December 12, 2002

They have trees by the ton, piles of poinsettias and more Christmas cacti than you could shake a candy cane at. Here Scott Watson, son of Morgan Arboretum forest operations manager John Watson, is artfully arranging some of the many firs the Arboretum has on sale for your Yuletide pleasure. See On Campus.
Photo: Owen Egan

The latest supercomputer
Ed Kromer
Put away your palm pilots, there's a new kid on the block -- and he's fast. McGill's newest piece of computing hardware is the fastest of its kind in the country. The multi-processor system can chew through 400 billion operations a second. This ain't your Dad's Commodore 64.

The green womb
James Martin
For the fortieth anniversary of Silent Spring Sandra Steingraber spoke at McGill about everyone's first environment: the womb. Dubbed "the next Rachel Carson," Steingraber explained how toxins in our environment can affect unborn children.

Ottawa treaty five years on
Mark Reynolds
They've killed far more civilians than either poison gas or biological weapons, yet landmines continue to be used around the world. A recent conference at McGill looked at how far we've come and where we have to go, five years after the signing of the Ottawa treaty that prohibited these weapons.

Concentrating on media
Mark Reynolds
As president and publisher of Le Soleil, Alain Dubuc knows all about media concentration -- he went to his paper after it was bought by Power Corp. In a McGill Institute for the Study of Canada lecture, Dubuc dismissed fears that media ownership in Canada is too concentrated.

Sharing the wealth of knowledge
Bronwyn Chester
The three university students are going back to elementary school. McGill students Samuel Vaillancourt and Joel Thibert founded Horizons, where high school students go to elementary schools to help less fortunate kids with their schoolwork -- and give them motivation to finish their education.

King of sound
James Martin
A McGill music degree can take you places -- from recording with Yo-Yo Ma to accepting not one, but three Grammy awards. Sound engineer Richard King returned to McGill to talk about Surround Sound -- and being surrounded by sound for a living.

Teaching an old DNA new tricks
B. Jesse Shapiro
DNA has been doing pretty well for the last few eons -- faithfully replicating its double helix through the ages, quietly minding its own business. Chemistry professor Hanadi Sleiman wants to shake things up -- with funky new DNA boxes and triangles with flashy metal accessories. The result could be a revolutionary nanotechnology.

Photogenic philanthropists
Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins
Psychology student Kristen Bussandri has a gift idea to heat up the cold winter months -- an even dozen handsome young men to grace your wall for the upcoming year. Even better, proceeds from the Men of Montreal calendar, featuring seven McGill students, will go to the McGill Cancer Centre.

Principal's curtain call
Maeve Haldane
Bernard Shapiro is leaving McGill after many years. The principal mulls over his nearly nine years here, what he's learned and achieved, as well as spills the beans on future plans and his love of opera.

Also in this issue Kudos Letters Kaleidoscope Stéphane Perreault is an only child, but he is also a Brother. The PhD history student is a member of the Clerics of St. Viator, to which he recently swore oaths of chastity, poverty and obedience. A breath of fresh air for the Osler Library. Professor takes a dunk in the name of teaching science. On campus Figuring out technology in the classroom, finding the next Morningside prodigy at McGill, selling sylvan Yuletide accessories at the Arboretum and making the ornaments with which to decorate them at the McCord.