Media Memo

More than 450 delegates from around the world will take part in the 20th International Conference on Death and Bereavement at King's College at Western next week.

This year's theme will focus on the events of September 11 and its aftermath with sixty speakers examining a wide range of issues including childhood grief, grief associated with loss of a spouse, friend, employment or home and traumatic grief. The conference will also feature an exhibit of the personal reaction to September 11 by artists across Canada called "Beyond Ground Zero."

Hosted by the King's College Centre for Education about Death and Bereavement, the conference takes place from Saturday, May 11 to Wednesday, May 15 at King's College. For more information, or a complete program, please contact John D. Morgan, Conference founder and coordinator, at (519) 432-7946.

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Western Professor is Prestigious Award Finalist

Computer science expert Stephen Watt is the winner of the 2002 CANARIE IWAY Award for new technology development.

The IWAY Awards (short for Information Highway) honour individuals, groups or organizations that have made outstanding contributions to Canada's world-recognized information society. Watt served as an invited expert on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Math Working Group, to help determine the standards by which mathematics should be stored and represented in Web documents.

His ad hoc subgroup proposed that mathematical formulae should be represented in XML (Extensible Markup Language). This led to MathML (Mathematical Markup Language), a specialized form of XML, which has been quickly accepted as the preferred format to represent mathematical formulae in Web pages. Numerous software packages, commercial companies, universities, and government organizations around the world now support MathML. For example, MathML is used by the United States Patent Office, as patents can often involve a lot of mathematics.

Watt is Chair of Western's Department of Computer Science and he directs the Ontario Research Center for Computer Algebra (ORCCA) at Western.

CANARIE is Canada's Internet Development Organization, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to accelerating the development of Canada's Internet and the creation of innovative applications that exploit the power of that infrastructure to benefit Canadians. For more information, please contact Stephen Watt at (519) 661-4244 or visit www.canarie.ca.


Sure Sign of Spring

The Friends of the Garden plant sale at Western is back by popular demand this month.

The volunteer group, comprised of members from both the Western and London communities, maintain the St. Mary's Rock Garden and the Jancey Garden on campus. Their successful annual plant sale raises funds for the Environmental Science Student Bursary and will feature perennials, annuals, biennials, herbs, vegetables, shrubs, trees, and houseplants. The sale takes place Thursday, May 16 from 12 noon to 2 p.m., in the Biological & Geological Sciences Building Courtyard, near Room 43.

For more information, please contact Friends of the Garden volunteer Sarah Lee at (519) 661-2111, ext. 86795 or visit www.execulink.com/~bmccoy/FOGS.htm.


Alumni Association Annual General Meeting

Western's Alumni Association will hold its Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, May 29, at 7 p.m. in the McKellar Room, 2nd floor of the University Community Centre.

University President Paul Davenport will address the audience and guest speaker Paul Berton, Editor-In-Chief of the London Free Press, will present a talk "The Value of the University in the Community."

For more information, please call Alumni Relations and Development at (519) 661-2199.

Pfizer Canada Discovery Days in Health Sciences

London high school students will spend the day with leading medical researchers next week at Western during the first Pfizer Canada Discovery Days in Health Sciences.

The event is a career awareness initiative of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, based in London, that brings senior secondary school students from London and surrounding area together with leading scientists, researchers and physicians in Western's Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, local hospitals and affiliated research institutions.

Students will participate in hands-on workshops, attend career panel sessions with Western liaison staff and health professionals, and hear a talk by Canadian Medical Hall of Fame laureate Dr. Charles Scriver. Scriver was Canada's first biogeneticist, and is now a professor at McGill and a clinician at the Montreal Children's Hospital. University President Paul Davenport and Carol Herbert, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, will open the session.

The event takes place on Friday, May 10, beginning at 8:45 a.m. in the University Community Centre atrium. For more information, please contact Carmen Kinniburgh, Communications & Public Affairs, at (519) 661-2111, ext. 85165.


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Coming Events

Ecosystem Health Course - "Ecosystem Health: From Issues to Actions"

Western's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry is offering its 2nd International Course in Ecosystem Health on Tuesday, May 7 to Friday, May 10, at Huron University College at Western. The interactive program will explore the interconnectivity of ecosystem health issues, with a particular focus on how environmental issues interact with human health issues. For more information, please contact Carmen Kinniburgh, Communications & Public Affairs, at 661-2111, ext. 85165 or visit www.med.uwo.ca/ecosystemhealth.

Board of Governors Meeting

Thursday, May 9, 3 p.m., Stevenson-Lawson Building, Room 330. The meeting agenda will be available on the web at www.uwo.ca/univsec/board/minutes.html on Monday, May 6.

From Rumour to Reason: Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse

Professors Emeritus from Western's Department of Psychiatry and the Faculty of Law will present a series of lectures on current scientific, legal and cultural perspectives on child abuse allegations on Thursday, May 16, beginning at 8 a.m. in the Faculty of Law Building at Western. Objectives of the seminar include identifying overarching issues in the child suggestibility debate, recognizing suggestive interview techniques and discussing ways to distinguish between true and false child abuse accusations. For more information, please contact Harold Merskey, Department of Psychiatry, at 434-8333.