With the goal of fortifying teaching, research and scholarship on comparative religion and interfaith dialogue at McGill, alumni Barbara and Patrick Keenan have made a $5 million gift to the Faculty of Religious Studies (the largest gift since the Faculty’s founding).

Barbara and Patrick Keenan; Photo by Nicolas Morin

Among the initiatives the gift will fund, the Barbara and Patrick Keenan Chair in Interfaith Studies – the first such Chair in Canada and one of only a handful worldwide — will bring world-class scholars to the University to lead new research initiatives in interfaith studies, and will result in the development of a new introductory level course, “World Religions and the Cultures They Create,” aimed at enhancing religious literacy among a greater number of undergraduate students at the onset of their university careers.

The Barbara and Patrick Keenan Conference Support Fund will support one or two high-profile symposiums that will bring together prominent international scholars to share their knowledge of world religions and globalization with the wider community.

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Amblyopia, which involves one eye not developing properly and having poor vision, affects up to 3 percent of the population, says Dr. Robert Hess, of McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC). Traditional treatment calls for patching the good eye to force the bad eye to work, but this approach has had only limited success, and usually only in children, Hess said, adding that this form of treatment is often accompanied by teasing in the schoolyard.

“Instead of thinking that the eye is lazy and that is has to be forced to work, we’ve taken a different point of view,” explained Hess, who is the senior author of the paper. “The sighted eye is actively inhibiting the other eye… so we have set out to get the two eyes working together.”

Still better than an eye patch: Dr. Robert Hess demonstrates new treatment of "lazy eye."

To do so, Hess and his colleagues gave head-mounted video goggles to a sample group of research participants and invited them to play an unusual game of Tetris: one eye saw only the Tetris blocks as they fell from the top of the screen and the other eye saw only the blocks already on the ground.

After two weeks, the participants playing the dichoptic game (as the split screen view is called) showed dramatic improvement in vision and 3-D depth perception in the weaker eye.

Hess and his colleagues are currently planning to run a clinical trial across North America later this year to assess how well this treatment works in children.

Now if only they could develop a similar option for Candy Crush…

Read more, including the entire article as it was published in the prestigious journal, Current Biology.

And so Michael Becker wraps up his New York Times blog today. We’ve written about Becker before–the PhD candidate in McGill’s Department of Geography is a five-time South Pole vet, who most recently partook in scientific dives into Lake Untersee, a permanently ice-covered lake that’s home to microbes not found anywhere else on Earth–but his blog is such a great read that it’s worth re-plugging. Where else can you find a dramatic Antarctic storm and a Louis C.K. quote?

(Photo by Michael Becker)

MINED PHOSPHORUS, AN ELEMENT WIDELY USED AS AGRICULTURAL FERTILIZER, IS A NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCE. This finite supply has led some researchers to project a peak phosphorous scenario, akin to that of peak oil, in which the earth’s reserves of the mineral will be completely depleted within 50-100 years. Too much phosphorus in an ecosystem as a result of runoff and erosion can also lead to eutrophication, a process of dense plant growth that depletes the system’s overall supply of oxygen.

Because the overuse of phosphorus has both agricultural and ecological consequences, GENEVIÈVE METSON, a PhD student in McGill’s Department of Natural Resource Sciences, sought to investigate how changes in diet might contribute to sustainable phosphorus management. To do so, she performed a number of statistical calculations on the amount of phosphorus applied to crops to feed humans, including the feed used by animals ultimately consumed by people.

“Our results demonstrate that changes in diet can be a significant part of the strategy for enhancing sustainability of phosphorus management,” Metson says. “In particular, reduced consumption of meat, and especially beef, in countries with large phosphorus footprints could put a big dent in demand for mined phosphorus — since it takes many kilograms of feed, which is fertilized, to produce a kilogram of meat.”

This research was supported by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Arizona State University’s Sustainable P Initiative, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

THE LATEST EXERCISE TREND: BRAIN TRAINING

IN THE SAME WAY THAT SPRING TRAINING IS INTENDED TO WHIP BASEBALL PLAYERS INTO SHAPE FOR THE UPCOMING SEASON, so can you put your brain through the paces and fend off dementia in old age with a new cognitive training project offered by the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.

Called PONDER (Prevention of Neurological Diseases in Everyone at Risk), the initiative is led by associate professor of psychiatry JENS PRUESSNER, who points out that the more we use our minds, the less likely we are to, well, lose them.

“Studies show that cognitive training has a significant effect on preserving high cognitive function in old age. The idea is that the more intellectual capacity you have to begin with, the more of a buffer you have that will prevent you from being afflicted with neurodegeneration or dementia,” he says. “Dementia is like descending a mountain — it takes longer to reach the bottom if you start
at 1,000 feet than if you start at 100 feet.”

To start climbing: the PONDER website (ponder.mcgill.ca) offers a series of online games that progress from encouragingly easy (repeat the sequence of one or two flashing lights as they travel across your screen) to revealingly aggravating (repeat the sequence of seven traveling, flashing lights and realize after three failed attempts that your brain is in some serious need of regularworking out). The project encourages participants to register, which gives players access to the full series of games rather than a sample, and which will also allow researchers to create a database of longitudinal cognitive assessments, providing further insight into intervention and treatment of dementia such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. So what are you waiting for? Get those neurons firing!

Jens Pruessner’s research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Alzheimer Society of Canada, Fonds de recherche du Québec — Santé and the donors of the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging.

AND ONE LAST THING

Find out more about World Health Day here. This year’s theme is awareness about high blood pressure… so if nothing else, don’t let all this research information stress you out too much.

Here’s to your health and to the world’s health.

Not why corruption exists — that is a much more complex, and in some ways much simpler, question… Rather, how did years of whispering about kickbacks and collusion at City Hall finally culminate in revelations last year that blew the lid off the whole thing?

In other words, why do some acts of corruption become public while others remain secret in the first place?

One theory comes from research done by McGill political science assistant professor Manuel Balán, who set out to answer this question by examining the publicity and reactions that resulted from revelations of corruption in Argentina and Chile between 1989 and 2007.

Public disclosures of corruption, he found, are often triggered by competition within a governing party or coalition itself (intragovernment competition, as opposed to intergovernment competition among multiple parties).

In other words, while corruption is ever-present, it is more likely to become public when there is political infighting, as government insiders with privileged access to information leak details about misdeeds for their own gain.

The takeaway? Those who are successful in the political underworld keep their enemies close and their friends even closer…

Or, to put a positive spin on what is generally seen to be a negative phenomenon: political infighting is crucial for a transparent and accountable democracy.

This infographic, along with other research-related news, can be found in the Spring 2013 issue of Headway available here.

Four of these award-winning ideas are featured in the most recent issue of Headway; here, we present a few other novel concepts that might soon find their way to a patent office or lab supply catalog.

1. Alignment tool for distributed mirror systems

Andrew McCann's alignment tool for distributed mirror systems

Under the blue sky and bright sun of the Sonoran desert in Southern Arizona sit four enormous (12-metre) telescopes, each mounted with 345 identical hexagonal mirror facets. The telescopes, called the VERITAS array, are one of only three such systems in the world and they measure photons in very high energy gamma-rays as these rays strike the atmosphere. (VERITAS stands for Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System.) Data derived from the VERITAS array provide scientists with information on black holes, pulsars, supernova remnants and a host of subjects of great interest to astrophysicists.

Now imagine these telescopes in day-to-day use. T hese objects sit in the middle of the desert, swept by wind and dust. The telescopes’ mirror surfaces lose reflectivity over time, meaning that the mirrors are recoated periodically to restore their shine. However, removing and reinstalling these thousands of reflective components to recoat them affects their positioning, which needs to be calibrated with precision.

McGill graduate student Andrew McCann devised an alignment tool for distributed mirror systems that uses a digital camera to scan the mirror facets, reveal which ones are crooked, and calculate what adjustments are necessary to move all the facets to their optimal position. After the tool was used to align the telescopes for the first time in May 2009, the point spread function (a term to describe the blurriness of the images captured) immediately decreased by 30 percent from previous values.

For his invention, McCann received a Fessenden Prize in 2010.

2.     Clinical device to detect malaria infection

Paul Wiseman's clinical device for malaria detection

Malaria is a parasitic disease found predominantly in tropical and subtropical areas of the world such as South America, sub-Saharan Africa, China, India and other parts of Asia, with 350-500 million cases reported annually in these areas. The disease is not only difficult to treat but also tricky to reliably diagnose.

Like other blood-feeding parasites, malaria produces a pigment crystal called hemozoin when it breaks down hemoglobin proteins in red blood cells. McGill professor Paul Wiseman has developed a novel technique to analyze hemozoin specifically for malaria and thus detect the disease in its early stages.

Wiseman’s technique is based on a branch of physics called optics, which examines the behavior and properties of light – specifically, a process called third harmonic generation (THG) imaging, which investigates the effects of light generated at triple its original frequency (or one-third its wavelength). THG converts three photons of the original frequency into one photon at three times the frequency and is used to provide images of neurons, red blood cells and other macromolecules.

Wiseman measured THG signals from both infected and uninfected red blood cells and determined that the hemozoin pigments in infected cells produce a very specific and easy to identify THG emission. This result led Wiseman to envision a THG/flow cytometer system using an infrared pulsed laser. This device could be adapted from existing flow cytometry technology, meaning it would be relatively inexpensive and could also be operated accurately by personnel with minimal training.

Some countries where malaria is endemic test more than 100 million blood samples for malaria every year, Wiseman notes. A THG cytometer system would make it possible for these tests to be conducted in large volume and with reliable results.

For his invention, Wiseman received a Fessenden Professorship in 2009.

3.      Centrifugal microfluidics devices

Josian Lafleur's centrifugal microfluidic device

In the opinion storm surrounding the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, the U.S. State Department released an environmental impact statement in early March that further fueled debate about the controversial project. Regardless of its findings, the impact statement itself is a sign of the times: environmental analysis of the polluting effects of a proposed project is an expected and basic part of the development process.

Environmental analysis is predicated on obtaining soil and water samples and to analyze drinking water and sea water, chemists use a time-consuming and painstaking process called Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) to isolate extracts from the liquid. As demand for environmental analyses has increased, use of SPE has grown exponentially as well.

Aiming to reduce the amount of time and number of steps required for SPE, McGill PhD student Josiane Lafleur came up with a device that miniaturizes the entire extraction process.

The device uses specially designed discs to obtain and treat up to eight samples at a time (as compared to treating individual samples using the conventional procedure) and these samples can be extracted from a few hundred microlitres of liquid rather than the hundreds of millilitres the process usually requires. The device then uses a simple motor (rather a pressure pump or a syringe plunger) to spin the discs and the centrifugal action creates the fluid flow necessary to pre-concentrate the eight samples and isolate the analytes from the rest of the liquid (without requiring application of a usually pre-requisite organic solvent).

As an added bonus, the entire SPE process can be done on-site and in the field, or, if desired, the samples can be stored in the device and brought back to the lab for further analysis.

For her invention, Lafleur received a Fessenden Prize in 2009.

McGill microbiologist Lyle Whyte examines the extreme temperatures at which microbial life survives and his research usually takes him to the Canadian high Arctic but on this day, he was bringing a piece of the South Pole to a classroom in Montreal.

Working with scientists at the NASA field station in the Antarctic Dry Valleys, Whyte brought a live satellite feed of the station to the classroom to show students how a drill draws soil samples from the Antarctic permafrost — a demonstration of how the drill might someday draw samples from the frozen surface of Mars.

The IceBreaker drill is designed to operate in cold environments without lubrication and has taken 10 years to perfect.

“There is water in the soil,” Whyte explains, “and when the drill pushes down, it spins and generates heat.” When it stops spinning, it refreezes and the drill core — the bit — gets stuck.

The students remotely operated the IceBreaker drill by deciding how fast the drill should spin and how much pressure it should exert. In Antarctica, scientist Margarita Maranova collected the samples for analysis. These samples will provide a baseline for comparison with samples eventually collected from Mars. For now, she says, the samples allow us ”to understand where the limits for life are.”

Click below to watch. (Link opens on the Discovery Channel site.)

Fortier is currently President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), which she has headed since 2006. Under Fortier, NSERC renewed its mandate, making changes to its funding structure, encouraging collaboration between industries and academic partners and emphasizing initiatives with other federal granting agencies. Through her work at the agency, Fortier also made invited presentations on science, technology and innovation, women in science and engineering, and the recruitment of the next generation of scientists and engineers.

A crystallographer by training, Fortier received a BSc and a PhD from McGill in 1972 and 1976 respectively and has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific publications. Her work has contributed to the development of novel techniques in crytallographic data mining, as well as the development of mathematical and artificial intelligence methodologies for protein structure determination.

For more about Suzanne Fortier, visit this link.

The study is part of a five-year Community University Research Alliance (CURA) project supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) aimed at encouraging evidence-based approaches to promoting diversity in leadership. It examined over 3,000 senior leaders in organizations in Montreal in six sectors – elected, public, private, voluntary or non-profit, education and agency, board or commission appointments – and found that, across all sectors, there is a gap between the proportion of women and visible minorities in the population and their presence in positions of leadership.

Co-authored by Suzanne Gagnon, professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management, the report contains a fascinating breakdown of the number of women and visible minorities in 19 municipalities in the greater metropolitan area of Montreal, as well as their representation rates in organizations (such as the largest 60 corporations headquartered in Montreal, or among elected officials or among the senior administrative ranks of the public sector), often broken down into sub-categories of even greater detail.

Some of the examples are promising:

Among elected officials, and on non-profit and education boards and executives, women make up between 30 and 40 percent of these positions (and 51.7 percent of the population at large). In government appointments to agencies and commissions and on non-profit boards and executive positions, visible minority representation hovers at or above 10 percent (and 22.5 percent of the general population).

Others are disheartening:

Of the 14 public sector police executive positions assessed in the study, one is filled by a woman and none by a visible minority. And while 41 percent of deputy and assistant deputy ministers in public service are women, none of these ministers are visible minorities.

The same divide holds true for the boards of governors at Montreal’s four universities: while women make up 32.6 percent of the boards, there is no visible minority member on any of the boards.

Read the report, look at the data and decide for yourself, here.

Imagine descending to the bottom of a pitch black mine, or crashing through a wintry ocean to an iceberg to take measurements of a particular environment. Not too pleasant for the most hardy of creatures, not even robots.

An announcement by Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology) will bring $5 million to support the newly formed NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network. This network aims to build on existent robotics systems to create advanced machines that can work in extreme conditions and that can ‘talk’ to each other to share data.

To properly monitor a coastline or to track iceberg movement, for example, a water robotic tool would need be able to function in frigid temperatures, and, to make the best use of the information it collects, that robot should be able to communicate with machines on land and in the air.

McGill University Computer Science professor Gregory Dudek leads the Canadian Field Robotics Network and has high hopes for the program. “We have created a very ambitious program for ourselves, but this group combines the best people working in field robotics… I’ve no doubt that we will be able to work together to build a suite of shared tools to bring new concepts and technologies to fruition.”

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