{"id":42162,"date":"2016-11-23T12:48:31","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T16:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=42162"},"modified":"2016-11-23T12:51:38","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T16:51:38","slug":"cutting-edge-technology-keeps-brock-at-the-forefront-of-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/11\/cutting-edge-technology-keeps-brock-at-the-forefront-of-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting-edge technology keeps Brock at the forefront of research and learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">A mannequin that tells you he\u2019s in pain. A &#8216;vacuum cleaner&#8217; that clears debris from an underwater ancient shipwreck. A maze of pipes and pumps measuring 800 million-year-old air.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>These are among the cutting-edge, creative or just plain cool technologies that help Brock University researchers unlock the secrets contained within their various disciplines.<\/p>\n<p>The High Fidelity Simulation Mannequin \u2014 stretched out in a hospital bed in the Department of Nursing \u2014 has a heart that pumps, lungs that breathe, eyes that blink and can even answer questions. Attached to the &#8220;patient\u2019s&#8221; head is a GoPro camera, which enables Karyn Taplay and her team to conduct their simulation research.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe purpose is to capture the care provided\u00a0by student nurses from the patient\u2019s perspective,\u201d says Taplay, an associate professor in Nursing. \u201cThe students then watch the care they provided and reflect on it, from the patients point of view. This research has the ability to revolutionized\u00a0reflective practice that is key component of\u00a0nursing and impact patient-centered care.\u201d<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a-zbtvH6OuA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, eight metres under water off the coast of Sicily, archaeologists on the Marzamemi Maritime Heritage Project are diving on a 6th-century shipwreck. They grip the mouth of a machine called a Water Dredge, which looks \u2014 and acts \u2014 like a vacuum cleaner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Water Dredge allows us to carefully remove thousands of years of accumulated sediment from the wreck, revealing its cargo of marble columns and other archaeological elements destined for the construction of a church,\u201d says Elizabeth Greene, associate professor in the Department of Classics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThrough our research at Marzamemi, we are learning about the mechanics of maritime transport in the changing world of late antiquity and the relationship between state-driven and independent commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then there\u2019s the complicated-looking machine that gives Nigel Blamey and his colleagues around the world a \u2018blast from the past,\u2019 a Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer based on a modified design constructed by his then-PhD advisor in the 1970s and housed at New Mexico Tech.<\/p>\n<p>The Earth Sciences professor places a sample of rock salt called halite into the vacuum chamber. As the rock is crushed, 800 million-year-old trapped fossil gas disperses into the highly-sensitive spectrometer, which reads and analyzes the gas content and composition.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that there was five times as much oxygen 800 million years ago than previously thought, opening the door for a reinterpretation of Earth history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDeciphering the oxygenation history of the atmosphere and oceans is critical to understanding weathering processes, sedimentary environments, climate change, mass extinctions, selected ore deposits, and the evolution of Earth\u2019s biota,\u201d says Blamey.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to individual pieces of equipment, Brock has state-of-the-art laboratories.<\/p>\n<p>Unique to a Canadian university is an insectary within Brock\u2019s CL3 lab. This enables medical entomologist Fiona Hunter and her team to make breakthroughs in mosquito research.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/10\/brock-team-finds-first-aedes-aegypti-mosquitoes-in-canada\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Their latest research<\/strong><\/a> found what are believed to be the first <em>Aedes aegypti<\/em> mosquitoes in Canada during surveillance in Windsor.<\/p>\n<p>The species, commonly known as the yellow fever mosquito, is responsible for the majority of human cases of Zika virus infections in the Caribbean, South America and Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Kinesiology professor Stephen Cheung\u2019s Environmental Ergonomics Lab (EEL) features an environmental tank and chamber. The tank contains water varying from eight to 45 degrees Celsius, while air temperatures in the chamber can range from -30 to +50 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is quite unique to be able to manipulate both temperature and oxygen at the same time,\u201d says Cheung, who is Canada Research Chair in Environmental Ergonomics. \u201cWe can replicate the altitude of approximately Mexico City (2,300 m) and do that while either in the cold or heat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Research participants exercise in various conditions of heat, cold, humidity and oxygen levels. Cheung and his team take a variety of physical readings from the participants to measure the effects of environmental stress on human physiology and performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are thankful to our partners and funders for the cutting edge equipment our researchers use as they learn more about the world around us,\u201d says Vice-President Research, Joffre Mercier.<\/p>\n<p>Brock\u2019s major funders include the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).<\/p>\n<p>Others include: Restorative Therapies in Baltimore, MD; Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care; and Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities<\/p>\n<p>To see a sampling of equipment Brock researchers use, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/a-zbtvH6OuA\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>see the slideshow<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Research3.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-42241 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Research3-1280x750.jpeg\" alt=\"research3\" width=\"1280\" height=\"750\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Research2.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-42240 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Research2.jpeg\" alt=\"research2\" width=\"7360\" height=\"4912\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A mannequin that tells you he\u2019s in pain. A \u201cvacuum cleaner\u201d that clears debris from an underwater ancient shipwreck. A maze of pipes and pumps measuring 800 million-year-old air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":42239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,188,55,1,5],"tags":[894],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42162"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42243,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42162\/revisions\/42243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}