No LongPen necessary: Author Margaret Atwood sits and signs after her standing room-only Big Thinking lecture yesterday in the Humanities Theatre. I hear even the overflow rooms, er, overflowed.

Photograph by James Skidmore.

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Congress continues with lectures, workshops

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada organizes career workshops for graduate students at every Congress in collaboration with the teaching centres and career centres at the host universities. This year 18 Career Corner events are planned, with Waterloo’s Centre for Career Action and Centre for Teaching Excellence both contributing. A list of remaining events includes:

• Shari Graydon, "The top 7 reasons smart women should speak up," 9:00 a.m., 202 Regina Street (WLU), room 270
• Jillian Perkins-Marsh, "Key strategies for building an effective academic CV," 10:30 a.m., 202 Regina Street (WLU), room 270
• Jillian Perkins-Marsh, "The academic job search: Demystifying the academic hiring cycle," 202 Regina Street (WLU), room 270
• Professor Angela Roorda, "Pitching your project: strategies for grant writing," Thursday, May 31, 9:00 a.m., William M. Tatham Centre (UW), room 2218
• Matthew Erickson, "Preparing for difficult conversations with your supervisor," Thursday, May 31, 10:30 a.m., William M. Tatham Centre (UW), room 2218
• Profs Gerry Boychuk, Monica Leoni, Jasmin Habib, Lorne Dawson, and Lynn Taylor, "The academic interview," Thursday, May 31, 1:00 p.m., William M. Tatham Centre (UW), room 2218
• Elizabeth Adrian, "Careers beyond academia," Thursday, May 31, 3:00 p.m., William M. Tatham Centre (UW), room 2218
• Doug Hildebrand (University of Toronto Press), Donna Livingstone (University of Calgary Press), Cheryl Miki (University of Manitoba Press), "Publishing and marketing your scholarly book," Friday, June 1, 10:30 a.m., Athletics Complex (WLU), Expo Hall.

Today's Big Thinking Lecture features Janine Brodie, Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance at the University of Alberta, speaking at 12:15 p.m. today in Laurier's Maureen Forrester Recital Hall.

The ConnecTent - Experience Waterloo: An Uptown Celebration continues tonight, free of charge, with local band BlackWater Draw performing. The event begins at 6:30 p.m., and the first 100 people will be entered into a draw to win a $300 hotel package to attend Oktoberfest between October 5 and 13, 2012. Local vendors include the Charcoal Steakhouse, Bingemans, St. Jacob's Catering, Wildcraft, and local microbreweries.

Here's today's "Skid @ Congress" update:

Wednesday, May 30

"I have to admit, I’m amazed that it’s Day 5 of Congress. This enterprise just keeps chugging along. You might think that it starts to become old news, especially for the organizers and those executing all the a/v and food orders. But for many delegates it’s their first day of Congress, and so they’re seeing all the Congress offerings with fresh eyes. So I’m sure that at our 7:00 a.m. operations meeting we’ll be reminding everyone to keep this in mind.

With all the lectures taking place, I haven’t made it to many exhibitions or displays taking place at Congress, and I really must begin squeezing them in. Top of my list is the University of Waterloo Art Gallery (UWAG) exhibition “An Uncertain World.” While I’m in East Campus Hall I’ll also go see what all the fuss is about the MicroTileFilm installation “Rotten with Perfection.” I have been to the REAP interactive media display at Porter Library a couple of times already (they have a charging station for cellphones, and mine has been needing extra juice with all the tweeting I’m doing trying to promote Congress). On the Laurier campus there is another digital media exhibition, the Mobile CrimeLab, as well as “Canadian English, Eh?” by the Canadian Linguistic Association.

In the morning I will go to a major panel discussion about partnerships in the digital economy organized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. SSHRC is all about partnerships nowadays (research partnerships, that is, and not e-dating), and I want to see how folks such as Neil Randall have made these collaborative efforts come about.

The Big Thinking lecture is of course a must-see for me, and today’s features Janine Brodie talking about the timidity of the social sciences in entering public discourses on pressing social issues even though they have a lot of important data and information to share (12:15 p.m., Maureen Forrester Recital Hall). Later in the day I will listen to Rick Helmes-Hayes of Waterloo speak on his award-winning book about the sociologist John Porter (5:00 p.m., Peters Building at Laurier). If the event starts on time and Rick doesn’t talk too long, I’ll be able to catch the end of the President’s Reception as well, and then from there head to Uptown Waterloo for the last evening of the Experience Waterloo Festival at the ConnecTent."

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Nutrition study seeks participants

by Kirsten Bell

An ongoing study in the Department of Kinesiology's Nutrition and Metabolism Laboratory is looking into ways to counter the secondary diseases that tend to develop after recovery from breast cancer. The laboratory, led by Dr. Marina Mourtzakis, is currently involved in a randomized control trial that is comparing the effects of an exercise training program combined with nutrition consults, to usual care for breast cancer, on the body composition and metabolism of breast cancer patients who are receiving treatment.

Although survival rates are high —89 per cent of middle-aged breast cancer patients and 95 per cent of middle-aged prostate cancer patients will achieve 5-year survival— patients tend to develop secondary diseases, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even cancer reoccurrence, once they recover from these forms of cancer. Metabolic syndrome and obesity are risk factors for breast cancer and prostate cancer, making these diseases highly preventable by lifestyle changes like diet and exercise. In fact, most breast cancer patients present at diagnosis with body mass index (BMI) values in the overweight or obese categories.

The laboratory's research team, consisting of three graduate students, assesses the changes in fat mass and muscle mass (i.e. body composition) that occur in breast cancer patients over the course of treatment. The laboratory is interested in examining how these changes in body composition may be associated with changes in metabolism, nutrition and exercise capacity. This approach extends not only to breast cancer, but the lab’s studies in prostate cancer, ICU patients, and an upcoming study in renal cancer.

Although all patients are expected to gain fat and lose muscle over the course of treatment, it is thought that patients who participate in the exercise and nutrition consult program will gain less fat and preserve more muscle, and thus have a healthier metabolism and experience less inflammation compared to patients receiving usual care. The laboratory’s findings regarding the effect of exercise and proper nutrition on metabolism will be helpful in countering the secondary diseases that tend to develop after recovery from breast cancer.

The results of this study will be useful in designing effective and appropriate training programs and nutrition advice for breast cancer patients to improve disease-free survival rates. The research will also help improve overall patient health using lifestyle changes that are accessible to the general population.

Students in the laboratory are currently embarking on the next phase of the study, which examines the differences in nutrition, metabolism and body composition between breast cancer patients and healthy women who are of similar age and BMI. The students expect that despite controlling for BMI, patients will have a higher percentage fat mass compared to the healthy women. The laboratory is currently recruiting women in their 40s who have never been diagnosed with cancer to participate in a nutrition, metabolism, body composition and exercise evaluation. Participants will receive the results of all their assessments (valued at over $100) and feedback on their nutrition and exercise habits. Women interested in the study may contact Kirsten Bell (MSc Candidate) by email ke2bell@ uwaterloo.ca or phone 519-888-4567 ext. 38588.

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Remembering Alyson and other notes

Waterloo alumnus Alyson Woloshyn (BA '00, Honours Recreation and Leisure Studies), whose cancer battle, fundraising efforts, and the inspiring effect she had on her close circle of friends received national media attention earlier this month, died on May 27. Woloshyn's friends, the Baker's Dozen (uWaterloo grads all), established a legacy fund in her name earlier this year, raising over $55,000 towards the Alyson Woloshyn Leadership Award, which will be given to the first student recipient this September. Two memorial events will be held for Alyson: one in Calgary on Saturday, June 2 at the University of Calgary's MacEwan Ballroom, and one in Waterloo on Saturday, June 9 from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at St. Jerome's University.

"Hoping to keep your professional development going and not put it on hiatus this summer?" asks the Centre for Extended Learning's Valarie Beyer. "No problem! uWaterloo Professional Development is offering a number of courses. Check them out!"

Faculty of Engineering Dean Adel Sedra is the guest of honour tonight at a retirement celebration at the Waterloo Inn at 6:00 p.m. "Over the course of his term as Dean of Engineering, Adel Sedra has worn many hats," the event invitation reads. "His visionary spirit and ambition have built a strong foundation for the Faculty; those contributions will prove invaluable as we move forward and engineer the future through Vision 2015." Sedra, who has led the engineering faculty since 2003, will step down when his term ends in June, with Pearl Sullivan, the current chair of the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering department, taking the reins in July.

The Canadian Mathematical Society has announced that the 2012 Doctoral Prize Winner is Matthew Kennedy, who completed his PhD in Pure Mathematics at Waterloo in 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Kenneth Davidson. He will receive the award and give a prize lecture in December at the CMS annual meeting in Montreal. Kennedy joins other uW math faculty alumni who have won this award including Jim Geelen (Combinatorics & Optimization) in 1997, Stephen Astels (Pure Math) in 2000, Nico Spronk (Pure Math) in 2004, Michael Newman (Combinatorics & Optimization) in 2006, and also David Kerr (Pure Math undergrad, Toronto Ph.D.) in 2002.

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