Good ingredients for assistive technology

By Naeema Bhyat, Technology & Engineering editor Christian Bagg was looking to get back into mountain biking years after a snowboarding injury to his spinal cord prevented him from using a conventional bike. He developed a rugged, stable, three-wheeled, hand-powered bike. In the process, he founded Bowhead, a Calgary-based company that makes adaptive mountain bikes. […]

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Have you met your digital twin?

By Naeema Bhyat, Technology & Engineering editor Someday soon, your city, your house, your planet and even you could have a digital twin. Digital twins are virtual models that exist alongside one or more physical objects, systems or processes. IBM describes them as “a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, […]

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Scientists look billions of years into the past to learn about our future

By Nada Salem, Physics & Astronomy editor Few events mark the beginning of a new age in astronomy the way that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) did last summer. In July 2022, the first full-colour images from the honeycomb-shaped JWST stunned the world. They captured moments from the infancy of the universe beamed from […]

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Microbes could be the solution to our waste plastics problem

By Ishara Yahampath, guest contributor Globally, 400 metric tonnes of plastic are produced annually: 40% is single-use, resulting in significant waste. Every year, 29,000 tonnes of plastic are released into Canada’s environment, causing serious environmental problems—the accumulation of plastic waste in land and water ecosystems, leakage of harmful microbes into the environment, and threats to […]

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Crushing snowbanks could help to preserve permafrost and keep northern communities connected

By Patrick Jardine, new science communicator Northern field work 2:00 p.m. on March 9th, 2021: I was finishing sampling snow density along a mine access roadside in the central Yukon with my co-worker, Jen, when I heard branches breaking deep within the forest beside me. It was a balmy –15 °C out — a significant […]

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