By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

Queen’s University emeritus professor James Low has been named a member of the Order of Canada for his contributions as an academic and as the founder of the Museum of Health Care.

The award is the second highest honour of merit in Canada and is given to those who make a major difference in Canada through lifelong contributions in their field.

“The award is actually more for the museum than for me,” says the ever-humble Dr. Low, who has volunteered at the museum since it opened as a non-profit institution in 1991, served as its executive director until the end of 2012, and now works as its advancement officer. “We have created a unique cultural resource.”

James Low poses with one of the only remaining original iron lungs used at Sick Children's Hospital in 1937.

Dr. Low was also the head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Queen’s from 1965 to 1985.

“This is the only mission-specific museum of health care in Canada,” says Dr. Low. “We have two missions: develop a complete collection highlighting all health care disciplines, and tell the health care story to enhance public understanding. The past is the foundation on which the present is built. Preserving the health care legacy is important.”

In his role as advancement Officer, Dr Low works with the museum's Board of Directors to find new patrons and donors which help preserve the museum's history.

“James Low has contributed greatly to Queen’s University and its medical program since coming to Kingston nearly 50 years ago,” says Principal Daniel Woolf. “Earning the Order of Canada is a true honour and rewards the years Dr. Low spent establishing the Museum of Health Care, the only one of its kind in Canada.”

Six Queen’s alumni were also appointed to the Order of Canada. Named as officers of the order are:

Harold Jennings, OC,  MSc’61, PhD’64 (Chemistry), Distinguished Research Scientist, National Research Council of Canada,  for his contributions to carbohydrate chemistry, notably in the development of a pediatric vaccine used internationally to prevent the most common strain of meningitis.

Veena Rawat, OC, PhD’73 (Electrical Engineering), past president of the Communications Research Centre, for her contributions to telecommunications engineering and for her leadership in establishing the global regulatory framework for radio spectrum management.

Shirley Tilghman, OC, Artsci’68 (Chemistry),  DSc’02, a molecular biologist and past president of Princeton University,  for her contributions to molecular biology, for her leadership in university education and for her influential efforts to champion women in science and engineering.

Named as members of the order are:

Jim Leech, CM, MBA’73,  former president and CEO of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and current Queen’s chancellor, for his contributions as an innovator in pension management, for his writings on the subject of retirement funding, and for his community involvement.

Bruce McNiven, CM,  Artsci’76 (History), lawyer and founding member and treasurer of the Trudeau Foundation, for his broad and sustained commitment to the preservation and flourishing of Montreal culture and heritage.

Donna Stewart, CM, Meds’67, chair of women’s health for the University Health Network and U of T, for her contributions to women’s health as a nationally renowned leader in the field.

By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

Twenty years of research into how the human brain processes visual information has earned Nikolaus Troje (Psychology, Biology, School of Computing) the Humboldt Research Award, an honour established by the German government to recognize a lifetime of achievement.

 “I feel very honoured having received a lifetime recognition award without having a single grey hair yet,” says Dr. Troje, who was nominated for the award by colleague Karl Gegenfurtner from the University of Giessen.

Using the sensors shown below, Nikolaus Troje uses motion capture technology to study how people move.

Dr. Troje operates the Biomotion Lab at Queen’s, studying visual perception and cognition using motion capture technology. The goal of his research is to answer questions concerning social recognition including processing visual information contained in the way people walk and move, specifically the subtle nuances that signal emotions and personality.

Dr. Troje started his career working on visual systems of insects, and later on face recognition in humans. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, he met Queen’s professor Barrie Frost during a conference in Germany who invited him to come to Queen’s and study visual recognition in pigeons. He spent two years in Kingston before moving back to Germany where he founded the Biomotion Lab at Ruhr University. In 2003, Dr. Troje accepted the position of Canada Research Chair in Vision and Behavioural Sciences at Queen’s where he continues his research today.

The motion sensors used in his research.

“Understanding how our visual system obtains information about other people from the way they move is just one example of the amazing ability of our perceptual systems to turn neuronal activity in response to external energies into the objects and events that form our perception of the outside world,” he says.

Dr. Troje is now preparing for a one year sabbatical in Germany where he will spend time at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen and at the JustusLiebig University in Giessen.

By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

Queen’s University assistant professor Pendar Farahani (Department of Medicine and Department of Public Health Sciences) is advocating the use of gender-based treatment for mitigating the cardiovascular risk factors related to diabetes.

Research has shown women with Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol are less likely than their male peers to reach treatment goals to lower their bad cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.

Women living with diabetes are less likely than men to reach their treatment goals.

“The findings suggest the need for gender-based evaluation and treatment of cardiovascular risk factors in these patients,” says Dr. Farahani. “We need further study into the gender disparities to tailor drug interventions and we need to increase the inclusion of women in clinical trials.”

With treatment, only 64 per cent of women lowered their LDL cholesterol to the recommended level compared with 81 per cent of men, the investigators reported. Research has shown women have poorer adherence to taking their statin medication to treat high cholesterol, perhaps due to somewhat dissimilar pharmacological properties in a woman’s body than a man’s. For example, women often have more side effects such as muscle pain, explains Dr. Farahani.

“The finding that women were not able to lower their so-called bad cholesterol sufficiently is a concern,” he says. “Women with diabetes have a considerably higher rate of cardiovascular-related illness and death than men with diabetes. This pattern is likely related to poorer control of cardiovascular risk factors.”

Dr. Farahani’s research also discovered access to medication is not responsible for this difference. All patients, who were in a database from pharmacies in four Canadian provinces, had social insurance and could afford their medications.

To evaluate whether biological sex influenced the results of cholesterol-lowering drug treatment, Dr. Farahani included nearly equal numbers of men and women (101 and 97) in the study. The average age of participants was 65 years for men and 63 years for women. All patients had Type 2 diabetes and had filled prescriptions for statin medication to treat high cholesterol between 2003 and 2004.

The results were presented on Saturday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and The Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago.