Neff to lecture on fisheries future
Biology professor Bryan Neff will deliver his Bucke Prize lecture, The Ocean’s Bounty: Science and the Changing Face of Global Fisheries, 7:30 p.m. March 29 in Somerville House, Room 3345.
Neurology professor highlights research event
Dr. Vladimir Hachinski, a Western Neurology professor, will present the keynote address at London Evening 2012: Virtually Educating Our Future, an annual health research event sponsored by Partners In Research. His lecture is entitled, Stroke and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Treatable Connection? The event will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 1 at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn, 591 Wellington Road, London.
Established in 1988, Partners In Research is a Canadian charity focused on educating the public – particularly young people – about the history, importance, accomplishments and promise of health research.
For information on the London event, call 519-433-7866 or e-mail info@pirweb.org.
New moot puts business on the stand
A new moot court conceived of by Western Law students provides practical appellate advocacy experience in a business law context. Launched on March 7, the Chaitons LLP Corporate Restructuring Advocacy Competition is the brainchild of Western Law students Michael Kril-Mascarin and Lee Nicholson.
The competition involves students advocating on corporate restructuring issues arising from controversial court decisions. Competitors argued the issues that have arisen from the Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent decision in Indalex Ltd., Re.
The top appellant team was Vitali Berditchevski and Nina Plotnik and the successful respondent team was Claire Devlin and Anton Tchajkov.
Conference targets electronic medical records
Western researchers recently hosted 104 participants, including primary health-care practitioners, policy-makers, researchers and electronic medical record vendors from across Canada, at the Bridging the Gaps: A Canadian Primary Health Care Electronic Medical Record Conference held in Toronto on March 1. The conference spotlighted primary health-care electronic medical records in Canada. Canada’s level of electronic medical record use is significantly lower than other countries such as the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Australia.
The conference was held in partnership with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, as part of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded knowledge translation study called Creating the Agenda for Tomorrow’s Electronic Medical Records in Primary Health Care (CREATE-PHC).
The CREATE-PHC study is led by researchers from the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine, the departments of Family Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics (Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry), and builds on a CIHR-funded study led by the same researchers, Primary Health Care Electronic Medical Records: Gaps in Knowledge and Research in Canada.
CREATE-PHC team members include Western professors Amanda Terry, Moira Stewart, Amardeep Thind and Laura Warner, research program co-ordinator.
Lecture eye intersection of education, philanthropy
The Rogers Chair for Studies in Journalism and New Media Technologies presents Janice Peck, University of Colorado, for a public lecture, Schooling the Public Mind: Billionaire Philanthropy, Media Narratives and Defining the ‘Problem’ of Public Education, at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28 in the Visual Arts Building, Room 100.
The lecture will examine the role of billionaire philanthropists, and philanthropy in general, in the campaign to ‘reform’ public education in the United States and Canada.
Peck is the author of The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era (Paradigm, 2008) and The Gods of Televangelism: The Crisis of Meaning and the Appeal of Religious Television (Hampton, 1993), as well as co-editor of A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication Since World War II (Marquette University Press, 2011) and Handbook of Communication History (Routledge).
Sleepless in London
London never sleeps according to a group of journalism students at Western University who recently published an issue of the program’s online publication, The Reporter, covering an entire day’s worth of living in the city.
Each student was assigned a two-hour window to find and cover what might normally be considered only an ordinary occasion in the city, from midnight to midnight. Stories of cult movie fanatics ready for a midnight screening of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, early morning aquafit classes at the YMCA, routines parents follow to care for special needs children and late-night quizzes at local pubs can all be found in the March 13 issue online at fims.uwo.ca/olr/Mar1312/index.html.
Mixing music and health
It is well known participation in sports requires proper warm-ups and specific attention to technique and pacing to avoid injury. But most people don’t transfer that approach to singing or playing an instrument and, as a result, many develop injuries.
Western has launched a first-of-its-kind course to address this growing concern, by integrating concepts and teaching strategies from occupational health, rehabilitation and health promotion.
Health and Music Performance, to be taught by Christine Guptill, provides students from the Faculty of Health Science and the Don Wright Faculty of Music an opportunity to transfer knowledge from other courses into clinical applications.
“It’s important to learn how we maintain health through the lifespan, and not just for those who make a living with music, but for those who play or sing for fun,” said Guptill, adding this kind of education makes health-care practitioners aware of the specific issues musicians cope with each day.