With the aim of helping faculty, staff and students "Get Your 150" (minutes of recommended exercise a week) to improve health and wellness, the Gazette and Athletics and Recreation will be offering Fit Tips each week.

We live in a computer-based world, and we can’t always jump up from our desks for a quick jog. Here are a few ways to burn more calories throughout your day:

• Clean up! Move your trashcan away from your desk, so you have to go for a short walk to throw things away.

• Fidget! Simply tapping your foot during your favorite songs throughout the day can help you burn calories.

• Stand tall! If you want to slim down and boost your confidence, good posture is the first step. It will help you burn extra calories.

• Have a giggle! Laughing for 10-15 minutes a day burns an additional 50 calories each day.

• Take the stairs! A person climbing stairs uses around 10 calories per minute.

You don’t have to dramatically reschedule your day to be active. Be creative and you will find new ways to add movement to your whole day.

Distilling years of research into a three-minute presentation is challenging enough, but doing it in your second language is a monumental task.

That’s what Chenman Yin did as she claimed the Queen’s University title for the Three Minute Thesis on Tuesday.

Ms. Yin, who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Engineering and Applied Physics, is an international student from China who also completed her undergraduate studies at Queen’s.

Her presentation – a three-minute talk and a single static slide – on using lasers to cut bone during brain surgery, earned her the top prize of $1,000 and the chance to compete at the provincials. She competed against nine other finalists who spoke on a wide array of topics, from powerful numbers in mathematics and using geosynthetics in landfills to protecting traditional knowledge and whether or not allergies develop before birth.

The event is a mix of in-depth research, engagement and humour, with the goal of helping the audience understand the findings.

The win was a bit of a surprise for Ms. Yin who entered the contest at the last minute and, being an international student, wasn’t confident in her presentation skills. She credits her friends for pushing her to enter the contest in the first place.

“As an international student, where English is not my first language, there is always pressure when speaking in front of a big crowd. I think I needed that push to do something like this. I wouldn’t voluntarily do it,” she says.

She also points out that taking part in the event will help her as she works on her thesis, providing focus as well as giving her confidence in her presentation abilities. She also just loves what she is doing and wants others to know about it.

“I think this is a great opportunity to think about what you did over the past two years, in three minutes. I personally think that my project is cool so I really want to tell people about it,” she says. “A lot of people get scared when they hear the word physics but for me it isn’t (scary), so I guess I try to use everyday language to show people why physics is neat and they actually can do something to help people live a better life.”

Nicolle Domnik, who is pursuing a PhD in physiology, claimed the runner-up prize and $500 for her presentation on her research on the cardiopulmonary system, while Changhai Zhu, a Master’s student in biology, picked up the People’s Choice Award for his work in using fishing competitions to monitor bass populations in Lake Ontario.

Ms. Yin will represent Queen’s at the Ontario University Three Minute Thesis Competition set for April 23 at Western University.

For further information on the Three Minute Thesis, go to queensu.ca/3mt/.

On March 9 Alex Mann (Sc’16) marked a special anniversary: five years without cancer.

The day marked a sort of conclusion to a journey of loss and triumph.

The loss of a promising future in baseball. The loss of an 18-cm section of his humerus, the bone in your upper arm. Triumph over adversity at so many levels.

Now, at the dawn of a new stage in his life, he’s looking to give back.

To celebrate, Mann, who at the age of 17 was diagnosed with Ewing’s Cell Sarcoma, a rare form of childhood bone cancer, has launched an online fundraising campaign that will benefit two of the charities that helped him through his darkest days: Childhood Cancer Canada and Children’s Wish.

In less than two weeks, he raised more than $11,000. It has been an enlightening exercise.

“Getting $11,000, it’s overwhelming, the amount of support. When I first put it up, the amount of people who were sharing it and sending me thoughtful messages, it just blew me away,” he says. “I have some really good friends here at Queen’s but I just didn’t realize the amount of support I really had. People are reaching out to me personally and some of these people I haven’t spoken to in years.”

It was also thanks to the support of his close friends that he initiated the campaign and the five-year mark had always seemed to be the right time.

Anyone who has fought cancer or is close to someone with the deadly disease, knows that the fifth anniversary is a key waypoint in the journey.

While not an absolute, in the majority of cases it marks a successful end of the battle.

For Mann, it certainly was a special day.

“Waking up it was just like, all right, it worked, I was okay, I was living, I was healthy,” he says. “I kept having these flashback memories of the hospital. Some good moments and some bad moments and it was just crazy for me to think that was five years ago today, that I was leaving the hospital. I won’t ever forget that.”

He also won’t forget the shock, pain and trials that he and his family went through in his “lost year.”

It was May 2009 and Mann was riding high, having just celebrated his 17th birthday and in the midst of a solid baseball campaign. But then he felt a pain in the upper portion of his left arm, the one he used for fielding. It wasn’t the usual ache that comes from playing ball, so he went to the hospital to get it checked out.

What happened next would change his life forever – he was diagnosed with cancer.

“It was surreal. I was a healthy guy. It was baseball on the weekends strictly,” he says. “You ask ‘How did this really happen and how did it develop?’ It’s not the right question to ask yourself. At the time you always think things happen because of the way you live.”

A bit of research and Mann learned that in most cases of cancer, there isn’t a specific reason or cause. It just happens.

A mere three weeks later he would undergo his first seven rounds of chemotherapy. In November he had surgery, removing the bone and part of his deltoid and replacing it with a metal rod linking his shoulder and elbow joint.

After two weeks of recuperation, there were seven more rounds of chemotherapy.

At the end of it, he was literally a shadow of his former self. His body had been wracked by the aggressive treatments. He had lost 30 pounds.

Yet he was alive and the outlook was good. Doctors told him the chemotherapy had destroyed 99 per cent of the cancerous cells.

Through it all, he set himself a number of goals, including getting back to playing baseball, which he would do the next year and eventually would go on to pitch for the Queen’s Gaels. He also made sure he set himself up for a good education.

Mann wasn’t alone and had a lot of support, first and foremost from his family, but also from a number of foundations, including Childhood Cancer Canada and Children’s Wish.

He credits his parents for ensuring he put up a good fight. They simply told him “never give up.” And they hammered it home.

He has shared that simple message with others as they begin their treatment.

“For the most part I was just pushing them and saying there is going to be a life after cancer. And there is a life after cancer,” he says. “You can’t count yourself out. You’re going to come out beaten and bruised and, you know, I came out totally different than I thought I was going to. You have to have that goal. You can’t let yourself get depressed about it. It’s not going to make the situation better. Asking ‘Why me?’ is not going to help anything. You just have to put it in perspective and you just have to stay up as much as you can.”

Mann’s campaign can be found at tilt.com/campaigns/alex-mann-five-years-and-counting.