Awards of up to $5,000 are available to UWindsor faculty and librarians through the University Diversity, Indigeneity, and Anti-Racism Professional Development Funds.

These monies are held in separate funds of $50,000 each: one directed to scholarship and teaching in Indigeneity, and the other to scholarship and teaching in anti-racist pedagogies.

The funds may be drawn on by members of the Windsor University Faculty Association to support research, knowledge mobilization, community engagement, development of educational resources, or ongoing learning activities.

Awards are disbursed twice annually, in March and June. Applications for the March 2023 tranche will open Feb. 15 and are due by March 15. Requests for amounts greater than $5,000 may be considered depending on the availability of funds.

Find more information, including the application form, on the Office of the Vice-President, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion website.

University Players is offering DailyNews readers a chance to win two tickets to its current production, 365 Days/365 Plays.

The cast and crew from the School of Dramatic Art present 43 of playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 works in a two-hour span. The piece is directed by Jane Luk, a famed Canadian comedy actress who brings her unique and witty sense of humour to the show.

To enter the contest, just send your answers to the following trivia questions. A winner, selected at random from all correct responses received by noon Thursday, Feb. 9, will receive two tickets to attend a performance.

1. Suzan-Lori Parks wrote 365 Days/365 Plays over the course of one year. What was the first day she began writing?
   a) Sept. 11, 2001
   b) Nov. 13, 2002
   c) Dec. 25, 2008
   d) Feb. 14, 2020
    
2. Suzan Lori-Parks won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for which play?
   a) Betting on the Dust Commander
   b) Father Comes Home from the Wars
   c) Sally & Tom
   d) Topdog/Underdog
    
3. University Players has been a staple on campus for professional-level live entertainment for over 60 years. What is the title of the final production of this season?
   a) Dead Man’s Cell Phone
   b) Tinker Bell
   c) Twelfth Night
   d) All’s Well that Ends Well

Contest is open to all readers of the DailyNews. Send an e-mail with your responses to uofwnews@uwindsor.ca. One entry per contestant, please.

365 Days/365 Plays runs until Feb. 12 at Essex Hall Theatre. Recommended for ages 14+. Tickets are on sale now and can be bought at www.universityplayers.com. UWindsor student tickets are just $10, and regular price tickets start at $20.

Audiences are promised a delightful kaleidoscope of characters, performing short scenes that reflect the absurdity of human behaviour in all its forms. Sneak a peek of just a few of those scenes here:

Curators of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum will discuss the history of Nazrey African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Taylor log cabin, and the museum’s main building, and their significance to the Underground Railroad and Black settlement in Canada in a free public presentation Thursday, Feb. 9.

Curator Mary-Katherine Whelan and assistant curator Lorene Bridgen-Lennie will present “It Started With A Dream: the History of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum” starting at 6:30 p.m. in the Hole in the Wall room above the River Bookshop, 67 Richmond St., Amherstburg. RSVP here to reserve a spot.

Actor Kate Winslet set a Hollywood record for holding her breath underwater for more than seven minutes while filming the latest Avatar movie.

While the feat is impressive, it has been demystified by UWindsor kinesiology professor Anthony Bain, an expert in cardiovascular and respiratory function.

In an article published in The Conversation, Dr. Bain said Winslet could achieve the feat by breathing in pure oxygen before holding her breath.

“Winslet also most likely hyperventilated (breathed faster and deeper than normal) on the 100 per cent oxygen,” Bain said.

While Winslet now holds the record for holding your breath on a movie set, it pales in comparison to the current world record: 24 minutes and 37 seconds, set in 2021 by Croatian diver Budimir Šobat, whom Bain knows personally. The world record for a non-oxygen-assisted breath hold is 11 minutes and 35 minutes for a man, and nine minutes and two seconds for a woman.

In his article, Bain explains the science of holding your breath. A cluster of cells in your brain and neck called chemoreceptors monitor the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your bloodstream. When you hold your breath, the level of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream rises and the level of oxygen declines. Eventually your diaphragm — the primary respiratory muscle — contracts involuntarily.

Inhaling 100 per cent oxygen prior to holding your breath offsets the buildup of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream, dramatically delaying involuntary breathing.

“It’s likely that Winslet’s trainers had a keen understanding of respiratory physiology and that she benefited from that knowledge,” Bain writes.

Read the full article, “The science of holding your breath,” in the Conversation, which publishes news and views from the academic and research community.

—Sarah Sacheli

Five DailyNews readers each received entry for two to a screening of Boblo Boats: A Detroit Ferry Tale on Friday, Feb. 10, at the Capitol Theatre, sponsored by the University of Windsor Alumni Association.

Jannah Jessop, Karl Jirgens, Susan McKee, Abigail Morris, and Tianyi Yang had their entries drawn from all those which correctly identified birch trees as the source of the name of Bois Blanc Island, the Columbia and Ste. Clair as the steamboat ferries, and 1993 as the amusement park’s final year of operation.

The film explores the complicated history of Boblo Island Amusement Park and its iconic ferries. Friday’s screening begins at 7 p.m. at 121 University Ave. W. Tickets are available for purchase on the Windsor International Film Festival website.

Salim’s entry was drawn from all those which correctly identified Leonard Braithwaite as the first Black Canadian elected to a provincial legislature, Haiti as the birthplace of former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, and Lincoln Alexander as the Canada’s first Black Member of Parliament.

Watch DailyNews through February for more chances to win.

A meeting Wednesday, Feb. 8, will provide information to UWindsor students on roles available on the Science Rendezvous Windsor volunteer organizing committee.

Science Rendezvous is an annual family festival that takes science out of the lab and onto the street. It is returning to in-person activities on May 13.

The information session will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the USci Network Classroom, room 335, Essex Hall. Click here to learn more.

Researchers looking to enhance their data skills are encouraged to join the Leddy Library for a series of workshops.

“Building Capacity for Research Data Management and Text Data Mining in a JupyterHub Advanced Research Computing Environment” will introduce researchers to Jupyter Lab using SHARCNET’s and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s JupyterHub portals.

Jupyter is an open source, multi-user electronic notebook (ELN) which replicates in digital form a paper lab notebook. It allows researchers to add observations, protocols, and annotate code, among other uses. ELNs facilitate good practices in helping researchers write reproducible code and facilitate data and code sharing.

Workshops will explore the following topics:

• Introduction to JupyterHub
• Text Data Mining of Newspapers in JupyterHub
• Research Data Management in Jupyter: the Importance of Keeping your Data Reproducible

The workshop series was made possible by a Compute Ontario grant and is a collaboration between the Leddy Library, the Office of Research and Innovation Services, and Information Technology Services.

The in-person portion will take place in the Collaboratory on the main floor of the Leddy Library.

Register for the workshops online: https://leddy.uwindsor.ca/training-events/rdm-tdm-jupyterhub-newspapers.

“Introduction to JupyterHub” will run as a hybrid session from 9:15 to 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 21. This workshop will introduce researchers to Jupyter Lab using SHARCNET’s and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s JupyterHub portals. It will cover various details including discussing what is and how to obtain a Digital Research Alliance of Canada account, understanding the purposes of electronic notebooks, and how to use Jupyer Lab on these portals — including how to find and load various pre-installed software with your notebooks.
In-person registration
Virtual registration

“Text Data Mining of Newspapers in JupyterHub” will run as a hybrid session from 9 to 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 22. This session introduces textual analysis and data mining with newspaper text. Using an historical community newspaper from Essex County, Jupyter notebooks will be used to explore the uses of digitized content in a browser without requiring the installation of specialized software. Participants will be provided with guest credentials for Digital Alliance research computing resources.
In-person registration
Virtual registration

“Research Data Management in Jupyter: The Importance of Keeping your Data Reproducible” will run online only from 9 to 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 28. This session will take a deep dive into some research data management best practices when developing in a Jupyter environment. The focus will be on ensuring reproducibility of analysis and bundling up code and data for use by others. This will be examined in two ways: moving your project to Github, and remixing and extending work that already exists.
Virtual registration

All code used for the workshops will be available in the Leddy Library’s Academic Data Centre GitHub repository.

Visit the Faculty of Human Kinetics on Thursday for a special screening of the film, The Loyola Project.

The event, presented by the faculty’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, is one way to celebrate Black History-Black Futures Month, says Adriana Duquette, committee chair. The documentary tells the story of the 1963 Loyola Ramblers basketball team from Chicago and the racism Black players on the team faced as they made their way to winning the national collegiate championship.

“This legendary team challenged racial barriers at the height of the civil rights movement and changed the trajectory of college basketball forever,” says Duquette. “This is an important film and we are proud to be able to present it for the University of Windsor and surrounding community.”

Narrated by Loyola basketball player and former team co-captain, Lucas Williamson, the film combines modern-day interviews with historic footage.

After the screening, there will be a discussion featuring members of the Lancer men’s basketball team.

The free event begins at 5 p.m. in room 140, Human Kinetics Building. Light refreshments will be served.

Learn more about the film here.

—Sarah Sacheli