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Arts & Entertainment, Music

First Impressions: Missy Elliott’s new music video

by Morgan Davis, April Barett, Selin Altuntur on

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If Missy Elliott is known for anything, it’s her bravado. The woman knows how to brag. Unfortunately, after a long hiatus from the industry, Missy has little to back it up. The last time we heard anything from Missy Elliott was in July 2016, when she was rapping “Get Your Freak On” in a carpool with James Corden and Michelle Obama (Obama/Elliott 2020).

The icy lyrics for her new stripped-down single try to remind us of the Missy Elliott we know and love. And the video has a lot going on…

With Elliott co-directing the video, I wasn’t surprised with the array of extraordinarily weird costumes (see: hairstyles similar to those of Beaker the Muppets) and energetic moves. But the dancing didn’t seem to keep pace with the music—it was much more animated and pumped up than the actual song. At one point exercise balls are involved. Don’t ask why.

Also, what kind of lip gloss is Missy using because it looks like she just put clear plastic over black lipstick and I’m fascinated.

The underwater choreography is appreciated. Underwater settings are becoming a trend for artists and I’m not angry about it (take Beyoncé’s maternity shoot , for example).  

As for the lyrics?

“He watching my body like he watching /Scandal/. What does this mean? @ShondaRhimes can you explain? Is he binge-watching Missy?

All-in-all, this video seems to be a failed attempt at reaching back into the public eye. Missy is back—but she’s not better, not better, not better.  

-Morgan Davis, Staff Writer

The aesthetic of the “I’m Better” music video is fascinating, but hard to pinpoint. It’s somewhere in between Pink Friday-era Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus’ “Can’t Be Tamed” bird look, and the classic sci-fi music video. Dancers in similarly confusing outfits bop around like puppets behind Missy.

The song lacks punch. There are trap-inspired boops, blips, and sirens, but they come across surprisingly low key. The whole thing is maybe supposed to sound cool and menacing; both Missy and Lamb’s flows are slow and steady throughout the track, and there isn’t much of a melodic pick-up in the chorus.

This chill song would be better served if the aesthetic of the video wasn’t so wild. At a certain point, the backup dancers are dressed in all white and bouncing on exercise balls at the bottom of a pool. Missy then appears underwater and neon pink rave lights start strobing over all of them. I’m not sure how I am supposed to feel.

-April Barrett, Managing Editor

It’s nice to see Missy throwing back to her classic ‘wiggling background dancers in unconventional outfits’ aesthetic. Despite being darker and more futurist than her previous videos, the choreography is reminiscent of “Ching-A-Ling”’s gelatinous dance moves and gold motifs.

There’s a surprise pool of water in the middle of the dance floor! This is exciting. It looks like a continuous floor but it’s not. The dancers are flopping into the surprise water and it’s very exhilarating. To be quite honest, this might be the most surprising thing Missy has pulled off in recent years. Not to be too critical of an icon who can almost do no wrong, but 2015’s “WTF (Where They From)” included a lot of the same things we have come to expect from her. It didn’t break much new ground. What with Lady Gaga’s meat dress and Miley Cyrus’ reinvented tumblr-core image in our collective cultural conscience, it takes more to surprise the average pop-music aficionado.

“He watches my body like he watches Scandal”— basically how every man should observe their partner at all times. Nice to see that Missy is still a romantic. Her lyrics might be more poignant if they weren’t paired with Lamb’s monotonous, dull delivery. “I wake up, I wanna dance. / So, as long as I got my friends, / I’m better, I’m better, I’m better”—okay, Lamb. Not better than nearly every other rapper out there, I don’t think. At least you have friends.

The visuals are admittedly off the chain. The pool sequences are especially captivating. Who knew eight women in clunky heels could pull off a routine choreographed with silver exercise balls in near unison? Missy’s metal-plated lips add to video’s over-stimulating-yet-charming look. Somehow, few female rap icons pull off wacky aesthetics to the same degree as Missy—she always seems to be a couple dozen years ahead of the game.

It’s a shame that Lamb takes this party down a few notches. The video would be “Better” without him in it.

—Selin Altuntur, Arts & Entertainment Editor

 

Science & Technology

McHacks draws top talent from across Canada and the U.S. to McGill

by Erin Dwyer on

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The annual McHacks competition—a 24-hour student-run collaborative computer programming event—returned to McGill in full force over the weekend of Jan. 28 and 29.

Since 2013, the hackathon has attracted programming veterans and rookies alike to Montreal to compete for awards and prizes from the event’s many sponsors. This year’s sponsors, including Google and Microsoft, rewarded top hackers with Apple Watches.

The SSMU lounge, normally filled with McGill students catching shut-eye between classes, was packed with coders from universities across Eastern Canada and the United States. Two students in ‘Queens Computing’ varsity jackets squinted at their lines of colourful code as another student slept at their feet, using his hackathon t-shirt as a pillow. The floors were littered with take-out food containers, cans of energy drinks, and extension cords.

Members of the organizing committee, made up of McGill students dedicating their time and energy to pull the event off, were bustling up and down the stairs to get ready for judging.

“Basically it’s students coming in, making teams, and then they decide, ‘Oh, we want to make an app’ or, ‘We want to make a web application,’” first-time organizer Arun Rawlani, U3 Computer Science, explained. “These guys are up from Saturday morning until Sunday evening, they don’t sleep, and they keep hacking throughout it.”

Coders have traveled from as far as the University of Waterloo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to compete against over 700 other students at McHacks.

“I think a lot of people come because at school they don't have time to do their own side projects consistently,” Queen’s student Matt Sims said.

These hackathons, typically ranging from 24 to 36 hours, are events where students team up to conjur up a project and stitch together pieces of code to transform an idea into virtual reality in a matter of hours. At McHacks, those ideas can be just about anything.

“I was looking through the project descriptions and there was this Trump project, that tries to ‘Trumpify’ every quote you see on the Internet by turning it into a Trump quote,” Rawlani laughed. “Just come and have fun, and if you really want to have a good project, you get good prizes as well.”

For all the sillier projects the McHacks judges see, there are just as many that left judges and fellow hackers in awe.

A group of first-year University of Waterloo students—Wilson Wu, Clive Chen, Alex Foley, and Colin Daly—brought their A-game, designing and creating voice-automated sign language hands. Their design, which can be used as a teaching tool for translating voice commands into sign language, won first place in this year’s competition.

One McGill team—Gabriel Downs, U2 Joint Honours Mathematics and Computer Science, Aidon Lebar, U1 Computer Science, David Lougheed, U1 Joint Honours Computer Science and Biology, and Michael Goodale, U1 Honours Cognitive Science—put a new twist on Facebook messenger.

The team designed a chatbot that can mimic conversation with a particular friend. According to Lebar, the chatbot uses previous messages from the friend as a dataset to adopt a similar conversation style.

“You talk to it, it imitates a real person, and you chat with it on Facebook,” Downs explained.

Some projects stepped into less familiar disciplines for most coders, even crossing over into the social science field.

“[Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)] in politics makes a lot of sense,” University of Waterloo hacker Moeyyad Qureshi said. “If a president wants to connect with his [or her] people, he [or she] can use his [or her] advisors, but then he [or she] will only talk to so many people […] if he [or she] used an AI that scanned through Twitter and read through the opinions of hundreds of thousands of people, then that’d be much better.”

His team used the application programming interface (API) Bluemix to scan through dozens of tweets and return a graphical emotional analysis. They typed in “Putin” to their program and a graph popped with various emotions along the x-axis. The red bar above “sad” towered above the rest. When they typed in “poutine,” the dominating bar switched to “joy” in blue.

The McHacks organizational committee worked to make McHacks as financially accessible as possible for all competitors from various universities.

“It’s completely free of cost, we make sure we get enough money from sponsorships to make sure it’s a really good experience for everyone that comes here,” Rawlani said, “We usually are doing travel reimbursements for people who are coming from Ottawa or Waterloo.”

In addition to covering the entry fee, meals, and snacks for participants over the two days, the team organized buses specifically for McHacks participants coming from the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo.

In addition to accommodating university students from other provinces, the hackathon actively encourages high school students to attend. A group of students from F.A.C.E. High School in Montreal, Tristan Hamer, Linnea Sander, and Edgar Granados, explained that they found the opportunity listed on the McGill Computer Science website.

“We’re interested in this sort of thing and it sounded like fun,” Granados said. “The website said that high school students were extra welcome and it actually was an educational experience.”

Although the group didn’t complete their project in the 24-hour time constraint, they left with a new appreciation for coding.

“It’s definitely given us a lot of respect for programmers,” Hamer explained.

Following the 24-hour hacking period, teams set up at designated tables and demoed their programs. Hackers, interested observers, and judges moved between tables to explore the projects.

The judging panel consisted of experienced professionals from Deloitte, IBM, CPPIB, and Lexalytics, as well as a few select HackMcGill executives with hackathon judging experience.

McHacks racked up an impressive 18 sponsors this year, including Deloitte and IBM. This follows a trend of hackathons becoming a common hunting ground for tech recruiters.

Scott Armstrong of Interfacing Technologies, a firm based in Montreal that develops business process management software, says that he actively seeks out students who take part in hackathons.

“There’s more ambition [and] drive,” Armstrong said. “They’re not just going to school to write a test. To me, if you’re here, it’s not because you're forced to be here, its because you like to develop. I believe in them.”

That determination can help propel hackathon projects into long-term, intensive endeavors for students to work on throughout the year.

“We actually have a community organization,” Ben Emdon, a McHacks participant from Carleton University, explained. “We make a project at a hackathon and continue with it afterwards.”

Many hackers return year after year. The same McGill group of Downs, Lebar, Lougheed, and Goodale placed in the top ten in the 2016 hackathon.

“Our McHacks project from last year, [David] still works on all the time,” Downs said. “It’s called Sketchwave, and its a messenger, but you draw pictures.”

Since 2013, McHacks has been a place for hackers of all skills levels, ages, and universities to bond over code and lack of sleep. The event doesn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon.

“The first edition had only 400 attendees, while [this year] we had over 700,” Rawlani wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “McHacks is a perfect example of McGill’s contribution to tech innovation and entrepreneurship and we are aiming to make it bigger [and] better next year.”

Science & Technology

McGill researchers advocate for delayed school start times for adolescents

by Andy Wang on

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With the onslaught of midterms on the horizon, sleep will likely be pushed down the list of students’ priorities.

According to a report card issued by ParticipACTION, a Canadian non-profit organization focused on improving public health, 26 per cent of adolescents are either mildly or moderately sleep deprived. In addition to citing statistics, the report card also establishes a data-based guideline on the amount of time children and adolescents should be sleeping—the first such guideline published in Canada.

Despite its importance, sleep deprivation has not yet been the focus of serious public discourse.

“I don’t think [sleep has] been a prominent public health discussion point,” Dr. Mark Tremblay, the report card’s chief scientific officer, told The Globe and Mail in June 2016.

The rapid digitization and the presence of screens in children’s rooms have contributed to the deterioration of sleep in recent years.

Recent studies have indicated that a good night’s sleep relies on appropriate levels of physical activity during the day. As such, ParticipACTION recommends a new philosophy called “the whole day matters.”

“There is a direct correlation between sleep and [children’s] physical activity levels,” Tremblay said.

According to the report card, children ages five to seventeen should perform at least one hour of moderate to intense physical activity per day. Only nine per cent of Canadian children meet the criterion.

Early school start times also play a significant role in the amount of sleep children and adolescents receive during the week. According to participACTION, schools should begin no earlier than 8:30 in the morning.

McGill researchers published a study in The Journal of Sleep Research in November 2016, which contributed further evidence to an already growing body of data indicating that early school start times could be adversely affecting the grades and the general well-being of children and adolescents.

“This study provided the first comprehensive assessment of school start times across Canada and examined whether school start times were associated with sleep duration and tiredness among adolescents,” the study’s abstract explained.

The researchers, led by Dr. Geneviève Gariépy of McGill’s Institute for Health and Social Policy, reported that despite 69 per cent of students meeting the national recommendations for sleep, 60 per cent reported feeling tired throughout the school day.

“Although school start times in Canada [are] better than in the U.S., there really hasn’t yet been a focus on adolescent sleep,” said Gariépy in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

But the situation seems to be improving. According to Gariépy, her research has led to the implementation of new policies regarding start times in two high schools in Eastern Canada.

A number of studies have shown that adolescents differ from adults in their sleep-wake cycles in two respects. First, adolescents require a longer duration of time to fall asleep compared to adults. Second, the secretion of melatonin—a hormone thought to induce drowsiness—is delayed in adolescents. As the brain releases melatonin in response to darkness, the change in secretion patterns observed in adolescence contribute to the sleep-wake system’s phase delay during this period of life.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to a variety of health problems including obesity, mood disorders, and depression. Signs of inadequate sleep may include daytime lethargy, depression, and loud snoring—an indication of restricted airflow.

The Canadian Sleep Society recommends nine hours of sleep per night. With time starting to stretch thin for many students, it will be difficult to meet this standard. But it is important to keep in mind that adequate sleep will result in more energy, better mood, and, in turn, better grades.

Creative, In Competition With, Sports

In Competition With: Fencing

by Aaron Rose and Joe Khammar on

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When two useless Sports Editors compete in McGill sports, who reigns supreme? In Competition With is a new series brought you by The McGill Tribune to see who truly is less athletically challenged: Joe or Aaron? In the first episode, the eager editors take each other on with some help from the McGill Fencing Club.

For information on the fencing team and how to get involved click here.

 

 

Joe
1

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron
0

 

 

 

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV, Pop Rhetoric

Pop Dialectic: Film Reboots

by Ariella Garmaise and Declan Embury on

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End the Reboot

Hollywood and content creators of all kinds have always been influenced by those that have come before them. Some of the greatest films of all time are based on previous works: The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to name a few. But in the past two decades, any movie fan will have noticed the growing trend of reboots, rehashes, and spin-offs filling up the theatre bills. 

It’s understandable why studios want to make these movies; they are easy to produce and seem like a surefire way to draw nostalgic audiences to the theatres. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Jurassic World (2015) are both good examples of films that capitalize on nostalgia. Neither film managed to get out of the shadow cast by the original and stand out independently in any meaningful way, but that did not the reeboots from hitting big at the box office, with Jurassic World becoming the third-highest grossing film of all time. 

This desire to avoid risk and stick to the ‘classics’ has lead to a significant reduction in the quality of new blockbuster films.We could be missing out on many new classics as studios decide to produce a reboot rather than taking a risk on a new idea. These huge projects are able to offer actors, actresses, directors, producers, and every other crew member more incentives than other projects. This often causes the most accomplished and established talent to be snapped up to work on these unimaginative money-making projects, rather than more interesting and fresh films.

Not only are reboots uninspired and often uninteresting, historically, reboots have generally lacked critical success. For instance, take the wave of ‘90s and early ‘00s comedies that have been been getting sequels in the past few years. Dumb and Dumber To (2014), Anchorman 2 (2013), and Zoolander 2 (2016) all floundered trying to recapture the quality and style that made the originals so great. Critics assessed them as outdated, uninspired, and nothing more than big cash grabs.

“Anytime you mention reboot and remake, the audience thinks ‘rip-off,’” said Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst when interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t know why Hollywood keeps shoving these movies down our throats.”

 There are reasons why rebooting movies is hard. Most classics are products of their time, so it is hard to recreate their tone in a modern setting. It is also hard to balance the desire to be loyal to the original while also giving the remake its own feel. This is why most reboots either feel like copies of the original or completely different movies that happen to share the same name, perhaps with a couple references to the original. 

Many people enjoy the entertainment value of reboots, but it is misguided to think they aren’t having a adverse effect on the film industry. The issue with reboots is that they give a creative industry an excuse to avoid creativity. This leads major filmmakers and stars of the industry away from more original projects and denigrates the legacy of these classic films. Reboots are bad for both the industry in the long-term and for movie fans who want to see classic films emerge in their own generation. 

-Declan Embury, Contributor

Reboot the Reboot 

Infamously terrible remakes like 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and 2016’s Ben-Hur give the reboot a sour reputation. At best, reboots are criticized as failing to live up to their source material’s former glory. At worst, their producers are labelled as unoriginal  cash grabs. However, throughout all of film history, the same stories have been updated to fit the modern times. Disney’s Cinderella (1950) has taken countless forms–from the animated Disney Classic, the magical Ella Enchanted (2004), to Hilary Duff’s spunky Cinderella Story (2004) . Each of these films is proof that, sometimes, how a story is told is just as important as the story itself.

Nancy Meyer’s 1998 film Parent Trap is a critically-acclaimed classic, showcasing talents like Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richards, and kick-starting the career of Lindsay Lohan. The Parent Trap follows two girls who meet at summer camp, where they discover that they are long-lost twins. Many people overlook the fact that the film is actually based on a 1961 original, starring popular Disney actress Hayley Mills. The updated Parent Trap allowed filmmakers to show off how vastly movie technology had evolved. In the 1961 original, most shots with both twins required a body double, while in the 1998 version, the crew was able to use more advanced split-screen technology. The Parent Trap is an example of how reboots can enable filmmakers to improve both the content and mechanics of past movies.

Reboots are also valuable because they allow filmmakers to recreate beloved classics with underrepresented or marginalized cast members. Film history is dominated by white heterosexual characters, in which men get to play powerful roles while women are sidelined. Reboots allow audiences to reimagine old favourites by giving them a chance to recognize themselves onscreen. 2016’s Ghostbusters showcases the often-forgotten female comedian, with five women leads just as hilarious and dynamic as the original all-male cast. The upcoming Oceans 8 is yet another chance for women to shine in the traditionally male-led crime genre. 2014’s Annie featured Quvenzhané Wallis as the eponymous star. Annie is traditionally red-headed, but Wallis, who is African American, proves that we need not accept these arbitrary casting norms. Progression in the film industry is not just about continuing to cast diverse performers, but also about deconstructing existing conceptions of who can occupy what roles within film. Questioning and delegitimizing these notions is an important foundation to improving diversity in future films.

Granted, there are reboots that are quite cringe-worthy to watch. The fourth season of Arrested Development failed to deliver the belly-aching laughter for which its first three seasons were famous. 2016’s Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life felt like a shadow of its charming and heartwarming former self. Nonetheless, what both of these projects have in common is that they tried to recreate, rather than readapt, their originals. Like a former cheerleader at her 20-year high school reunion, these films were trying to relive past success, instead of looking at new territory to explore.

Reboots are a gamble, and hold potential to compare unfavourably to the works on which they are based. However, when executed with originality and a fresh perspective, they are a great mechanism for telling familiar stories in new ways. 

-Ariella Garmaise, Staff Writer

Science & Technology

Communicating climate change in Canada

by Daria Kiseleva on

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On Feb. 2, Media@McGill hosted a panel discussion on the role of journalism in effectively communicating climate change. NASA recently revealed that 2016 was the hottest year in history and the third record year in a row—the first time such a pattern has occurred since climate data collection began. Despite this, according to a 2015 study from the Université de Montréal, only about half of Canadians subscribe to the scientific consensus that rising temperatures are primarily caused by human activity and only 27 per cent say that they are well-informed on the issue of global warming. In an attempt to address the gap between scientific knowledge and public engagement, the panel featured six experts across multiple sectors.

The participants acknowledged the media’s limited success in bringing climate change to the forefront of public awareness.

“The media has covered climate change in Canada extensively, but it has failed in a lot of cases, particularly in the last election,” Mike de Souza, managing editor of the National Observer, said. “It would have been up to the media […] to provoke more discussion during debates.”  

Kai Nagata, communications director of the Dogwood Initiative, believes that the Canadian government has made decisions on the assumption that there will be a market for non-renewable energy in the future because climate action will fail.

“[The media] fails to hold these people to account,” Nagata said.

The discussion also touched on the challenges journalism faces as a medium in tackling the complex issue of climate change. A proposition was put forth that the scope of the environmental phenomenon cannot be contained by the reactionary, event-driven format of popular media.

“[To communicate about climate change] we need to dig down deep into stories over a long period of time,” Linda Solomon Wood, CEO of the Observer Media Group, said. “And that’s not sexy, it’s the total opposite of clickbait.”

Repeatedly, the conversation returned to the subject of promoting engagement with the issue of climate change in diverse populations.

Martin Lukacs, environmental journalist for The Guardian, argued that a rift along ideological and political lines is central to the divergent perceptions of climate change.

“Polarization is really necessary [to motivate action against climate change],” Lukacs said. “What we are confronting is an ideological foe.”

Nagata agreed with Lukacs that perceptions of climate change vary strongly across the political spectrum.

“Discussion [on climate change] is not happening to the same extent on the political right [as on the left],” Nagata said. “Our responsibility, as advocates, is to understand the values that motivate people’s choices and to find a way to talk about this crisis that motivates action from people who are our political opposites.”

On the other hand, Candis Callison, associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at UBC, shared insight from her research on different forms of environmental activism, including that of American Evangelicals.

“There’s a way of talking about climate change which imbues it with ethics and morality […] and in various contexts it sounds different,” Callison said. “That kind of plurality associated with climate change isn’t something we generally think of.”

Laure Waridel, executive director of Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Sustainable Development Operationalization, agreed with Callison.

“The same message will not reach everybody,” said Waridel. “To get the business sector involved, […] we might not even use the language of climate change, but […] the language of optimization, for example.”

Lukacs remarked that environmental issues may resonate more with the public when they are framed in a new light by social movements.

“Pipelines six or seven years ago were a technical issue that got mentioned in the business section of newspapers, […] but they are now a defining political issue in this country, discussed in terms of their impact on indigenous rights,” Lukacs said.  

The panel seemed to agree that an impactful communication of climate change goes beyond an accurate reporting of statistics.

“[Climate change communication] needs to stay true to the scientific fact […] and at the same time it needs to become more than that in order for a diverse public to become engaged,” Callison said.

Science & Technology

McGill bioethicists argue for stricter limits on first-in-human clinical trials

by Palma Gubert on

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The standards for drugs entering first-in-human (FIH) clinical trials are too low, argues Associate Professor Dr. Jonathan Kimmelman and PhD candidate Carole Federico in McGill’s Biomedical Ethics Unit. In a commentary published online in Nature on Jan. 30, Kimmelman and Federico maintain that evidence for drug efficacy is not emphasized enough before FIH trials and call for more thorough evaluation of the clinical promise of a drug before it is tested in humans.  

Today, regulatory bodies in Europe and North America look for evidence of safety before drugs are tested in humans, but do not require evidence of drug effectiveness.

“We believe that many FIH studies are launched on the basis of flimsy, under-scrutinized evidence,” Federico and Kimmelman wrote.

The ALS Therapy Development Institute, which studies the motor-neuron disease made famous by the ice bucket challenge in 2014, has similarly determined via its own animal studies that many failed drugs enter human trials due to inadequately designed or conducted preclinical studies.

Most drugs that make it to phase II and phase III in human clinical trial stages fail due to lack of demonstrated effectiveness. Kimmelman and Federico posit that raising the bar for assessments of efficacy before going into human trials would lower failure rates and the high costs of drug development—money that could be better spent developing drugs with real clinical promise.

Likewise, failed drug trials—even if the drug in question is harmless for the participants—divert manpower away from more promising trials. Researchers and volunteers, in devoting time and effort to a fruitless drug, are not available for other, more favourable endeavours.

“Scientists are a very scarce resource,” Kimmelman told CNN. “It takes years and years of training to be able to run a trial and we want to allocate that resource as judiciously as possible to lead to major advances and cures.”

Moving forward, Kimmelman and Federico suggest a number of changes to the existing process of clinical trial approval. They propose that researchers should be obligated to disclose all of the results, even the unfavourable ones, from their preclinical studies when looking for trial approval. Furthermore, a central review board of experts should be created, combining ethical and scientific vetting of the preclinical evidence before approval for a human trial. In order to determine a drug’s clinical promise, such a board should pose questions asking, for example, how other drugs addressing the same disease process have fared, or whether the conditions of preclinical experiments match clinical scenarios.

Critics of Kimmelman and Federico’s proposal may counter that increased regulation could hinder potentially favourable drug candidates from ever reaching human trials. Kimmelman and Federico, however, argue that preclinical evidence does not necessarily need to be strong—but it should be critically scrutinized. In some instances, where animal models of a condition are inadequate, such as in some neurodegenerative disorders, a “limited suggestion of clinical promise” may be enough to warrant human trials.

“We call for infrastructure, resources, and better methods to rigorously evaluate the clinical promise of new interventions before testing them on humans for the first time,” Federico and Kimmelman wrote. “We must abandon the fiction that current oversight systems are adequate […] to steward scientific efforts.”

Kimmelman expressed his worries to CNN regarding the potential effects of the Trump presidency in prioritizing speed over efficacy. While campaigning, President Trump said that he wanted to speed up the drug approval process and eliminate red tape at the FDA.

“If President Trump follows through on some of the plans he has articulated on the campaign trail about drug approval, he plans to weaken the critical evidence needed to approve new drugs," Kimmelman said.

Science & Technology

MNI researchers link lack of pleasure from music with decreased connectivity in the brain

by Izze Siemann on

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Ever have friends that didn’t tap their foot, bob their head, or drum their hands to the beat of a good song? Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) and the University of Barcelona have discovered that the lack of joy from music can arise biologically, rather than just by choice or taste.

While on sabbatical in Spain, MNI neuroscientist Dr. Robert Zatorre connected with colleagues at the University of Barcelona. Pooling together Zatorre’s knowledge of the brain’s response to pleasure and music and his colleagues’ expertise on anhedonia—the inability to experience pleasure—the team set out to explore the way in which the human brain derives happiness or displeasure from music.

In their resulting study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in September 2016, 45 participants filled out a questionnaire regarding the satisfaction they receive from music. The team divided these participants into three categories: Those who “can’t live without music,” those who experience regular joy from music, and those who exhibited no joy from music.

Participants in all three categories listened to music during the scans, voicing whether they liked the music or not. Brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the subject pool brought an intriguing conclusion to light: The scans projected three different patterns for the three subject pools.

The cortical regions of the brain that control audio processing and the reward system are connected. “Hyper-hedonic” people—those who receive vast amounts of happiness from music—have tightly connected audio and reward systems. On the other hand, individuals who don't experience joy from listening to music have lower connections between these regions than usual. This phenomenon, found in three to five per cent of the population, was dubbed “specific music anhedonia” by the research team.

“There is a whole group of structures called […] the reward circuit,” Zatorre explained. “If there’s activity in that part of the brain, you experience pleasure. If there is no activity in that part of the brain, you experience no pleasure.”

But there are crucial differences between specific music anhedonia and anhedonia in general.

Subjects with specific music anhedonia took a control test. They played an addictive gambling video game so the researchers could focus on their “reward system” response. This test, coupled with verbal questions, revealed normal results—affirming that because the subjects could activate their “reward system” in other ways, the anhedonia they experience must be specific to music.

“[Anhedonia is] a symptom that often occurs in depression and other disorders, like Parkinson’s disease,” Zatorre said. “It refers to the lack of pleasure. The people that we were studying were perfectly fine in terms of their pleasure responses for anything [besides music]. […They] like to be with their friends. They like to be among their families, and have normal, loving relationships like other humans [.…] They like everything, except for music.”

According to Zatorre, subsequent studies seek to explore whether and how these psychiatric conditions may receive more effective treatment—such as a collaborative team at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel, working on the development of a targeted music therapy. Currently, these developments are still experimental.

“The human brain can do a lot of really cool stuff,” Zatorre said.

Commentary, Opinion

Trudeau must be held accountable in the era of “alternative facts”

by Grey Gunning on

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On Jan. 31, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order limiting immigration from seven majority Muslim countries. The order also suspended the United States’ acceptance of refugees for 120 days, and barred Syrian refugees completely. Trump’s order ignores the 1951 Geneva Convention, which recommends that participating governments provide asylum to refugees without considering “race, religion, or country of origin.” The ban has since been blocked as unconstitutional by a U.S. federal court ruling; nonetheless, the reverberations of such a sweeping and exclusionary move persist. Amid the outrage that followed the order, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter, declaring that Canada welcomes all refugees, regardless of faith. Trudeau’s feel-good tweet, however, is undermined by his government, which has placed its own cap on refugee admission. Even more troublesome is the fact the Canada-United States border continues to operate under the Safe Third Party Agreement. The Agreement requires that refugees request protection in the first safe country that they arrive in—meaning Canada cannot legally accept asylum seekers turned away from the United States. Should Trump follow through on his promise to overturn the court’s decision and reinstate the ban, it seems that those denied entry to the U.S. can find only false hopes in Canada.

It the responsibility of Canadian citizens have a responsibility to hold their government accountable for its lack of concessions to refugees. In a political climate where “alternative facts” have taken precedence over honesty, it is crucial that the Trudeau administration maintain a standard of integrity and compassion. If the people of Canada do not see this integrity and compassion, they must demand it.

Given the global political climate, political participation is more vital than ever. The power inherent in political speech is apparent in the events of the last week. After Trudeau’s tweet, Canadians took action. An online petition calling for the repeal of the Safe Third Country Agreement currently has 38,583 signatures, and a movement has emerged encouraging constituents to contact their MPs to demand change. Locally, McGill Law students are providing legal services to those affected by the ban at Trudeau airport, and organizing a letter writing campaign to protest the Executive Order. This coincides with a nationwide effort among law students to make legal resources accessible to anyone who needs them in the wake of the Executive Order. Protesting, volunteering, contacting local representatives are all examples of political action that has the potential to minimize the ban’s negative consequences. By refusing to stand idly by, Canadians can keep their own government transparent and, by extension, demand equivalent accountability from the Trump administration.

It is a representative’s job to listen—but it is also the citizen’s job to speak.

The rhetoric of “alternative facts” allows for the perpetration of harmful lies, such as the idea that a significant amount of Syrian refugees are terrorists, or, in Trump’s words, “the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.” Canada must do its part in emphasizing that a government that lies is not normal or acceptable. It should not permit a political landscape that facilitates the formation of national myths that are disconnected from reality. Leading by example is essential to setting this standard. To combat the political culture of falsehood that the Trump administration propagates, and to impress upon the U.S government that their decisions do not exist in a vacuum, the people of Canada must demand transparency from their own government. If the Trudeau administration strives to be humanitarian, it needs to be transparent with its constituents first and foremost. When it is not honest, Canadians have the power to put pressure on their government, and they should use that power.

The nature of a representative system ensures that politicians have a responsibility towards those they represent. They are supposed to empower their constituents, to amplify these citizens’ voices and implement policy that caters to their needs. It is a representative’s job to listen—but it is also the citizen’s job to speak. Now more than ever, Canadians need to ensure that their government represents their ideals in both actions and words. If those ideals are compassion and honesty, then the responsibility falls on Canadian citizens to ensure that Canada supports the people that the United States does not.

 

Grey Gunning is a U2 History major and occasional artist. She enjoys climbing, gardening, and cheesy 80's sci fi.

 

@mcgilltribop |

 

 
Commentary, Opinion

Quebec pharmacists should not act as gate-keepers for emergency contraception

by Emily Heer on

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The condom broke, you skipped a pill, or your memories are foggy from the night before. Accidents happen: Thankfully, emergency contraceptive pills are available. Since 2005, pharmacies have provided levonorgestrel pills (Plan B) without a prescription in Canada. In 11 provinces and territories, you can now find Plan B beside the condoms on drugstore shelves, while Quebec and Saskatchewan both keep it behind the counter. But in Quebec, it is only administered after a mandatory consultation with the pharmacist. This barrier impedes the autonomy of women seeking emergency contraception. It is unreasonable and unethical for Quebec to continue to uphold this standard when most of Canada has removed it.

When I went to get Plan B in Montreal, my consultation was with a pharmacist who seemed to be close to my age. He asked whether I had taken emergency contraception before, the date of my last menstrual cycle, the length of my typical cycle, why I thought I needed emergency contraception, when the "event" had occurred, and whether I used other methods of birth control. At the end of our consultation, he agreed that he would dispense the pill.

My bill came to $44.50. The consultation and the pill both cost $22, which is on the low-end of pricing in Montreal. If you have a valid Quebec health card, the consultation is free of charge. The pill can be partially or completely covered by insurance, depending on your plan. And, if you're under 18, it's always free. But, because I'm a student and it's not a prescription medication, I have no coverage.

 

Given the right information, women should be able to decide on their own if they need emergency contraception.

At the end of my consultation, I asked whether he would ever refuse to dispense it. He confirmed that he would if there was little chance of the woman being pregnant, or if she were outside the window of effectiveness.

While the latter condition may be reasonable, the period of efficacy is not widely agreed upon and depends on the pill. There is some evidence that the pill is still effective within five days, but other studies suggest that it decreases significantly after 3 days.

Refusal to prescribe the pill based on the likelihood of pregnancy, however, is unreasonable and unethical. While the chance of pregnancy immediately after or before a period is extremely low, the women who seek out emergency contraception are typically in their early 20s, and in the reproductive prime of their life. Furthermore, regardless of the likelihood of a pregnancy, emergency contraception empowers women with autonomy over their bodies. Even if a woman forgot to take her pill, or the condom broke, or there was a sexual assault, she can still be in control of her reproductive system. Barring situations where use of Plan B would be unsafe, it is unethical for a pharmacist to send a woman who was attempting to exercise this autonomy home.

The Canadian Women's Health Network and the World Health Organization have declared that there is no medical argument to justify a consultation or examination to obtain the pill. While they should certainly ensure that patrons are educated on the proper use of any drug, pharmacists are not medical practitioners. They are not a sexual health consultants or necessarily experts in women's health, either. The paternalistic idea that a pharmacist knows best what every woman needs is therefore rattling. Given the right information, women should be able to decide on their own if they need emergency contraception.

I work in sexual health, so my level of comfort with this consultation may not reflect the comfort of all women. These conversations can cause shame and embarrassment, especially in the case of assault. This consultation also makes it impossible for women to buy emergency contraception in advance—just in case.

When taken safely, Plan B is a fast and non-invasive way for women to take control of their sexuality. Mandating a consultation detracts from this, and there is no excuse for the fact that Quebec has yet to abolish this standard.

 

 

Emily Heer is a M.Sc Public Health Candidate at McGill.

 

@mcgilltribop |

 

 
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