A distinctly happy society
Posted on Monday, March 18, 2013 at 4:17 pmMcGill economist Christopher Barrington-Leigh says Quebecers are among the happiest people in the world. He suspects the province’s Nordic approach to life has a lot to do with it.
Robot research gets a boost
Posted on Friday, March 1, 2013 at 3:06 pmA new national robotics network, led by McGill’s Gregory Dudek, will develop smarter, tougher robots that can tackle the sorts of jobs that humans aren’t well equipped to handle.
The benefits of being openly gay
Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 5:00 pmMcGill researcher Robert-Paul Juster, MSc’10, discovered that gay or bisexual men who are open about their sexual orientation may experience less stress in their lives than their heterosexual counterparts.
Fuelling our future
Posted on Sunday, December 9, 2012 at 5:36 pmJake Brennan, BA’97 What keeps researchers and industry partners involved in the transportation, fuel, forestry and agriculture sectors up at night? Climate change, and what it means for powering our future. “People used to talk about the world we’re leaving our grandchildren,” says Don Smith, James McGill Professor in the Department of Plant Science. “Now, [...]
Standing up for science and sustainability
Posted on Friday, December 7, 2012 at 3:39 pmby Gary Francouer Lorne Trottier’s love affair with science and technology began in childhood and it eventually fuelled his co-founding of Matrox Electronics Systems, his Montreal-based video graphics company. Not surprisingly, Trottier (pictured) wants the object of his affection to be properly understood. “I am dismayed by the dangerous science illiteracy that pervades much of [...]
Defining the line between fun and harm
Posted on Friday, December 7, 2012 at 3:29 pmby Daniel McCabe, BA’89 When it comes to online privacy and cyberbullying, teens often have a poor grasp of the law surrounding these issues. But they aren’t the only ones who need to give the subject more thought, says Shaheen Shariff, an associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education. Policymakers, parents and [...]
How MP3s conquered the world (by doing less)
Posted on Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 6:22 pmby Ryan McNutt You might expect a history of the MP3 to start with Napster, or with the format’s technical development in the eighties. But Jonathan Sterne’s new book, MP3: The Meaning of a Format, is full of surprises, not the least of which is how it traces the MP3 through almost 100 years of [...]
Fuzziness in funding
Posted on Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 6:17 pmby Patrick Lejtenyi, BA’97 In a study recently published in the British Medical Journal, Brett Thombs, an associate professor of psychiatry, and Michelle Roseman, BA’08, a master’s student in psychiatry, point to an alarming lack of transparency surrounding the funding of those who review the results of drug trials in medical publications. The duo discovered [...]
Why women don’t reach for the top
Posted on Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 6:14 pmby Saleema Nawaz Webster Roxana Barbulescu, an assistant professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management, recently set out to investigate why women continue to be poorly represented in many of the most lucrative professions. Together with Wharton University’s Matthew Bidwell, Barbulescu focused on the job search patterns of 1,255 MBA students, hoping to shed some [...]
A simulator for surgeons
Posted on Friday, November 30, 2012 at 4:27 pmby Mark Reynolds Imagine boarding an aircraft, only to discover that your pilot is taking a back seat in the cockpit, tutoring a trainee who’ll actually be the one handling the controls of the plane during take-off and landing. That is a rough analogue for how surgical training works: while medical students get limited time [...]
