Canada’s baby boomers are edging into their retirement years, marking a great demographic shift. Add to that the fact that we’re living longer than ever (the number of centenarians is set to triple, to more than 14,000 people, by 2031) and Canadians are having fewer babies, and it’s clear that Canada’s aging population is growing — and it’s a growing concern. Read more »
David R. Colman, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, passed away unexpectedly on June 1, 2011. Liliana Pedraza, who worked closely with David Colman for 18 years, reflects on her dear friend and mentor. Read more »
Aging touches everyone’s life in profound ways. When I returned to Montreal from Calgary in 2010 to become VP (RIR) at McGill, I quite literally moved back home, temporarily taking up residence with my elderly parents. This was a learning experience, as I saw first-hand their needs in terms of their health, mobility and care. Read more »
When older people talk about resting their weary bones, they’re not waxing metaphoric: Decades of movement and support takes a natural toll on our bones — a toll that becomes even more pronounced when pathologies come into play. Read more »
Five years ago, McGill associate professor of computer science (and co-director of the Reasoning and Learning Lab) Joelle Pineau began collaborating with professor Paul Cohen’s team at École Polytechnique de Montréal. Pineau’s specialty is coding algorithms, while the Polytechnique crew are focused on engineering challenges. Their new “smart wheelchair” senses obstacles and can use programmed maps to self-navigate specific terrains. Read more »
McGill biochemistry professor J.B. Collip was searching for new sex hormones. He enlisted Hans Selye, a 29-year-old Austro-Hungarian post-doc, to inject lab rats with bovine ovary extracts, then look for changes to their sex organs. What Selye observed, however, weren’t the expected changes. Read more »
Alzheimer’s disease may have you long before you know that you’ve got it: By the time you’ve got symptoms, the disease is (for now) unstoppable. But Dr. John Breitner and researchers at the new Centre for Studies on the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease are learning how to trace the progress of the disease in people who are not yet symptomatic — opening the door to early therapeutic interventions that might save millions of people from the creeping fog of dementia. Read more »
The longer you live, the greater the chance you’ll develop Alzheimer’s disease. By some researchers’ estimates, up to two-thirds of people in their nineties will show AD symptoms. But, even if the disease is an inevitable byproduct of aging (and the jury is still out on that one), it doesn’t mean that its primary symptom — dementia — can’t be kept in check. Read more »
The McConnell Brain Imaging Centre’s ACE NeuroImaging Laboratory and the Montreal Consortium for Brain Imaging Research are getting a clearer picture (literally) of what Alzheimer’s disease does to our brains. Read more »
Persistence can pay off. Andréa LeBlanc has found what may be a crucial key for X decoding Alzheimer’s disease (where no one was even looking). Read more »
Interdisciplinary research across McGill — including the Bloomfield Centre for Research in Aging, the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the Centre for Research on Language, Mind and Brain—is exploring how language works… or doesn’t. Read more »
Autosomal Recessive Spastic Ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay affects the cerebellum, causing young people to lose their ability to walk, even as their cognitive functions develop normally. Early settlers in “New France” introduced this genetic defect, meaning certain pockets of the Quebec population are at much higher risk for developing this devastating disorder. Now a new study, led by investigators at The Neuro and published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, has traced ARSACS to malfunctioning mitochondria.
The Weekly World News isn’t the only publishing excitement of late. Is that McGill’s Redmen football team on the cover of esteemed journal Neuron? Indeed it is. It’s all in the name of a new McGill study on the cognitive neurophysiology of how we focus our attention on multiple things at the same time…like how a quarterback keeps simultaneous tabs on his receiver and the opposing defense. Or how a Headway blogger can pay sharp attention to both the level of coffee left in his mug and…and… Let’s stick with the football example. Read more »
We haven’t crunched the numbers, but Headway thinks this might be a McGill first: Our research has been taffy-pulled into goofball fantasy in the venerable (virtual) pages of the Weekly World News. Earlier this week, we posted about PhD student Rajee Rajakumar, professor Ehab Abouheif and their team’s new insights into the evolutionary genetics of “supersoldier” ants, and now their good work has become fodder for satire. (Let’s be clear: the real supersoldier ant research is NOT behind any mayhem.) As longtime “BatBoy” fans, we’re chuffed.
We think there’s some legal requirement that all blogs make at least one passing reference to singing sensation du jour Lana Del Rey. So here goes: Could it be that Ms. Del Rey’s viral hit song “Video Games” is actually about Phylo, the online game that lets casual players contribute to scientific research? You know, by arranging multiple sequences of coloured blocks that represent human DNA? And thereby helping scientists gain new insight into a variety of genetically based diseases? Probably not, but last year 17,000 registered users got on the Phylo bandwagon. And there’s plenty room for more. “It’s guilt-free playing,” says Mathieu Blanchette, who designed the game with professor Jérôme Waldispuhl of the McGill School of Computer Science. “Now you can tell yourself it’s not just wasted time.”
Remember in Captain America, when that nice scientist takes a 78-pound weakling and science-ifizes him into a beefy super soldier? Well, that’s exactly what Ehab Abouheif and his McGill research team have done, but with ants. “Captain Ant-erica,” anyone? Sigh. We know. Sorry. Don’t let our despicable punning stop you from watching a video about this really cool discovery.
We at Headway try to maintain a Thanksgiving state of mind all year round, partially because we’re overly fond of cranberry-stuffing sandwiches (that’s right: bread wrapped in bread—we make no apologies) and partially because there’s a lot to be thankful for. Case in point: the latest generous gift from renowned McGill alumnus and benefactor Lorne M. Trottier. Read more about how this gift will help fight against “junk science” »
Whatever the reason–Grey Cup, American Thanksgiving, just being awake–we at Headway are big fans of grazing. Why limit ourselves to nachos or wings, when we can (and do!) toggle between both? Throw in those little hot dogs baked in dough and we’re even happier. In the past, our omnivorous eating habits have earned us dirty looks and unflattering names. But it turns out we’re simply “generalist feeders”–and we’re doing our part for biodiversity, one mouthful of nachowingdog at a time.
You’ve worked a 12-hour day, and you’re soooo hungry. On your way home, you decide it’ll be healthier to grab some groceries instead of hitting up the nearest burger joint. Good for you, but… (You knew there’d be a “but,” right?) All too often, something funny happens to your brain on the way to the check-out. Here’s why your tofu and quinoa intentions result all too often in a donuts and ice cream reality.
Brenda Milner is a member of the Order of Canada, the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada. She has won the Gairdner International Award and was a finalist for NSERC’s Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering. Now McGill’s resident slacker (just kidding) has a new feather in her cap: the prestigious Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.
We build up our heroes only to tear them down. We made poor Gary Kasparov play chess against Deep Blue, we paid no respect to Hippocrates as we cast aside the Four Humours, and we mocked poor Charlie Sheen all the way to the unemployment line. Now, a McGill professor and his son have found a mathematical error in Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). How do you like them apples, Gravity Boy?
Need a last-minute Hallowe’en costume? How about going as a chickensaurus? All you need is last year’s T-rex outfit, a few chicken feathers, and some genetic engineering. Ah, maybe we’d better let Wired magazine explain in its latest cover story, “How to Hatch a Dinosaur.” It’s not just a cool story, but it features McGill vertebrate paleontologist, and Headway favourite, Hans Larsson.
Spare the rod, spoil the child. It’s a cliché you’ve heard 1,000 times before. In fact, we think we might have used it in a previous blog post (please don’t check.) But by sparing the rod, parents and teachers might also be sparing themselves from having to deal with a little Pinocchio later on. And no one wants to get splinters when they hug their kids.
When we at Headway were your age, we had no money, no friends, no bicycle, and no iPhone 4s. To get to school every day, we had to walk 5 miles (8.046 km) in minus 40 degrees, uphill both ways, with snow over our heads, totally naked except for our backpacks. For dinner, we ate Brussels sprouts and old shoes. And now, to top it all off, we find out that our genes might “remember” how bad we had it as kids, and could be impacting our lives today. Oh, and the same goes for your genes, buster.
We want another coffee. We don’t want to put on pants for the long walk across the office to the coffee pot. What will be the deciding factor, the thing we want (more coffee) or the action we’d need to take to get it (more pants)? We’re going to need some serious neuroeconomics to figure this out.
In his article about the 3-Minute Thesis Challenge in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, Russell Smith made passing reference to Dissertation Haiku, a blog in which PhD candidates distill their research topics into the classic three-line verse. Headway was tickled to find two McGill grad students in the haiku archives.
“Sorry, new artificial hip—it’s not you, it’s me.” A new kind of biodegradable scaffold may stop our bodies from breaking up with our much-needed medical implants. Because nobody likes rejection.
Climate change is changing the Arctic. But how, exactly? A new multi-university research project wants to understand precisely what’s going on in the great white north—from microbes on up.
Rana Alrabi is wrapping up her blogging from this year’s Science & Policy Exchange / Dialogue sciences et politiques conference, which runs today in the McGill Faculty Club. Here are a few thoughts on the final panel of the day.
Rana Alrabi continues her guest-blogging from this year’s Science & Policy Exchange / Dialogue sciences et politiques conference, which runs today in the McGill Faculty Club. Here are some observations from a panel entitled “Energy: Quebec’s energy independence.”
Rana Alrabi is blogging from this year’s Science & Policy Exchange / Dialogue sciences et politiques conference, which runs today in the McGill Faculty Club. Here are some observations from a panel entitled “Partnership: university, industry, and small business: How does the university culture need to adapt to favour wealth generation?”
Rana Alrabi is blogging from this year’s Science & Policy Exchange / Dialogue sciences et politiques conference, which runs all day today in the McGill Faculty Club. Here are some of her observations from the morning’s first panel, entitled “Funding: innovative sources of revenue for research: Who should fund research? Who should profit?”
Doing good science means answering questions—and sometimes those questions are about how we should do the science itself. Who should fund research in universities? Is it ethical to put a dollar sign on nature? Should society pay for assisted reproduction? It’s those kinds of big questions that are the focus of the 2011 Science & Policy Exchange / Dialogue sciences et politiques conference, which runs all day today in the McGill Faculty Club. This year’s topic is “Quebec’s Research Future: Economy and Society.” In a Headway online exclusive, Rana Alrabi will be blogging from the conference.
Watch the following video and you’ll make the world a better place. Okay, maybe that’s stretching it. But you’re sure to get a kick out of seeing some of McGill’s brightest researchers bust the proverbial move. And the generous people at Medicom will make a cash donation to McGill’s Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Research Centre every time someone watches the video.Go ahead. You know what to do:
Would you believe that a really tiny version of a Swiffer WetJet might help scientists spy on the secret lives of cells? You should. (Headway does not necessarily endorse the Swiffer WetJet. It’s just an analogy. Besides, we have wall-to-wall shag carpet.)
It’s the mathematics equivalent of playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: The “Erdös Number” measures how far removed you are from having co-authored an academic paper with Paul Erdös (1913-96), the legendarily prolific Hungarian genius. To mark the 15th anniversary of his death, Headway looks at the McGill brains with close connections to Erdös. Most of them are human, too.
Why should humans return to the moon? Sure, there’s the whole “understanding the moon helps us better understand the Earth’s history” thing, but we think that’s all just avoiding a bigger question: When we do get back up there, how are we supposed to get around without blowing a tire? Or without creeping along slower than a turtle? Moon rocks are sharp, really sharp, and the whole zero gravity thing makes things complicated—-it’s enough to make an astronaut nostalgic for the axle-snapping simplicity of a good ol’ Montreal pothole. Fear not, though: A group of McGill mechanical engineers have cooked up a nifty prototype for “soft” moon buggy wheels that’s caught the attention of the Canadian Space Agency:
For people living with chronic diseases, long-term monitoring means regularly traveling to a hospital or clinic. Antonia Arnaert’s new tele-nursing study suggests that close quality care might only be a smart phone away.
David R. Colman, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, passed away unexpectedly on June 1, 2011. Liliana Pedraza, who worked closely with David Colman for 18 years, reflects on her dear friend and mentor. 
Aging touches everyone’s life in profound ways. When I returned to Montreal from Calgary in 2010 to become VP (RIR) at McGill, I quite literally moved back home, temporarily taking up residence with my elderly parents. This was a learning experience, as I saw first-hand their needs in terms of their health, mobility and care. 
Forget about gorging on antioxidant-rich “superfoods.” Mutant roundworms are boring a hole through one of aging’s most enduring concepts. 
When older people talk about resting their weary bones, they’re not waxing metaphoric: Decades of movement and support takes a natural toll on our bones — a toll that becomes even more pronounced when pathologies come into play. 
Five years ago, McGill associate professor of computer science (and co-director of the Reasoning and Learning Lab) Joelle Pineau began collaborating with professor Paul Cohen’s team at École Polytechnique de Montréal. Pineau’s specialty is coding algorithms, while the Polytechnique crew are focused on engineering challenges. Their new “smart wheelchair” senses obstacles and can use programmed maps to self-navigate specific terrains. 
McGill biochemistry professor J.B. Collip was searching for new sex hormones. He enlisted Hans Selye, a 29-year-old Austro-Hungarian post-doc, to inject lab rats with bovine ovary extracts, then look for changes to their sex organs. What Selye observed, however, weren’t the expected changes. 
Alzheimer’s disease may have you long before you know that you’ve got it: By the time you’ve got symptoms, the disease is (for now) unstoppable. But Dr. John Breitner and researchers at the new Centre for Studies on the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease are learning how to trace the progress of the disease in people who are not yet symptomatic — opening the door to early therapeutic interventions that might save millions of people from the creeping fog of dementia. 
