Research

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The World Health Organization considers HIV a worldwide pandemic. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 22 million people are living with it.

James Dou, a University of Toronto PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering, and his supervisor, Professor Stewart Aitchison, vice-dean (research) for the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, have developed an affordable and efficient lab-on-a-chip that can revolutionize HIV monitoring in developing countries.

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From the Michelin Man to the Pillsbury Doughboy, anthropomorphized brands have often been used by companies eager to put a personal face on their products. Now new research shows that thinking about brands as people can make you either take on the brand’s characteristics or display the opposite characteristics, depending on how you feel about the brand.

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Three astronomers at the University of Toronto have found the most numerous batch of young, supermassive stars yet observed in our galaxy: hundreds of thousands of stars, including several hundreds of the most massive kind --blue stars dozens of times heavier than our Sun. The light these newborn stars emit is so intense, it has pushed out and heated the gas that gave them birth, carving out a glowing hollow shell about a hundred light-years across.

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When we talk about Alzheimer’s disease, what kind of story are we telling?

A horror story, at least here in contemporary North America, says Marlene Goldman.

“The media’s take on Alzheimer’s is very Gothic and apocaplytic,” she says, a story of the slow loss of mind and self. “The typical presentation is: we have a huge baby boomer population and they’ll be turning 65. In the media’s view, they’ll be zombies.  And we’ll have to pay for them.”

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Randy McIntosh’s brain isn’t very smart. It’s about as astute as your average three-year-old. But it’s getting smarter every day.

Housed in a supercomputing data centre, this “brain” is actually a model created by the Brain Network Recovery Group (Brain NRG), a consortium of 16 universities. McIntosh, a psychology professor at U of T, vice-president of research at Baycrest and director of Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute, helped found Brain NRG.