ALAIN BRUNET
TAKING THE EDGE OFF POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS
During a terrifying event, such as rape, war, or car accident, intense emotions are seared into the brain's amygdala, and can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychotherapy is the only treatment for PTSD, but often fails. Psychologist Alain Brunet at Montreal's McGill University, however, says each time a PTSD patient recalls their pain, the brain re-saves those emotions all over again. Disrupt the process, and you could take the edge off those emotions. In a study of 19 PTSD sufferers, Brunet, 42, did just that with a single low dose of propranolol, a common heart drug. Patients showed a 19 per cent reduction in symptoms, proof that, in principle, propranolol can treat PTSD. Says Brunet: "If we could remove the emotional pain around the memory, or dampen it, then you'd still have the memory, but it would be like a regular unpleasant memory -- like the time you got a parking ticket."

GABE COSCARELLA
DIRTY JOB, BUT THIS GUY DOESN'T HAVE TO DO IT
When he was still a plumber, Gabe Coscarella spent most of his days in other people's basements, sloshing through brown, stinky waste. He would always repair the problem -- clear a drain or install a new pipe -- but the flood water would usually return. Convinced there was a permanent solution(read: he was tired of tiptoeing through human excrement), the 41-year-old Edmontonian designed a drainage valve that acts like a trap door, stopping sewage backflow before it reaches the basement. His award-winning invention -- the Mainline Fullport Backwater Valve -- is now the industry standard, installed in more than 50,000 new homes every year. "I don't do any plumbing anymore," he laughs. "The first thing I did was get rid of my tools. I mean, I'll still do the odd thing for an uncle here or there, but that's it."

MAYDIANNE ANDRADE
AT LEAST THEY DIE HAPPY
Maydianne Andrade is Canada's very own spider woman. The Toronto-based zoologist, who focuses mainly on sex and cannibalism within the world of Australian redback spiders, has garnered international attention for offering new insights into sexual selection among these members of the black widow family. For pushing the limits in her unique discipline, she was named to Popular Science's "Brilliant 10" list last fall. The 35-year-old's most recent discovery: male spiders in this group mature faster if they can smell females -- if there are fewer potential mates nearby they have less of a reason to grow up since their life revolves around sex. Andrade has also done major research on the fact that male redback spiders will sacrifice their lives for sex: "They actually dangle their bodies above the female's fangs while they're mating."

CARL GRILLMAIR
FINDING A WINDOW INTO THE PAST
Earlier this year, astronomer Carl Grillmair found a massive group of never-before-seen stars that date back to the beginning of the universe. The former Calgarian, who now works at the Spitzer Science Center in Pasadena, Calif., says that the ancient lights -- in the form of a large stream, streaking across almost a third of the northern sky -- are fossil remnants of a star cluster that was ripped apart by the Milky Way. "It's pretty cool to find something that nobody else has ever seen," says Grillmair, 47, who plans to spend the next couple of years researching his rare finding. What he knows now is that the length of the stream extends from the Big Dipper through the constellation of Cancer and is about 30,000 light years from earth. And the stars have very small random motions and are moving rapidly in one direction -- about 100 million miles an hour. Says Grillmair: "It's like bumper-to-bumper traffic up there."

JOANNA BERZOWSKA
CLOTHES THAT CHANGE SPOTS AND RATE GROPES
This summer, Joanna Berzowska is going to create "kinetic" dresses, complete with hemlines that rise and fall on their own and fabrics that can electronically tighten, like a corset, and loosen. The Concordia University professor -- who started her math degree at McGill when she was 16 and combined it with a fine arts degree at Concordia a year later -- calls herself a "geeky nerd," but the age-old dream of inventing magical fabrics are coming true in her Montreal lab where she integrates electronics into textiles. Berzowska, 33, weaves conductive threads into cloth that change colour when touched or heated, and made an animal-print dress that loses its spots when another body presses against it. Beaded onto a "grope" skirt, another of her inventions, are electronic components and light-emitting diodes that measure the intensity of a fondle; the harder the grope, the longer it takes for the illumination to fade. While the commercial possibilities of her work seem infinite, the technological challenges are daunting. "If it was easy," says Berzowska, "it would be at the Gap already."

RON DEIBERT
PROFESSOR HACKER VS. OPPRESSIVE REGIMES
Ron Deibert's students affectionately call him the "hacker prof." Officially, he's the director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, where his hacktivism is as infectious as a computer virus, but in a good way. Deibert's lab co-founded the OpenNet Initiative, whose dogged cyber-detective work has exposed how Western software manufacturers help oppressive regimes censor Internet content. OpenNet has shown, for instance, how Cisco, Fortinet, Secure Computing and Websense have sold China, Burma, Iran and Yemen, respectively, the electronic firewalls being used to limit web access. In January, the MacArthur Foundation awarded OpenNet US$3 million, allowing a fourfold expansion of its investigations. "This is the most rewarding research I've ever done," says Deibert, 41. "It's not abstract and theoretical, but connected, substantially, to people in countries where the rights we enjoy here in Canada have to be fought for."

ALISA SMITH AND JAMES MACKINNON
'LOCAVORES' EAT A LOT OF POTATOES
WhenAlisa Smith and James MacKinnon realized the fossil fuels they saved by cycling to the grocery store were nothing compared to those spent transporting their food from around the globe, they decided to eat locally for a year -- only what was grown and processed within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver home. "We controversially went non-metric -- 160 km didn't sound very catchy," laughs Smith, 34. They got chummy with local farmers, preserved jams with honey instead of sugar, and lost a combined 15 lb. on a diet of lots of potatoes. Life improved considerably when they discovered a local flour mill -- adding bread and pasta to their menu. Their diet, which ended in March, has inspired several "locavore" communities in the U.S. and Canada.

TOM CHAU
KIDS, NOT COMPUTERS, ARE THE FUTURE
When Tom Chau called Toronto's Bloorview MacMillian Children's Centre seven years ago and told them he wanted to quit his cushy job at IBM to do research for disabled children, they warned him against making a rash decision -- mainly because they didn't have any money to pay him. But Chau quit his job anyway. "There was just this emptiness at the end of the day," he says. Chau, 36, found his own funding and has since developed, among other things, a revolutionary prosthetic arm triggered by the faint sounds of a child's arm muscles and a system that allows kids with motor disabilities to play music. Chau is currently researching ways to help speech-impaired children better communicate. "I don't see the kids as having this or not having that," he says. "It's all about facilitating potential."

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