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St. Mary's Convent High school, Mapusa is staging a play titled "Lion King" December 1, 2007 - Hanuman Hall, Mapusa to fundraise for a false ceiling for the school hall & upgrading the school playground Headmistress Sr. Namika A.C. / Teacher Mrs. Sonia Noronha [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 23, 2007 WATERLOO A Wilfrid Laurier University scientist who is working on physical exercise as an alternative to drug therapy for people with Parkinson's disease has won a prestigious John Charles Polanyi Prize. Quincy Almeida is one of five Ontario researchers whose achievements are being recognized this year, John Milloy, minister of training, colleges and universities, said in an announcement yesterday. "These five individuals represent some of the best and brightest researchers in our province," Milloy said in a statement. The awards, valued at $20,000, are given to researchers in the early stages of their careers who plan to continue post-doctoral studies at an Ontario university. They're named after John Polanyi of the University of Toronto, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Almeida, director of the Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre at WLU, said he considers the prize "Ontario's equivalent of the Nobel Prize."He said his work is seeing remarkable results in a short period. "We're getting very interesting results in terms of what needs to be the direction Canada and the world should take in developing rehabilitation for Parkinson's and lots of other movement disorders," Almeida, 34, said yesterday. Among his projects, Almeida launched a rehabilitation program last year for people with Parkinson's. The program was aimed at improving people's balance, gait and co-ordination so they can live more independently and actively. Almeida's goal is to establish exercise recommendations for Canadians who have Parkinson's disease. The program showed there are some exercises that will improve strength, and heart and blood pressure, but they do not change Parkinson's symptoms. Now Almeida is focusing on those exercises that actually show improvement of symptoms, such as balance loss, stiffness and slowness of movement. In the next phase of the study, patients will do those exercises over a 24-week period. Almeida has been travelling to national conferences in the last two weeks to show the results of his work. He is demonstrating a tool he has developed to evaluate changes in symptoms. The test battery will become an international standard and a better way of measuring change, he said. Laurier's Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre was established in the former Northdale public school on Hickory Street in Waterloo. It's the first facility of its kind in Canada to focus on Parkinson's, which affects more than 100,000 Canadians. The centre also tests state-of-the-art tools and inventions from around the world to see what impact they have on patients' health. Other prize-winning researchers are from Carleton University, York University, University of Toronto and Queen's University. Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca