From the source article:

The woman behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting may be buried near a now derelict building in the heart of Florence, according to archival documents. The exact location of Mona Lisa’s burial site, the convent of Sant’Orsola, was just a about 900 feet away from the house of the artist’s father, according to the historian, Giuseppe Pallanti.

Paul Davies, George Efstathiou, David Gross and Leonard Susskind, four of the world’s most renowned physicists, will debate the fundamental questions of existence at A Cosmic Coincidence: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? McGill University’s second annual Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium. The symposium will address the controversial anthropic principle: the notion that the universe is somehow specifically “tuned” to support life as we know it.

What: The 2007 Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium: A Cosmic Coincidence: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?

When: 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, January 25, 2007

Where: McGill University Main Campus, Leacock Building, Room 132

Live Webcast (on January 25)

This symposium will be presented in English with simultaneous French translation.

Read the source article on the McGill Newsroom.

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians. Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

You can read the full article on the National Post website.

I am not directly affected by this disease, but I know enough people who unfortunately are to realize that this has the potential to tremendously change a lot of people’s lives, if it does lead to anything even remotely viable for humans.

This is, by Web standards, old news, but I still wanted to mark the passing of a great Canadian mind. See the article on the Globe and Mail site.

Archaeologist, anthropologist and historian Bruce Trigger had a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity that roamed across civilizations — from ancient Egyptians in Africa to the Huron Confederacy in Eastern Canada — historical time frames and scholarly disciplines. He understood from an early age that complexity was an underlying factor in human behaviour, an insight that made him wary of ideological determinism and rigid methodological approaches to data.

See also: Honouring Bruce Trigger in the McGill Reporter.