Daily News

Federal economic statement spells good news for McMaster Innovation Park

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.

Womb needed for proper brain development

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.

Preparing for the next pandemic

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.