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Science & Technology

Scientists for Love encourages connections through the senses

by Gustina Giordano on

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Love is in the air and, according to the Montreal-based organization Scientists for Love, it is also in our senses. On Feb. 9, founders Amy Chartrand and Leigh Kotsilidis spoke during the Science Undergraduate Society’s (SUS) Academia Week 2017 “Stranger Things,” introducing the audience to a new method for building human connections.

“[Scientists for Love is] an organization devoted to the scientific study and advancement of love in all its forms,” Kotsilidis said. “Not just the love that you might feel for a romantic partner, also the love you share with family members, friends, and even complete strangers.”

While brainstorming project ideas in Casa Del Popolo, Chartrand and Kotsilidis realized that it was more difficult to engage with the people physically around them than through virtual platforms, such as Tinder and Facebook.

“We were totally surrounded by a sea of people we thought were really interesting and cool, but we had no way to bridge the gap and talk to them,” Chartrand said. “What is going on with our interactions that we can’t bridge the gap in this room, but we have no problem connecting with people on all sorts of social media?”

They looked to the scientific method for a solution that would help people develop connections through social interactions.

“We thought, ‘What if we tested all five senses […] to see if the senses themselves, if when examined in isolation, could make a prediction of who you would be compatible with?’” Chartrand said. “It was all a big joke, until we started actually thinking about it and talking to people about it.”

Their first event, “Speed Dating for the Senses and the Sensitive,” launched in January 2014. They tested each smell, taste, hearing, sight, and touch during the night through five experiments, which measured each sense in isolation.

Chartrand and Kotsilidis illustrated their method on their McGill audience. It began with putting on blindfolds and listening to the count of 10 by several different voices and picking the most attractive voice. Then, audience members experienced the touch of another participant while blindfolded and listening to music. The event culminated with looking at several participants in the eyes without speaking. These experiments were all developed to encourage connection through atypical means with a focus on the effect of the senses.

(Alex Gardiner / The McGill Tribune)
(Alex Gardiner / The McGill Tribune)

 

“What we are doing is part science, part performance art,” Kotsilidis said. “We consider the science we do not for us, but for the participants. All the data and all the information we gathered throughout the evening is handed over to all the participants to analyze and draw their own conclusions.”

Unlike psychological studies aimed at gleaning generalizable findings, these experiments are designed to connect individual participants to each other and enable them to gain a better understanding of themselves. They use the scientific method to inspire connections by leaving the analysis to the participants.

“We really believe that there is a truth in your own perception of your own experience as a human being, and so for us, if you examine your own perception of your own experience through the scientific method, then you are a scientist,” Chartrand said.

 

Scientists for Love have will have their next event March 18, 2017.

 
Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

“Intractable Woman” tells story of gendered journalism and censorship

by Avleen Mokha on

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In the 9/11 gallery theatre of the Newseum in Washington D.C., a quote by Rod Dreher is marked on the wall like a silent, certain truth: “There are three kinds of people who run toward disaster, not away: Cops, firemen and reporters.” Imago Theatre is an independent theatre company located in Montreal, dedicated to bringing to life the stories of unstoppable women. Their latest production, Intractable Woman, is not only a stellar homage to the work of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, but a timely reminder of fighting for free speech under oppressive regimes. Directed by Micheline Chevrier, the production offers a poetic and productive theatre experience. 

Focused on the writings of Anna Politkovskaya—the only journalist to report on the 1999 Second Chechen conflict between Russia and Chechen separatists—the play considers themes of silencing, censorship, and freedom of expression. The lyrical text of playwright Stefano Massini, moulded by Chevrier’s vision, is delivered effortlessly by a compact, multi-ethnic cast of three women. 

Chevrier elaborated on her artistic vision in choosing the diverse cast. 

“I didn’t want people to think this happened only to a Russian journalist,” Chevrier explained. “Journalists all over the world, of incredible backgrounds, [from] all kinds of countries, get killed for being journalists. For me, it was important that you see three women of various backgrounds on stage, to see them take her spirit on. In the end, they don’t really become her so much as they become her words.” 

The narrative is structured into 21 scenes, all drawing upon incidents in Politkovskaya’s life. To make the events coherent for the stage was, according Chevrier, challenging. Substantial attention had to be given to staging the relentless, flurrying life of Politkovskaya without distracting the audience from the essence of the narrative.

 “It’s all about finding the balance between the words and everything else on the stage,” Chevrier explained.  

This balance is reflected in the chilling austerity of the production’s design. If only one word were to be used in describing the aesthetic of the play, it would be ‘minimalist.’ All aspects of the production design exhibit nuanced simplicity. For example, the set, developed by Eo Sharp, reflects the thematic hierarchy of the narrative. At the forefront is a compact three-tiered set, subordinated to the pipeline that traverses the troubled land. The highest level, however, is reserved for a screen on which Politkovskaya’s writing appears during the stage action. The constant presence of written words on stage emphasises the importance of writing: Its ability to impact change, to shape lives for better and for worse.

The influence of authorship on objectivity in journalism in a running theme in Intractable Woman. In one scene, Anna comes across a war film on state-controlled television that claims to be a true story. A quick dissection, however, reveals the clear propaganda motive behind the piece. While Politkovskaya is shown to condemn bias in media, the play does not simplify her as the pinnacle of journalistic integrity. Standing in front of a fire fuelled by human bodies, Anna’s documenting of the endless catalogue of violence is halting, but she perseveres. With tears in her eyes, she challenges the perception that journalism is easy because it is only about reporting facts. Intractable Woman captures, with vivifying rawness, the inner conflict of Politkovskaya to stay objective during her reporting on horrifying human rights violation.’

The ultimate message of Intractable Woman is constant vigilance. 

“[We must] not take for granted what we have, [that] things need to be fought for, debated, questioned,” Chevrier said. 

The production’s pacing is relentless and its tone biting: a lyrically descriptive encapsulation of Anna Politkovskaya’s life, Intractable Woman is a fierce commentary on taking action—which seems more relevant now than ever before.

 

Intractable Women runs Feb. 9 to Feb. 18 at the Centaur Theatre. Tickets reservations are available through the venue’s website.

Science & Technology

Green Chemistry can lead Canada to be the next global superpower

by Angelina Giordano on

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The McGill Canada Excellence Research Chair in Green Chemistry and Green Chemicals Robin D. Rogers spoke at the Cutting Edge Lecture series on Feb. 9 at the Redpath Museum. Rogers work focuses on creating ionic liquids for cleaning using the principles of Green Chemistry—that is, designing chemical products that reduce environmental degradation.

His lecture—titled, “Canada can be the World’s economic superpower in the non-fossil fuel world and Green Chemistry can get us there”—revealed the scope of Rogers’ ambition.

“Maybe what I would do is take you through a personal story and see if we could ever arrive at the rather grand title that is up there today,” Rogers said.

Rogers grew up in Athens, Alabama. By the time he was two years old, he knew he wanted to become a scientist.

“To me, the 1960s were about science and technology,” Rogers said. “This was the race to the Moon. This was when to be a scientist or an engineer was the pre-eminent job that one would want to have.”

In this atmosphere, Rogers was inspired to attend the University of Alabama to study chemistry.

Then, something changed. Rachel Carson’s ground-breaking book, Silent Spring, was released in 1962 and the public’s perception of science began to shift. Chemists were perceived as creating toxic chemicals that pollute the planet and the number of environmental regulations began to increase.

“One thing that chemists do is we make things,” Rogers said. “We make new chemicals and these chemicals, a lot of times, get out into society and are used for some purpose.”

Rogers emphasized the need to test for potential toxicity in newly released chemicals.

Chemistry, as Rogers explained, can be used to protect the environment; but, unless it is bridged with other disciplines, it isn’t enough. Because of sustainability’s interdisciplinary nature, Rogers has developed a “three-legged stool” for sustainable development. The three legs are: Environmental integrity, social responsibility, and economic viability.

“I can tell you there’s a third leg academics never want to talk about,” Rogers said. “[Which is that] you have to make money.”

As a scientist, Rogers explains how he had to think about creating a business model. Though it wasn’t his area of expertise, he started his own company, 525 Solutions, in order to innovate and develop some of his new ideas. Particularly interested in using salts to break down compounds, his company focused on the development of ionic liquids. Unfortunately, his company was declined a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, so Rogers sought inspiration elsewhere.

When the 2010 BP oil spill happened, Rogers went to see what he could do to help. He realized people were paying $100,000 a month to dispose of the shrimp shells that littered the Gulf of Mexico. Rather than shipping these crustacean shells off to a landfill, Rogers saw potential because the shells contained chitin.

As a naturally occurring biomolecule, chitin has economic value due to its flexibility and strength. Not only that, but the ionic liquid Rogers had previously developed could dissolve the shell, so all that remained was the chitin. The chitin industry is a $63 billion world-wide industry and no chitin producer currently operates in the United States.

Eventually, Rogers and his team were able to obtain a grant for their ionic liquid design. Now, Rogers is working on turning renewable polymers into products.

“I don’t want to replace anything,” Rogers said. “I want to eliminate it.”

Rogers came to McGill because he believes that Canada has all three of the legs for sustainable development. Unlike other resource-restricted countries, Canada has the opportunity for sustainable harvest of its raw materials. Canada also has the social fabric, intellectual capital, and natural resources to make sustainable goals a reality.

Rogers believes Canada can become a global economic superpower by developing new products from renewable polymers through the use of his tool: Green Chemistry.

Science & Technology

The academic journal detectives behind Retraction Watch

by Angelina Giordano on

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The atmosphere was electric in the New Residence Ballroom on Feb. 3. Tables were filled with the energetic chatter of graduate researchers and professors in anticipation of the academic journal retraction detective: Ivan Oransky. Oransky and his partner Adam Marcus founded the popular blog Retraction Watch in 2010 to record when academic papers get retracted, how many retractions each researcher has, and the reason for every retraction.

There are many factors that can lead to the retraction of an academic paper. Oransky’s presentation, “Retractions, Post-Publication Peer Review, and Fraud: Scientific Publishing’s Wild West,” demonstrated multiple scenarios for why academic papers might be retracted.

When Ivan Oransky and his partner started the blog, they did not anticipate it to be as successful as it is today.

“[I thought that we] would post a few things a couple times a month and hope that maybe [our] mothers would read it,” Oransky said.

Today, Retraction Watch has a readership of more than 150,000 people per month. According to Oransky, the rate of retractions increased tenfold from 2000 to 2010.

Until six to eight months ago, he thought the rise in retractions might be because more academics were paying attention.

“[I thought] that we were simply better at catching all of these problems,” Oransky said. “[But] the number of papers published only grew by 44 per cent [during this time period …] so, in that case, the growth of retractions outpaced the growth of papers being published.”

According to Retraction Watch, of these papers, two-thirds are retracted due to misconduct, 20 per cent due to honest errors, and the rest for reasons unknown.

Retraction Watch has a leaderboard of 30 individuals and the number of retractions they have had. Coming in first with 183 retractions is Yoshitaka Fujii, an anesthesiology researcher who got caught publishing results that were too good to be true. Fujii also happened to spend two years at McGill as a research fellow during the 1990s.

According to Oransky, when someone’s results are too beautiful, “it really means the opposite.” John Carlisle tried to replicate Fujii’s results and found that the likelihood of achieving them was statistically close to impossible. Fujii was forced to retract his papers and was dismissed from his associate professorship at the Japanese University where he had conducted his false research.

Papers aren’t always retracted for negative reasons. Nathan Georgette—at the time, an undergraduate student at Harvard—retracted a paper he had written in high school after conducting further research and finding mistakes in his original paper. Georgette also proves that retractions don’t always ruin careers. He went on to the Harvard Medical School and is successfully continuing his research in epidemiology.

Although the world of retractions and scientific publishing consists of a matrix of opaque procedures and regulations, scientists are rewarded for admitting their mistakes. Oransky and his team at Retraction Watch not only educate the public on the multiplicity of reasons behind retractions, they also ensure that the world is aware of mistakes when they happen.

Basketball, Martlets

Potvin’s late three lifts McGill to victory over UQAM

by Patrick Beacham on

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McGill Martlets
55

UQAM Citadins
50

In the dead of winter, a crowd of McGill students in swimsuits and beachwear came to Love Competition Hall to see Martlets basketball (7-6) down the visiting UQAM Citadins (7-6) 55-50 on Feb. 9’s Beach Night.

With a bevy of turnovers from both squads, neither team was able to capitalize and gain a substantial lead in the first half. Despite the Citadins struggles as a unit, senior centre Jessica Lubin had a dominant first half performance, netting 12 points and 5 rebounds.

“[Lubin] is probably one of the top post players in the country,” Martlets Head Coach Ryan Thorne said.

Up by two points at halftime, the Martlets enjoyed some much-needed rest before breaking out in the third frame. Momentum swung McGill’s way as a pair of threes from sophomore guard Fredericke Laflamme stretched McGill’s lead to 12 points before the fourth quarter.

“I think the girls did a good job knocking down shots when they needed to,” senior Martlets centre Alex Kiss-Rusk said. “We took a few reckless ones that were kind of lucky going in, but we did a good job.”

In the final frame, the game began to unravel for the Martlets. Turnovers and missed shots pumped life back into the UQAM attack. With 30 seconds left, the Citadins clawed back from a double-digit deficit to tie the game at 50. After a McGill timeout, Kiss-Rusk set an off-ball screen to free up senior guard Frederique Potvin for the clutch three to regain the lead.

“We tried to run this play twice in the game, but it didn’t really work out,” Potvin said “But then Alex set me a really great screen and my defender got caught in it and I was wide open, so I didn’t have a choice but to hit it.”

On the next possession, the Citadins air-balled a three that would have tied the game before the Martlets converted a pair of free throws to ice the game.

“It was for sure a tough game, but we had a 16 point lead,” Potvin said. “I wish we had kept the lead, but we still pulled that off, so that’s all that matters.”

While Lubin finished the game with 21 points and 18 rebounds for UQAM, it was McGill’s balanced attack that prevailed. Gladys Hakizimana, Kiss-Rusk, and Laflamme all finished the game with double-digit points and combined for 13 rebounds.

The Martlets will head across town to take on the Concordia Stingers on Feb. 16. With their playoff spot secure, the team’s focus will be on preparing for what lies beyond the upcoming match.

“[This next game] is about improving every week as we head into playoffs,” Thorne said. “It’s not necessarily about Concordia, it’s more about us being better.”

 

Moment of the Game: An off-ball screen from Alex Kiss-Rusk freed up Frederique Potvin for an open three to give McGill the lead with 16 seconds left in the game.

Quotable: “When we were in trouble is [when] we got stagnant [….] We wanted someone to win the game one-on-one, and we’re not that team.” —Martlets Head Coach Ryan Thorne on team cohesion

Stat Corner: McGill was outscored in the paint 34 to 16 by UQAM.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

First Impressions: Missy Elliott’s new music video

by Morgan Davis, April Barett, Selin Altuntur on

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If Missy Elliott is known for anything, it’s her bravado. The woman knows how to brag. Unfortunately, after a long hiatus from the industry, Missy has little to back it up. The last time we heard anything from Missy Elliott was in July 2016, when she was rapping “Get Your Freak On” in a carpool with James Corden and Michelle Obama (Obama/Elliott 2020).

The icy lyrics for her new stripped-down single try to remind us of the Missy Elliott we know and love. And the video has a lot going on…

With Elliott co-directing the video, I wasn’t surprised with the array of extraordinarily weird costumes (see: hairstyles similar to those of Beaker the Muppets) and energetic moves. But the dancing didn’t seem to keep pace with the music—it was much more animated and pumped up than the actual song. At one point exercise balls are involved. Don’t ask why.

Also, what kind of lip gloss is Missy using because it looks like she just put clear plastic over black lipstick and I’m fascinated.

The underwater choreography is appreciated. Underwater settings are becoming a trend for artists and I’m not angry about it (take Beyoncé’s maternity shoot , for example).  

As for the lyrics?

“He watching my body like he watching /Scandal/. What does this mean? @ShondaRhimes can you explain? Is he binge-watching Missy?

All-in-all, this video seems to be a failed attempt at reaching back into the public eye. Missy is back—but she’s not better, not better, not better.  

-Morgan Davis, Staff Writer

The aesthetic of the “I’m Better” music video is fascinating, but hard to pinpoint. It’s somewhere in between Pink Friday-era Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus’ “Can’t Be Tamed” bird look, and the classic sci-fi music video. Dancers in similarly confusing outfits bop around like puppets behind Missy.

The song lacks punch. There are trap-inspired boops, blips, and sirens, but they come across surprisingly low key. The whole thing is maybe supposed to sound cool and menacing; both Missy and Lamb’s flows are slow and steady throughout the track, and there isn’t much of a melodic pick-up in the chorus.

This chill song would be better served if the aesthetic of the video wasn’t so wild. At a certain point, the backup dancers are dressed in all white and bouncing on exercise balls at the bottom of a pool. Missy then appears underwater and neon pink rave lights start strobing over all of them. I’m not sure how I am supposed to feel.

-April Barrett, Managing Editor

It’s nice to see Missy throwing back to her classic ‘wiggling background dancers in unconventional outfits’ aesthetic. Despite being darker and more futurist than her previous videos, the choreography is reminiscent of “Ching-A-Ling”’s gelatinous dance moves and gold motifs.

There’s a surprise pool of water in the middle of the dance floor! This is exciting. It looks like a continuous floor but it’s not. The dancers are flopping into the surprise water and it’s very exhilarating. To be quite honest, this might be the most surprising thing Missy has pulled off in recent years. Not to be too critical of an icon who can almost do no wrong, but 2015’s “WTF (Where They From)” included a lot of the same things we have come to expect from her. It didn’t break much new ground. What with Lady Gaga’s meat dress and Miley Cyrus’ reinvented tumblr-core image in our collective cultural conscience, it takes more to surprise the average pop-music aficionado.

“He watches my body like he watches Scandal”— basically how every man should observe their partner at all times. Nice to see that Missy is still a romantic. Her lyrics might be more poignant if they weren’t paired with Lamb’s monotonous, dull delivery. “I wake up, I wanna dance. / So, as long as I got my friends, / I’m better, I’m better, I’m better”—okay, Lamb. Not better than nearly every other rapper out there, I don’t think. At least you have friends.

The visuals are admittedly off the chain. The pool sequences are especially captivating. Who knew eight women in clunky heels could pull off a routine choreographed with silver exercise balls in near unison? Missy’s metal-plated lips add to video’s over-stimulating-yet-charming look. Somehow, few female rap icons pull off wacky aesthetics to the same degree as Missy—she always seems to be a couple dozen years ahead of the game.

It’s a shame that Lamb takes this party down a few notches. The video would be “Better” without him in it.

—Selin Altuntur, Arts & Entertainment Editor

 

Science & Technology

McHacks draws top talent from across Canada and the U.S. to McGill

by Erin Dwyer on

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The annual McHacks competition—a 24-hour student-run collaborative computer programming event—returned to McGill in full force over the weekend of Jan. 28 and 29.

Since 2013, the hackathon has attracted programming veterans and rookies alike to Montreal to compete for awards and prizes from the event’s many sponsors. This year’s sponsors, including Google and Microsoft, rewarded top hackers with Apple Watches.

The SSMU lounge, normally filled with McGill students catching shut-eye between classes, was packed with coders from universities across Eastern Canada and the United States. Two students in ‘Queens Computing’ varsity jackets squinted at their lines of colourful code as another student slept at their feet, using his hackathon t-shirt as a pillow. The floors were littered with take-out food containers, cans of energy drinks, and extension cords.

Members of the organizing committee, made up of McGill students dedicating their time and energy to pull the event off, were bustling up and down the stairs to get ready for judging.

“Basically it’s students coming in, making teams, and then they decide, ‘Oh, we want to make an app’ or, ‘We want to make a web application,’” first-time organizer Arun Rawlani, U3 Computer Science, explained. “These guys are up from Saturday morning until Sunday evening, they don’t sleep, and they keep hacking throughout it.”

Coders have traveled from as far as the University of Waterloo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to compete against over 700 other students at McHacks.

“I think a lot of people come because at school they don't have time to do their own side projects consistently,” Queen’s student Matt Sims said.

These hackathons, typically ranging from 24 to 36 hours, are events where students team up to conjur up a project and stitch together pieces of code to transform an idea into virtual reality in a matter of hours. At McHacks, those ideas can be just about anything.

“I was looking through the project descriptions and there was this Trump project, that tries to ‘Trumpify’ every quote you see on the Internet by turning it into a Trump quote,” Rawlani laughed. “Just come and have fun, and if you really want to have a good project, you get good prizes as well.”

For all the sillier projects the McHacks judges see, there are just as many that left judges and fellow hackers in awe.

A group of first-year University of Waterloo students—Wilson Wu, Clive Chen, Alex Foley, and Colin Daly—brought their A-game, designing and creating voice-automated sign language hands. Their design, which can be used as a teaching tool for translating voice commands into sign language, won first place in this year’s competition.

One McGill team—Gabriel Downs, U2 Joint Honours Mathematics and Computer Science, Aidon Lebar, U1 Computer Science, David Lougheed, U1 Joint Honours Computer Science and Biology, and Michael Goodale, U1 Honours Cognitive Science—put a new twist on Facebook messenger.

The team designed a chatbot that can mimic conversation with a particular friend. According to Lebar, the chatbot uses previous messages from the friend as a dataset to adopt a similar conversation style.

“You talk to it, it imitates a real person, and you chat with it on Facebook,” Downs explained.

Some projects stepped into less familiar disciplines for most coders, even crossing over into the social science field.

“[Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)] in politics makes a lot of sense,” University of Waterloo hacker Moeyyad Qureshi said. “If a president wants to connect with his [or her] people, he [or she] can use his [or her] advisors, but then he [or she] will only talk to so many people […] if he [or she] used an AI that scanned through Twitter and read through the opinions of hundreds of thousands of people, then that’d be much better.”

His team used the application programming interface (API) Bluemix to scan through dozens of tweets and return a graphical emotional analysis. They typed in “Putin” to their program and a graph popped with various emotions along the x-axis. The red bar above “sad” towered above the rest. When they typed in “poutine,” the dominating bar switched to “joy” in blue.

The McHacks organizational committee worked to make McHacks as financially accessible as possible for all competitors from various universities.

“It’s completely free of cost, we make sure we get enough money from sponsorships to make sure it’s a really good experience for everyone that comes here,” Rawlani said, “We usually are doing travel reimbursements for people who are coming from Ottawa or Waterloo.”

In addition to covering the entry fee, meals, and snacks for participants over the two days, the team organized buses specifically for McHacks participants coming from the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo.

In addition to accommodating university students from other provinces, the hackathon actively encourages high school students to attend. A group of students from F.A.C.E. High School in Montreal, Tristan Hamer, Linnea Sander, and Edgar Granados, explained that they found the opportunity listed on the McGill Computer Science website.

“We’re interested in this sort of thing and it sounded like fun,” Granados said. “The website said that high school students were extra welcome and it actually was an educational experience.”

Although the group didn’t complete their project in the 24-hour time constraint, they left with a new appreciation for coding.

“It’s definitely given us a lot of respect for programmers,” Hamer explained.

Following the 24-hour hacking period, teams set up at designated tables and demoed their programs. Hackers, interested observers, and judges moved between tables to explore the projects.

The judging panel consisted of experienced professionals from Deloitte, IBM, CPPIB, and Lexalytics, as well as a few select HackMcGill executives with hackathon judging experience.

McHacks racked up an impressive 18 sponsors this year, including Deloitte and IBM. This follows a trend of hackathons becoming a common hunting ground for tech recruiters.

Scott Armstrong of Interfacing Technologies, a firm based in Montreal that develops business process management software, says that he actively seeks out students who take part in hackathons.

“There’s more ambition [and] drive,” Armstrong said. “They’re not just going to school to write a test. To me, if you’re here, it’s not because you're forced to be here, its because you like to develop. I believe in them.”

That determination can help propel hackathon projects into long-term, intensive endeavors for students to work on throughout the year.

“We actually have a community organization,” Ben Emdon, a McHacks participant from Carleton University, explained. “We make a project at a hackathon and continue with it afterwards.”

Many hackers return year after year. The same McGill group of Downs, Lebar, Lougheed, and Goodale placed in the top ten in the 2016 hackathon.

“Our McHacks project from last year, [David] still works on all the time,” Downs said. “It’s called Sketchwave, and its a messenger, but you draw pictures.”

Since 2013, McHacks has been a place for hackers of all skills levels, ages, and universities to bond over code and lack of sleep. The event doesn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon.

“The first edition had only 400 attendees, while [this year] we had over 700,” Rawlani wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “McHacks is a perfect example of McGill’s contribution to tech innovation and entrepreneurship and we are aiming to make it bigger [and] better next year.”

Science & Technology

McGill researchers advocate for delayed school start times for adolescents

by Andy Wang on

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With the onslaught of midterms on the horizon, sleep will likely be pushed down the list of students’ priorities.

According to a report card issued by ParticipACTION, a Canadian non-profit organization focused on improving public health, 26 per cent of adolescents are either mildly or moderately sleep deprived. In addition to citing statistics, the report card also establishes a data-based guideline on the amount of time children and adolescents should be sleeping—the first such guideline published in Canada.

Despite its importance, sleep deprivation has not yet been the focus of serious public discourse.

“I don’t think [sleep has] been a prominent public health discussion point,” Dr. Mark Tremblay, the report card’s chief scientific officer, told The Globe and Mail in June 2016.

The rapid digitization and the presence of screens in children’s rooms have contributed to the deterioration of sleep in recent years.

Recent studies have indicated that a good night’s sleep relies on appropriate levels of physical activity during the day. As such, ParticipACTION recommends a new philosophy called “the whole day matters.”

“There is a direct correlation between sleep and [children’s] physical activity levels,” Tremblay said.

According to the report card, children ages five to seventeen should perform at least one hour of moderate to intense physical activity per day. Only nine per cent of Canadian children meet the criterion.

Early school start times also play a significant role in the amount of sleep children and adolescents receive during the week. According to participACTION, schools should begin no earlier than 8:30 in the morning.

McGill researchers published a study in The Journal of Sleep Research in November 2016, which contributed further evidence to an already growing body of data indicating that early school start times could be adversely affecting the grades and the general well-being of children and adolescents.

“This study provided the first comprehensive assessment of school start times across Canada and examined whether school start times were associated with sleep duration and tiredness among adolescents,” the study’s abstract explained.

The researchers, led by Dr. Geneviève Gariépy of McGill’s Institute for Health and Social Policy, reported that despite 69 per cent of students meeting the national recommendations for sleep, 60 per cent reported feeling tired throughout the school day.

“Although school start times in Canada [are] better than in the U.S., there really hasn’t yet been a focus on adolescent sleep,” said Gariépy in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

But the situation seems to be improving. According to Gariépy, her research has led to the implementation of new policies regarding start times in two high schools in Eastern Canada.

A number of studies have shown that adolescents differ from adults in their sleep-wake cycles in two respects. First, adolescents require a longer duration of time to fall asleep compared to adults. Second, the secretion of melatonin—a hormone thought to induce drowsiness—is delayed in adolescents. As the brain releases melatonin in response to darkness, the change in secretion patterns observed in adolescence contribute to the sleep-wake system’s phase delay during this period of life.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to a variety of health problems including obesity, mood disorders, and depression. Signs of inadequate sleep may include daytime lethargy, depression, and loud snoring—an indication of restricted airflow.

The Canadian Sleep Society recommends nine hours of sleep per night. With time starting to stretch thin for many students, it will be difficult to meet this standard. But it is important to keep in mind that adequate sleep will result in more energy, better mood, and, in turn, better grades.

Creative, In Competition With, Sports

In Competition With: Fencing

by Aaron Rose and Joe Khammar on

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When two useless Sports Editors compete in McGill sports, who reigns supreme? In Competition With is a new series brought you by The McGill Tribune to see who truly is less athletically challenged: Joe or Aaron? In the first episode, the eager editors take each other on with some help from the McGill Fencing Club.

For information on the fencing team and how to get involved click here.

 

 

Joe
1

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron
0

 

 

 

Science & Technology

Communicating climate change in Canada

by Daria Kiseleva on

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On Feb. 2, Media@McGill hosted a panel discussion on the role of journalism in effectively communicating climate change. NASA recently revealed that 2016 was the hottest year in history and the third record year in a row—the first time such a pattern has occurred since climate data collection began. Despite this, according to a 2015 study from the Université de Montréal, only about half of Canadians subscribe to the scientific consensus that rising temperatures are primarily caused by human activity and only 27 per cent say that they are well-informed on the issue of global warming. In an attempt to address the gap between scientific knowledge and public engagement, the panel featured six experts across multiple sectors.

The participants acknowledged the media’s limited success in bringing climate change to the forefront of public awareness.

“The media has covered climate change in Canada extensively, but it has failed in a lot of cases, particularly in the last election,” Mike de Souza, managing editor of the National Observer, said. “It would have been up to the media […] to provoke more discussion during debates.”  

Kai Nagata, communications director of the Dogwood Initiative, believes that the Canadian government has made decisions on the assumption that there will be a market for non-renewable energy in the future because climate action will fail.

“[The media] fails to hold these people to account,” Nagata said.

The discussion also touched on the challenges journalism faces as a medium in tackling the complex issue of climate change. A proposition was put forth that the scope of the environmental phenomenon cannot be contained by the reactionary, event-driven format of popular media.

“[To communicate about climate change] we need to dig down deep into stories over a long period of time,” Linda Solomon Wood, CEO of the Observer Media Group, said. “And that’s not sexy, it’s the total opposite of clickbait.”

Repeatedly, the conversation returned to the subject of promoting engagement with the issue of climate change in diverse populations.

Martin Lukacs, environmental journalist for The Guardian, argued that a rift along ideological and political lines is central to the divergent perceptions of climate change.

“Polarization is really necessary [to motivate action against climate change],” Lukacs said. “What we are confronting is an ideological foe.”

Nagata agreed with Lukacs that perceptions of climate change vary strongly across the political spectrum.

“Discussion [on climate change] is not happening to the same extent on the political right [as on the left],” Nagata said. “Our responsibility, as advocates, is to understand the values that motivate people’s choices and to find a way to talk about this crisis that motivates action from people who are our political opposites.”

On the other hand, Candis Callison, associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at UBC, shared insight from her research on different forms of environmental activism, including that of American Evangelicals.

“There’s a way of talking about climate change which imbues it with ethics and morality […] and in various contexts it sounds different,” Callison said. “That kind of plurality associated with climate change isn’t something we generally think of.”

Laure Waridel, executive director of Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Sustainable Development Operationalization, agreed with Callison.

“The same message will not reach everybody,” said Waridel. “To get the business sector involved, […] we might not even use the language of climate change, but […] the language of optimization, for example.”

Lukacs remarked that environmental issues may resonate more with the public when they are framed in a new light by social movements.

“Pipelines six or seven years ago were a technical issue that got mentioned in the business section of newspapers, […] but they are now a defining political issue in this country, discussed in terms of their impact on indigenous rights,” Lukacs said.  

The panel seemed to agree that an impactful communication of climate change goes beyond an accurate reporting of statistics.

“[Climate change communication] needs to stay true to the scientific fact […] and at the same time it needs to become more than that in order for a diverse public to become engaged,” Callison said.

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