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Canadian musicians play for prison farms

Local artist Sarah Harmer will headline a concert tomorrow evening to save Canada’s prison farms.

Corrections Canada announced in February 2009 it’s closing the country’s six prison farms. Inmates work on the farms, which supply food locally.

Kingston has two farms, located at Frontenac and Pittsburgh Institutions.

Queen’s students helped organize the concert and spoken word event, and student Maya Thau-Eleff, ArtSci ’10, is one of the guest speakers.

Other artists include Fred Penner, Luther Wright and Kris and Dee.

Tickets for the concert are $15 and can be purchased at Tara Natural Foods, Brian’s Record Option, Renaissance Music and Local Family Farms in Verona.

—Gloria Er-Chua

Hillel organizes bone marrow drive

410 people were swabbed during Queen’s Hillel’s two-day bone marrow drive this week.

Queen’s Hillel and Alpha Epsilon Pi of Kingston, a local Jewish organization, set up registration desks in BioSciences Complex on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“In the 10 minutes required to fill out the paperwork and conduct a cheek-swab, you could potentially save a life,” Hillel member and bone marrow drive volunteer Joshua Zelikovitz said.

Hillel collected the information and handed it to Gift of Life Bone Marrow Donor Registry, a Florida-based organization.

Hillel set a target of 500 by the end of the drive.

“We’re proud that 410 of the Queen’s community have stepped up to help fight leukemia and lymphoma,” Zelikovitz said.

—Gloria Er-Chua

An armload of research

A new website run by the Harris Centre at Memorial University is aiming to play matchmaker for researchers.

Memorial University Harris Centre’s Operations Manager Jennifer Adams-Warburton said she thinks Yaffle.ca links individuals and researchers together in an innovative way. “Yaffle is a searchable database of the ongoing and past research done at Memorial,” she said. “It’s also a matchmaking tool for knowledge brokering partnerships and collaborations.”

Adams-Warburton said anyone can use Yaffle but researchers must be d with Memorial in order to post their work.

“Somebody sitting at home can go to yaffle.ca and if they have topic in mind they can use the search or browse functions and receive a series of results of research that would have a relationship with the keyword,” Adams-Warburton said. “The other way that people at home can access Yaffle is they’re able to suggest topics of research to the University so they can shape the work that’s happening here at

She said within the next one to two years, the Harris Centre will have a model to expand Yaffle to other universities but it’s still relevant to students and researchers across the world.

“Graduate students across the world use Yaffle to find supervisors or fellowships and research topics,” she said.

—Rachel Kuper

Health Sciences welcomes new dean

University of Toronto professor Dr. Richard Reznick has been appointed Queen’s new dean of health sciences.

Reznick, who’s a general and colorectal surgeon, will begin his five-year term on July 1.

He will be a professor in Queen’s surgery department and the Southeastern Ontario Academic Medical Organization’s chief executive officer.

Prior to Queen’s, Reznick was the University of Toronto’s surgery department chair and was a founding director of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine Centre for Research in Education. He’s worked at the University of Toronto since 1987.

Reznick received his medical degree from McGill University. He received general surgery training at the University of Toronto and further training at South Illinois University and the University of Texas in the United States.

“My dad was a Queen’s alumnus and many of my colleagues have fond memories of their Queen’s days,” he said in a release.

—Gloria Er-Chua

Queen’s wins health care challenge

A team of Queen’s students won the Provincial Health Care Team Challenge on March 12 at the National Health Sciences Students’ Association in Hamilton.

The competition asked teams to develop a care plan for a virtual patient.

Representing Queen’s were Justin Brooks, Karan Cheema, Sylvia Magrys, Fateme Salehi, Krista Sawadski, Ralph Yeung and Anne O’Riordan. Each student is from a different professional program.

Queen’s competed against teams from the University of Toronto, McMaster University, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Ottawa.

—Gloria Er-Chua

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