news

Campus - 09.02.2021

How accurate are first impressions on a first date?
The high stakes of first dates require would-be partners to make and interpret first impressions. But, can we rely on these first impressions to accurately assess someone's personality? According to researchers from McGill University , the answer is yes, although it may be more difficult than in more casual settings.

Social Sciences - Campus - 08.02.2021

Happiness really does come for free
Economic growth is often prescribed as a sure way of increasing the well-being of people in low-income countries, but a study led by McGill and the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) suggests that there may be good reason to question this assumption.

Life Sciences - Campus - 03.02.2021

When the bloom is off: why do some plants produce small and unattractive flowers?
Picture a flower: what do you see? A bright and showy splash of contrasting colours? Well, not all plants produce flowers that are only like that. Some plant species actually produce two types: "normal" ones that look great, and "runts" that are small, never open and, rather than attract pollinating insects, instead pollinate themselves.

Campus - Economics - 20.01.2021

How Fellow Students Improve Your Own Grades
Better grades thanks to your fellow students? A study conducted by the University of Zurich's Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics has revealed that not only the grade point average, gender and nationality peers can influence your own academic achievement, but so can their personalities. Intensive contact and interaction with persistent fellow students improve your own performance, and this effect even endures in subsequent semesters.

Environment - Campus - 20.01.2021

Methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells underestimated
Bubbles of methane gas in water around an unplugged oil/gas well in Pennsylvania . CREDIT: Mary Kang A recent McGill study published in Environmental Science and Technology finds that annual methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas (AOG) wells in Canada and the US have been greatly underestimated - by as much as 150% in Canada, and by 20% in the US.

Paleontology - Campus - 19.01.2021

Discovery of new praying mantis species from the time of the dinosaurs
Artist's interpretation of Labradormantis guilbaulti in liftoff among the leaves of a sycamore tree, Labrador, around 100 million years ago. The interpretation is based on fossils (for the wings) and living and extinct relatives (for the rest of the body). Fossilized sycamore leaves have been found in the same deposits as the mantis wings and show that this new insect species would have lived in a lush warm temperate forest during the Cretaceous.

Astronomy / Space Science - Campus - 18.01.2021

A ’super-puff’ planet like no other
The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, according to a Canadian-led team of astronomers, including McGill University Professor Eve Lee. This intriguing discovery by Caroline Piaulet of the Université de Montréal under the supervision of Björn Benneke suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more easily than previously believed.

Campus - Life Sciences - 15.01.2021

Well-built muscles underlie athletic performance in birds
Muscle structure and body size predict the athletic performance of Olympic athletes, such as sprinters. The same, it appears, is true of wild seabirds that can commute hundreds of kilometres a day to find food, according to a recent paper by scientists from McGill and Colgate universities published in the Journal of Experimental Biology .

Campus - Law - 08.01.2021

Child marriage is legal and persists across Canada
Canada is at the forefront of global efforts to end child marriage abroad. Yet this practice remains legal and persists across the country. In Canada, more than 3,600 marriage certificates were issued to children, usually girls, under the age of 18 between 2000 and 2018, according to a new study from researchers at McGill University.

Environment - Campus - 05.01.2021

Identifying Canada’s key conservation hot spots highlights problem
To stop biodiversity loss, Canada recently committed to protecting 30% of its land and sea by 2030. But making conservation decisions about where to locate new protected areas is complicated. It depends on data both about biodiversity and about a range of benefits (e.g. freshwater, climate regulation, recreation) that people get from nature.

Environment - Campus - 21.12.2020

Climate change: threshold for dangerous warming will likely be crossed between 2027-2042
The threshold for dangerous global warming will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042 - a much narrower window than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate of between now and 2052. In a study published in Climate Dynamics , researchers from McGill University introduce a new and more precise way to project the Earth's temperature.

Social Sciences - Campus - 16.12.2020

How the spread of the Internet is changing migration
The spread of the Internet is shaping migration in profound ways. A McGill-led study of over 150 countries links Internet penetration with migration intentions and behaviours, suggesting that digital connectivity plays a key role in migration decisions and actively supports the migration process. Countries with higher proportions of Internet users tend to have more people who are willing to emigrate.

Environment - Campus - 15.12.2020

’Peecycling’ payoff: Urine diversion shows multiple environmental benefits when used at city scale
Diverting urine away from municipal wastewater treatment plants and recycling the nutrient-rich liquid to make crop fertilizer would result in multiple environmental benefits when used at city scale, according to a new University of Michigan-led study. The study, published online Dec. 15 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, modeled large-scale, centralized urine-diversion and fertilizer-processing systems-none of which currently exist-and compared their expected environmental impacts to conventional wastewater treatment and fertilizer production methods.

Life Sciences - Campus - 04.12.2020

Sustainably managed fisheries provide a safeguard against global food insecurity
Thanks to the pandemic, we know just how quickly food can disappear from supermarket shelves. But it is hard to gauge the vulnerability of our food production system as a whole to abrupt changes, such as those that could be caused by extreme events such as a nuclear war or massive volcanic eruptions.

Campus - Pedagogy - 02.12.2020

Parents shouldn’t worry about their baby’s inconsistent sleep patterns
New parents often expect their baby to start sleeping through the night around the time they reach six months of age. But according to a new study led by Professor Marie-Hélène Pennestri, parents should view sleep consolidation as a process, instead of a milestone to be achieved at a specific age. Tracking 44 infants over a period of two weeks, she found that sleeping patterns vary greatly - not only for different babies, but also night to night for the same baby.

Campus - 17.11.2020

New Edition Personnel Magazine UGent’ers Now Available!
The second edition of UGent'ers will arrive in your mailbox this week. Sneak-preview: Claudia and Wuxia compare Ghent to their hometown, Napels and Guizhou.

History / Archeology - Campus - 10.11.2020

Hundreds of Copies of Newton’s Principia Found in New Census
In a story of lost and stolen books and scrupulous detective work across continents, a Caltech historian and his former student have unearthed previously uncounted copies of Isaac Newton's groundbreaking science book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , known more colloquially as the Principia .

Health - Campus - 02.11.2020

Mind the gap: Discrepancies in walking assessments for people with Multiple Sclerosis
Significant gaps in how walking capacity and performance is assessed for people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) could be harming therapy and treatment development according to McGill University researchers. The study, published in the International Journal of MS Care , examined the differential between measurement tools for clinical walking capacity and real-world performance.

Health - Campus - 28.10.2020

Poor memory tied to attention lapses and media multitasking
Stanford researchers are connecting the dots between attention and memory to explain why we remember certain things and forget others, why some people remember better than others and how media multitasking affects how well we recall. The eyes may be the windows to the soul, but they can also provide insightful glimpses into memory.

Health - Campus - 19.10.2020

Studies investigate need for and impact of culturally aware mentorship training
Higher education institutions frequently offer mentored research experiences to increase undergraduate student interest, motivation and preparedness for research careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematic and Medicine (STEMM) fields. However, for participating students from historically underrepresented groups, unaddressed cultural factors may hinder engagement and result in a less effective mentoring relationship.