MARCH 2001

Writer-in-residence named

The Department of English Language and Literature named local author Kenneth J. Harvey as its writer in residence for the fall semester 2001. During the three-month residency, Mr. Harvey will continue his own writing, make his expertise available to the university community and the community at large through readings and workshops. Mr. Harvey is a prolific writer who has published 11 books; five novels, four collections of short fiction, a book of essays and a collection of poetry. Brud, his first novel, received a nomination for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

Long crossing

Engineering professor Dr. Siu O'Young joined his friends Peter Armitage and C-CORE researcher James Youden on a ski-trek across the Avalon Peninsula, NF, to celebrate Mr. Armitage's second anniversary of cancer survival. The trio departed from the St. Mary's/Gaskiers area on Feb. 9 and emerged four days, 70 km, two snowstorms, and a lifetime later in Cape Broyle. Relying on their survivalist and winter camping skills, the group survived blowing snow, limited visibility, ice pellets and freezing rain. Navigating the barrens of the Avalon Wilderness Area using compass and GPS, Dr. O'Young and his companions witnessed evidence of caribou, moose, fox, ptarmigan, snowshoe hare and many other species, some of which Dr. O'Young had only seen in pictures. The group erected a small cairn in the centre of the peninsula as a monument to everyone who faced cancer, including Dr. O'Young's father and his uncle. They plan to do it all again in February 2004.

N.B. health minister visits medical school

Dr. Dennis Furlong, the minister of health for New Brunswick, paid a visit to Memorial's medical school to meet with the 10 New Brunswick students in the first-year class. Dr. Furlong graduated from the medical school in 1976, and he has many fond remembrances of his student days. Now he's delighted that New Brunswick is once again buying student seats, a practice that was discontinued five years ago when the province felt it would be facing an oversupply of doctors.

On top of the world

The Brad Gushue rink from the St. John's Curling Club won the World Curling Championships in Ogden, Utah, March 25, following up a win at the Canadian Championships in February. The winning team and coach were skip Brad Gushue, third Mark Nichols, second Brent Hamilton, lead Mike Adam, fifth Jamie Korab and coach Jeff Thomas. Among the members of the winning team were three Memorial students; Brad Gushue, St. John's; and Mark Nichols and Mike Adam, Labrador City.

Oceanographer published in Science

According to Dr. Richard Rivkin of Memorial's Ocean Sciences Centre, tiny organisms floating in the upper ocean can help us understand how oceans respond to global climate changes. He has been studying the importance of food-web processes as they control oceanic biogenic carbon cycles and ocean-atmosphere carbon dioxide exchanges; Science, a highly prestigious U.S.-based science journal, featured his research in its March 23 edition. The article, titled Biogenic Carbon Cycling in the Upper Ocean: Effects of Microbial Respiration, is co-authored with Louis Legendre, Laboratoire d'Oceanigraphie de Villefranche. They found that the biological controls on the cycling of carbon, and the production of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, is much more strongly controlled by temperature than had been previously thought.