McGill Podcasts » Cutting Edge Lectures: Recent Episodes
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Approximately 20 per cent of Canadians suffer from chronic pain, making it not only the number one reason that people seek health care, but also the number one concern of patients with long-term illnesses. Chronic pain drains more than $10-billion annually in lost productivity and health-care services from the Canadian economy, which is more than [...]
Dr. Anthony Ricciardi talks about “biological invasions” and how they can cause extinctions, disrupt ecosystems, alter natural resources, threaten human health, and even pose national security problems. He further discusses how ecologists are planning “assisted colonization” for species to rescue species threatened by climate change.
We live in a Universe of remarkable structure. From super-clusters of galaxies, tens of millions of light years across, to grand-design spiral galaxies and small rocky planets like Earth, structure exists on all scales. It wasn’t always this way: through the extraordinary advancements of observational cosmology of the last several decades, we now [...]
Speaker: Christie Rowe (Assistant Professor, Dept. Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University) Earthquakes happen every day all over the world. Most are concentrated along the boundaries of tectonic plates, but occasionally, earthquakes happen where we don’t expect them. How do these events start? What controls the location of earthquakes? And what happens to all the [...]
More than a billion people, mostly in developing nations, still serve as hosts to roundworms. They are a source of diseases that often kill – yet medicines for these diseases have generally been adopted from veterinary use and have not been optimized for humans. This lecture provides an introduction to parasitic diseases of poverty and [...]
Professor Costopoulos argues that while humans are probably selected to have a limited ability to make good decisions. Under the ‘diversity-tolerance’ model of cultural evolution, humans are smart enough to come up with a range of potential solutions to the problems we face but not very good at determining which solution is the best.
As a specialist in three-dimensional modeling of the living brain, Alan Evans works to understand neurological pathologies inside-out: the natural history of a disease,” He asks: “What parts of the brain exhibit abnormal changes in cortical thickness, for example, over the duration of Alzheimer’s disease? How does that brain map relate to behaviours, such as [...]
By Elena Bennett (Natural Resource Sciences and McGill School of Environment, McGill) Agricultural landscapes can provide many different ecosystem services, including food, high quality freshwater, opportunities for recreation, and flood control. Yet we often focus narrowly on the production of food, which can unintentionally undermine provision of other key services. The idea of managing for [...]
Of the nearly 600 species and subspecies of primates living today, approximately half are in danger of going extinct. In fact, one subspecies in West Africa, Miss Waldron’s red colobus, is likely extinct. Furthermore, the number of recognized threats to primate survival has increased dramatically over the last decade. A decade ago, disease was not [...]
Every tissue in the body requires blood flow to bring nutrients to the tissue. For this reason, there is significant therapeutic advantage to controlling when and where new blood vessels develop. If we could induce new blood vessels, we could improve wound healing. In situation likes cancer, inhibiting blood vessels from growing into a tumour [...]
This talk takes an overview of the history and the challenges of prediction, from the oracle at Delphi, right up to the latest methods being developed in areas such as systems biology and economics — and argues that our search for the “perfect model” often reveals as much about our sense of aesthetics as it [...]
Advances in electronics, optics and nanotechnology have led to a tremendous progress in optical imaging over the past years. Gonzalo Cosa presents the specific case of fluorescence imaging, where the possibility of visualizing single fluorescent molecules with exquisite resolution gave rise to the field of Single Molecule Spectroscopy.
The Oil Sands of Alberta present many environmental challenges. Stan Boutin focuses on how terrestrial ecosystems and their components can be conserved in this heavily industrialized landscape.
Arctic regions are experiencing high degrees of environmental change, including thinning of arctic sea ice, increased deposition of airborne pollutants, as well as evidence of a longer growing season. Marianne Douglas uses examples from our research on lakes and ponds in the Canadian High Arctic to show some of the practical applications of paleolimnology in [...]
Canada’s western interior has one of the world’s most variable climates, with severe drought and torrential rainstorms experienced in recent years. The extreme climate events in this region have been some of the most costly natural disasters in Canada history. Climate models suggest that this hydroclimatic variability could be amplified by global warming — presenting [...]
Dinosaurs have undergone a remarkable renaissance in recent decades. Far from being sluggish reptilian monsters doomed to extinction, new discoveries and new methods of scientific investigation have revealed dinosaurs as complex, highly active animals capable of sophisticated behaviors and as one of the most diverse and successful groups of land creatures in the history of [...]
Maya Saleh discusses what we have recently learned on the role of our innate immune response in inflammatory diseases and cancer, with a focus on intestinal pathologies, including inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and colorectal cancer.
Yogita Chudasama discusses how neuroscientists have been able to successfully exploit a conceptual framework, derived from research in human experimental psychology, which decomposes cognition into its basic building blocks.
What do butterfly wings, Venus flower baskets and healthy doses of elements from the Periodic Table have to do with conveying digital data, music, voice and video by light? They can all be designed to make “light work”.
In the history of the universe, there is a period which is extremely difficult for us to see because there were no sources of light. These cosmic “dark ages” ended when the first stars turned on, providing the first view of the somewhat evolved universe.
Warwick Vincent explains how global climate change will be increasingly accompanied by discontinuous shifts in aquatic ecosystem structue and function.
Almost mythical creatures, seahorses have the potential to capture the public imagination and inspire action for marine conservation.
If we could functionally erase a memory to make someone’s life better would that be acceptable? What if the memory was of a trauma that has incapacitated someone for decades? Why do we need memories if they keep us down? In a very playful manner, Dr. Karim Nader addresses some of the science that is [...]
The connection between textiles and mathematics is intimate but not often explored, possibly because textiles and fiber arts have traditionally been the domain of women while mathematics was viewed as a male endeavour. How times have changed! Today, textiles and mathematics, like art and science, are recognized for their interwoven, complimentary attributes. In this presentation, [...]
The treatment of complex diseases like cancer may lie in grasping their mechanisms at all levels of biological hierarchy. Most research focuses on understanding how genes cause cancer from within a cell, but much can be learned from intercell interaction. In this regard, cancer cells are not only “antisocial”, but also exhibit a “gang culture”, [...]
In this installation of “The Cutting Edge”, chemistry professor Christopher Barrett describes an emerging new guiding principle for materials development at McGill, based on bio-mimicry and self-assembly as an inspiration and a toolbox.
Dr. Andrew D. Miall (Professor of Geology at the Geology Department, University of Toronto) presents six popular myths that complicate the development of good public policies, though they may make the arguments for protecting our environment stronger. This lecture was recorded as part of the Royal Society of Canada’s “The Cutting Edge” seminar series.
As part of the Royal Society of Canada’s “The Cutting Edge” series, Nathalie Tufenkji from the Department of Chemical Engineering discusses her work aimed at preventing the binding of infectious organisms to medical devices and to mammalian cell surfaces using an active component of cranberries. This research has applications in fields ranging from medicine to [...]
Dr. Andrew Kirk of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering describes some of the current research being done as to the applications of nanophotonics in the future of telecommunications and also in the field of biosensing. This lecture was recorded as part of the Royal Society of Canada’s “The Cutting Edge” seminar series.
Dr. Stephen Suomi, Chair of the Laboratory of Comparative Ethology at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, speaks on risk, resilience, and gene X environment interactions in rhesus monkeys and other primates.