Life, love and chemistry

Newsbites

Keep on kayakin'

In the Fall '99 McGill News we told you about McGill wildlife biology student Ilya Klvana and his 7,380-kilometre kayak expedition from Prince Rupert, B.C., to Montreal. The indomitable Klvana, having arrived in Montreal in late September, decided to continue on to Newfoundland.

Before paddling off again for parts east, Klvana had kayaked for 32 hours straight in order to make it to a reception in his honour at the Macdonald Campus. He used the old voyageur's trick of napping and paddling at the same time -- opening his eyes every few seconds to avoid hazards and collisions -- bringing new meaning to that student favourite "pulling an all-nighter." Though he arrived at the campus 2 1/2 hours late in the pouring rain, Klvana was welcomed by cheering Mac students and professors, the Dean of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and his family.

The addition of a twelfth, and no doubt frosty, leg to his trip takes him from Montreal to L'Anse-aux-Meadows at the northern tip of Newfoundland, stretching the expedition from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Klvana's aim is to raise awareness of the threat to the nation's waterways and the wildlife they support.

You can read his expedition journal on the web at www.mcgill.ca/kayak/.

Digital dance music

Owen Egan

The future of audio on the Internet was previewed recently in an unusual collaborative performance between the McGill University Swing Band and a group of New York University dance students. In September, the two ensembles took part in the first ever real-time multichannel audio Internet demonstration, with the NYU students dancing in New York to music performed by the McGill students at Redpath Hall on the University campus in Montreal. While the Swing Band swung, their sound was streamed across a high-performance network over the Internet as a five-channel audio signal and reproduced live in high fidelity for an audience watching the dancers in the Cantor Film Center on the NYU campus.

The event was possible thanks to software developed at the University by McGill engineering professor Jeremy Cooperstock and members of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), an international organization of audio technology professionals, working at McGill. The high-speed network and huge bandwidth necessary for such a transmission was provided by CANARIE Inc. in Canada and Internet 2 Corporation in the U.S. AES technical chair and McGill music professor Wieslaw Woszczyk said this type of audio demonstration is "much more appealing than the current telephone conferencing model because it offers an experience more like a movie theatre."

Love, life and chemistry

Owen Egan

Ever wondered about the big cholesterol kerfuffle, and what it means to you? Or about what happens to your synapses when you fall deeply in love (or lust)? If you have, you should know about McGill's new Office for Chemistry and Society (OCS). Since 1981, David Harpp, McGill's current chair of Chemistry, has collaborated with Joe Schwarcz, BSc'69, PhD'74, and Ariel Fenster, PhD'73, to bring everyday chemistry to the non-specialist, through their highly popular "The World of Chemistry" undergraduate course, as well as numerous public lectures and stage shows that aim to improve the science literacy of the general public. The course draws rave reviews; one satisfied student, Margaret Swain, LLB'93, calls it "one of the most important courses taught at McGill University" because of its commitment to making the obscure but important realm of chemistry accessible. The hordes that throng into the lecture hall each term support her claims.

"The OCS is an outgrowth of our activities together for the last 20 years: courses, lectures, our 'Magic of Chemistry' stage show," Harpp explains. Schwarcz, who until this year was also a full-time faculty member at Vanier CEGEP, is the OCS's inaugural director, while Fenster, also at Vanier, is director of communications. The Office, opened with some chemical pizzazz by Principal Shapiro, will coordinate the course as well as a range of outreach and continuing education projects. "There is no other centre like this in Canada," notes Harpp proudly.

The team has impressive credentials as public educators. Schwarcz has science shows on CJAD and the Discovery channel, columns on the chemistry of everyday life in the Montreal Gazette and the Washington Post, and a book of collected writings, Radar, Hula Hoops and Playful Pigs, just published by ECW Press. Fenster is also a regular in both French and English media, and has published extensively on the teaching of chemistry.

The OCS's physical office is in the Otto Maass Building, while the virtual office can be found at www.mcgill.ca/chempublic/.