The Reporter

Miles speaks English, French, Arabic, Spanish and basic Hebrew. / Photo Claudio Calligaris

By Neale McDevitt

Arielle Miles likes logic. That’s one of the reasons she was drawn toward chemistry at Seekonk High School, in Seekonk, Mass. “The periodic table makes so much sense,” she said with a laugh. “You go from left to right, there are certain trends and each element has one more proton.” more

Dr. Ronald Melzack O.C. – Professor Emeritus in Psychology, former E.P. Taylor Chair in Pain Studies. / Photo: Claudio Calligaris

The king of (understanding) pain

By Mark Shainblum

Dr. Ronald Melzack is an emeritus professor of psychology at McGill who revolutionized the study and treatment of pain. His historic partnership with Dr. Patrick Wall of MIT led to the 1985 publication of the Gate Control Theory of Pain, which overturned the then-accepted view of pain as a primitive and static danger warning system. more

McGill’s Quidditch team shows no signs of hanging up the brooms for the season. The down to earth version of the game came to McGill in September. / Photo: Owen Egan

Muggle version of Harry Potter game takes off, sort of

By Jim Hynes

It’s the campus sports craze that’s sweeping the nation.

Quidditch, or the Muggle version of the high-flying team sport born in the imagination of Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, has come to McGill. more

To tackle problems as complex as childhood obesity and food crises, “the everyday economic machine has to be revisited,” said Laurette Dubé. / Photo: Owen Egan

Building a hub for health and economic research

By Chris Chipello

McGill’s annual Health Challenge Think Tank conference has come a long way since marketing professor Laurette Dubé launched it five years ago.  And the forum is poised to take another big step forward in the coming year – a step that promises to turn McGill into a year-round global hub for scientific and policy research on health and economic issues such as childhood obesity and food security. more

The right chemistry

Hanadi Sleiman, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, has won the Canadian Society for Chemistry’s Strem Chemicals Award. The Award is presented to a chemist working in Canada who has made an outstanding contribution to inorganic chemistry that demonstrates exceptional promise. more

If you have any kind of yard whatsoever you probably have leaves to rake in the fall. And while it’s tempting to go au natural when it comes to tree debris (we don’t rake the forest, do we?), there is a good reason to clean up Mother Nature’s leafy waste in urban and suburban areas: uncollected leaves can clog up sewers and other drainage systems and cause flooding. more