Recent News April 2007

Dr. Juan Vera, Chapter President , and Dr. M.A. Whitehead, Honorary Life President and Permanent Vice-President of the McGill-Montreal Chapter, attended both Thursday, 29th. and Friday, 30th. March, the 4th.Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Symposium, to choose the best Interdisciplinary Research Poster and Oral Presentation to receive a Certificate of Recognition and Associate Membership in the McGill-Montreal Chapter of Sigma Xi
The winners were:
Karine Fénelon (Physiology, Université de Montréal) for her Oral Presentation
"Understanding the Physiology of Locomotion: from Fish to Man"
Poulomi Sanyal (Biomedical Engineering, Medicine, McGill) for
her Poster Presentation,"Microfabrication of microfluidic probes and their use for biological applications"
Two Chapter Members who were ineligible for these Awards were awarded Certificates of Excellence for their exemplary Oral Presentation which demonstrated their excellent Interdisciplinary Research from theory to experiment to spectroscopy to predictions for Dendrtic Structures and Nano Fabrication:
Thomas Lazzara (Chemistry and Pulp and Paper, McGill) for his
Oral Presentation, "Nanotubes from alternating co-polymers of styrene"
for which he received also a Book Prize, "Fakes and Forgery"
Rami Hourani (Chemistry, McGill) for his Oral Presentation,
"Bifunctional Dendritic Systems as multipurpose nanomaterials" for which
he also received a Book Prize: "Espionage"

To recognise the superb organisation of the 4th IGSRS the seven Student Organisers were Elected to Associate Membership in the McGill-Montreal Chapter of Sigma Xi:
Maria de Boef (Sociology, McGill) Social Events, Logistics
Ed Hudson (Chemistry, McGill) Co-ordinator, Publicity
Sophie-Anne Lamour (Pharmacology, McGill) Fundraising, Budget
Neil Oliiver (Mathematics, McGill) Web-site, Abstract Volume
Elvis Pandzic (Physics, McGill) Keynote Speaker Inviter
Graydon Snider (Chemistry, McGill) Judging
Lydia Bourouiba (Atmospheric Oceanic Sciences, McGill) AOS co-ordinator, Fundraiser.

An interested and questioning crowd of Members and Friends listened to Dr. Michael Smith analyse and interpret to see whether the various ways that the Census Data from Canada and The USA differed for Employment Income(EI/Unemployment income(UI) and non-employed influenced conclusions. An animated discussion followed the Lecture and gave a real understanding to the use and misuse of primary data if the underlying assumptions behind the data were not known. Dr. Juan Vera, Chapter President , and Dr. M.A. Whitehead, Honorary Life President and Permanent Vice-President of the McGill-Montreal Chapter, and Dr. Gritzena Wilchek attended the 2007 Bell Science Fair at Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School 13 800 boul. Pierrefonds, Pierrefonds QC H9A 1A7,on Monday 1st. April, at which The McGill-Montreal Sigma Xi Chapter sponsored 3 Sigma Xi awards for the best Indisciplinary Presentations at the 2007 edition of the Bell Science Fair.The prizes include a Certificate of Recognition and a one year Associate Membership of the McGill-Chapter of Sigma Xi. They were all worried by the apparent lower standards of the Presentations compared to earlier years: the students had immense quantities of information, but no knowledge, logic, idea of the scientific method and a disastrous dependence on web-page information and references. Web-page references are invalid: primary references on the web-page must be found and given.