As Canada’s flu season collides with record strep A cases and ongoing COVID-19 concerns, a new study is shedding light on our understanding of respiratory immune responses. Scholars from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) have discovered a surprising facet about a century-old vaccine for tuberculosis, Bacillus Calmette Guérin (BCG).

Today, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced the selection of 126 extraordinary early-career researchers as recipients of the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship. Amongst the recipients is Courtney Y. Paquette, (Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics). Candidates are nominated by their colleagues, and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his or her field. Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship to further their research.

As many as one in five Canadian households can be considered to be in energy poverty, according to researchers from McGill University. Energy poverty occurs when households cannot afford or access the levels of energy necessary to meet their daily needs, live decent lives, and maintain healthy indoor temperatures all year round. More Canadians potentially suffer from energy poverty than from food insecurity.

More than ever before, there is a growing interest in dedicating resources to stop the loss of biodiversity, as recently exemplified by the

The Board of Governors of McGill University approved the nomination of Pierre Boivin as the University’s 21st Chancellor. Mr. Boivin has been appointed for a three-year term, beginning on July 1, 2024. He will succeed Chancellor John McCall MacBain, whose current term will end on June 30, 2024. His nomination stems from a rigorous process that was launched last summer by the Nominating, Governance and Ethics Committee.

Hydrogels are engineered materials, which absorb and retain water and are currently used in various medical treatments, including dressing wounds. The problem with current hydrogels is that they adhere indiscriminately to all surfaces, which means that wound dressing can potentially damage delicate tissue as it is healing.

Global polls typically show that people in industrialized countries where incomes are relatively high report greater levels of satisfaction with life than those in low-income countries.

But now the first large-scale survey to look at happiness in small, non-industrialized communities living close to nature paints quite a different picture.

Looking at happiness in non-industrialized settings

In a study that signals potential reproductive and health complications in humans, now and for future generations, researchers from McGill University, the University of Pretoria, Université Laval, Aarhus University, and the University of Copenhagen, have concluded that fathers exposed to environmental toxins, notably DDT, may produce sperm with health consequences for their children.

The decade-long research project examined the impact of DDT on the sperm epigenome of South African Vhavenda and Greenlandic Inuit men, some of whom live in Canada’s North.

In Canada, only 1 in 5 children who need mental health services receive them. Clinical and psychiatric programs, while effective, can involve long wait times and prohibitive costs. A new study involving McGill University researchers points to a solution to fill the gap: a low-cost, community-based program that has seen inspiring results.

As Canadians share more and more genetic data with service providers such as insurance companies or databases like Ancestry.com, the potential for discrimination based on this data is growing. Known as Genetic Discrimination (GD), this practice is broadly defined as the differential treatment of an individual compared to the rest of the population based on actual or presumed genetic information.

One of the things that makes developing effective treatments for Parkinson’s disease so challenging is its complexity. While some forms are caused by genetics, others have environmental factors, and patients can show a wide range of symptoms of varying severity. Diagnosis of Parkinson’s is also currently made very late, after the disease may have been in the brain for a decade or more.

A new project led by McGill University researchers seeks to understand one of humanity’s oldest practices and most powerful tools—storytelling. From ancient oral traditions to modern-day literature and digital narratives, storytelling is an essential part of the lived experience that is not yet fully understood. ‘The Lives of Literary Characters’ is a first-of-its-kind initiative, harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and the collective wisdom of readers worldwide to explore the question: why do we tell stories?

As the COVID-19 pandemic raises questions about efficient ventilation and the climate crisis threatens to exacerbate extreme temperatures, efficient building design is front of mind for today’s architects. But what can we learn from architectural techniques that were developed more than 100 years ago?

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, including Professor Daryl Haggard at McGill University, has released new images of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, using data from observations taken in April 2018. With the participation of the newly commissioned Greenland Telescope and a dramatically improved recording rate across the array, the 2018 observations give us a view of the source independent from the first observations in 2017.

A recent study from researchers in Canada and Germany has revealed that an unlikely event, occurring over 12 million years ago played an important role in shaping one of Canada’s most damaging invasive species. Zebra and quagga mussels, belonging to the Dreissenid family, are widespread freshwater invasive species throughout North America that present a significant danger to native ecosystems by competing for resources. Using a fibrous anchor called a byssus, Dreissenid mussels contribute to biofouling on surfaces and obstruct intake structures in power stations and water treatment plants.

Every year an estimated 20 million babies worldwide are born with low birth weight, according to the World Health Organization, leading to a wide range of significant short- and long-term consequences. And though you may think the obvious answer is greater emphasis on food and nutrition for pregnant women, leading McGill University researchers are proposing an unexpected solution: the cellphone.

A McGill-led team of researchers have made an important discovery shedding light on the genetic basis of a rare skeletal disorder. The study, published in Nature Communications, reveals that a defect in a specific gene (heterozygous variants in the matrix Gla protein, or MGP) may cause a disorder that affects the structure of connective tissues that supports the body.

Fleeting blasts of energy from space, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), are a cosmic enigma. A Canadian-led international team of researchers has published new findings suggesting that supernovae are the predominant contributors to forming sources that eventually produce FRBs.