Daily News

November 16, 2005

Ancaster investment executive Russell C. Boychuk is giving $500,000 to the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University. The gift allows for the continued delivery of market data to the School's Allen H. Gould Trading Floor. "The DeGroote School of Business is privileged to receive such a generous gift from an outstanding member of our community and longtime business leader," says Paul Bates, dean, DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.

November 16, 2005

The newly formed McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind will present a unique public event aimed at bringing together the art and the science of music. Professor Glenn Schellenberg will discuss new research findings that reveal how listening to music and taking music lessons affects intellectual abilities such as language, spatial ability, and mathematics, while renowned musicians Valerie Tryon (piano), Mary Lou Fallis (soprano), Suzanne Shulman (flute), David Gerry (flute) and the John Laing Singers illustrate with musical examples.

November 15, 2005

The federal government's commitment to turning research and development into new businesses and higher productivity is welcome news for McMaster University. In Monday's economic statement, Minister of Finance, Ralph Goodale committed $2.1 billion in additional funding to help create new partnerships between government, universities and business to create more commercial spin-offs. "Ottawa understands that focusing public investment in Research and Development in universities is critical to our national economy and has the greatest potential for delivering the most significant pay backs," says McMaster President Peter George.

November 15, 2005

The brains of babies born very prematurely do not develop as well as those who are carried to full-term, according to new research presented today at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. Sandra Witelson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and chief investigator on the interdisciplinary project at Hamilton Health Sciences, said that an ultrasound study of the brains of babies born around 26 weeks gestation showed that certain aspects of brain development were very compromised compared to infants in utero.

November 15, 2005

The headlines are full of the news that an influenza pandemic is a virtual certainty. Behind those headlines there is concrete, leading edge research that is taking place here at McMaster University that will be shared by a panel at tonight's Science in the City lecture, From pathogen to pandemic: how science is responding to infectious threats. Anthropologist Hendrik Poinar, vaccine expert Jonathan Bramson and infectious diseases authority Mark Loeb are uniquely positioned to offer the public their insights into the threat of a global outbreak of disease. All three are currently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to answer pieces of the puzzles that might one day provide countermeasures or vaccines to deal with infectious diseases.

November 15, 2005

A new lecture series being launched by McMaster's School of Nursing is designed to enhance clinical nursing education through innovation and collaboration with health-care partners. The Inaugural Bernice King Lectureship in Clinical Nursing Education will take place on Nov. 17 at St. Joseph's Healthcare. The speaker is Florence Myrick, an associate professor for the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, who has extensive experience as a nurse and nurse educator in five provinces and the Northwest Territories.

November 14, 2005

A diagnostic test that detects all the major human respiratory viruses, including H5N1 (Avian Flu) and SARS Corona, has been developed by a virologist at McMaster University, and is about to undergo clinical evaluation. It is expected that the test will be available for evaluation by hospital-based laboratories by early December. Jim Mahony and his lab at McMaster University collaborated with Tm Bioscience Corporation, a Toronto-based company that conducts genetic testing, says the test reduces the laborious and long process involved in acquiring definitive results.

November 14, 2005

Sam Minniti has been appointed the new executive director of the McMaster Association of Part-Time Students (MAPS). In this role, Minniti will lead MAPS' advocacy work with campus partners, levels of government, and have a key role in stakeholder communications. His appointment, which takes effect Nov. 28, 2005, concludes an extensive search that attracted more than 50 candidates from across Canada and beyond.

November 14, 2005

Einstein's theory of gravity has given us a remarkable understanding of the evolution of the universe, from the quark soup that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, through the formation of the galaxies, stars and planets to the present - a span of some 14 billions years. Einstein's start has given rise to many more questions. The two that pose the greatest challenges to cosmologists are these: What happened before the Big Bang? What is our cosmic destiny?

November 11, 2005

McMaster is now home to 58 Canada Research Chairs with a national announcement that includes one new Chair and four Chair renewals and represents a $2.5 million investment for the University. McMaster respirologist and assistant professor of medicine, Parameswaran Nair, has been named Canada Research Chair in Airway Diseases. His work, conducted at the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health, will focus on understanding cellular biology and measuring airway inflammation in clinical practice to improve treatment of airway diseases such as asthma and Chronic Obstruction Pulmonary Diseases (COPD).

November 11, 2005

Three champions of McMaster's philosophy of medical education and a renowned child psychiatrist have been recognized for their significant contributions to the development of the Faculty of Health Sciences. James Anderson, Howard S. Barrows, Barber Mueller, and David (Dan) Offord were inducted today into the Faculty of Health Sciences Community of Distinction.

November 11, 2005

Every week, more than 20,000 images of child porn are used on the Internet. Sixty per cent of all website visits are sexual in nature. Annual worldwide porn sales total $57 billion. There are more adult bookstores in the United States than there are McDonalds. These staggering statistics have been appearing all over campus this past week and they have been generating a lot of discussion and speculation. This is exactly the kind of response the posters are meant to invoke.

November 10, 2005

Cancer patients who need radiation therapy and students who want a career in providing that care are the beneficiaries of a unique program being offered by McMaster University, Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology, and the Juravinski Cancer Centre at Hamilton Health Sciences. The three institutions have joined together to offer students the radiation therapy stream of study in the collaborative medical radiation sciences program. Until now, the fully integrated diploma-degree program, the only one of its kind in Ontario, offered students specialization in either medical radiation technology (radiography) or ultrasonography.

November 10, 2005

High Performance Computing (HPC) is a vital component of a diverse range of research initiatives that have already made an impact on Canadian society. If you've turned on the Weather Channel to see when the rain will end, done a Google search on a computer or picked your stock portfolio according to the latest economic forecasts, you've benefited from HPC.

November 10, 2005

Women with some heart problems are almost one-third less likely to receive invasive treatments compared to men with the same conditions, according to data from an international study of more than 12,000 people. Consequently, women are about one-sixth more likely than men to suffer additional chest pain or other recurrent heart problems. Sonia Anand, associate professor of medicine for the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, is the lead author of the study to be published in the Nov. 15 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

November 9, 2005

Two mathematicians, one from McMaster University's Faculty of Engineering the other from the Faculty of Science, will lead Canada's first graduate school dedicated to study in the rapidly growing field of computational engineering and science. Tam

November 9, 2005

Canada now has its first school dedicated to graduate study in the rapidly advancing area of computational engineering and science. The McMaster School of Computational Engineering and Science was officially launched in Hamilton, Ontario today. It brings together 50 faculty from engineering, science, business and health science to collaboratively conduct research and advance education involving simulation, modeling and optimization. Study in this area is helping to advance understanding of a wide range of issues and opportunities from pandemics, to weather patterns, to improving automobile safety, to the design of computer chips.

November 9, 2005

McMaster neuroscientist Margaret Fahnestock's research into Alzheimer's disease will be propelled forward thanks to a $35,000 donation from the Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation of Canada. Fahnestock, who studies proteins essential for nervous system function, focuses her research on the regulation and biosynthesis of neurotrophic factors and their role in Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy.

November 9, 2005

New automated banking machines (ABM) will be installed across campus over the next few weeks. Led by Terry Galan, director of purchasing, and Nancy Gray, director of finance, a user group of representatives from across campus, including the McMaster Students Union, selected Swytch as the successful supplier of automated banking services.

November 8, 2005

McMaster thespians will cast an Arabian spell on Hamilton beginning this Friday. In the upcoming production The Arabian Nights, seven McMaster students and employees will take to the Waterdown Village Theatre stage to present Arabian Nights - a play that involves a selection of historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques and Muslim religious legends.