On Friday, Sept. 14, a group of graduate students, professors, policy-makers, and entrepreneurs gathered in the McGill Faculty Club ballroom to attend the third annual Science  and Policy Exchange.

The conference featured panel speakers from government, industry, and academia. The sessions covered three topics: sustainable policymaking, the 2014 health care reform, and science literacy in Quebec.

According to Janet Prince, director of the Science and Policy Exchange organization and PhD candidate in neurology and neurosurgery at McGill, the mission of the conference was “to give students an opportunity to discuss [science and policy issues] with decision-makers in Quebec and at a federal level.”

“You can have people at a government and industry level that never hear the voice of students, and vice versa,” she said.

Vasanth Ramamurthy, a PhD student in his final year in experimental medicine at McGill, attended the conference hoping to learn how his research could be used on a larger scale, and how businesses and policy-makers look at the work being done by PhD students.

“Events like these are a great way for students to learn how they can apply their talents to the bigger picture,” Ramamurthy said.

The Science Policy Exchange is an annual event. The organization is run by a team of volunteers, graduate, and postdoctoral students from McGill University, Université de Montréal, and Polytechnique Montréal. The board of directors has members from both McGill and Concordia.

Sustainable Policy-Making

Accoring to a recent report by the World Economic Forum, Canada placed 14th  out of 17 developed countries in innovation.

Federally-appointed panelists at the Science and Policy Exchange focused on the disconnect between sustainable technology breakthroughs and commercially available products, as well as their impact on Canadian innovation.

“Despite strong research, breakthroughs are not leading to commercialization and investment because Canada lacks an innovation policy,” CEO of Polytechnics Canada and member of the Jenkins panel Nobina Robinson said. The Jenkins panel was charged with leading a review of federal support to research and development.

In 2011, the Jenkins panel published a report, calling for changes in tax policy and trade, in addition to stronger government focus on developing the research it funds into commercial products.

According to Laurin Liu, NDP member of parliament and McGill aluminus, the problem stems from a lack of support for research-oriented companies.

“Cutting science funding is a debt we are leaving for future generations,” she said of federal programs like Canada’s Major Resources Support.

Health Care Reform

Despite a common assumption that Quebec’s aging population is the largest financial burden on the health care system, panelists agreed that other factors, such as improper management, costly novel technologies, and the privatization of certain aspects of health care account for the burgeoning costs.

The health care reform, slated for 2014, will be based on 18 reports generated over the last 15 years, outlining problems facing the system. Louis Theriault, director of health economics at the Conference Board of Canada, says half of the 432 recommendations in these reports called for improved health care system management.

Theriault believes students will play an important role in ensuring adequate implementation of these policy changes in the future.

“Students are the future policy makers, future politicians and future business leaders—this is the demographic group that should be most concerned about the future,” he said.

Science Literacy

In general, students are showing less interest in science, according to Johanne Patry, an expert in education and chair of Science on Stage Canada. She partly attributes this lack of interest to a failure by teachers to impart  a passion for science to students.

“Rather than reaching [out to] students, we should reach teachers, since that reaches a thousand students,” Patry said.

Quebec’s first Chief Scientist Remi Quirion, was the panel’s keynote speaker. Quirion chairs the board of directors for the three Fonds de Recherche du Quebec (FRQ), which work to ensure that Quebec retains its best researchers and students.

Quirion said that Quebec is working to create an environment to attract the best students with challenging programs and by making sure that the research is well-funded.

According to Quirion, schools in Quebec can “give the best minds an edge—in Quebec, given our culture, bilingualism, or maybe speaking three languages, can give you an edge.”

According to Health Canada, approximately 37,000 deaths each year in Canada can be attributed to tobacco use, racking up $4.4 billion in hospital bills. Although the adverse health effects of smoking are well-known—thanks in part to the government’s anti-smoking campaigns—many have difficulty quitting, despite a variety of available cessation drugs. New research demonstrates that this may have to do with smokers’ genetics.

A recent study at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (the Neuro) focuses on the role that genetics play in the ability to stop smoking, and that information can be used to help more people quit successfully. It is well established that nicotine is the driving agent in smoking addictions. Studies have shown that smokers can be grouped into two genetic categories: those who metabolize nicotine quickly, and those who metabolize it slowly.

Dr. Alain Dagher, a McGill researcher at the Neuro, is among those examining the implications  of these genetic traits of smokers. A recent experiment he conducted sought to highlight the differences in response between fast and slow nicotine metabolizers, and how this variability could play a role in an individual’s struggle to quit smoking.

Nicotine is believed to work through the brain’s reward pathway. The reward pathway is the body’s way of encouraging good evolutionary behaviour. Activities like eating or having sex trigger the release of chemicals in the brain that give us a feeling of pleasure. Nicotine causes the brain to release the same chemicals.

A fast nicotine metabolism is characterized by a surge in blood nicotine level after smoking a cigarette; this is fleeting, and nicotine levels begin to normalize within minutes. A slow metabolism means nicotine levels stay constant throughout the day. Slow metabolizers have a mutation in the enzyme that breaks down nicotine; this means their body is less efficient at breaking down the chemical compound.

Fast metabolizers become conditioned to this pleasure hit over time, and their brain associates nicotine surges with cigarettes. The close association renders this subset of the smoking population more reactive to smoking cues, such as images of cigarettes.

However, in the case of slow metabolizers, “there is never an explicit pairing in the brain between smoking and nicotine levels” Dagher said, because the nicotine levels stay constant. This variability between these two genetic pools of smokers means different cues drive them to reach for a cigarette.

Dagher tested this hypothesis by exposing each metabolic group to a smoking video and measured participants’ brains’ response through a functional MRI. He found that fast metabolizers’ brains had more active responses to cigarette cues than those of slow metabolizers. The more intense the brain’s response to smoking cues, the less likely that a smoker will be able to quit successfully.

The image of a cigarette or a person smoking is therefore more likely to trigger the desire to smoke in a fast metabolizer, while the slow

metabolizer’s desire would stem from withdrawal symptoms when nicotine levels fall below a certain threshold.

Thus, fast metabolizers are more likely to relapse when exposed to smoking situations. These include exposure to images of cigarettes and stressful situations. In addition, fast metabolizers are unlikely to benefit from the majority of cessation products, such as Nicorette, which work by providing a slow release of nicotine into the blood stream.

“[Fast metabolizers] might benefit from behavioral therapy, where they learn how to deal with their cravings,” Dagher said.

Conversely, slow metabolizers, who smoke to maintain nicotine levels, might find cessation products helpful in their quest to quit.

Dagher believes that the future of smoking cessation involves tailoring a quitting regime to a patient’s genome. Identifying how they metabolize nicotine will help quitters succeed. According to Dagher, the nicotine metabolizing enzyme is “easy to test for, the test just isn’t widely available.”

Early in 2011, Ichthyologist (fish biologist) Brian Sidlauskas led an expedition to catalogue biodiversity in a remote river in Guyana. His goal was to bring back over 5,000 fish. According to Guyana’s customs laws, in order remove specimens from the country, each must be documented and identified. This presented an obstacle for Sidlauskas, considering the number of specimens he wished to obtain.

To complete this task, Sidlauskas appealed to an unlikely tool: Facebook. Rather than spend months cataloguing and documenting fish, Sidlauskas uploaded all of his photographs to Facebook and tagged researchers from around the world who might be able to help identify the fish. In less than twenty four hours, Sidlauskas and his team were able to identify all 5,000 specimens.

The general proliferation of social media has had interesting implications for scientific research. In addition to cutting cumbersome research corners, social media has also become an important tool for improving scientific literacy.

Until recently, the general public’s access to science has been limited to few channels: thick journals tucked away on library shelves, intimidating research papers, or scientific documentaries on TV.

While documentaries like Planet Earth and magazines such as Scientific American are evidence that, for decades, scientists have attempted to make their areas of expertise more accessible, the scientific community continues to be perceived as inaccessible to many. This issue is not limited to those considering dabbling in the field—even students studying science have struggled to find methods of maintaining an up–to–date understanding of the subject without an excessive time investment.

However, social media has begun to improve the public’s user interface with science. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter are not only changing how scientific discoveries are perceived, they are also making these ideas much more accessible, providing resources by which information is readily available in short, condensed formats, social media allows anyone with even a remote interest in the subject to access this knowledge in a matter of seconds.

The Facebook page ‘I Fucking Love Science’ is one testament to this development. The page describes itself as a “community built for the posting and sharing of scientific updates, quotes… and photographs…dedicated to bringing the amazing world of science straight to your newsfeed in an amusing and accessible way.”

The page features quirky posts accompanied by eye-catching images. Furthermore, each blurb is written in layman’s terms. This is a conscious choice to avoid overburdening the site with scientific terms—or defining them if they must be used—allowing just about anyone to appreciate the information.

The intertwining of social media with science has a good chance to break down the barrier between the public and the scientific community. The web has allowed science to grab the attention of a much larger audience; 1.1 million people ‘like’ the ‘I F***ing Love Science’ page, and the Mars Rover’s Twitter account, @MarsCuriosity, has about 1.2 million followers.

Whether it is a Facebook page dedicated to presenting scientific updates, or funny Tweets by a space rover, this popularization of science has increased interest in people of a variety of ages and backgrounds interested in new discoveries.