Daily News

Posted on July 15: McMaster student helps send mail to space

McMaster student Michael Kinsner is helping develop a relatively inexpensive means of mailing material back to Earth from the international space station. The fourth-year computer engineering and management student is working with an international scientific team in France, conducting experiments in weightless conditions in an aircraft over France and Belgium -- the so-called "vomit comet" used in astronaut training. The team, led by Kinsner's dad and McMaster alumnus Witold Kinsner '74 (University of Manitoba director of research), includes University of Manitoba master's students Neil Gadhok and Stephen Dueck. The students left for France this past weekend, where they will experience up to 30 episodes each trip of weightless conditions lasting about 30 seconds. The aircraft flies a lengthy parabolic trajectory that's been likened to a roller coaster, producing brief weightless conditions.

Posted on July 14: She’s a team player with a passionate spirit and a strong allegiance to community

Therese Quigley, McMaster's director of Athletics & Recreation, feels "very blessed" to have lived and worked in McMaster's supportive community for 18 years. And her best years, she vows, are still ahead of her. Quigley's drive and enthusiasm, along with exceptional teaching, coaching and management skills have brought her a long way. Growing up in London, Ontario, in a family of seven children, she remembers sports as her earliest passion. From the age of six, she played competitively and by her twelfth year, tennis had become the major focus. She says, "There were public courts about a block and a half from me and London had a very good junior development program. You didn't have to be wealthy to play and many of the players did not come from families who could afford to pay membership fees. A lot of them became tennis professionals. We played at a high level; it was very competitive. Clearly, my whole career grew from the sporting experiences I had at a young age."

Posted on July 11: Better environmental protection means lower health care costs: McMaster study

Cities that spend more on environmental protection spend less on health care costs, a McMaster Institute of Environment and Health study shows. In the first Canadian study to ever examine the link between the cost of pollution and health care costs, researchers found that Ontario counties with higher pollution outputs tend to have higher per capita health care expenditures, while those that spend more on defending environmental quality through spending on areas such as sewer and water works, waste management, emergency planning and recreational facilities spend less on health care. McMaster University researchers Michael Jerrett, John Eyles and Stephen Birch, along with University of Waterloo researcher Christian Dufournaud examined data on toxic pollution reported by industries to Environment Canada and all hospital and OHIP billings. These billings covered areas such as surgeries, asthma and cancer treatments and equipment purchases. The researchers studied data from all of Ontario's 49 counties and regions.