Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2005 RESEARCH, DISCOVERY AND INNOVATION AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY Vicky Kaspi Reaches Starsfor the SHINING A LIGHT ON KIDS’ DEPRESSION A PRESCRIPTION FOR SAFE DRUG USE IN PURSUIT OF PEACE Volume 1, Number 1 headway Fall 2005 Research, discovery and innovation at McGill University NEW WAVE Headway is published twice a 2 Shining a Light on Kids’ Depression year by the Office of the Vice-Principal (Research) and A psychology professor shows that children as young as the Office of the Associate six become depressed — and investigates why Vice-Principal (Communications). NETWORKS EDITORS 4 Back to the Future Susan Murley Jennifer Towell Today’s devotees of Internet chat rooms and theatre fans in the Renaissance are more similar than you might think SPECIAL THANKS TO Christine Zeindler IN FOCUS Mark Reynolds DESIGN 6 Making Babies Instructional Multimedia Services First-in-Canada treatments give women more options McGill University to improve fertility CORRESPONDENCE Headway IN DEPTH 805 Sherbrooke St. West Burnside Hall, Room 110 8 Montreal, Quebec Taking thePulse of the Universe H3A 2K6 Collapsed stars teach us about the laws of physics and inspire us to look beyond our earthly world [email protected] Telephone: 514-398-5633 INDUSTRIAL IMPACT Fax: 514-398-7364 Pour recevoir un exemplaire 12 A Prescription for Safe Drug Use de cette publication en français, A new company launched from McGill research puts drug veuillez communiquer avec safety information directly into the hands of doctors nous à l’adresse ci-dessus. ACT LOCALLY Publication Agreement Number 40031154 14 Road Warrior Headway can be found online at It’s time to start reversing the decline of our cities’ infrastructure www.mcgill.ca/headway/ ACT GLOBALLY 16 In Pursuit of Peace A professor committed to peace juggles research, teaching contents and travel to influence Middle East politics NEWS 18 Honour Roll McGill faculty have won many prestigious research awards over the past year On the cover: Vicky Kaspi, Canada FIRST PERSON Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics 20 Clearing the Air Photo by Professor Emeritus Margaret Becklake looks back on a research Normand Blouin career that has changed the way we view chronic lung disease Research Message from the Interim Vice-Principal (Research) It gives me unequivocal pleasure to introduce McGill University’s new research magazine, Headway. The choice of title plays on twin themes: the vigour and the brainpower of Canada’s most research-intensive university. Through Headway, we aim to convey some of the vibrancy of the remarkable research culture at McGill. With Headway scheduled to publish just twice a year, we know it will be challenging to cover the breadth of subjects that McGill researchers investigate, from medicine to music, from environment to education, from buildings to the brain. Boundaries are blurring, not only as those between neighbouring disciplines melt away (is it chemical biology or biological chemistry?), but as disciplines leapfrog over each other to forge new and unexpected links. This change is being accentuated as new colleagues flood in to join us from around the planet, close to 600 of them in the last six years. We want to showcase what they are bringing to us. We are living in one of the most dynamic periods in McGill’s long and rich history of research, discovery and innovation. For our enterprise to truly prosper, however, we must communicate our successes, not only through leading journals to our immediate colleagues, but also to a wider audience to ensure a broad base of understanding and support. We will be writing about McGill research in regular features we hope you will come to recognize: ■ New Wave: short profiles of some of our rising stars. ■ Networks: collaborative research that links different disciplines and different institutions. ■ In Focus and In Depth: feature articles on research leaders and their pioneering work. ■ Industrial Impact: research in action— in the community and in the marketplace. ■ Act Locally: research that makes its mark on Montreal, Quebec and Canada. ■ Act Globally: international research and development projects where McGill plays a leading role. ■ News: recent awards and accomplishments we are celebrating in the McGill research community. ■ First Person: the research life, from the researcher’s perspective. I wish you good reading. Jacques Hurtubise, DiscoverInterim Vice-Principal (Research) Innovation John Abela crosses cultural and geographic borders to explore depression in children Shining a Light John Abela, with Chou Chou, his team’s mascot 2 2 Headway Fall 2005 NEW WAVE on Kids’ Depression By Charlotte Hussey Winston Churchill called it the “black dog.” Ernest Having discovered that Western kids hold no monop- Hemingway wryly nicknamed it “the artist’s reward.” oly on the “black dog,” Abela wants to probe more deeply Marlon Brando, Vincent Van Gogh and Dolly Parton all into the cultural impact on depression. Specifically, Abela grappled with the demon called depression. wants to know whether the spread of cultural values such And now, research by Professor John Abela shows that as materialism can explain the rise of depression, first in the children as young as six can be affected by the illness that West and now in China. has plagued the great and not-so-great throughout history. In short, as Chinese kids embrace Western values, Abela, Associate Professor of Psychology at McGill and must they also accept the higher rates of depres- Director of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Clinic at the sion that seem to go along with them? Montreal Children’s Hospital, says the realization that Materialism, with its fixation on finan- children can become clinically depressed is a recent cial success, physical appearance development — within the last 20 years. But most studies and social recognition, seems to of childhood depression focused on teenagers on the produce higher levels of depres- assumption that younger children don’t have the cognitive sive symptoms. “Materialists capability and big-picture perspective to draw the negative have a fragile sense of self conclusions that fuel depression. because their worth de- Now Abela’s research indicates that even the sandbox set pends on attaining external What if you got can become depressed. He has found that small children, things. The quality of their a bad“ grade on a indeed, have already developed the cognitive factors that interpersonal relation- can lead to depression. ships suffers and they feel school test, or you’re Abela devised a sophisticated study of kids in more stress while pursu- Philadelphia and Montreal elementary schools. His team of ing extrinsic goals,” Abela not invited to a 32 students conducted between eight and 16 follow-up says. As the mindset in classmate’s assessments, unlike the traditional format of only one China becomes more ma- initial assessment and one follow-up. terialistic, depression rates birthday party? The children were asked to describe the thoughts they are rising. would have if certain negative things happened to them. And the psychologist isn’t “What if you got a bad grade on a school test, or you’re just trying to understand child- not invited to a classmate’s birthday party? Kids can hood depression better; he’s also Normand Blouin respond to that,” Abela says. focusing on prevention. Abela, The six- and seven-year-olds were given hand-held PCs along with his doctoral student Chad on which they touch-toned responses onto their screens. McWhinnie and several undergraduate ” The children loved it, and this computerized mood- students, has organized a depression preven- monitoring study proved conclusively that young children tion day camp for some 80 Montreal sixth graders, can think themselves into a state of depression. to ease their transition into high school. Abela has added a truly international dimension to his Funded by the Positive Psychology Centre at the Uni- studies by looking at the effect of culture on depression, a versity of Pennsylvania, this new initiative “will promote the variable rarely considered. He is conducting a study of development of character strengths and values,” says Abela. approximately 1,000 adolescents in Montreal and Shanghai. Its aim, as with all of his work, is to foster the psy- Depression among children, he has found, respects no chological well-being of our children. geographic boundaries. “In the past 15 years, China has gone through the same ■ John Abela’s research on depression has received funding from the amount of change that Europe or North America went Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the through in 70 years during the Industrial Revolution,” he National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, says. Marital infidelity and divorce are skyrocketing, urban- the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation, le Fonds québécois ization is ripping apart traditional family compounds— and de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies and the Canada depression rates in China now equal our own. Foundation for Innovation. McGill University 3 NETWORKS Paul Yachnin, head of the “Making Publics” research project, with collaborator Bronwen Wilson, Director of Graduate Studies in Art History, at a Montreal skateboarding park Shakespearean actors and theatregoers “ weren’t out to change the world . but they actually reshaped their society. – DR. PAUL YACHNIN ” 4 Headway Fall 2005 TO FUTURE THE By Hannah Hoag representative of the period’s entire socio-political situation. “Shakespeare was not early modern society; he was situated within early modern society. His plays were only a partial picture of that society,” he says. Soon, Yachnin had to come to terms with his state- ments. “People said, ‘If you are so smart, what is the socio-political dimension of the theatre?’” He didn’t know. And he realized he couldn’t answer the question alone. Over the next five years, Yachnin and several dozen other academics from Canada, the United States and Europe will study the development of publics during the European Renaissance.