Launching a legacy. As the steward of Paul’s estate, Mimi knew that using it to make an endowed scholarship gift would be a fitting way to honor his memory. “Paul’s MIT degree launched him on the career of his dreams,” she says. “I wanted to make a scholarship gift that will last in perpetuity so that others achieve their goals as well, and so that his name will be remembered.”
A lasting bond. Paul’s Theta Chi fraternity brothers invited Mimi to what would have been Paul’s 30th reunion—a “beautiful, but bittersweet” experience for her. The friendships he formed at MIT made a profound impact on his life, she says: “Paul would be proud to know his contribution will assist others in fulfilling their dreams. He never missed an opportunity to inspire, encourage, and support his fellow human beings in making their dreams come true.”
Smidt says she loves the lathe but is also very fond of a small tool called a French curve scraper, which she used to sand the curves of the desk that was her ambitious first project in the shop. The piece, which Smidt calls her “noodle desk,” consists of a butcher block top that S-curves to the floor for support. It’s made of reclaimed maple from MIT’s basketball court renovation, which the shop had salvaged. “It’s always such a pleasure to use the perfect hand tool,” she says. (Find a link to photos and step-by-step instructions for building the desk here.)
BLONDEGEEK VIA INSTRUCTABLES
Although Smidt was an undergraduate at MIT, she didn’t discover the Hobby Shop until she joined the faculty in September 2021 (after earning her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley). “For that first year, the Hobby Shop was pretty instrumental in my maintaining sanity,” she says, noting that MIT had just begun to relax its early covid restrictions. “I think I’ve now used just about every machine.”
Novices and experts
More than a workspace, the Hobby Shop is also a community—one where people from all corners of MIT can come together to share camaraderie as well as tips and techniques. “I’ve met some of my favorite people from MIT at the Hobby Shop,” Smidt says.
Fischman even owes his marriage to the shop. Thanks to a referral from a contact there, he wound up with a 25-year part-time gig teaching two night classes in woodworking at the Boston Center for Adult Education—where he met his wife. “That was a connection the shop made possible,” he says.
Novices are always welcome, and the shop’s staff—director Hayami Arakawa and technical instructor Coby Unger—are always willing to provide expert guidance. “It’s encouraged to ask questions,” Smidt says. Classes and workshops provide more formal training on complex machines or in unusual crafts, such as steam-bending wood.
Projects undertaken in the shop run the gamut from simple cutting boards to fine furniture. Fischman says the piece he’s most proud of is a curved-edge walnut console table with hand-planed, tapered octagonal legs. But not everyone makes furniture. “We had a guy who came in to build a machine to put the caps on his yogurt containers,” Fischman says. “We’ve had harpsichords built in the shop, canoes built in the shop. It goes on and on.”
Smidt adds, “It’s really inspiring to see what other people are making.”
Now, nearly 50 years after his bowl was spotlighted in Fine Woodworking, Fischman says he still finds joy at the Hobby Shop. “The shop is fun,” he says. “I think that’s an important aspect of it.”
Another, he says, is knowing that he has created pieces that will live on. “I’m 76. I think about legacy a bit,” he says. “The woodworking gifts that I gave to people that they cherish now are part of my legacy.”
William Warin Bainbridge Jr., Class of 1922, and Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge, Class of 1926, grew up on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive, the eldest of three sons of an upwardly mobile stationer who dabbled in real estate. Both went to MIT. And both would play important roles in World War II—one on the front lines at Normandy and at the Battle of the Bulge, the other with J. Robert Oppenheimer in Los Alamos.
William Warin Bainbridge Jr., Class of 1922
COURTESY OF DAVID BAINBRIDGE
Before making their way to MIT, the brothers attended the Horace Mann School, where they participated in athletics and Ken wrote for the newspaper and the humor magazine. But while Bill was playing hockey, Ken was busy exploring the new medium of radio. “I had a radio with an antenna on the roof [of the family townhouse],” he recalled in 1991. “The antenna and ground were connected across the vibrating contacts, which energized a commercial ultraviolet unit. I must have violated every bandwidth law.” Ken’s five-watt ham radio station had just three call letters: 2WN.
In 1918, Bill arrived at the Institute, where he majored in engineering administration. He belonged to a dizzying number of organizations, including two fraternities (Alpha Tau Omega and Theta Tau), the football team, the wrestling team (which he managed), and the finance and budget committees. Ken joined Bill at MIT in the fall of 1921 to study electrical engineering, ultimately earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree through a co-op program with General Electric that required him to spend time at GE’s offices in Lynn, Massachusetts, and summers at the GE campus in Schenectady, New York. Ken, too, pledged Alpha Tau Omega, and he served on the board of MIT’s Voo Doo humor magazine. Master’s in hand, Ken and an MIT friend were admitted in 1926 to the doctoral program in physics at Princeton, where the dean reportedly told them, “You’re nice boys, but it’s too bad you never went to college.”
Despite the dean’s skepticism, Ken rose quickly in the academic ranks—first at Princeton, where he became a pioneering mass spectroscopist; then at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Labs on a Guggenheim fellowship; and then at Harvard, where he built cyclotrons. Along the way, he published the results of an experiment confirming Einstein’s most famous equation, E = MC2. He returned to MIT in 1940 to help found the Radiation Laboratory and played a key role in recruiting scientists and developing radar.
But on September 22, 1943, a letter to the local War Office from President Karl Taylor Compton noted that Bainbridge was unavailable for new local work because his “services were urgently requested by another scientific project of extreme urgency and secrecy.” Since MIT couldn’t refuse, Compton wrote that “Bainbridge was released from the Radiation Laboratory to participate in this new activity.”
The “activity” was “Project Y” at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Ken and his cyclotron helped develop the first nuclear bomb.
Ken settled at Los Alamos with his wife, Margaret, formerly a member of the Swarthmore College faculty, and their three children. Under Oppenheimer’s direction, he took charge of the Initiator Committee and joined the “high-explosives” group. Then he was given the enormous responsibility of leading the effort to test the atomic bomb, which required working through countless technical and theoretical challenges. He was named head of Group E-9, “to study full-scale implosion assemblies and prepare for the Trinity test,” and Group E-2, which developed instrumentation for the test. In October 1944, Ken became a member of the detonator committee.
The other members of the Bainbridge family also threw themselves into the war effort. Mae, the matriarch, volunteered for the American Red Cross. Youngest brother Don, a Cornell grad, became a lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. Bill, who’d been working in construction for US Gypsum, was commissioned at age 39 as a first lieutenant of the 342nd Engineers (he’d served previously as a second lieutenant early in his career). He headed to the UK in 1942 to become a regimental operations officer, using his building experience to supervise road stabilization and work that required the use of heavy earthmoving machines. By year’s end he’d been promoted to captain, and in 1943 he was transferred to the 254th Engineer Combat Battalion, V Corps.
William Warin Bainbridge Jr. earned a Purple Heart and
a Silver Star for his actions during the Normandy invasion in 1944.
As an assistant division engineer, Bill spent the first half of 1944 training for the Normandy invasion. At 7:40 a.m. on June 6, 1944, his battalion landed at Omaha Beach. Bill, who was slightly wounded, and four other soldiers “made engineering reconnaissance from behind German lines,” as he would later describe it, to examine German engineering infrastructure. Then they captured five German soldiers and rejoined the remaining members of their battalion on the beach, where they breached the wall blocking the beach exit with 1,100 pounds of TNT. For his actions on D-Day, Bill received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. He later wrote that on June 8, his battalion “made reconnaissance of a gap in [a] bridge over Vire River, under German observation and fire”; they later bridged the gap.
One of the first battalions to enter Paris, the 254th went on to build multiple bridges, remove obstacles and mines, maintain roads, and assist stalled infantry and armor units as the Allies made their way across France. On September 11, 1944, it was one of the first battalions to reach Germany, where it would destroy 52 fortified positions.
Seven months after D-Day, Bill Bainbridge’s lightly armed battalion helped stop the German panzer divisions in the Ardennes Offensive, better known as Battle of the Bulge, for which the men would earn the Croix de Guerre. On December 17 they withstood two attacks, and managed to prevent supporting German infantry from advancing after a third attack with tanks breached their lines. They held off the Germans for nine hours until relief arrived. Reportedly, the frustrated SS commander was heard to mutter, “The damned engineers!”
Ken Bainbridge famously turned to Oppenheimer after the blast and said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.”
“Our battalion was cut off and fought its way into and then out of the German lines to escape … scattered over a 40-mile front,” Bill wrote. They would go on to cross the Rhine River, where they built a 330-foot floating bridge, the largest tactical bridge in the European theater—fighting Nazi troops all the way.
Injured during the fighting, Bill was hospitalized in France for nearly a month. During that time he met his wife-to-be, Captain Florence Thompson, a nurse from Nova Scotia previously stationed at Boston’s Robert Brigham Hospital. Their wedding announcement in the New York Times could only report that they married in February 1945 “somewhere in France.”
From May to October of 1945, Bill worked on his final assignment of the war: designing and supervising the construction of 18 French camps. These camps, he wrote, had to accommodate “480,000 men who were to return from Germany and prepare for the invasion of Japan.”
That full-out invasion of Japan became unnecessary, of course, thanks to his brother and his Los Alamos colleagues. As Bill was designing the camps, Ken was choosing the site for the first atomic detonation—a spot in the New Mexico desert called the Jornada del Muerto, or “Journey of the Dead Man.”
Manhattan Project
physicists at Los Alamos, from left: Kenneth Bainbridge, Class
of 1926; Joseph Hoffman; J. Robert
Oppenheimer; Louis Hempelman; MIT Rad Lab veteran Robert Bacher; MIT professor Victor Weisskopf; and Richard Dodson
ALAMY
The world’s first atomic bomb exploded at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945, less than a month before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ken, who would later call it a “foul and awesome display,” famously turned to Oppenheimer after the blast and said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.”
After the war, Ken returned to the Harvard physics faculty, where he later became department chair. He would also become a prominent advocate of responsible nuclear power and defend academic freedom against Senator Joseph McCarthy. He retired from Harvard in 1975 but remained active professionally until his death in 1996.
Meanwhile, Bill, who had earned the rank of major, returned to civilian life as a building component engineer, developer, and inventor, according to David A. Bainbridge, the son of Bill and Ken’s cousin and author of Game Changer: World War II, Radar, the Atomic Bomb, and the Life of Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge. Whereas for Ken the war years may have been “his best time,” David says, Ken’s daughter suspects that Bill might have been affected by PTSD.
Even in the midst of war, Bill was still thinking of MIT. From France, he sent a Nazi flag captured from the headquarters of a German panzer battalion to President Compton. “Some months ago,” Compton wrote to Bill in 1945, “we received the large Nazi flag and the small embroidered identification number, which evidently represent some captured trophies and which have elicited much interest as I have shown them to visitors in my office.” Bill wrote back, a little insouciantly: “Dear Dr. Compton: Was most agreeably surprised to hear from you and greatly enjoyed your letter. I am afraid it’s pretty late to start a German trophy collection although in the years to come undoubtedly our wives will make us dispose of stuff we have sent home.”
Ken would also make a gift of sorts to MIT when developing plans for a joint Harvard-MIT cyclotron. “Harvard didn’t care whether it was located at MIT or Harvard. MIT didn’t care whether it was Harvard or MIT,” he said in 1977. “You just didn’t want halfway in between in Central Square, being equally inconvenient to everybody.” So Ken decided to make life more convenient for the scientists of his alma mater, and the cyclotron ended up in Building 44.
“Both the Bainbridge brothers really benefited from their MIT time,” says David Bainbridge. “They were set up perfectly for the roles they were going to play in World War II.” And in very different ways, the two brothers’ contributions helped bring about the end of the war.
In the town of Alter do Chão, where my professor lived, traditional Paraense carimbó music dominated everyone’s social lives. As an undergraduate who was double-majoring in music, I decided to join the town’s major carimbó group, Grupo Cobra Grande. Despite my rudimentary grasp of Portuguese, I knew that I could communicate with the group through music. With the help of offline Google Translate and charades, I managed to learn not only the intricate rhythms and dance moves involved in this traditional musical style, but also the meanings of the lyrics and the associated folklore. We began every rehearsal and performance with a song calling the mythical frog Muiraquitã into the Lago Verde lake to protect the town and the people from evil spirits. The dance moves in carimbó reflect stories about the famous Amazonian pink dolphin coming to land in the evenings to court young women—men wear hats to cover their dolphin spouts and dance in circles around the women like dolphins jumping in and out of the water.
Talia Khan ’20 in the abandoned city of Velho Airão before she learned that killer ants had driven its people away. Her friend had an allergic reaction when bitten, but luckily, Khan had an EpiPen.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
I was lucky enough to return to Brazil two years later as a Fulbright scholar in Manaus, Amazonas, where I got to study natural rainforest materials such as curauá fibers and Marasmius yanomami fungi in the lab, research their traditional uses in artisanal crafts, and explore their potential as sustainable structural materials. I also volunteered at the Nobre Academia de Robótica, an organization that gives children from impoverished backgrounds, including Indigenous youths from the São Sebastião community, free access to education in coding, science, and technology. They learn to use drones for land surveillance and develop sensors to monitor environmental conditions, honoring their cultural legacy and extending it with technological capabilities.
When I met a local clarinetist named Abner at the Manaus synagogue, he invited me to watch as he recorded music with Eliberto Barroncas, an art professor at a local university who played instruments he crafted from repurposed “found” objects such as cardboard tubes, rubber tires, and marbles. As Abner played the clarinet, Barroncas created a background that immersed the listener in the sounds of Amazonia: croaking frogs, flowing water, shaking leaves. Afterward, we discussed the interconnectedness of nature and music over coffee. Barroncas’s philosophy is that making music should come from the soul, as a tangible expression of one’s natural surroundings. This idea resonated with me, inspiring me to deepen the scope of my extracurricular research on eco-organology—the study of how instruments are connected to the natural world. I shared several of his quotes when I presented my research at the American Musicological Society annual conference in the fall of 2022.
Through my work with the Nobre Academia de Robótica, I also met the local music producer and arranger César Lima, who developed a virtual-reality app called “The Roots VR” to introduce users to over 100 Amazonian instruments. This app allows users to interact with a variety of these instruments in virtual settings, creating an accessible way for people worldwide to engage with and appreciate the rich musical heritage of the Amazon. His work demonstrates how modern technology can be harnessed to preserve and promote musical traditions.
“I told Fred that everyone needed to come to the Amazon. Everyone needed to taste the tingling jambú flower, drink suco de taperebá, and perform in the famous Teatro Amazonas opera house.”
I found myself sharing stories of these incredible people with my music friends at MIT and with Fred Harris, director of the MIT Festival Jazz Band, a group I joined as an undergrad. I told Fred that everyone needed to come to the Amazon. Everyone needed to taste the tingling jambú flower, drink suco de taperebá, and perform in the famous Teatro Amazonas opera house. We had to not just introduce other students to the music of the Amazon, but take them there so they, too, could collaborate with Indigenous performers. In the spring of 2023, Fred brought some 80 MIT student musicians, none of whom spoke Portuguese, to the Rio Negro in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. These students, along with approximately 20 staff, faculty, and guest artists, communicated with the locals through science and music.
The project Fred led, called “Hearing Amazônia,” was a testament to the power of interdisciplinary collaboration. Influenced by my experiences in the Amazon, and further inspired by guest artists Luciana Souza, Anat Cohen, and Djuena Tikuna, it culminated in a concert featuring Brazilian and Amazonian music influenced by the natural world. Working together, we created a musical narrative of the Amazon’s beauty and the looming threats it faces. We went on to perform it both at MIT and in the Amazon.
Fred Harris, senior lecturer in music and director of wind and jazz ensembles at MIT, gets a traditional pattern painted on his face with natural plant dye by a woman in the São Sebastião community.
MIT VIDEO PRODUCTIONS
This project transcended the traditional boundaries between education and activism. Bringing MIT student musicians to the Amazon provided a platform for experiential learning unlike any other. It wasn’t just about playing music; it was about understanding music as a living entity, deeply entwined with the environment where it originates.
In planning the trip, we knew that engaging with the Indigenous communities was essential. We partnered with the Nobre Academia de Robótica to visit the São Sebastião community so the whole group could learn about their culture, their traditions, and the ways in which science and tech are helping them protect their land and maintain their fishing economy. We also took part in workshops with César Lima and Eliberto Barroncas. The opportunity for students to play Professor Barroncas’s instruments and take part in an impromptu jam session was a powerful demonstration of music as a universal language, transcending barriers and connecting us to the environment and each other. He and Lima influenced us beyond the realm of music, offering insights into the broader implications of cultural sustainability and environmental stewardship. Their work demonstrated that the preservation of cultural practices and natural ecosystems is not only an artistic or environmental issue but also a matter of global responsibility.
As our alumni and friends know better than anyone, the intellectual excellence and bold ingenuity of the people of MIT are the Institute’s greatest strength. While IAP supplied its welcome respite, the first part of the year also offered inspiring reminders of MIT’s ability to make a powerful, positive difference in the world. Here are just two examples.
The MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative
In January, we engaged the MIT community with a day of fascinating panel discussions to launch the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. Participants from government, industry, and academia explored questions like What kind of work do we want in the future? and How do we shape technology for social good?
The Climate Project at MIT
Many universities are taking on climate change by launching a new school or designating a new building. By the time you read this letter, we will have announced a different approach with the Climate Project at MIT, an ambitious new effort to focus the strength of our community on achieving a set of critical missions in the fight to cope with this global threat. This was the central priority I discussed in my inaugural remarks—and you’ll hear much more about it in the months to come.
Like campus communities across the country, we also continue to deal with heightened tensions over the tragic events in the Middle East.
As I noted in a letter to the campus community in early January, events of the past few months have pressure-tested some long-standing systems and assumptions, presenting challenges to our community and to fulfilling our mission of research and education. In the best spirit of MIT, we’re responding with systematic assessment and improvements. At the same time, the community-led effort called Standing Together Against Hate is offering opportunities for education and discussion to help us build our skills as a campus community in addressing difficult subjects through civil dialogue.
To make it easy to keep track of campus developments and leadership communications, we’ve developed the campus updates page, which you can find at the top of the MIT home page. I’ll have more to say throughout the spring about the Institute issues that matter most right now.
Thompkins’s experiences as a youth advocate set her up to dream big about what she might accomplish on behalf of the disabled community. Her hope as a teenager had been to go to law school and become a disability rights attorney—that is, until she surprised herself by falling in love with an economics course in high school. She majored in mathematical economics at Scripps College. And by the time she arrived on MIT’s campus for grad school, she had become enthusiastic about the possibility of using economics as a tool for disability justice.
Angrist, a Nobel Prize winner who served as one of Thompkins’s thesis advisors, wrote one of the early papers analyzing the Americans with Disabilities Act and concluded that it had in many ways been counterproductive. He and his coauthor, fellow MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu, found that the ADA increased costs for employers and wound up having a negative effect on employment of disabled workers. Thompkins built on their research, writing the first two papers analyzing the long-term impact of the ADA. Both have been cited often.
She also wrote a report on disability policy in India for the World Bank and then conducted more sophisticated econometric analysis, using the same World Bank data, of an Indian program designed to give assistance to disabled workers and working-age disabled people. That research became a chapter of her PhD thesis and was later published in Applied Economics and Finance. Angrist, who remembers Thompkins as a “hardworking and tenacious student,” says that “Allison’s paper at the time was one of the few to look at labor market effects of disability policy in that part of the world.”
“Even to hold my neck in one position is kind of like mountain climbing would be for some other people.”
The Indian program was unique at the time because “mainstream microlending programs systematically excluded people with disabilities from receiving loans,” Thompkins says. After digging into the data, she realized that many of the disabled people who received microloans were not on schedule to repay them on time because they used the loans not to expand a business but to go to secondary school, which she calls “a luxury that many disabled people in rural India do not get.” But her analysis concluded that researchers needed longer-term data to determine the loans’ ultimate impact on these participants’ economic outcomes. In other words, it wasn’t fair to assume that just because disabled people weren’t using the microloans in the exact way that the lenders had expected, the investment was wasted.
Thompkins earned a reputation at MIT for her warmth and excitement about her work. “She’s always very joyful and was really passionate about what she was doing, and just exuded positivity and enthusiasm,” says Autor, who also served as her thesis advisor. Kathleen Monagle, associate dean and director of disability and access services, adds that she’s also generous with her time and energy. Thompkins helped author a brochure for MIT on best practices for communicating with people with a range of disabilities—which Monagle’s office still uses—and has served as a mentor to numerous students who have come through the office over the years.
After earning her PhD, Thompkins became a research economist at Mathematica, where she conducted research on employment among people with disabilities, among other topics. Now, though she no longer works full time as an economist, she still takes on consulting gigs occasionally.
A deepening spiritual practice
Though stepping back from work for health reasons wasn’t what she would’ve planned for herself, the shift cleared the way for Thompkins to begin writing more about something else that had become important to her: the pursuit of a spiritual life that could sustain her in the face of challenging circumstances. She grew up going to church with her family, started meditating at age eight, and began modifying her meditation practice to fit her abilities in her teens. As an adult, she has continued to expand her understanding of spirituality through extensive reading. Yet her personal experiences, as well as her relationships with others in the disability community, had long made her aware of the barriers to participating in spiritual life for many people with disabilities. While practices like reading a book or praying quietly might seem almost effortless to some, they can be incredibly challenging for others, she notes.
“Even to hold my neck in one position is kind of like mountain climbing would be for some other people,” she says. (In her book, she notes that “researchers have estimated that someone with cerebral palsy uses three to five times more energy than someone without a disability.”)
As efficient creators and stewards of wetlands, beavers provide a hospitable ecosystem for dozens of other creatures, from insects, frogs, and turtles to owls, otters, great blue herons, and even moose and deer. What’s more, by harvesting undergrowth for their dams and creating ponds and bogs that raise the moisture content of the soil, beavers lessen the likelihood that forest fires will spread. As forest fires devastated Oregon in 2021, beaver wetlands remained green and lush, acting as natural firebreaks. On aerial images of the charred landscape, the beaver’s habitat stands out, a wide and verdant ribbon running through the blackened trees.
While not all property owners who live near beaver habitats appreciate the animals’ tree removal services, the pro-beaver movement seems to be getting more organized. In November 2023, some 300 beaver restoration advocates from North America and Europe gathered in the Beaver State (Oregon) for the annual State of the Beaver conference. “Seventy-five percent of the artificial wetland restoration projects done in America over the past 30 years have failed,” conference cofounder Stanley Petrowski told the Daily Yonder. “But when beavers do it, they do it perfectly.”
BeaverCon, held near Baltimore in June of 2022, and the Midwest Beaver Summit, held in Chicago and online in September 2023, attracted similar crowds of humans interested in promoting beaver welfare.
It is, in fact, possible to find ways to allow beavers to continue creating their watery habitats in ways that minimize damage to human infrastructure. For example, devices such as the Beaver Deceiver can be installed to prevent beavers from damming culverts, which often leads to flooding of roads. Skip Lisle, founder of Beaver Deceivers International of Grafton, Vermont, first developed the device in the 1990s to beaver-proof the Penobscot Nation’s 130 miles of roads in Maine. “In all likelihood, they are the first large landowner to completely beaver-proof their property nonlethally,” he says.
Living organic chemical factory
At the base of their tail, all beavers have two castor sacs that store castoreum, a complex, granular substance with a strong and long-lasting musky smell. It is made up of at least 24 different compounds, primarily derived from the barks of the various trees in the beaver’s diet. Beavers deposit castoreum atop foot-high mounds of mud, sticks, and grass to mark the edges of their territory.
Humans have long valued castoreum. About 400 BCE, Hippocrates, a chronicler of natural cures, wrote of its wonderful medical properties. Around 77 CE, the Roman naturalist Pliny listed castoreum as a cure for headaches, constipation, and epilepsy. In the Middle Ages the list of maladies castoreum was said to cure expanded to include dysentery, worms, fleas, pleurisy, gout, rheumatism, insomnia, hysteria, memory loss, and liver problems.
Author William Miller ’51, SM ’52, reports that his foot once crashed through a beaver dam while he was dragging his canoe over it to get to the next lake in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. About 100 feet away, a watching beaver immediately began to slap its tail on the pond surface. Having just unleashed a string of curses directed at the beavers, Bill assumed that the beaver was cursing at him. But he now suspects it was sending a warning signal to the other beavers—or possibly urging them to come quickly to repair the damage caused by the trespassing human oaf.
COURTESY OF WILLIAM MILLER
As it turns out, quite a few of the tree barks that beavers prefer contain compounds with known medicinal benefits. Phenols, for example, are often anti-inflammatory and antiseptic and can have antiviral properties. They include salicylic acid (a precursor to aspirin), which can be found in the bark of willow, poplar, and alder trees—all beaver favorites. The beaver’s system functions as a natural pharmacy, extracting these compounds (among others) and secreting them in the form of castoreum.
Humans have also used castoreum for several nonmedical applications, such as in high-end “leather note” perfumes including Shalimar, Givenchy III, and Chanel’s Antaeus. It is an ingredient in some bourbons and vodkas and has been used in Sweden to flavor “Bäverhojt” (literally, beaver shout) schnapps.
Today, most castoreum is harvested in a sterile environment by anesthetizing beavers and expressing the castor sacs near their tails. As a food additive, castoreum extract is “generally recognized as safe,” according to the FDA. But at close to $100 per pound, it’s used sparingly. The total annual US consumption of dried castoreum is around 300 pounds.
The University of Waterloo, Canada’s number one comprehensive research university, is excited to tap into €53bn in new funding opportunities offered by Pillar II of Horizon Europe.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo), Canada’s number one comprehensive research university for the last 16 years, eagerly anticipate the official launch of Canada’s participation in Horizon Europe’s Pillar II programme to further support the university’s globally important and impactful research.
As the latest developed economy to join Horizon Europe under Pillar II, Canada has the opportunity to access €53bn in funding available through the European Commission. Waterloo’s proven track record of research excellence and successful international collaborations ensures that the university is well-positioned to leverage the myriad opportunities offered by this game-changing agreement.
Waterloo’s international reach
Waterloo is committed to advancing learning and knowledge worldwide through teaching, research and scholarship. Through Waterloo International, the university collaborates with other leading institutions around the globe to enhance its expertise further in the areas of research, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
Waterloo recognises the world is changing and that humanity must evolve with it. International collaborations are vital to achieving success in the future.
Global futures
To create maximum global impact, Waterloo is focusing on the following five key areas for humanity where it can leverage its academic and research strengths:
Societal futures
Demographic transformations, increased migration, digitisation, and automation, and shifting geopolitical relations are among the forces transforming society.
Waterloo’s dedication to producing ground-breaking research aims to improve communities worldwide.
Health futures
Waterloo is poised to take a unique leadership position by focusing on its strengths at the intersections of health, society, technology, entrepreneurship, and engaging partners to co-create solutions that advance population health and support the development of more sustainable community-based health systems.
Sustainable futures
While the global climate emergency is the greatest threat to our collective future, Waterloo is also addressing challenges in preserving biodiversity, ensuring clean water for all, and producing enough food for a growing planet.
As a leader in sustainability research and education, Waterloo will build on its strength to help guide society towards a sustainable future.
Technological futures
Waterloo has seen that big data can be harnessed to help governments and organisations make informed decisions and address equity and equality concerns. The world demands that innovators develop technology with greater responsibility and accountability.
As Waterloo continues to lead in technology and innovation in critical areas, it can shape technology to serve society rather than letting technology shape it.
Economic futures
Labour shortages, disruptions to supply chains, and geopolitical and digital threats have demonstrated vulnerabilities and risks inherent in several economies. Waterloo has the foundation to shape innovative ecosystems and develop talent to help create more equitable, resilient, and future-proofed economies.
Already a leader in work-integrated learning, Waterloo will support learning-integrated work to help organisations and individuals keep pace with technology and the changing world of work.
Waterloo excels in research, entrepreneurship, innovation, and work-integrated learning
Waterloo’s Global Futures initiative provides a framework to address the world’s most pressing challenges. Access to Horizon Europe’s funding will be instrumental in facilitating the university’s objectives to create a worldwide impact.
Dr Trevor Charles, professor in the Department of Biology and director of Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research at the University of Waterloo, said: “The full inclusion of Canadian scientists in international activities will have a transformative impact on research and innovation.”
One of Dr Charles’ current research areas intersects with Waterloo’s Health and Sustainable Futures. It addresses the challenges of food waste and plastics pollution by applying bacterial genome engineering and microbiome analysis within a circular bioeconomy concept to develop innovative methods for converting food waste into biodegradable plastics.
Through the startup company MetaCycler BioInnovations, members of Dr Charles’ research group are driving commercialisation by working with dairy companies to produce the bottles they package milk in, using the waste from the process. Opening pathways from research to commercialisation is another key differentiator at the University of Waterloo. The upcycling of waste lactose from the dairy industry to biodegradable plastics suitable for food packaging materials maximises resources and vastly reduces waste.
International collaboration is crucial for addressing complex global challenges and Dr Charles agrees that Horizon Europe’s expansion into North America enhances such collaboration. He said: “Science is international by nature. Our experience with the Horizon2020 project MicrobiomeSupport was enlightening. Rather than taking a human health-first approach to Microbiome, the concept was centered around food. By doing this, it touched on the impact of microbiome in all corners of society, without neglecting human health.”
The MicrobiomeSupport project, with Canada represented by the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, led to the establishment of the MicrobiomeSupport Association, of which Waterloo is a founding member.
The official inauguration of the MicrobiomeSupport Association will be at the first Food System Microbiomes 2024 International Conference, which will take place in Torino, Italy, from 14-17 May 2024. These strides would not have been possible without financial contributions from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Horizon’s Pillar II programme is especially noteworthy as it provides increased funding across multiple disciplines, including energy, technology and culture.
From left to right: Dr Charmaine Dean, Dr Myra Fernandes, Dr Trevor Charles
Dr Myra Fernandes, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, has also experienced the tremendous advantages of working with researchers in Europe. She is collaborating with Dr Hélène Sauzéon and Maxime Adolphe, PhD student at INRIA (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology) and the University of Bordeaux. Dr Sauzéon and Adolphe use augmented reality to study ways to improve cognitive behaviour and spatial navigation.
Dr Fernandes said: “France is using augmented reality to enhance basic research. The French company that PhD student Maxime is partnering with is interested in developing augmented reality glasses. One idea we had was to extend our project to look at the effect of different ways of implementing guided navigation.”
Seniors experiencing spatial memory decline could show signs of improvement if they were provided with some guidance through the use of aids.
On a global scale, this sort of discovery aligns with Waterloo’s Technology and Health Futures. It is significant as route memory problems are often the first sign of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia — diseases that are becoming more common as the world’s population continues to skew older.
Dr Fernandes continued: “France is advancing the way that my lab is thinking in terms of using the basic science findings and applying them. Translation of ideas is facilitated when the graduate students themselves here at the University of Waterloo and in France are involved in thinking of novel, cutting-edge solutions.”
In the current climate of global uncertainty, Waterloo is looking to strengthen relationships with our trusted EU partners. Charmaine Dean, Vice-President, Research and International at Waterloo, said: “The University of Waterloo welcomes the opportunity to forge new European partnerships to advance innovative research that will leave a lasting footprint around the world.”
“Waterloo facilitates large numbers of outbound and inbound student exchanges annually. The goal is to remain at the forefront of innovation by cultivating new collaborations with international partners. We welcome the opportunity to deepen our ties with the EU countries.”
Developing relationships and leveraging diverse perspectives through internationalisation is a top priority for the university.
Please note, this article will also appear in the seventeenth edition of our quarterly publication.
Rheumatoid arthritis impacts approximately 2 million people in the United States and is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. However, assessing cardiovascular risk is difficult in patients with rheumatoid arthritis because standard clinical assessments based on factors like age, cholesterol, and smoking status tend to underestimate cardiovascular risk in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis.
In a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, a research team led by physicians at Mass General Brigham with expertise in rheumatology and cardiovascular disease identified six blood biomarkers that are associated with cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and whose measurements improved the researchers’ ability to predict a future increase in arterial inflammation. The biomarkers hold the potential to clinically assess an individual patient’s risk of cardiovascular disease, but more research is needed to determine whether they are associated with cardiovascular events such as heart attack or stroke.
We think these biomarkers might improve our ability to predict risk and intervene early to help our patients. The idea is that if we measure biomarkers that are specific to rheumatoid arthritis, we might be able to better identify those at highest risk of cardiovascular events.”
Daniel H. Solomon, MD, MPH, first author, chief of the Section of Clinical Sciences in the Division of Rheumatology and Matthew H. Liang Distinguished Chair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system
To identify rheumatoid arthritis-specific biomarkers of cardiovascular risk, the researchers assembled a panel of 24 candidate biomarkers that had been previously shown to be associated with rheumatoid arthritis and systemic inflammation. Then, they measured the concentration of these biomarkers in 109 patients with rheumatoid arthritis who were taking part in a randomized clinical trial (the TARGET Trial) to compare the efficacy of two different treatments for rheumatoid arthritis at preventing cardiovascular disease. The researchers measured the biomarkers at the beginning of the study and six months later, imaging the patients’ arteries at each time to assess their arterial inflammation-;an indicator of cardiovascular risk.
“Arterial inflammation can predict future cardiovascular disease risk,” said cardiologist and co-author Ahmed Tawakol, MD, the director of Nuclear Cardiology and co-director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. “If you take a snapshot of a person’s blood vessels, the more inflammation that is measured there, the greater the likelihood the person will have progression of their disease, and the greater likelihood that they will have a stroke or a myocardial infarction.”
Six of the 24 biomarkers were associated with increased cardiovascular risk and using them in predictive models improved the researchers’ ability to predict increases in arterial inflammation compared to standard clinical indices such as the Framingham Risk Score, which is based on factors such as age, sex, cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking.
“This is an important step towards using blood samples to measure changes in cardiovascular risk with the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis,” said Solomon.
The study showcases the strength of ongoing collaborations between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, said Solomon and Tawakol, who trained together as residents at the Brigham around 30 years ago. “Having two really great institutions collaborating in the same organization meant we could leverage the strengths of the respective institutions and teams,” said Solomon.
Now, the team is working to test these biomarkers in a larger and more long-term cohort of rheumatoid arthritis patients, the Brigham and Women’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Sequential Study (BRASS), which has been following over 1,000 patients with rheumatoid arthritis since 2003. This follow-up study will allow the researchers to not only test associations between the biomarkers and arterial inflammation, but also assess whether the biomarkers can predict future cardiovascular events such as heart attack or stroke.
Source:
Journal reference:
Solomon, D. H., et al. (2024) Biomarkers of Cardiovascular Risk in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: Results from the TARGET Trial. Journal of the American Heart Association. DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.123.032095.
The Québec Mining Association, an association with 88 years of experience in Québec’s mining landscape, explores the future production of Québec rare earths and plans to promote sustainable mining practices.
Rare earth elements (REE) are one group of these critical materials, and various countries are stepping up their production of these. The province of Québec is well-known for its quantity of rare earths, meaning they are well positioned to ramp up exploration and production.
The Québec Mining Association (QMA), the association acting as the voice and representative of the mining industry in Québec, attending governmental policy discussions and promoting the interests of their communities and mining companies, tells us more about the future of the region.
Can you provide an overview of the recent projects undertaken by the Québec Mining Association (QMA)? How are these projects aligned with the Québec Mining Association’s long-term objectives?
The QMA is beginning a new strategic cycle with a plan that will run until 2026. The Board of Directors has adopted a new vision to further propel the QMA and the industry. Its new vision is:
‘In 2030, the QMA is recognised by its stakeholders as the catalyser for the mining industry, inspiring its members to follow an ethical approach and enabling them to respect the highest environmental, social and governance standards.’
The new strategic plan has five orientations:
To reposition the industry’s communication strategy to focus on its tangible ESG achievements (leadership through action, lead by example);
To improve the social acceptability and environmental and social performance of mining companies;
To ensure the competitiveness and sustainability of the industry;
To become a key player in the decarbonisation of the economy (positioning the industry as a real solution to certain climate issues); and
To maintain its organisational strength of influence and increase its legitimacy.
Communication, the protection of the environment, and social acceptability will be at the heart of the following Action Plan. The QMA will put forward the know-how and innovations of the mining companies to reduce the environmental footprint and inform the population and stakeholders of the good practices of the mining industry in Québec.
In 2023, the QMA participated in many public consultations and concluded that the population generally does not know the mining industry well. The public is unaware of our industry’s legal and regulatory obligations and of how the mining industry works to reduce its environmental footprint. The QMA hopes that its new strategic plan will help improve that knowledge.
What role does the Québec Mining Association see for rare earths in the global push towards electric vehicles and renewable energy?
Rare earth elements are part of the critical minerals necessary for the transition to a low-carbon economy. It is well known that the global demand for critical minerals, including REE, will rise significantly as the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies continues to grow.
Currently, no REE mines are in operation in Québec, but many deposits were identified. The QMA keeps an eye on the two projects that are the most advanced and under development in Northern Québec: Kwyjibo (SOQUEM) and Strange Lake (Torngat Metals).
Québec is rich in critical minerals, which enables us to become a leading player in the global energy transition. In October 2020, the Québec Government adopted a plan to valorise the development and production of critical minerals: Plan Québécois pour la valorisation des minéraux critiques et stratégiques’ (PQVMCS) and later a strategy to develop the battery value chain in Québec.
In doing so, Québec has decided to position its mining sector. It is stimulating the demand for Québec’s critical minerals. Many budget measures were put in place to help the development of mines and processing plants in Québec in that sector.
The province has substantial deposits of rare earths, and the mining industry in Québec has been exploring ways to extract and process these elements. Some key points regarding Québec’s role in the context of rare earths and the push towards electric vehicles and renewable energy include resource potential, supply chain security, economic opportunity, environmental considerations/research, and innovation.
Québec Mining Association greatly advocates for sustainability in the mining sector. Can you discuss how you promote sustainable practices?
The QMA and its members are committed to the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) standard. Developed by the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) in 2004, the TSM standard is a globally recognised sustainability programme that supports mining companies in managing key environmental and social risks. Since 2014, the TSM has been a condition of membership for QMA members.
The QMA supports its members in the implementation and monitoring of the protocols. The TSM management team is committed to remaining at the forefront of sustainable management of mining operations.
The initiative applies to all types of mining, including those mining for rare earths and battery metals. It includes nine protocols based on 30 indicators that support transparent and efficient communications with communities of interest and ensure that the main risks associated with mining are managed responsibly. Each year, mining companies must publish performance results for their facilities and state the improvement solutions to be put in place. These protocols are:
Climate Change;
Crisis Management and Communications Planning;
Biodiversity Conservation Management;
Indigenous and Community Relationships;
Prevention of Child and Forced Labour;
Safe, Healthy, and Respectful Workplaces;
Tailings Management;
Water Stewardship; and
Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Workplaces.
The TSM is, therefore, a powerful tool to encourage and continuously improve sustainable practices in extracting all types of minerals, including rare earths and battery metals. Most important is that the TSM goes beyond legal and regulatory obligations and that all the results are public.
Are there any new technologies or methods being adopted in Québec to improve mining efficiency for rare earths and battery metals?
Several government aid and funding programmes are available to the mining industry, and even more are available for critical minerals. The sector may thereby improve its exploration techniques, extraction methods and processing technologies in terms of efficiency, environmental footprint reduction and enhanced overall sustainability. Research and development initiatives, supported by industry and government partnerships, can stimulate innovation in mining practices.
The Plan d’Action 2023-2025 pour la mise en œuvre du PQVMCS is one such method. It contains four orientations for the valorisation of rare earth minerals, increasing knowledge and expertise on strategic and critical minerals (SCMs), setting up or optimising integrated value chains in partnership with SCM-producing regions, contributing to the transition to a sustainable economy, and raising awareness, support and promotion.
Each orientation is described in terms of objectives, actions, managers, indicators, and targets. This makes the plan an excellent tool for improving the efficiency of mining for critical minerals, including rare earths and battery minerals.
How are you collaborating with other provinces or countries to advance mining in Québec?
In Canada, all the provincial associations and the two Canadian associations (MAC and PDAC) are part of the Canadian Mineral Industry Federation (CMIF). We meet a few times a year and have the opportunity to exchange ideas on issues affecting our industry, share experiences and discuss the provincial and federal framework.
The QMA, as a TSM partner association, also participates in discussions with other TSM partner associations across the globe. We share experiences and issues to improve TSM and its worldwide expansion.
What are the future plans of the Québec Mining Association?
With its new vision and strategic plan, the QMA is working on new communication tactics to reach the public better. According to a QMA survey of the Québec population, 78% of respondents have a poor understanding of the mining industry.
Based on these findings, the QMA has committed to providing more information and highlighting best practices in the industry, as well as the positive impacts of mining activities on Québec as a whole and on host communities in particular.
With our social and environmental practices as well as our legislative and regulatory framework, Québec can produce minerals and metals with the lowest environmental footprint in the world, and the QMA wants to share that with the public.
The QMA wants to gain the population’s confidence and raise awareness that it is better to mine here in Québec than in other, less responsible jurisdictions.
History shows that mining projects can develop with respect for local populations and the environment. Mining companies wish to remain partners of the communities in which they operate, which is why they favour the reconciliation of land uses and actions are taken daily to adhere to it.
The mining companies active in Québec have committed to the population to do things right and be respectful and responsible. Combined with access to the territory, in compliance with the rules and regulations, Québec is on the right track to remain among the best mining jurisdictions in the world.
Please note, this article will also appear in the seventeenth edition of our quarterly publication.
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