Canada has long been a leader in the field of stem cell research, fueling the dream of renewed mobility for those with spinal cord injuries.

Regaining the ability to walk after being paralyzed by a spinal cord injury is a dream that many people think of as the quintessential medical miracle. For patients, even the smallest improvements to mobilityare cause for celebration. However, unlike cuts and bruises to the skin, the spinal cord has limited capacity to heal on its own, often leaving injured patients with limited mobility and paralysis for life.

One research area poised to make a big impact in the treatment of spinal cord injury is stem cell therapy. If successful, stem cells could replace damaged nerve cells and restore partial function to paralyzed areas.

While stem cells show promising results in the lab, it’s impossible to know whether they will translate into useful medical treatments until they are tested in human patients in clinical trials, several of which are ongoing.

Dr. Michael Fehlings, Director of the Krembil Neuroscience Centre at Toronto’s University Health Network, is leading a clinical trial that focuses on spinal cord injuries to the neck region, which is the most common site of injury. If stem cells can help heal a section even half a centimeter long, it could be enough to restore nerve connections to the hands.

The trial faces several hurdles, one of which is the potential for stem cells to transform into cancer cells. This means that besides monitoring patients for functional improvements, researchers will also be keeping a close eye on the transplanted stem cells over time to ensure safety.

Canada’s role in stem cell research

Canada is a pioneer in the field of stem cell research. In fact, stem cells were first discovered here in 1961 by Drs. James Till and Ernest McCulloch at the Ontario Cancer Institute.

More recently, Dr. Andras Nagy, Senior Investigator at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, also developed methods to take adult skin cells from patients and convert them into stem cells, an exciting discovery that overcomes the ethical debates surrounding embryonic stem cells, while also providing cells for transplantation that are a perfect donor match for the patient.

To help Canada keep pace with the world in the development of stem cell technologies, Dr. Janet Rossant, Executive Director of the Ontario Institute of Regenerative Medicine, is calling for increased funding.

In July 2015, Ottawa also pledged the $114 million to establish Medicine by Design, a stem cell research hub at the University of Toronto. A team effort led by Profs. Molly Shoichet and Peter Zandstra, this is the largest single grant in the university’s history.

In January 2016, the federal government pledged $20 million to the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine to help establish a stem cell therapy development facility in Toronto, with matching funding from GE Healthcare.

In Ontario, regulations are also being streamlined to help coordinate multiple qualified centres across the province for patient recruitment and care. Toronto, in particular, has a large pool of diverse patients to draw from. Combined with leading facilities and expertise, Ontario is positioned as a magnet for stem cell clinical trials.

Why is Ontario a hub for clinical trials in stem cell therapy?
Video courtesy of Clinical Trials Ontario

Want to learn even more about tissue engineering and regenerative medicine? Check out Prof. Molly Shoichet’s Orange Chair Interview on stem cells for stroke, and TED fellow Prof. Andrew Pelling’s work on growing human cells on scaffolds made of apples.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

‘The science of gambling has come a long way. We’re reaching a tipping point where governments are waking up to their responsibilities.’

Luke Clark is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Director of the Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia. We asked him everything from what inspired him to become a researcher to what he is reading in hopes of giving you a better understanding of what goes on outside the lab for one of the best minds in Canadian research.

What inspired you to become a researcher?
When I was about age 16 at high school, I was really struggling to decide what to read at university. My parents wanted me to be a dentist, but I had some reservations about that (I was quite clumsy, for one). I started reading some intro psychology books like Hans Eysenck’s Sense & Nonsense in Psychology, and Colin Blakemore’s Mind Machine, and I realized this was exactly what I’d been looking for. This was a highly scientific discipline, elegant experiments, applied to real-world problems, and at the same time it was nothing like the sciences I’d been studying at school.

What do you like most about your work?
Gambling research is quite a small field, it’s a young field, and it’s at a crossroads between several different disciplines: psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, economics and public policy…. As a scientist, I find this a really exciting combination — it means there’s a lot of research that needs to be done, you encounter ideas from very different perspectives, and I’ve realized that certain assumptions that are taken for granted in one field can be completely foreign to another.

What do you envision in the future of your field?
The science behind gambling has come a long way in the past decade: there’s a much greater awareness now of problem gambling and its relationship to addiction, and that this is serious mental health problem that can destroy lives. At the same time, opportunities to gamble have continued to grow, for example the expansion of online gambling to mobile devices. I feel we’re reaching a tipping point where governments around the world are waking up to their responsibilities here, and this has led to the field of ‘responsible gambling’. Ultimately, the solutions rely on how scientific research actually feeds back to change public policy, and I think we’ll start to see more of that in the next few years.

How will your research make a difference in people’s lives?
As with alcohol and other substances of abuse, a lot of people gamble for fun and don’t experience negative consequences. But for a minority of people, their gambling escalates and becomes problematic. How can we tell these two groups of people apart? Are those differences all about neurobiological disposition, or are there important differences between forms of gambling, or maybe in how different games affect different people? If we have better answers to these questions, we can intervene before the problems start, and we can target our interventions to the people who are most at risk.

What advice would you give to young researchers?
It can be hard to know when to say yes and when to say no in research. Starting out, at grad school, it’s a good idea to say yes to basically everything — giving talks, peer review, collaborations, media requests — the whole lot. But within a few years, especially when you’re setting up your own lab, you need to start saying no to lots of things — in fact, lots of the same things you were previously saying yes to! And I remember this felt very conflicting at the time.

What do you read?
I’m terrible at reading academic books, I buy them and never read them. I read a lot of old crime novels — I started out on Hammett & Chandler, and I’ve followed a trail from there, so at the moment I’m reading Jim Thompson, Cornell Woolrich, and Georges Simenon. It’s funny how the writing style of the hard-boiled authors has a lot in common with good scientific writing: concise, short sentences, and every word serves its purpose.

What’s on your iPod/CD collection/turntable?
I have a 45-minute drive to work, and a friend gave me some advice to record my lectures on my iPhone so that I can play them back on my commute to work, to prepare for class. And it’s actually a great tip, I’d really recommend it. But 2 months into our term here, it means right now I’m sick of the sound of my own voice, and I’m looking forward to getting back to some podcasts and audio books. It turns out I can finish academic audiobooks; I’m enjoying Richard Thaler’s ‘Misbehaving’ at the moment.

What do you like to do for fun?
My family and I moved to Vancouver two years ago, and it’s a wonderful place to live, particularly if you like outdoor activities. The scenery is beautiful, there’s trails and hiking everywhere. We’ve been getting into skiing this winter, and within a couple of months we’ll be back on the beach for the summer — we live 10 minutes from both. It’s pretty cool to live in a place where you can do that.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

Making AIDS Care Truly Universal

Marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, but public policy shifts are helping more people get needed healthcare.

Universal access to healthcare is a point of pride for Canadians. However, it is no secret that there are many barriers to accessing the medical system, especially for stigmatized and marginalized communities.

Dr. Kate Shannon, associate professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Gender and Sexual Health Initiative at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, is an advocate for health and human rights in the context of HIV and AIDS, addressing inequities by effecting change at the policy level.

“We know from the kind of landscape of HIV epidemic over the last 20 years that marginalized communities, particularly youths, sex workers, migrant women, and Indigenous and other racialized communities are disproportionately impacted by the [AIDS] epidemic, and we know that women living with HIV continue to be disproportionately impacted both in the global South and North. My work with my team really seeks to look at how structural factors, so things like laws, policies, migration as well as social environment, so housing, gendered violence, shape the HIV response in sexual health and HIV inequities for those communities,” explains Shannon.

Her work looks at the factors that shape barriers to accessing care, understanding which programs are working and why, and how to bridge or better address any gaps that exist. Social science, social justice work, and policy reform are vital cross-disciplinary collaborations to ensure the best response.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that the decriminalization of sex work could have a significant impact on the course of the AIDS epidemic across Canada, allowing sex workers to be less isolated and advocate for safer sex. Shannon participated in a legal intervention in the landmark Bedford v. Canada case, where the Supreme Court of Canada struck down laws around prostitution and opened a broader policy discussion.

Beyond moral debates, basic safety and human rights for sex workers need to be upheld. Shannon explains that “for many, the second they hear the context of something like sex work, the framing of that for many people brings on ethical questions. We really need to move beyond that to a kind of framing of human rights for all and recognizing that this is about access to health and social justice for all communities.”

Curious to learn more about the fight against HIV and AIDS? Check out our Orange Chair Interview with Dr. Julio Montaner, a global pioneer and champion of Treatment as Prevention in HIV and AIDS.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

‘I was fuelled by horror at the current state of the world, and infused with a conviction that things can be much better.’

Professor Deborah Cowen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. We asked her everything from why she chose her field of study to what she is reading in hopes of giving you a better understanding of what goes on outside the lab for one of the best minds in Canadian research.

What inspired you to become a researcher?
I became a researcher by accident. It was a combination of relentless curiosity about how things work, fueled by horror at the current state of the social world, infused with a conviction that things can be much better. Research allows me to work on connecting these dots.

What do you like most about your work?

The people. Most of them.

Perpetually questioning everything, when, on occasion, you have time to think.

What do you envision in the future of your field?

I sense that more and more people are going to appreciate the beauty and usefulness of Geography. I am not concerned with preserving disciplinary boundaries, and I think Geography is wonderfully interdisciplinary as a field. I do think that taking space seriously matters. There is also a growing interest in public scholarship in Geography — working on problems that are a priority to communities.

How will your research make a difference in people’s lives?

That is not something a mortal can answer!

What I am trying to understand in my work is a very small piece of a much bigger problem and I see my research as one tiny contribution to a large conversation. What my recent work highlights is the disastrous implications of organizing collective life around an economic system that promises much to many, but in fact benefits very few. The organization of the economy hinges on the organization of space — space within cities, infrastructural networks, the political jurisdictions over which different groups have authority, and where people and things can move or stand still. In very broad terms, my work asks:who has free passage and who gets stopped? Stopped and frisked, or stopped at the border, or stopped from leaving the house, or stopped by a bullet in the street, or stopped from trying to change things, or stopped from determining their own authority? But what’s crucial is that we can do so much better. We can see so many better examples of people organizing their relationships to each other, to their ecosystems, to time and to space. If we suspend fear and disbelief, and open our eyes to creative possibilities, there are better ways all around us.

What advice would you give to young researchers?

Ask the questions to which you really really really need answers. Don’t ask questions that are polite, and don’t ask questions just because they are well funded. Honor intellectual freedom by exercising it. Think hard about your questions. Look at them from a lot of angles. Learn what others think about your questions, or related ones. And listen to others who are interested in similar and different questions. Be accountable to others and walk with humility.

What do you read?

Mostly relations. Like on the streetcar, in the bank, in the news, on the screen — between people, but also between people and commodities, between people and institutions, between people and jurisdictions, and often between people and the categories that organize them. When I’m lucky, I get to read maps and drawings. I read far too many words.

What natural talent would you like to be gifted with?

Patience.

Not with the little things — I am good at that.

I mean patience with the big stuff. Like injustice.

I have none.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

Thanks, Invisible Little Water Filters

Tiny microorganisms that consume human-produced pollutants are helping reclaim contaminated sites and safeguard clean water.

In Canada, it may seem that clean water will never run out. The Great Lakes basin is one of the largest fresh water reserves in the world. But water has no boundaries, it can move from the air to the earth to the ocean, and many of the services and technologies that come with being an advanced society create pollutants that can contaminate our water supply. For example, the dry-cleaning compound, perchloroethylene or PERC, is toxic. The University of Waterloo recently showed that nitrates from fertilizer used today could persist in drinking water for decades.

Many researchers are turning to Nature for problem-solving inspiration. You may have read about how Prof. David Sinton is harnessing photosynthetic organisms like algae to produce energy. Elizabeth Edwards, Professor in the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry and Director of Biozoneat the University of Toronto, is using single-celled microorganisms to clean up contaminated water.

“Little microorganisms, single-celled creatures, use the things that we think are nasty — contaminants or poisons — they can use them as their food,” says Prof. Edwards.

Using molecular biology, analytical chemistry, and genetics, Prof. Edwards’ lab studies microbial communities to understand how they perform these biodegradation reactions. They can then use this information to tailor the conditions under which these creatures work and speed up the rate at which they decompose contaminants. The Edwards lab also looks for new microbial species that perform ever newer biotransformation reactions.

One such microorganism culture that the Edwards lab identified is now being sold worldwide through thespin-off company SiREM. This specialized microorganism can degrade PERC and other highly related industrial solvents. Contaminated industrial sites can now release it to remediate the area.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

Growing Up Poor Can Alter Your Genes

The study of epigenetics is showing how childhood poverty has deleterious health impacts that can last for a lifetime

Michael Kobor, associate professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, studies epigenetics. To help explain his field of study, he invites you to think of each of your 25,000 genes as a light bulb. The intensity of the light represents the level of activity of each gene. Like genes, each of these 25,000 light bulbs can be fully on or fully off, but epigenetics is like the dimmer switch that allows them to shine at any intensity in between; Kobor looks at both the light intensity and the position of the dimmer switch.

Unlike the sequence of your genes, which are inherited from your parents, your epigenetics are subject to change throughout your life based on your experiences. However, some of these changes can be long-lasting.

Epigenetics can be tracked through small chemical groups called methyl groups that attach to DNA to regulate gene activity, giving a marker that researchers can seek out to look for patterns, says Kobor.

Kobor is especially interested in the impact of early childhood poverty, and has uncovered several recognizable epigenetic patterns that predict whether a person had high or low socioeconomic status growing up.

It turns out that the patterns observed in people raised in poverty are not random — they are similar to patterns seen in heightened immune responses. While this may seem like a positive when it comes to resilience to infections, an overactive immune system is associated with a variety of medical conditions, from coronary heart disease to poor mental health. Kobor hopes that evidence of these concrete epigenetic changes might help change policies to give every child a healthy start in life.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

Seasonal allergies a combination of nature, nurture, and more nature

Spring can be a beautiful time: the flowers are out, the trees are blooming. But for the 25% of Canadians that suffer from seasonal allergies, it can also be a sniffly, sneezy, mucous-filled nightmare.

Like any allergic reaction, seasonal allergies occur when your immune system, normally there to protect you against foreign invaders like bacteria or viruses, becomes activated by a seemingly harmless substance.

Appalling pollen

The main culprit for seasonal allergies is pollen — a powdery substance produced by plants that essentially contains the plant’s sperm. Many trees, grasses, and other plants like ragweed rely on the wind to spread their pollen, but the chances of a single pollen grain landing on the female sex organ of another plant are very low. To offset this inefficiency, plants maximize the amount of pollen that’s released. Good for the plants, bad for your lungs.

“People are inhaling it constantly and it’s of the correct size to be inhaled into the nose and the lungs,” says Dr. Sue Waserman, Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and President of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Once a pollen particle enters the mucous of your nose, it encounters specialized immune cells called mast cells. These cells, once sensitized, will recognize the pollen proteins and release a molecule called histamine that leads to symptoms such as itchiness, sneezing, and mucus production.

A chain reaction then activates other immune cells that amplify the response, causing symptoms to last many hours after the initial exposure. Most available allergy medications are anti-histamines, which block this molecule from acting.

But abundance may not be the only reason pollen is such a potent allergen.

“It is now becoming clear that these proteins are not just average proteins,” says Mark Larché, Professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University and Canada Research Chair in Allergy and Immune response. For example, some of these proteins can bind bacteria, which provide a trigger to the immune system upon pollen exposure.

Not just your genes

So why do some people get allergies, and others don’t? Like with many diseases, the answer lies both in your genetics and your environment.

“If you have two parents that have allergies the likelihood of you having allergies is high,” explains Dr. Waserman. But you may not be allergic to the same things. “You don’t inherit the specific allergy, what you inherit is the tendency.”

The environment is everything else to which your body is exposed, and includes things like diet, cleanliness, and physical activity. It could also include specific events — if a child with a viral respiratory infection inhales a large dose of pollen, they may end up with pollen allergies in the future.

The hygiene hypothesis

Allergy rates are on the rise. A 2008 World Health Organization report estimated that allergy incidence has risen from 5% to 45% in the last 40 years. One possible reason is something called the hygiene hypothesis — essentially, we’re too clean for our own good.

“The immune system, like a child, needs to be educated as we develop,” says Prof. Larché.

In our sanitation-obsessed society, this doesn’t always happen. We use antibacterial soaps, wash daily, drink processed water, use antibiotics — and as a result our immune systems aren’t exposed to many stimuli.

“What this has led to is an immune system that’s gotten less used to fighting infection and it’s become hypersensitive… it’s looking for other things to fight,” says Dr. Waserman.

Last year, a research team at McGill developed an allergy vaccine that teaches the immune system to tolerate allergens when given at a young age. But perhaps a more organic solution is to re-develop the balance between humans and their microbial friends that has recently been challenged.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

Forget the special sauce; it’s actually a wave of environmental factors that’s driving your persistent fast food cravings

What we eat is a huge part of living a healthy lifestyle. Often it’s hard to choose the right things. When you’re tired after a hard day at work and all you want is that bag of chips that’s sitting on your counter. When you don’t have the time to make lunch for the kids and yourself, so a slice of pizza from the work cafeteria has to be good enough. When you just can’t say no to the ice cream that’s on sale.

But even if we have the best intentions, eating healthy can be an uphill battle.

It Ads Up

From a young age, TV commercials, internet ads, video games, or even packaging with branded logos or movie characters, teach us to crave foods high in salt and sugar. A study from McMaster University, published last week in the journal Obesity Reviews, pulled together data from 29 trials with over 6000 children and found that shortly after seeing an ad for unhealthy food, children consumed more calories and had a preference for junk food.

Though parents play an obvious role in teaching their children to live a healthy lifestyle, it’s difficult to completely eliminate environmental influence, says Bradley Johnston corresponding author on the paper.

“In spite of [parents’] efforts to steer their children toward fresh fruits and vegetables, junk food ads still drive kids towards poor food and beverage choices.” Johnston is an Assistant Professor at McMaster University and the University of Toronto as well as a clinical epidemiologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Despite this, Quebec remains the only province to have banned food ads directed at children under the age of 13 in both print an electronic media. This will hopefully change soon.

“To change minds and to change policies, decision-makers need quantifiable facts, our study has provided this,” says Prof. Johnston.

Swamped

Even when we grow up and presumably have an easier time ignoring ads, the pressures don’t stop. A study from the Dalla Lana school of Public Health at the University of Toronto found that people without diabetes had a 79% higher risk of developing the disease if they lived near a “fast food swamp” — that is an area with a high number of fast-food restaurants with few healthy options.

This was the first study in Canada to examine whether living within walking distance to various types of restaurants influences the risk of developing diabetes among adults. Although the study did have information about the participants’ particular eating habits, diet is clearly a factor.

Importantly, it’s wasn’t just about the number of fast food joints, it was the lack of balanced options that made the difference. This type of insight is invaluable to inform local government decisions on zoning policies.

“Policies that focus on the sheer volume (i.e. number) of fast-food outlets may not be as effective without also considering the overall balance or mix of outlets serving more and less healthful foods,” says PhD student and lead author Jane Polsky.

A vicious cycle?

And once we’ve gone down the unhealthy road, it might be harder to turn around again. A recent study from the University of Manitoba found that overweight people have less gray and white matter in key areas of the brain.

According to state-of-the-art brain images, body mass index and body fat percent were associated with structural and functional differences in brain regions responsible for “cognition, reward processing and the ability to override impulsive behaviors.” These differences may affect a person’s ability to lose weight or make healthy lifestyle choices, though it’s important to note that this study wasn’t designed to test causation. That is, we can’t tell whether increased fat causes these changes in the brain or whether this brain composition predisposes a person to become overweight.

Future investigations can try to replicate the results using larger sample sizes and longitudinal study designs (following the same people over time) in order to observe changes and determined causation, says Chase Figley, Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba and lead author of the study.

Don’t give up

Despite these roadblocks, we shouldn’t give up on the healthy thing. For Prof. Figley, moderation is key. “Eating your favorite comfort foods (e.g., hamburgers, french fries, cake, ice cream, etc.) is probably okay every once in a while; however, the key is to make these things the exception and not the rule.”

Educating yourself about environmental influences on diet is also important. In fact, reading this blog post is already helping! If you know you live in a “fast food swamp”, make a concerted effort to limit the number of times you eat out. If you have young children, teach them about healthy food choices. Draw their attention to those food ads so they actively think about them.

“Such awareness could build momentum toward shifting our food environment to one that better promotes and supports healthy eating. A food environment that makes the healthy choice not only the default choice, but also the preferred choice,” says Polsky.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

Strokes can hit anyone, anytime, anywhere — but a new study shows how to reduce the risk by over 90%.

A stroke can happen unexpectedly — anytime, anywhere, sometimes without you even realizing it. Because of this, we tend to imagine that it’s something outside our control, like a lightning strike. Yet a new study led by Drs. Martin O’Donnell and Salim Yusuf from the McMaster University Population Health Research Institute shows that the majority of risk factors for stroke are preventable.

Risky business

This study, called INTERSTROKE Phase II, builds on results from INTERSTROKE Phase I with over 13,000 additional patients, bringing the total to 26,919 participants from 32 countries. It was published last week in the leading medical journal, The Lancet.

Patients had suffered from either ischemic stroke (a blood clot blocking blood flow to the brain) or hemorrhagic stroke (a brain bleed). For every stroke patient, the study recruited an age and sex-matched healthy control to ensure unbiased results.

Patients were then scored based on a number of lifestyle factors: high blood pressure, physical activity, apolipoprotein (a measure of fats), diet, waist-to-hip ratio, psychosocial factors, smoking, cardiac causes, alcohol consumption, and diabetes mellitus. Each factor was studied for its strength of association with stroke. For example, how often patients with high blood pressure had a stroke versus patients with normal blood pressure.

The investigators then calculated the population attributable risk for each factor — an estimate of the strokes that could be reduced if an individual risk factor were eliminated.

High blood pressure ranked highest with a score of 47.9%, followed closely by physical inactivity and poor diet. All the risk factors together accounted for over 90% of stroke risk. This means that if we could fix or reverse all these factors, we could reduce the number of strokes by over 90%. Pretty amazing!

Regional differences

Although the total of all stroke factors was similar in all regions studied, their relative contributions varied. For example in North America, Western Europe, and Australia (one region) the association between alcohol intake and stroke was quite low, whereas in South Asia (second region) and Africa (third region) it was higher. On the other hand, poor diet was highly correlated with stroke in North America, Western Europe, and Australia, but had a low correlation in South Asia and Africa.

This type of information could inform regional stroke prevention programs or campaigns. Anti-drinking campaigns might be more important in Africa while a heart healthy diet should be stressed in North America.

A positive message

In 2012, more than 13,000 Canadians died as the result of a stroke and more than 400,000 Canadians are living with long-term stroke disability. This study shows that we have the power to decrease these numbers.

Cindi Morshead, Professor at the University of Toronto and stroke researcher, is excited by this positive message.

“These findings offer hope by telling us that we can take control and eliminate the risk factors that increase our chance of suffering a stroke. And by doing so you will be protecting your most important asset — your brain.”

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!

High speed train prototypes from two teams of Canadian students are among the final entrants in Elon Musk’s SpaceX Hyperloop Challenge.

At the heart of the Waterloop high-speed train design is a set of air castors that provide a cushion of air under the train that allows it to move without the ground friction of wheels and rails. While air castors are common commercially available parts, usually used to lift heavy objects like docked ships, their use at high speeds is new.

Team Waterloop, the student design team from the University of Waterloo behind this innovation, hopes it will be one step in changing the way we travel. Down from an original 1,200 teams that submitted designs to the SpaceX Hyperloop Challenge, Team Waterloop is now one of only 31 teams worldwide who have been invited to build and test prototypes on a 1-mile vacuum track in January 2017. The only other Canadian team is Hyperloop Toronto from the University of Toronto.

What is the Hyperloop Challenge?

The hope is to ultimately build trains that can push towards the speed of sound, moving passengers at speeds even faster than jet planes.

Elon Musk, the billionaire mind behind SpaceX and Tesla, issued a global challenge to students and everyday citizens, to design and build prototypes for electric train pods. In return, he pledged to build a 1-mile test track for finalists to use: a steel tube that could be placed under a vacuum, lowering the air pressure to an equivalent to being 48,800 metres above the Earth, to allow the pods to move without air resistance.

Under these conditions, trains could theoretically move at speeds up to 1,200 km/h. The trip from Toronto to Montreal could be made in just half an hour, or from Toronto to Vancouver in just over 3 hours. The enclosed track would also eliminate weather-related delays.

How could the Hyperloop result in a cultural shift?

High speed electric trains would offer a sustainable way to physically connect people across long distances. They would be more efficient and rapid than flying.

In the same way that the internet revolutionized the speed and ease of information transfer, this could be the equivalent for physically moving talent. Imagine that instead of being restricted to living within the cities or towns around your workplace that you could easily commute to another province for work.

What’s special about the Waterloop design?

Each Waterloop pod may cost just $37,000 to build, owing to the team’s dedication to a simple manufacturing process, low pod mass, and the inclusion of as many commercially available components as possible.

In addition to its innovative use of air castors that allow the train to float, its geodetic frame and rounded bottom are designed to roll into turns to make the ride more comfortable for passengers, and reduce energy consumption and transit times.

The pod is designed to carry 26 passengers at a top speed predicted at around 1,000 km/h, with a cruising velocity of around 350 km/h. Its interior design includes screens to broadcast information and panoramic snapshots of places along the track, creating a shared experience for riders.

Artist’s rendering of the interior of Team Waterloop’s high-speed floating train design
Credit: Team Waterloop

How has the global community come together?

Despite the Hyperloop Challenge being framed as a competition, all of the information gathered will be open source, meaning that anybody can access the results and build on the designs to make them even better. It has sparked global interest in innovating sustainable transportation.

The students behind Waterloop have even commented that the technologies being explored are so new that even competitors are banding together, helping one another and making thoughtful suggestions via Facebook Messenger.

When global innovators come together this way, everybody wins.

Hungry for more on high speed rail? Check out Professor Andrea Damascelli’s Orange Chair Interview on quantum materials for levitation.

Originally published on Research2Reality.com. Keep up to date with advances in Canadian science by subscribing to our newsletter!