Piping Hot
The Simon Fraser University Pipe Band wins its sixth world championship in Glasgow, Scotland. This is the second year in a row that SFU has come first, prompting Edinburgh’s premier newspaper, The Scotsman, to lament the state of Scots piping that results in a Canadian band winning and Irish bands coming second and third.

Rethinking Canada in the World
Canada needs a bold global vision if it is to rebuild its credibility in the world, according to a report by the SFU-based Canada’s World project. Shauna Sylvester, founding director of Canada’s World and a fellow at the Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, says the report was compiled after a year-long study including opinion research, deliberative dialogues, and social media tools. <www.canadasworld.ca>

Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip goes deep to survey the health of Mexican coral reefs.

Thelma Finlayson continues to be one of the strongest supporters of students SFU has ever had.

Woman of Distinction
Chemist Sophie Lavieri wins a YWCA Woman of Distinction award in the education, training, and development category. She has also won teaching excellence awards from both the university and the Faculty of Science for inspiring children to take an interest in science by making chemistry fun.

TOO MANY COLOURS
We can’t see all the colours available on our cell phone screens, so why waste battery power displaying them? Good question. Now MSC student Johnson Chuang and his colleagues have managed to slash the power consumption of an OLED panel by 40% with minimal effect on how people see the image.

Miss B.C.
Sandra Gin is Miss B.C. 2009. The Grade 12 English teacher and SFU MA student wanted to volunteer to work at the event, but instead found herself the winning contestant..

Climate Change and Health in B.C.
A new report says not enough is being done in the province to study climate change and its impact on health. The report is written by five researchers, including health scientists Tim Takaro and Kate Bassil and earth scientist Diana Allen. They call for a climate-change and health-research program to deal with environmental changes already aggravating existing health disparities in the province.

MAD TRAPPER MYSTERY
The infamous Mad Trapper of the high Arctic was not Canadian, but rather American or Scandinavian, according to forensic anthropologist Lynn Bell (right). Producers of a television documentary asked Bell to use the same isotopic testing she previously used to determine the origins of the crew of Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose. Her tests on the Mad Trapper’s remains, exhumed from the cemetery in Aklavik, involved tracing the levels of two different oxygen isotopes found in water systems.

Former Clan player Ibrahim “Obby” Khan (right) now a centre for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the CFL.

REEF GRIEF II
Caribbean reef fish are in danger, according to a study headed up by SFU postdoctoral fellow Michelle Paddack. A large team of scientists from around the globe concludes that the number of fish living in the reefs has dropped significantly every year since 1995 as a result of loss of coral cover and drastic changes in coral reef habitats.

Researcher Elizabeth Elle holds a box of bees. There’s world-wide concern about bee health and the effect on the eco-system.

Column Art by photo Pipers: courtesy SFU News/PAMR, Underwater photo by: Isabella Tellouli, Thelma Finlayson photo: Marianne Meadahl/SFU News, SFU Clan Photo: SFU News/PAMR, Elizabeth Elle photo: Greg Ehlers/LIDC, Lynne Bell: courtesy SFU News/PAMR

print this story
top of page