The industrial-scale farming that has made Canada a world leader in growing and exporting wheat has weakened crop resistance to blight, fungus and other diseases — a catastrophe in the making. Traditional ways of breeding new strains to address these dangers is slow and labour-intensive and genetically modified (GM) crops are steeped in controversy. But [...]
May 2011
Legend has it that sorbet was invented by Nero, though some contend Marco Polo brought it back from the Orient. How and wherever it first originated, sorbet today is loaded with stabilizers to extend its freezer life and provide a smooth texture. These stabilizers give the fruity frozen dessert a pronounced flavour, but many commercial [...]
Camille Champigny, a Grade 10 student at the École l’Odysée in Moncton, New Brunswick, has always been good at science and she is very keen to make it a career. Now she can lay claim at age 15 to having contributed to scientific knowledge about the health dangers of pesticides. Camille’s science teacher Eric Landry [...]
For Immediate Release May 4, 2011 Identification of local fungi capable of survival on PAH’s wins Grade 12 students from Summerside, entry to National BioTalent Challenge Student Finals CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI — Ground-breaking research by 17 and 18-year-old Summerside, Prince Edward Island students that contributes to the global search for ways to solve PAH Contamination. PAH [...]
The Manitoba competition was held April 12′th at the beautiful St Boniface Hospital Research Centre, (SBRC) which generously hosted this year’s event. Many thanks to the SBRC and in particular Bill Peters; Manager of Communications and Media Services and his colleague Rob Blaich who snapped great photos of each contestant. The competition judging was in [...]
Every seven minutes of every day in Canada someone dies from a cardiovascular disease. Since 1956, Canada has spent over $1 billion dollars on heart disease research, including conditions such as atherosclerosis and hypertension (high blood pressure). Hannah Boone (age 14) and Megan Howse (age 15) both plan to enter professional medicine were very interested [...]
From giant tankers to industrial sites to your own backyard, oil spills have an adverse effect on the environment that can be deadly to almost all living things. Certain types of micro-organisms (essentially various fungi) can safely “digest” the petro-contaminants and for some years microbes have been used to remediate soil, but only on land-based [...]
Last year’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico sparked the imagination of 16-year-old Nova Scotian Samantha Wright-Smith. Reading about the environmental impacts of toxic chemical dispersants used to deal with the spill, Samantha’s wondered whether oil-eating bacteria might do the job. Oil spills occur routinely from the production, transport, storage, and use of [...]
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have become a major issue in hospitals and in the treatment of long-term illnesses like cystic fibrosis (CF). One such bug, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is the primary cause of chronic lung infection and death in CF patients. Today, these infections are literally bombarded with up to 400 different antibiotic soups of varying composition in [...]
While many high school students can navigate computers with ease, not many can say they’re had a major success using the Canadian SCINET supercomputing network. In fact, Marshall Zhang, 16, a Grade 11 student at Richmond Hill’s Bayview Secondary School, this year used the massive computer system to find a new and potentially effective drug [...]