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Laughing Matters, Opinion

Schulogy for the library

by Sanchi Bhalla on

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This month, the McGill community suffered a great loss. We received news of the beloved Schulich Library of Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Engineering’s impending closure. Home to mostly stressed students and a couple of bookshelves, this 24-hour study spot will be missed. Though moving on seems hard, it is not impossible.

One cannot describe the beauty of the recently deceased without mentioning its stark white, asylum-like walls, uncomfortable polyester seats, and drab grey carpets, which are perfect for camouflaging your third breakdown of the hour. Many a time, with tears in my eyes and stress gripping each breath, I have retreated to that corner to cry—only to find it occupied by another student in the same sorry state. After all, community building is what hygiène de vie is all about.

I don’t know a single student who hasn’t fallen in love with the coffee-less, food-free, asbestos-filled building that was Schulich library. Some of my best first-year memories took place in there: Curling up in a ball on the floor, starving, but unable to leave my seat in case an eagle-eyed engineer stole my spot, all without having seen sunlight for two days straight. Oh, to be a froshie again.

The Engineering Undergraduate Society will be hosting a memorial service at Blue’s Pub this week. Dear Ol’ Schu drove many of its inhabitants to drink, so it’s the only way to truly honour its memory.

Features

Pipelines, blockades, and sovereignty

by Calvin Trottier-Chi on

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Much to journalists’ chagrin, progress doesn’t come in satisfying narrative arcs. It is unsteady, disjointed, unpredictable, and ongoing in a way that frustrates the limits of news coverage. The indigenous protests at Standing Rock captured the world’s attention for weeks in early 2016, but few reporters were on the scene when the constructed pipeline leaked 84 gallons of oil of oil on Apr. 4 and 6 the following year. This familiar narrative is playing out in Canada, and the eyes of the nation are on the indigenous Wet’suwet’en Nation, where the Unist’ot’en Camp is blocking a pipeline route. It is only the latest flashpoint in the ongoing struggle for indigenous land ownership, but media attention has brought this protest to the front of Canadian consciousness.

Out on the Town, Student Life

Local gin and geniality

by Leyla Moy on

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At the southwest warehouse of Montreal’s star micro-distillery Cirka Distilleries rows of awards line a public tasting counter. Cirka’s sleek website echoes this artisanal aesthetic and invites guests to peek behind the curtain by touring their space, breaking the seemingly intricate process of distillation down into simple steps.

The Cirka building is an open warehouse with high ceilings and is filled with the sweet, heady smell of gin botanicals. Weaving in between barrels and past humming machines, distiller Isabelle Rochette expertly explains the three steps of the distillation process to visitors: Cooking the grain, turning starch into fermentable sugar, and then fermentable sugar into alcohol through fermentation with yeast, and, finally, extracting and refining the alcohol.  From start to finish, production takes place between three rooms; the bottling line is laid out a stone’s throw from where the grain is cooked at the beginning of the process.

In the back is what Rochette refers to as the  ‘controlled chaos’ warehouse, which houses everything from bottles, grain, product packaging, and whiskey barrels. Whiskey needs to be aged for three years to be labelled as such in Canada—the same standard as in Scotland—and Cirka plans to release their first batch by the end of the year.

Though it is their latest release, whiskey is the driving force behind Cirka. Namesake Paul Cirka worked as a botanist and in the IT industry before deciding that producing whiskey was his calling. With a couple of friends on board, he decided to try to put Quebec whiskey back on the map. The team knew that they had a couple of years of waiting time before coming out with their whiskey, so they began by distilling gin and vodka to debut the brand and build consumer confidence.

“If we [make] good vodka and good gin, [then people will] know we’ll be making good whiskeys,” Rochette said.

Rochette joined the team in 2015 after returning from a motorcycle tour across Canada and the US, trying out distilleries, wineries, and breweries. Rochette, who previously worked in video game development before training as a sommelier, initially planned to open a wine tasting bar in the city when she was connected with Cirka. Both were drawn to Montreal as a home base for a spirits business.

“We really love the energy of Montreal,” Rochette said. “It’s a super curious, epicurean city. We’re lucky in Quebec to have access to really good grains, so that’s why even our rye is local.”

Cirka likes to preserve a local flair in their spirits. Their current lineup includes one vodka and two gins, each made from a base of 100 per cent Quebec corn and the latter two filled with a plethora of regional botanicals. These infusions create a final product with a more complex flavour profile than the overwhelming ‘uppercut of juniper’ that Rochette often tastes in the mass-produced spirits. The company flagship, Gin Sauvage, is distilled using a botanical basket that allows warm vapours travelling upward to infuse the gin with essential oils from the 30 plus botanicals it contains. In creating the second, limited-edition Gin375, the micro-distillery challenged themselves to replicate centuries-old flavours in honour of the city’s 375th anniversary.

“[In developing Gin375] we went to the Château Ramezay in Old Port, […] met with a historian, and asked what [historically] was in the orchards and the medicinal plants that were used, and that’s where we got our inspiration,” Rochette said. “For the base, we dehydrate sour cherries and cranberries, and, once we proof it, down we add [local] honey. [It’s limited edition] because I can only make it twice a year since it’s [made from] all foraged ingredients.”

Cirka is in good company in Quebec, where the local micro-distillery business has boomed in recent years, equally dedicated to creating a unique and well-crafted product. They see themselves as part of a family of  local businesses and welcome questions, even from potential competitors.

“Most of the distilleries that are open right now […] passed through here, visited, and talked to us,” Rochette said. “We’re one of the few that are open [for tours], and we like to [explain] the process so people can understand [….] The fact that they want to know more about the industry, about us [makes me] more than happy to do the tours and answer the questions.”

McGill, News

Arisha Khan named McGill’s 145th Rhodes Scholar for youth welfare advocacy

by Jacqueline Yao on

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The Selection Committee for the Rhodes Global Scholarship has chosen Arisha Khan (U3 Arts) as McGill’s 145th Rhodes Scholar. Rhodes Scholarships fund at least two years of postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford and are awarded to promising young leaders motivated to tackle global challenges.

Khan’s focus on the intersection between health services and child-welfare policies stems from her own experiences in the Ontario foster care system. Raised in the foster system,  Khan lost financial support at the age of 18 after her children’s aid society, the Peel Children’s Aid Society (Peel CAS) deemed that she was not following her plan of care, a guideline developed by the children’s aid society to determine their future living situation, by choosing to work full-time as a high school student. According to Khan, the privatized and decentralized nature of the child protection system makes it difficult to hold accountable.

“The volume-based funding model [of the Ontario foster care system] is a profit-seeking game because, instead of [providing] continued care for the young person, it becomes about keeping the youths in as long as they are making money for the [foster care] agencies,” Khan said. “There is really no way to seek recourse and justice unless you have the resources, and when you’re that vulnerable [as a foster child], you can’t.”

From 2013-2016, as a high school student, Khan was an appointee on the Premier’s Council on Youth Opportunities (PCYO) where she advised the Ontario Premier and Ministry of Children and Youth Services on youth-oriented policies and programs. Since 2016, she has been the Vice-President (VP) of Youth in Care Canada, a national charitable organization that promotes a national strategy for child welfare and provides legal education for youth.

“When I was on the [PCYO], I [saw] how a single line in a policy can impact so many people because it can enable [someone’s access] to a service, or it can restrict someone from accessing vital [support],” Khan said. “Youth in Care Canada is uniquely run by and for youth in care […], and I’ll be wrapping up my work there before I go to Oxford.”

While working on policy development for Ontario youth mental health systems, Khan became involved in technical policy work. At McGill, Khan pursued her interest in funding models by serving as VP Finance of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU)  in 2017. Khan also analyzed healthcare systems and integrated care for aging populations at the McGill Observatory on Health and Social Services Reforms under the supervision of Daniel Weinstock. Weinstock, also Khan’s program advisor, noted her resourcefulness and determination in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

“When I heard that Arisha got the Rhodes Scholarship, I was not surprised at all,” Weinstock said. “She took the difficult task of coming up with her degree [Comparative Health and Social Policy] that fit her purposes and is incredibly engaged to a level that is rare even among McGill students.”

Khan will enroll in the Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation Master’s program at Oxford in Sept. 2019. Her thesis will focus on the impact of child protection health services.

She hopes that recent publicity of her winning the Rhodes Scholarship will deter the media from underplaying what she believes are serious inadequacies in the current Canadian foster care system.

“When people tell me ‘you pulled yourself up by the bootstraps,’ it’s harmful because we shouldn’t be expecting kids [in foster care] to do that,” Khan said. “[Many media outlets] just want to sell a story about the first foster kid to win [a Rhodes Scholarship], and it’s a harmful narrative because it pats the [foster care] system on the back.”

In an email to the Tribune, McGill Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier congratulated Khan on her accomplishments.

“[Khan] is committed to making a positive impact on the world and to giving back to others, and has done so right here at McGill with a project aimed at offering scholarships for students from the foster care system,” Fortier wrote. “She has a strong sense of purpose, and I have no doubt that she has the qualities, commitment, and character to lead lasting change.”

 

A previous version of this article stated that the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies had deemed that Khan was not following her plan of care. In fact it was her children’s aid society, Peel Children’s Aid Society.

Science & Technology

Ebrahim Noroozi recognized for sustainable lab initiatives

by Ronny Litvack-Katzman on

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The only thing that makes Ebrahim Noroozi salivate more than food is its sustainable practices. As lab supervisor, he clearly takes pride in making his experiments more environmentally friendly. He carries with him a seemingly endless list of the many innovations he has implemented in the Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry, like a badge of honour.

This fall, Noroozi received the inaugural Sustainable Lab Award—the most recent of many formal recognitions for his service to the McGill community.

Amongst nearly 800 research and teaching labs currently operating at McGill, Noroozi’s lab was selected by the McGill Sustainable Labs Working Group for its environmentally-conscious chemical purchasing policy of buying supplies in reduced amounts, its novel system to recover and reuse chemicals, and other uniquely-sustainable lab practices.

The award, presented to a lab which demonstrates “a commitment to integrating environmental, social, and economic considerations into the way they work,” is one of many initiatives proposed in McGill’s Climate and Sustainability Action Plan, a framework to increase the university’s dedication to sustainability.

“Mr. Noroozi has consistently demonstrated the utmost regard for [the] best practices around health, safety and sustainability in the laboratory he operates,” Vice-Principal (VP) of Administration and Finance Yves Beauchamp wrote in a statement to The McGill Tribune. “He goes above and beyond the call of duty by making use of his expertise as a chemist and a safety professional in providing guidance to others in the Faculty around chemical safety, hazardous waste disposal, spill response, and environmental protection in general.”

From eliminating thermometers containing mercury to using small containers to reduce commercial alcohol use, Noroozi’s success is credited to his eye for identifying ways in which the lab can be improved.

In the case of alcohol storage, Noroozi noted that the 200-litre containers they used previously were easily contaminated because of their large size.

“By purchasing smaller, 25-litre containers, the amount of waste product due to cross-contamination [when performing experiments] was drastically decreased,” Noroozi said. “I try to teach students good lab practices, [such as] the difference between which substances are waste and those which are recoverable and can be used again for teaching purposes.”

When students brought to his attention that the rubber lining in one apparatus was wearing down, Noroozi purchased stainless steel ones to replace them. As a more durable material, stainless steel equipment can be used for longer periods of time without needing to be replaced.

Noroozi has also started multiple internal initiatives, including the promotion of sharing chemicals between labs and buying products that meet modern environmental standards.

McGill currently employs ‘lab-packs,’ a series of steel-drums which help to safely dispose of unwanted, dated, or contaminated chemicals. When Noroozi realized the lab-pack system did not account for leftover reusable chemicals, he offered an alternative solution.

“These chemicals are not necessarily bad,” Noroozi said. “[It] could be from a lab which has been retired or from a researcher who had a surplus of one product. Before I get rid of [the chemicals], I let my colleagues know what I have and they can then come and pick-up what [they need].”

Under his leadership, Noroozi estimates the faculty has spent upwards of $100,000 on safety equipment over the last two decades to improve health and safety features across the Macdonald Campus.

“An institution of McGill’s size owes it to the environment to have laboratory practices that are sustainable,” Noroozi said. “Our research has the potential to carry a lot of biological, chemical, and physical harm. If we are careful with the way in which we implement our laboratories, then society can benefit from our research without the imposition of environmental consequences.”

Art, Arts & Entertainment

A look back on art’s historical past in ‘Manifesto’

by Keira Seidenberg on

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Manifesto, one of German artist Julian Rosefeldt’s most internationally renowned video works, ran at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) from Oct. 20 to Jan. 20. The work is comprised of 13 videos—each showcasing Australian actress Cate Blanchett assuming different roles, including that of a teacher, a homeless man, and an anchorwoman. During each scene, Blanchett presents multiple manifestos corresponding to a specific modernist avant-garde artistic movement, such as dada, futurism, and fluxus. An artistic manifesto is a statement of purpose, and, while the term is often associated with political movements such as Marxism, manifestos were similarly employed among the artistic movements that emerged in the twentieth century. Manifestos organized a movement’s ideology and allowed lay-persons to understand the its guiding artistic objectives.

In Manifesto, Rosefeldt explores history and temporality through video, a medium associated with technological advancement, thus allowing him to present the manifestos to a contemporary audience. The exhibition examines current receptions of historical manifestos, looking at how the works change once extracted from their original contexts. Rosefeldt also draws on performance art in the 13 videos; while the word ‘performance’ suggests live-action art that cannot be reproduced, Manifesto establishes a unique relationship between video and viewer by allowing Blanchett’s performances to loop infinitely.

“[E]xploring the powerful urgency of these historical statements, which were composed with passion and conviction by artists many years ago, Manifesto questions whether the words and sentiments have withstood the passage of time” wrote Rosefeldt in a statement for the MAC.

While, at first, the settings and characters appear to hold only aesthetic appeal, listening to Blanchett read each manifesto demonstrates the ideologies behind the visual content. In the pop art video, Blanchett plays a mother leading her southern family in saying grace while reading Claes Oldenburg’s text, “I am for Art.” While pop art seems inseparable from rows of grinning Marilyn Monroes or Lichtenstein’s comic book characters, the video draws on pop art’s use of the everyday material and manipulation of items, such as the Campbell’s soup can, that appear in the average American households. In the video devoted to Surrealism, Blanchett plays a puppeteer crafting a puppet in her own likeness, echoing the absurdity of works by canonical artists such as Salvador Dali or René Magritte. In the video for abstract expressionism, Blanchett is cast as a CEO at a party reading manifestos by artists Barnett Newman, Wyndham Lewis, Wassily Kandinsky, and Franz Marc, contrasting the sterile business environment with the dynamic and spontaneous quality of expressionist art.

Rosefeldt’s Manifesto provokes commentary through audience reflection. Rather than using the elaborate scenes to deconstruct the manifestos’ contents, Rosefeldt presents the 13 scenes in such a way that the audience is encouraged to determine for themselves how Blanchett’s characters and environments connect to each movement and to decide whether the artists’ statements remain provocative or whether time has rendered them archaic. The videos are at once utopian and dystopian; it becomes difficult to settle on a single emotional response, as the videos each employ starkly contrasting imagery. Rosefeldt uses Blanchett’s background in acting to its fullest extent: She employs different accents, appearances, and mannerisms within each video. Despite the distracting melee of sounds playing throughout the room, Rosefeldt coordinated the videos to align once every 10 minutes—at that moment Blanchett’s face dominates every screen as she reads from the respective manifestos.  

While integrating manifestos into video performances at times appears forced, Manifesto is notable for its attention to detail and the history the exhibition honours. While artworks often deploy symbolism or draw influence from the art of the past, Rosefeldt’s work is an explicit tribute to evolving artistic movements and how they engage with the present. Despite demanding that the viewer take the time to watch each 10 minute video to gain a greater understanding of each movement, Manifesto delivers a choreographed and visually engaging video art installation.

Baseball, Hockey, Sports

Eakin fellow Robert Elias delivers lecture on baseball in hockey’s shadow

by Alden Tabac on

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On Nov. 29, Robert Elias gave the Fall 2018 Eakin lecture, the summary of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada’s (MISC) Eakin Visiting Fellow’s research, titled “Sports and Canadian Values: Baseball in Hockey’s Shadow” at the McGill Faculty Club. Elias, who was visiting from the University of San Francisco for Fall 2018, has written multiple books on baseball including The Empire Strikes Out and Baseball and the American Dream: Race, Class, Gender, and the National Pastime.

Before coming to McGill, Elias researched baseball’s role in American life and politics, including its use as a way to sell the American Dream around the world. Elias currently coordinates the Legal Studies program at the University of San Francisco, and has lectured on baseball to audiences including the Society for American Baseball Research.

“I had done a lot of work on sports and politics, […] particularly baseball and politics in the US,” Elias said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “Although I had done work with baseball in the Caribbean, Korea, and Japan, I really hadn’t looked much at Canada.”

Elias presented his findings in a lecture that focussed on the hidden history of baseball in Canada, which has been overshadowed by hockey. Elias pointed out that Canadians have played crucial roles in the development of the game that we know today. Babe Ruth, one of the game’s all-time greats, owes his career to Canadian priest Martin Boutilier, who introduced the Sultan of Swat to baseball. Canadian Tip O’Neill won the first-ever Triple Crown, a seldom achieved statistic handed out to players who manage to lead their league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in all in the same season.  Baseball was even Canada’s main sport for the first four decades of the twentieth century. Most significantly, the first recorded game of baseball did not take place in Cooperstown, New York, as the legend goes; instead, ballplayers first gathered in Beachville, Ontario in 1838.

The parallels between baseball and Canadian culture were of particular interest to Elias. During his presentation, Elias played a George Carlin stand-up comedy routine in which the performer contrasted the aggressive game of football with the more peaceful nature of baseball. Team collaboration is crucial to baseball, and the sport is a paragon of diversity and multiculturalism—values which Canadian culture aspires to embody.

However, hockey dominates Canada’s sporting scene, though Elias argued that it does not reflect Canadian values to the extent that baseball does.

“Baseball actually fits with Canadian culture in many ways that I think are being neglected,” Elias said. “The main other sport to look at in Canada is hockey [….] There has been a lot of criticism in recent years with what’s going on in hockey. It’s become increasingly violent [….] There is an increase in hockey goons, and there’s some sexual abuse [.…] Even some hardened supporters of hockey have said, ‘Maybe, we need to pull [hockey] back to be more in line with Canadian values.’”

Elias was quick to debunk the myth of hockey’s invention in Canada and by extension the sport’s centrality to the country’s culture. While it is the case that ice hockey was first played in Canada, it was based off of field hockey which originated in the United Kingdom.

“A lot of people claim that hockey was invented here, but it really wasn’t. It was actually invented in Britain,” Elias said. “That may not seem like a big deal, except that that’s one of the claims that a lot of supporters of hockey use to say, ‘It’s our game and that’s why it ought to be dominant’.”

Elias also believes that baseball’s relative obscurity in Canada is, in part, a political issue.

“There are certainly political issues that come up as far as how resources are allocated, that could determine the extent to which one sport is dominant over another.,” Elias said. “That would be true [in Canada] for hockey and baseball too.”

To conclude his lecture, Elias hit close to home. Donning an Expos hat, he spoke optimistically about a return to Montreal for Nos Amours. From a financial perspective, Elias believes that a well-located stadium could help bring the team back to life.

“There are all the ingredients for more baseball at the highest level […] in Canada,” Elias said. “The good news is there’s a lot of momentum to bring a team back to Montreal [….] I think that would be a great development.”

Baseball, Football, Sports

Point-counterpoint: Kyler Murray

by Paul McCann, Owen Gibbs on

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Kyler Murray was drafted ninth overall by the Oakland Athletics in the 2018 MLB draft, but after a stellar season as the University of Oklahoma’s starting quarterback culminating in a Heisman Trophy, the 21-year-old has a chance to make it big in the NFL, too. Now, he must choose between the diamond and the gridiron.

Baseball is the safer, smarter choice

Paul McCann

There is a multitude of reasons for Kyler Murray to pick baseball, but the most important is his safety. Football is an extremely dangerous sport in comparison to baseball. In the short term alone, he has a greater chance of injury in football than baseball, which could shorten or even end his career. In the long term, the biggest threat to a football player’s health is brain health: Football is one of the highest-risk sports in the world for head injuries and concussions. Head injuries can threaten a football career in the short-term, but they could also lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a progressive degenerative brain disease that can lead to further health complications, including depression, suicidal thoughts, Parkinson’s, and progressive dementia. Meanwhile, the risk of brain injury is almost non-existent in baseball.

Further, the future is bright for Murray’s baseball career. Murray was selected ninth overall by the Oakland Athletics. With young stars like Matt Chapman and Matt Olson as well as multiple top 50 prospects, the Athletics have a promising future ahead of them of which Murray could be a part. Meanwhile, many football pundits say that Murray could succeed more quickly in football. However, there is no guarantee that this is the case, especially given that he is six inches shorter than the average NFL quarterback. Considering that very few quarterbacks under six feet tall achieve stardom, Murray’s road to success faces a difficult roadblock.

Lastly, Murray is already guaranteed $4.66 million if he plays baseball, and, if he leverages his position correctly, he could end up with as much as $15 million in his first contract. To build on an already-hefty guarantee, his career will likely last longer in the MLB. The average baseball career is 5.6 years long, compared to just 3.3 years in the NFL. Every additional year means Murray can make millions more in salary. If he becomes the player the Athletics project him to be, Murray could eventually sign a free agent contract for over $100 million.

Baseball is the safer decision for Kyler Murray, both financially and physically. And here, the safer choice is the better one.

The money is in the NFL

Owen Gibbs

Kyler Murray should stick with the NFL to maximize his athletic potential. Murray appears to be a consensus top-15 pick in the NFL Entry Draft. The list of quarterbacks selected in that range over the past few years is filled with standouts like Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. In baseball, success would not come as quickly. Murray would likely have to toil in the minors for several years before finding his place with the Oakland Athletics. During this time, Murray would not be paid as much as he would make in the NFL. By choosing football, Murray is more likely to find success sooner rather than later.

Further, Murray must choose between playing quarterback and playing outfield. While both make exceptional salaries, NFL quarterbacks on average make $2 million more than MLB outfielders. Currently, the highest-paid player in the NFL is Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who made over $75 million this season including endorsements. Meanwhile, the highest-paid MLB player is Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout, who made over $33 million this year.

The only reason Murray might have for choosing baseball over football would be an already guaranteed contract with Oakland, thus making them the safer destination. However, Murray is fairly certain to find a place in the NFL that would pay him a higher salary given that it is extremely unlikely for his drafting team to give up on him during his rookie contract. The NFL is most certainly a greater gamble, but Kyler Murray’s talent is worth betting on.

Editors’ Choice: Baseball

One thing is for sure: Kyler Murray has a bright future ahead of him wherever he ends up. We want to see Murray choose baseball, though, so he can stay safe for years beyond the end of what should be a lengthy athletic career.

Science & Technology

Revolutionary developments by McGill researchers in the past year

by Océane Marescal on

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Quebec-based researchers publish over 16,000 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals on an annual basis. For the past 26 years, the magazine Quebec Science has taken on the difficult endeavour of choosing which of these thousands of discoveries deserves to be honoured for both their methodology and impact on the scientific community. In 2018, the magazine highlighted 10 major findings, some of which were completed at McGill University.

Earth before the arrival of animal life

When atmospheric oxygen reacts with pyrite, a common mineral, sulfate salts form. These salts contain the oxygen atoms found in the atmosphere at the time of the reaction’s occurrence. Using this information, Peter Crockford, then-graduate student at McGill, measured oxygen isotope values from samples of 1.4 billion-year-old lake deposits to determine what the Earth’s ancient atmosphere and biosphere contained prior to the emergence of animal life.   

Based on these measurements, Crockford and his team found that primary production, the production of oxygen and organic matter by cyanobacteria, algae, and other organisms, was extremely low 1.4 billion years ago. These findings suggest a limit for the complexity of life that could have existed during this period based on the amount of organic matter available.

For Crockford, the publication was a culmination of long days in the lab measuring oxygen isotopes in the sulfates.

“[The process] begins with weighing out samples and putting them into a chamber,” Crockford wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “We then add a reactive gas to get rid of any oxygen in the chamber. Then, we shoot our sample with lasers to liberate oxygen from sulfate ions and, finally, purify the oxygen and measure it on a mass spectrometer.”

According to Crockford, published findings are only the beginning. Having an established effective methodology allows for scientists to apply the same strategy to over 40 other geologic formations, which, together, span time periods from 2.5 billion years ago to 500 million years ago and account for over half of the Earth’s history.

A treatment for cerebral malaria

Every year, over 500 million people are affected by malaria, a life-threatening disease caused by a parasite from the Plasmodium family. One of the most drastic complications of malaria is cerebral malaria, a severe neurological effect characterized by brain swelling, coma, and often death. Surviving patients, often children, sustain brain injuries and permanent neurological impairments.

A recent study published by McGill researchers found that a natural product called rocaglate, which is derived from the aglaia plant species, was able to block blood-stage parasite replication in mouse models, presenting a possible treatment to prevent malarial parasite proliferation. In these mice, rocoglates were able to reduce neurological inflammation and increase survival of those rodents infected with drug-resistant parasites. Although not yet tested on human subjects, this essential research shows the immense potential of this class of compounds for the treatment of cerebral malaria.

PapSeek: Early detection of ovarian and endometrial cancers

Early detection is an important part of cancer treatment, especially in the case of ovarian and uterine cancers. A pap smear is an essential test that most women should begin receiving every three years starting at age 21. Usually, a normal pap smear will collect cells from the cervix to detect cancerous cells in this area.

Lucy Gilbert, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology  and the Department of Oncology, developed PapSeek, a test that collects samples not only from the cervix, but also from the uterus. The technique extends a brush into the uterus to collect cells closer to the region where cancers could originate, increasing the sensitivity of the test and the likelihood of detecting cancer from the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus.

Science & Technology

Soup & Science: Animal edition

by Kate Lord, Celia Hameury, Krithika Ragupathi & Grace Hu on

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At McGill’s biannual intersection of science and lunch, Redpath Museum hosted Soup and Science, providing students with a look into some of the most interesting and exciting research currently underway at the university. In a series of short, three-minute presentations last week, professors from a wide array of scientific disciplines spent their lunchtimes sharing their passion for research and describing how undergraduate students can get involved. The McGill Tribune reports on their favourite presentations.

Neural cell torpedoes

Monday, January 14 – Celia Hameury

In her presentation on cellular changes in the cerebellum, a section of the brain crucial for sensory coordination and motor movement, Alanna Watt, associate professor in the Department of Biology, discussed the dramatic changes scientific hypotheses can undergo over the course of experimentation and research.

Watt’s research focuses on axonal torpedoes, which are rounded swellings of the Purkinje cells, a subset of neuronal cells that constitute  the cerebellum. Scientists had previously observed that axonal torpedoes were often more likely to occur in people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, and they hypothesized that axonal torpedoes must be a root cause of these diseases.

Knowing that axons are responsible for the propagation of electric currents and subsequent neuronal communication in the brain, Watt and her team analyzed the electrical currents in  axons with torpedoes. She noticed that normal axons occasionally fail to relay electrical signals. Axons with torpedoes, however, failed much more rarely. Moreover, increased failures lead to the formation of torpedoes, which helped reduce the failures and strengthen neurological paths. As a result, a new hypothesis emerged: axonal torpedoes are the body’s way of creating a balanced response to axon failures. Watt’s research is an exciting reminder of how, in science, things aren’t always as they first appear.

The birds and the other birds

Tuesday, January 15 – Kate Lord

Mélanie Guigueno, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology, gave Soup and Science attendees insight into the curious ecological phenomenon of avian brood parasitism, in which certain species of birds rely on other species of birds to raise their young. In particular, Guigueno’s research focuses on the brownheaded cowbird, which forgoes the energy-draining task of bringing up their offspring by dumping their eggs into the nests of other birds. When they have found a suitable host nest, cowbirds will typically wait until the resident bird is away before depositing a couple of their eggs and removing or damaging an equivalent number of host eggs. At the expense of their own young, the foster parents will then unknowingly raise the cowbirds.

“What’s interesting about brownheaded cowbirds, specifically, is that, with this species, only females search for host nests […] without being aided by males,” Guigueno said. “As such, females have more complex space use than males. This is a pretty neat system, as many […other] systems show a male-bias in the complexity of space use. Few systems see a female-bias sex difference in space use.”

Guigueno and her lab are particularly interested in the relationship between animal behaviour in its natural environment and how the brain is functioning.

“In [cowbirds], we see that females have higher levels of hippocampal neurogenesis [neural growth in the brain’s hippocampus] than males,” Guigueno said. “This suggests that, in females, the hippocampus is specialized for the brood parasitic mode of reproduction. So, what happens [in] the brain is associated with their behaviour in the field.”

A venom worse than death

Tuesday, January 15 – Kate Lord

Reza Sharif-Naeini, associate professor in the Department of Physiology, presented a thought-provoking account of how his lab began investigating the nervous system of an invasive species along North America’s western coastline—the lionfish.

“The story around this project starts in 1995 when divers off of the coast of Florida spotted some lionfish during their dive, which is not normal since this isn’t their natural habitat,” Sharif-Naeini said. “These fish belong to the Indo-Pacific region, where their growth is limited by the local predators such as the sharks.”

In the warm Atlantic waters and without a natural enemy, lionfish were free to reproduce at astronomical rates as, according to Sharif-Naeini, females can lay 15,000 to 30,000 eggs every four days.

“If you fast forward to 2015, the fish have invaded all of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic coast all the way up to Rhode Island,” Sharif-Naeini said. “It’s an ecological disaster because they eat anything smaller than half of their size, which means all the young of other species are being eaten.”

Beyond the devastating effects on local aquatic food chains and local marine industry economies, the venomous spines on lionfish pose an extremely painful health threat to people.

“Divers, snorkelers, [and] local fishermen often get stung by these fish, and the way they describe the pain is that, [while] it doesn’t kill you, you wish you were dead,” Sharif-Naeini said. “There is currently no antidote for this pain, so the only thing someone can do is immerse their stung limb in hot water in hopes of degrading the peptides [responsible for the pain].”

Sharif-Naeini’s lab was inspired to investigate the pain-sensing neurons activated by lionfish venom based on the determination of Stéphanie Mouchbahani-Constance, an undergraduate student in physiology.

“This [project] was really spearheaded by Stéphanie,” Sharif-Naeini said. “Just like you, she was an undergraduate [student], and this study would not have been done had she not come to me and expressed her interest [in doing research].”

From shells to shelves

Wednesday, January 16 – Krithika Ragupathi

Over five trillion pieces of plastic currently litter the ocean and pose a serious threat to its ecosystems. While initiatives such as the Ocean Cleanup Project, which employs large floating robots to sequester plastics in the Pacific, help remedy the issue, they do little to tackle the actual reliance on plastic to begin with.

Audrey Moores, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at McGill, explained that McGill researchers have developed a biodegradable, alternative plastic. Chitin, a polymer found in the rigid shells of insects and crustaceans like lobsters and shrimps, is converted into chitosan, a compound which researchers have used to make plastics. While chitosan is ordinarily difficult to create in large enough quantities for manufacturing use, the McGill team has managed to create longer, more durable chains of the compound.

Moores explained that the conversion process does not require much material.

“We just mill [the shells] in a solid phase […], and, by letting them age in humidity, […] we have been able to make plastics,” Moores said.

Their lab is working on making the plastic product more flexible.

Matching data

Thursday, January 17 – Grace Hu

The standard machine learning process, useful for anything from emails to medical X-rays, takes spatial data points and then classifies them or uses them to make predictions.

William Hamilton, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, described how machine learning can be used to explore the relationships between independent data points in a dataset. This type of analysis has applications in both the biomedical sciences and in analyzing social networks on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. His algorithms currently power the Pinterest recommendation system, and it’s an exciting reminder of how websites that millions of people browse everyday are based on research conducted at McGill.

Hamilton stressed that students can get involved in such research, explaining that he himself started off as an undergraduate researcher at McGill, and his experience is inspiring for students unsure of how to start.

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