the next generation of research on maps, their fundamental role in human thought and action, and their associated technologies.

Extending the scope of standard tomographic medical imaging to allow investigation of temporal changes related to the function of the living organism and its physiological processes is the goal of dynamic single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). SPECT is a powerful and relatively inexpensive technique, widely available in clinics, but only in a static form. To be able to do this in a dynamic manner would greatly enhance the potential of SPECT in both clinical and research environments. The proposed dynamic SPECT workshop will allow members of the Vancouver Medical Imaging Research Group and its collaborators (the "core" group), as well as key researchers from other laboratories, to meet, share experiences, discuss problems and compare different approaches and results of studies. The workshop participants will represent the following disciplines: medicine, radiopharmacy, medical physics, mathematics, computer science.

Human society affects environmental change but is also vulnerable to these changes. This relation has generated a number of theories that either focus on how we affect the environment or how the environment affects us. Few theories explicitly focus on the reflexive nature of this interaction and policy suffers as a result. This workshop will establish the range of data required to give an assessment of how likely an ecosystem is to change (which we label environmental sensitivity) and the ability of communities to adapt (social resilience). Illustrative case studies, drawn from both the industrial and developing world agricultural and forestry sectors, will allow us to develop this approach and help us generate a new method for assessing the reflexive relation between society and the environment.

There are approximately 11,000 new spinal cord injuries each year in North America, many of which produce severe physical impairment and disability, often in a youthful and otherwise healthy population. The overall inability of the medical and scientific communities to achieve a "cure" for paralysis or even to clearly identify some therapeutic interventions that produce predictable and measurable improvements in neurologic function may in part be attributable to the limited scope of the research approaches that have been adopted to study this problem. Clinical, radiological, histopathological, and biomechanical evidence suggest that acute spinal cord injury may be the result of multiple mechanisms of primary insult. Despite this evidence, very little research has occurred that addresses this point, and we suggest that acknowledging different possible injury mechanisms may be of importance in the overall strategy to minimize the secondary injury, to enhance the repair of partially injured cells and/or to regenerate the severely damaged neurological tissue. Therein lies the rationale for the focus of this exploratory workshop. The overall objective of this exploratory workshop is to foster an international collaborative effort on the biomechanics of spinal cord injury.

Worldwide there are over 1.6 million hip fractures annually among people aged 60 years and over, and as the number and mean age of the populations continue to increase, the number of hip fractures is likely to increase as well. Epidemiologically, a substantial additional concern is that, besides the demographic change in populations, the age-standardized incidence (i.e., the average individual risk) of fracture is rising in many populations and countries. The treatment costs of fall-related injuries such as hip fracture in Canada are currently estimated 650 million dollars but are predicted to exceed 2.4 billion dollars in 2041. Therefore, we propose to answer 2 research questions in order to better prevent hip fractures: 1. What are the currently unrecognized risks for hip fractures? 2. What novel interventions can better prevent hip fractures?

Despite the immense popularity of biography and autobiography today, little research has been devoted to exploring how the theatre addresses the AutoBiographical or how a play, especially in performance, differs from traditional modes of AutoBiography. Scholars and the general public are very familiar with narrative forms of biography and autobiography, but theatre specialists are well aware that a significant number of contemporary plays are overtly AutoBiographical. Focussed research on this aspect of AutoBiography is needed and will be both timely and innovative. This Workshop will bring together scholars in biography, autobiography, and theatre to explore the intersection of Theatre and AutoBiography. We are planning three days of lectures, panels, and roundtable discussions that will coincide with the production of Joy Coghill's play Song of the Place at UBC's Freddie Wood Theatre. This play, apart from its separate life as a published text and a production, will serve as an exemplary 'case study' for the Workshop because it is an AutoBiographical play about the eminent Canadian painter Emily Carr that draws directly on Carr's letters, journals, diaries, autobiography, and on biographies of Carr; it is also deeply connected with Coghill's own "life-story" as an artist (award-winning actor, writer, director, and artistic director). Guest speakers will be invited from across Canada, the UK, Australia, and possibly the USA. Panels will be developed by the three main organisers from solicited presentations and vetted proposals in order to concentrate on theoretical issues, practical theatre challenges, and specific playwrights and themes. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will be especially encouraged to present their research. A fourth day is planned, after the Workshop, to enable the organisers and other participants to begin drafting a book based on the research presented during the Workshop.

This exploratory workshop proposal seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from UBC, from across Canada and internationally, to construct a robust framework for international comparative research on historical consciousness. This emerging field lies at the intersection of the vibrant areas of cultural studies, studies in collective memory, and history education. The UBC scholars are beginning work on a proposed Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness, anchored by a Canada Research Chair in Education: those from beyond UBC are co-investigators in a SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiative, the letter of intent for which was submitted in January, 2001. The Peter Wall Exploratory Workshop will enable the two groups to come together for the first time to shape a research framework, which will then be used to conduct research in Canada and stimulate work internationally, and ultimately, to articulate policy implications for the development of historical consciousness.

Following forty years of (often policy-induced) industrialization, it is apparent that service industries (especially advanced services, such as finance, information- and technology-based services) are playing more central roles in urban development within the broadly-defined Asia-Pacific. The pace and far-reaching effects of this recent service growth (or tertiarization) has generated a significant demand for theoretical and normative research that is at the social science frontier for the new century. This will be addressed by bringing to UBC leading Asian urban scholars and internationally-recognized service industry specialists (1) to develop a stimulating, interdisciplinary discourse on the three principal consequences of urban service industry growth: (a. new development trajectories, b. changes in urban structure, space and form, c. implications for urban social structure.); (2) to establish priorities for new scholarly investigations derived from these analyses and discussions and (3) to develop a collaborative approach prior to the preparation of a strategic-level grant application.

This workshop, entitled Beyond Postmodernism, will examine the influence of Postmodernism on a variety of disciplines. The principal issues to be addressed by the workshop are: What influences has Postmodernism had on various disciplines? In what ways has Postmodernism encouraged or limited debate on the issues in various disciplines? What influences has Postmodernism had on public policy in relation to the central issues of various disciplines? Is there a way to reconcile Postmodernism and other approaches and, it so, how? What is the future of Postmodernism? What are the future directions in intellectual thought in the post-Postmodernist era?

There is increasing recognition of the Positive role that technology can play in improving the efficiency and reliability of health care delivery, particularly in the operating room. The impact of computer-integrated surgery will offer the surgeon the ability to carry out surgical intervention in a more accurate and less invasive manner. In a similar manner, automatic drug delivery systems based on accurate patient-specific models will allow anaesthesia with minimal drug usage and patient recovery time. Success will require fundamental understanding of physiological mechanisms, electro-physiology, biomechanics, and significant progress in robotics, signal processing and automation. Prominent experts from automation, robotics and medicine, from North America and Europe, will be brought together to assess the research opportunities in the areas of medical devices fro general anaesthesia and surgical haptic interfaces. The challenges currently faced will be used as a basis for the preparation of a broadly based research proposal geared towards efficient and safe health care delivery.

Nearly one in 10 couples has difficulty in either conceiving or maintaining a pregnancy to term. The known causes are heterogeneous and it is often difficult to diagnose a specific cause of infertility or recurrent pregnancy loss in any particular case. This produces an enormous emotional burden for the couple, as well as a financial burden to the health care system. More and more couples are resorting to expensive assisted reproduction technologies without a full understanding of the cause of their infertility and their chance of success. Furthermore, chromosome abnormalities are reportedly increased in pregnancies resulting from in vitro fertilization techniques using intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a technique developed particularly to overcome male-factor infertility. It is important to determine the source of these abnormalities, as the use of these techniques is rapidly increasing. The high rate of chromosome abnormalities in humans is a major contributor to low fertility and it is estimated that up to 25% of all human conceptions are chromosomally abnormal. Some individuals may be at increased risk of infertility or recurrent pregnancy loss because of either a genetic or an environmental factor (including maternal age) causing a predisposition to chromosome errors. Identifying such individuals would be important in assessing the reproductive options (and the associated risks) available to them. Furthermore any predisposition to chromosome segregation errors may also be important in risk for cancer, as such errors are typically a precursor step in tumorigenesis. Genetic factors may also be important in explaining recurrent pregnancy loss which is not associated with aneuploidy. Our goal is to bring together researchers from different fields with a common interest in the role of genetic and environmental factors affecting human reproductive success including infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, and in vitro fertilization techniques. The goal will be to 1)exchange ideas through seminar presentation and informal social gathering 2)develop collaborative research projects involving the diverse range of expertise present at UBC.

We are proposing an exploratory workshop to be held in February/March 2001 in order to investigate the international ethics of security. This workshop will be composed of an interdisciplinary group of internationally recognised scholars from Canada, the United States, and Europe who possess relevant expertise in history, international law, philosophy, and political science. The purpose of the workshop is to interrogate the normative assumptions and moral justifications of the theory and practise of security, and its relation to war, international law, sovereignty, trusteeship, national minorities, identity, human rights, democracy, great powers, international organisation, self-determination, and the history of international thought. The degree of human suffering that is associated with organised violence in our world has stimulated scholars and practitioners of world affairs to rethink the idea of security, to re-define and re-conceptualise how security impinges upon our world. Security is, above all else, a fundamental human value. Security is a value whose meaning springs from beliefs about human relations and how human beings ought to treat one another. Thus, the idea of security expresses a moral idea. In exploring the international ethics of security we are aiming at identifying and articulating a major research agenda that is tentatively entitles 'Human Security in a World of States', and which is organised and supported by the Institute of International Relations at UBC. We believe that research in this area will help situate UBC at the cutting-edge of security research and lend recognition to UBC as an international centre of excellence for the study of security issues.

The quality of democracy in Latin America is threatened by centralized executive power backed by a resurgent military, the lack of judicial independence and the rule of law, violations of basic rights and freedoms, weak political parties and legislatures, and the exclusion of indigenous peoples. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from UBC and across the Americas has been assembled to examine these problems. We seek funding from the Peter Wall Institute for an exploratory workshop to be held at UBC in the Fall of 2000 in preparation for a submission for major funding to the Institute and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The composition of the dark matter halo of our Milky Way Galaxy remains one of the fundamental unanswered mysteries of modern astronomy. Thanks to its gravitational effect upon the luminous matter we can see (stars and gas), we know that there is at least ten times as much mass tied up in the form of matter we have thus far been unable to identify compared to the matter that we actually "see". Theorists have spent the last several decades attempting to provide an apriori solution as to the form of this matter, while observers have worked just as hard attempting to quantify the amount and distribution of this matter based upon the aforementioned indirect gravitational effects. Because it is the dominant form of matter in the universe, driving the formation and evolution of galaxies as well as the ultimate fate of the universe as a whole, identifying its exact form is crucial. With this workshop we will be exploring a candidate for what may be an important fraction of our galaxy's dark matter - old white dwarfs, the burnt out cores of stars that have completed their nuclear evolution. Both theoreticians, observers and contrarians will be brought together to explore this exciting area of astrophysics whose original observational impetus came from UBC scientists.

New genetic knowledge and techniques are reshaping the ways in which we understand health and illness as well as perceive our biological and social relatedness to others. For instance, the current emphasis on genes as causes of disease raises new questions about the relevance of knowing our medical family history or learning, through genetic testing, which diseases we are likely to succumb to in adulthood and old age. In this sense, genetic information is unlike most other types of diagnostic information - it is about the future and it is familial rather than individual in orientation. What are the most salient issues for individuals and families at risk for hereditary disease and how can their experiences best inform research and theory? The proposed Exploratory Workshop will bring UBC researchers together with distinguished external experts to discuss new opportunities for collaborative research on the social and moral dimensions of hereditary risk and genetic testing. Although there is considerable ethical discussion about genetics and clinical practice or social policy, the Workshop emphasizes the implications hereditary disease within the context of family and community. The approach taken is therefore novel in that the aim is to create a framework for comparative analysis of people's everyday experiences of hereditary risk. Further, the workshop emphasizes the development of appropriate methods and ethical guidelines for ethnographic research in this area. Building on findings from current studies on the everyday experiences associated with Huntington Disease, Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease and familial breast/ovarian cancer, Burgess and Cox are currently developing a framework for ethnographic research on the experience of hereditary risk and genetic testing across a range of adult onset diseases. The framework is a flexible matrix which lays the groundwork for a coherent program of comparative research. This framework will be a focus for the Workshop and will be central to the development of a Major Thematic Grant application.