Daily News

Posted on March 26: $25,000 grand prize nurtures student entrepreneurs

Life's been fun and games for Chris Benoit since winning the $25,000 CampusIncubator award. The third-year McMaster software engineering student, with Peter Hitchcock, third-year McMaster arts and science student, and Mark Mikulec, a computer science student from Brock University, are recipients of the 2003 CampusIncubator Business Plan Challenge for Iron Fusion, an entertainment software development company. "We supply the core software component of a computer game, which makes it possible for others to use this technology to make their own games," Benoit explains. "The whole idea about this invention is that we are making it easier for others to create games. People have great ideas they just don't know how to separate the content of the game from the code." The $25,000 prize is welcome support for the start-up company, Benoit says. "The money will really help us make a lot of progress. Within the next year or two we hope to have the engine complete and by the end of 2004 we hope to complete a game called Dog Fight, which is a tactical space combat game." The software also enables urban visualization, he says. "Instead of using blueprints or schematics, you can use this software to get a 3-D model in its own virtual world, including wind and traffic." "This is something we have all been interested in for a long time," says Benoit, who with Hitchcock and Mikulec leads a nine-member team. "We have learned a lot from what we have seen and feel we can make it even better. Games are still so new. They have really only been around for 20 years." But, he adds, it is a growing industry, noting in 2003, it made about $7.7 billion in U.S. sales. "It rivals the music and movie industries. It's an exciting time to be in it because there are so many exciting things happening."

Posted on March 24: Ombuds Office busier, issues complex

McMaster University ombudsperson Shelley Lancaster wants a more uniform approach to accommodating students with chronic mental health problems and other long-term conditions. The number of students with mental health concerns is increasing, Lancaster says. The issue is how to balance McMaster's obligation to accommodate them with the need to protect the academic integrity of its courses. Lancaster touched on the topic in her annual report, which covers the 12 months ending July 31, 2002. It went to Senate this month. The Ombuds Office, which assists students, staff and faculty, dealt with 325 cases last year, including 167 academic cases, a 36 per cent jump from the previous year. Lancaster said the increase may simply mean her office is becoming better known. Some of the most difficult cases involved students with mental health issues who were trying to remove failing grades from their transcripts. The episodic and unpredictable nature of some of these illnesses makes these problems very complex, Lancaster said. She noticed variations in how they are addressed from faculty to faculty, and says the university community could benefit from more education around mental health issues. Academic issues raised most frequently overall included grade appeals (18 per cent), academic misconduct (14 per cent), examinations (8 per cent), and teaching quality (7 per cent). The most common complaint about teaching practice involves instructors who read their entire lectures from overheads. Students also complain about instructors who are perpetually late for class and who appear disorganized in presenting material. McMaster's policy on the public release of students' ratings of teaching effectiveness stipulated the policy should be reassessed in the fall of 1999. That review is now more than three years overdue, and Lancaster recommended a committee be struck to do it. Lancaster said much has been accomplished in the past year, including the appointment of an academic integrity officer and various policy improvements. (The Hamilton Spectator, March 21, 2003)

Posted on March 27: Program opens doors of opportunity for engineering students

Fifty first- and second-year engineering students will gain experience working with professors and research staff in a research-oriented environment through the 2003 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Students may participate in UROP by applying for positions that professors and research staff post through Engineering Career Services or by creating research proposals for specific professors and research staff. Students will contribute to research projects in a variety of ways. Some will assist a team of research engineers in the installation, testing and operation of new pieces of semiconductor fabrication and characterization equipment in the Centre for Electrophotonic Materials and Devices; some will work with graduate students to assist with investigation of the behaviour or non-aqueous phase liquids (i.e. oil) in the subsurface (i.e. groundwater) in the Environmental Engineering Laboratory; others will assist in experiments involving novel techniques for preparing nano-crystalline materials in Materials Engineering; and all students will develop the techniques, skills and procedures required to produce quality research. Last year, dean Mo Elbestawi launched UROP 2002 by saying, "The introduction of UROP demonstrates the Faculty of Engineering's commitment to enhancing its reputation as a student-centered research intensive institution." The fact that the number of available UROP positions has almost doubled this summer indicates the strength of this commitment.

Posted on March 25: An economist’s view: beauty is a labour market matter

If you look good, will you get ahead? American economist Daniel S. Hamermesh will talk about the relationship between physical appearance and labour market success in a public lecture titled The Economics of Beauty. Hamermesh, a 2003 Hooker Visiting Professor in Economics, will deliver the lecture on Thursday, March 27, at 3 p.m. in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business building Room 505. Hamermesh is the Edward Everett Hale Centennial Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at Princeton and Michigan State and has held visiting professorships at universities in the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia. His research, published in more than 70 papers in scholarly journals, has concentrated on labor demand, time use, social programs and unusual applications of labor economics to suicide, sleep and beauty. A recent research article is titled Dress for Success: Does Primping Pay? Hamermesh is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, program director at the Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA), and past president of the Society of Labor Economists and of the Midwest Economics Association. His books include Labor Demand and The Economics of Work and Pay, a labour economics textbook. His latest book, published this year, is Economics Is Everywhere, a series of 400 vignettes designed to illustrate the ubiquity of economics in everyday life and how the simple tools in a microeconomics principles class can be used. Hamermesh is widely quoted in newspapers and magazines and has appeared on such television programs as Good Morning, America, and the McNeil-Lehrer Report. Go to http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/ for more information about Hamermesh. The lecture is co-sponsored by the McMaster Economics Society.

Posted on March 24: Researchers help develop intelligent lumber mills

McMaster is joining forces with Precarn Inc., Forintek Canada, Tembec and Comact Optimisation to develop an Intelligent Mill Wide Control System for the lumber industry. The official announcement was made Feb. 20 during the Canadian Lumbermen's Association Annual Convention in Montreal. Over the next three years the partners will contribute $2.7 million to create the Smart Mill Assistant (SMA). This advanced process control system will allow lumber manufacturers to monitor and control all independent production steps in an integrated fashion. The Smart Mill Assistant Project is being led by Forintek, which is Canada's National Wood Products Research Institute, in close collaboration with key specialists and mill staff from Tembec, Comact Optimisation and McMaster University (Dr. J. MacGregor and Dr. T. Kourti, MACC, Dept. Chem. Eng.) Theodora Kourti is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering