Rocking with Dr. Rosen

It started out innocently enough. Dr. Harry Rosen, DDS'53, wanted to move some rocks from the waterfront at his family cottage in the Laurentian Mountains. That work led to building patios and Stonehenge-like rock gardens. Which led to erecting walls. Which led eventually to free-standing Inukshuk-style sculpture.

A McGill emeritus professor of dentistry specializing in prosthodontics, Rosen has been moving rocks and boulders as a hobby for a long time now and shows no signs of stopping. He's shown here with his latest creation, Universal Woman on the Half Shell, inspired partly by Botticelli's Venus, which takes his previous work on Inukshuks into new territory.

"It's a study in balance," says Rosen, who has spent over two years on the project but is no Sisyphus judging by his enthusiasm. "All the rocks are laid down around a centre post. It could only be done with the proper engineering. It's different from conventional sculpture where you work from the top down, cutting into fine-grained marble like Michelangelo."

It's engineering that Rosen has perfected over time, splitting, carving and sanding rocks to suit his purpose. The work finds a surprising parallel in his dentistry career, where Rosen has rebuilt people's mouths and teeth with comparable methods of shaping and chiselling, creating coherent structure out of broken and disfigured dental bits.

All the rock Rosen works with comes from the area around his cottage and all the work is done by hand. He has built a stone amphitheatre in the woods and used the stone to winterize his cottage walls. The 12-foot-high Universal Woman emerged from eight to ten tons of rock that the 74-year-old Rosen moved himself, the base of which was a massive, 4-ton "half shell." The large boulders he moves with a system of pulleys, chains and winches. It's a great workout, says Rosen, who credits his keenness for staying fit -- and he is in remarkable shape -- to lessons he learned at McGill. "Why go to the gym when I can do this?" Rosen exclaims.

When he's not working with rock, Rosen teaches at the Montreal General Hospital, where he is head of the Prosthetic Division of the McGill Multidisciplinary Residency program. And he travels around the world representing McGill and lecturing on prosthodontics, a field in which he has been honoured as a leader in Quebec, Canada and the United States, which presented him with the prestigious American Academy of Operative Dentistry's Award of Excellence in 1996.

This year marks Rosen's 50th anniversary since graduating from McGill and Homecoming in October promises to be a special reunion. "We're hoping to get a lot of people out to it," says Rosen. "Maybe they'll see me in the magazine and come!"

New Cooking Oil Fights Fats

	Owen Egan

Researchers at the Macdonald Campus have potentially come up with some good news for calorie counters. A blended cooking oil used in two new studies enables people to heighten their metabolism, lower their cholesterol and in certain cases lose weight. The studies by Peter Jones, a professor at McGill's School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, have been published in four journals, including the International Journal of Obesity.

Jones (pictured above) and his research team tested a cooking oil made up of tropical oils, olive oil, canola oil, flaxseed oil, coconut oil and plant extracts called phytosterols, calling the resulting combination "functional oil" for the time being.

The oil "is directed towards the liver for combustion and burned as energy," says Jones. "[It's] not stored in the body as fat and heightens the metabolism, which is key in maintaining a healthy body weight."

Jones says there is evidence that oils rich in fats called medium chain triglycerides -- as his oil is -- could reduce appetite. In his study, male participants lost an average of one pound per month. The bad news for women is that while female participants did experience heightened metabolic rates, they didn't drop any pounds. The oil also lowered participants' cholesterol "by over 13 percent," says Jones, compared to olive oil at 4.5 percent. "We're pretty impressed, since olive oil was considered the best cholesterol fighter until now."

Participants weren't living off lawn clippings and berries in the study either. "We reproduced a typical North American diet or what could be found in a greasy spoon." Plain tropical oils have a bad reputation but Jones says, "Tropical oils with phytosterols are actually fat-busters."

The $400,000 study was funded by Forbes-Medi-Tech, which holds the patent to the functional oil.

"It doesn't take much -- 100 to 200 extra calories per day over a decade -- to make you obese," says Jones. "Controlling obesity is all about engineering a balance between calorie intake and calorie burn."

Rising Star Roberts

Chances are you've seen a lot of Sam Roberts, BA'98, lately. His shaggy-bearded mug adorned the cover of Toro magazine last month and his soulful blue eyes were featured on the cover of Chart. There have been recent pieces in Maclean's, La Presse and the National Post. And, yes, that was Sam a few weeks ago, launching his brand-new video on MuchMusic.

That's a lot of commotion for someone who just released his first full-length CD. Music critics and record company executives are betting that Roberts is on the cusp of big-time stardom. He certainly has that most precious of songwriting gifts -- the ability to craft a catchy melody you just can't shake. Add to that Roberts's good looks, his energetic stage presence, his thoughtful lyrics and his true-believer dedication to rock and roll, and it's no wonder that Toro declares, "You just can't help but feel that this guy is the genuine article."

Is all the media buzz surrounding his new record, We Were Born in a Flame, making Roberts nervous? "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't," he responds. "The record will do what it does. Now that the CD is [in the stores], it is mostly out of our hands."

Much of the excitement around Roberts relates to what he achieved last summer. His six-song EP, The Inhuman Condition, was a surprise success, drawing rave reviews and spawning the hit single, "Brother Down." As a result, Roberts picked up Juno Award nominations for best single and best new artist and recently garnered three MuchMusic Video Award nominations to boot.

The EP was put together as an audition tape meant for the ears of only a handful of music company talent scouts. "It was never intended to be on the radio or to be in stores," says Roberts. "The EP was fairly haphazard in how we put it together and I think people ended up liking it because it was haphazard."

Critics have taken note of how Roberts's tunes frequently dart back and forth between themes of melancholy and hopefulness. "This album is full of mournful songs that feel joyous," says the Globe and Mail. "I think that's an accurate reflection of reality," offers Roberts. "That's how we all live. No matter how high you get, there is always something pulling you back down, and vice versa. I don't think my music is ever despairing. There is always a bit of hope at the centre."