(Desautels' Karl Moore): "Hormones can affect traders’ views. Cambridge’s John Coates believes that the financial crisis was created, to some degree, by people’s body chemistry. Would having more women on Wall Street and in the City help? Let’s listen to John…"
Read more at Forbes
n search of genomic incentives Medical innovation involves a peculiar mix of seemingly contradictory motivations. We need to strike the right balance, says Jonathan Kimmelman.
Doctors should think twice about prescribing drugs like Ritalin and Adderall used to treat attention deficit disorder to healthy individuals seeking to boost their brain power, says an article in this weeks edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The authors say prescription stimulants are used by some people for cognitive enhancement in the absence of any medical need.
Scientists have announced a small but important step in the development of an effective cattle vaccine to prevent bovine tuberculosis. They have identified a "biomarker" using sophisticated molecular technology that allows them to predict vaccine efficacy. David Williams, chairman of the Badger Trust, which strongly supports vaccination of both cattle and badgers, said: "We welcome this refinement in laboratory technique, part of the progress towards the long-awaited goal of an effective cattle vaccine.
Tom Velk and Olivia Gong say while China shows all the usual traits of a conventional great power, the West needs to accept that the way it wields its influence is also very different. [Tom Velk is a professor of economics and director of the North American Studies program at McGill University. Olivia Gong is a finance student and research assistant at McGill].
Read more at the South China Morning Post
The artist and professor advises women to look for ways in which being female is an advantage in their industry.
Read more at Financial Times
(Chemistry professor Joe Schwarcz): What did the jockey who never lost a race whisper into the horse's ear? Roses are red violets are blue Horses that lose are made into glue! OK, so it's a groaner. But until the advent of polyvinyl acetate (PVA) and other synthetic glues in the 20th century, the destiny of aging horses was indeed the glue factory. The collagen extracted from their hides, connective tissues and hoofs made for an ideal wood adhesive. Our word "collagen," for the group of proteins found in these tissues, actually derives from the Greek "kolla" for "glue."
A growing body of evidence suggests that the sunshine vitamin can do more than increase bone strength, leading many researchers to pop mega doses of vitamin D in an attempt to ward off a host of conditions, including various cancers, diabetes, heart and autoimmune disease. The more of the nutrient that is in the bloodstream, the better the health outcomes, surveys have found, although not everyone is convinced of the health benefits of higher-dose vitamin D supplements.
McGill wide receiver Shaquille Johnson received the Peter Gorman Trophy, emblematic of the rookie-of-the-year award in CIS football, during the CFL Player Awards ceremony in Toronto Thursday night. Johnson, a 19-year-old management freshman from Brampton, Ont., is only the second McGill player to win the award. Michael Soles was the Peter Gorman Trophy winner in 1986; he went on to a long CFL career. "As a person, Shaq is quiet, modest, and humble," McGill head coach Clint Uttley said. "As a football player, he has a natural feel for the game. He's extremely athletic and smooth.
(Desautels' Karl Moore): “It seems every Business School professor starts by saying how much the world has changed” – that was Henry Mintzberg’s opening to a session on change, not unsurprisingly Henry takes a different tack. He points out that continuity is as important as change. We are co-teaching strategy to a group of Chinese executives today, and I had to sheepishly admit I had done just that earlier in the day!
Read more at Forbes
When longevity is a plus in the arenas of jazz, blues and country, do aging rockers face scorn? When Dave Brubeck last made one of his semi-regular appearances at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 2011, he was 90. No one jokingly wondered aloud how they let him out of the nursing home. B.B. King, 87, played two nights at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier in May. No cartoons were published of his fans making their way to the shows with walkers. With rock ’n’ roll, it’s a whole different ball game. Why the double standard?
The addition of speaker channels above the familiar 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound array can recreate an exceptionally lifelike ambient soundfield, and enables much more accurate localization of aerial objects, such as helicopters. Although surround sound has taken an evolutionary step over the past decade by adding a “height” component to the traditional horizontal configuration of loudspeakers, more recent advances in 3D video have led to the emergence of a variety of 3D sound schemes.
Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management, Talking Management for The Globe and Mail, speaks with MIT’s Deborah Ancona. "…Distributive leadership is a term that we have recently developed that really refers to three particular components to leadership. The first is that it is decentralized so no longer can we rely on that CEO at the top of the organization to do everything. So decentralized leadership means that there are leaders throughout the organization. The idea is how do you mobilize all of those leaders?
The term “medical tourism” may conjure images of clinics in far-flung countries that offer a tempting proposition: world travel and cut-rate surgery. Yet a Quebec clinic hopes that Canadians will instead think of a warm bed, perhaps an invigorating facial scrub at a renowned Quebec City spa and the chance to skip the clogged lines that are the reality in much of the Canadian public medical system. […] That Quebec is at the forefront of private medical care is the result of history and judicial precedent.
Heather Munroe-Blum - Appointed in 2003 at McGill University. What is the biggest challenge your successor faces? No matter what the challenges are, the job is an exhilarating one, the people remarkable, the mission simply the best. But a primary issue facing today’s university leaders is that of making the case for effective public policy in a focused, evidence-based, yet politically and publicly compelling manner.
