Newsbites (Page 4)

Brains eat breakfast

Dr. Peter Jones of the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition has joined a select group of academics. In September, he was invited to address a group of Parliamentarians in Ottawa at a "Bacon and Eggheads" educational breakfast. The breakfast series, organized under the auspices of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, brings together policy-makers and experts in a variety of fields.

What did Jones talk about? Well, breakfast, among other things. He addressed the issue of "functional foods," that is, foods which have some added value apart from their nutritional content. An example is omega-3 eggs, which contain less fat and cholesterol than conventional eggs because the hens which produce them are raised on feed containing oils similar to the "good" oils found in fish. These oils may reduce the risks of heart disease, autoimmune disorders, type-2 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease.

Last year, Kellogg Cereals began promoting a line of foods known as Ensemble. Products like pasta, frozen dinners and breakfast cereals containing high-fibre and cholesterol-lowering psyllium husks were tested. They were not a hit with consumers, although that may have been due to confusion with genetically modified food. Jones was at pains to point out that there is no genetic mixing in the case of functional food.

The job of policy-makers, Jones told his audience, is "to allow the opportunities for these foods to exist" and "to protect consumers against false or unsafe claims." According to Jones, "The consumer and Canadian society stand to benefit from functional foods -- to increase health and wellness and also, thereby, to reduce the cost to health care." That's a benefit that might save the bacon of a lot of politicians.

Fourth rock from the sun

The Martian meteorite with the catchy name, ALH84001, is back in the news again. The 4-billion-year-old hunk of extraterrestrial rock first created a media sensation in 1996 when researchers, including McGill's Dr. Hojatollah Vali, suggested that it showed signs of having harboured life.

Vali and scientists from the California Institute of Technology and Vanderbilt University have continued to study the meteorite since then. Their analysis of its magnetic field now suggests that the interior of ALH84001 was never heated above 40° Celsius, either before its ejection from the surface of Mars or during entry into Earth's atmosphere. (Found in Antarctica in the Allan Hills icefield -- hence ALH -- the meteorite is believed to have crash landed about 13,000 years ago.) A temperature of 40° Celsius is not high enough to sterilize most bacteria.

Vali, a professor in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Anatomy and Cell Biology, says these latest findings mean that meteorites could be an interplanetary delivery system capable of transferring life or the components of life between planets. He adds that the theory of cosmic ancestry holds that primitive life must have evolved elsewhere before coming to Earth, since the genetic programs for higher evolution cannot be explained by random mutation and recombination among genes of single-celled organisms.

As he has since the life on Mars stories first hit the headlines, Vali urges caution. He will carry on his investigations, both at NASA and at McGill, which he says has one of the best electron microscopy facilities in North America. "What we have so far are indications and indirect evidence, not proof. So our work continues."

Charting our course

Quebec's Ministry of Education has asked the province's universities to set out their plans for the future in some detail. The Minister has promised to divert $80 million in new funding to the universities and wants to know how they'll spend it.

Once each university's "contrat de performance" has been discussed and approved, it will then form the basis upon which the school can be periodically evaluated. Members of senior administration worked on McGill's submission over the summer, and in September, Vice Principal (Academic) Luc Vinet led a delegation to Quebec City to present the University's list of priorities. Some examples:

• To achieve a zero-debt situation by the end of the 2002-03 fiscal year.

• To hire 100 new professors each year over the next ten years to ensure faculty renewal. At McGill, as at many other universities in North America, a disproportionately large number of staff -- hired to teach baby boomers -- are now reaching retirement age.

• To improve the University's student-to-faculty ratio to 20:1.

• To increase the proportion of international students at McGill to 25% of enrolment. The number is currently around 15% among undergraduates, rising to 22% at the graduate level.

• To maintain McGill's admission standards, presently among the highest in Canada.

• To increase the financial support available to graduate students by creating more scholarships and teaching assistantships.

• To build expertise and create new program offerings in the areas of software engineering, bioinformatics and language acquisition.

• To establish better coordination among the library collections at McGill and Montreal's three other large downtown schools (Université de Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal and Concordia).