Sri Ray-Chauduri, Technology & Engineering editor By all accounts, this has been a tough flu season. According to FluWatch, a surveillance system that monitors flu and flu-like activity across Canada, there have been more than 46,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza so far this season, thousands of hospitalizations, and, unfortunately, hundreds of deaths. Although the flu […]
Technology & Engineering
On first looking into the Large Hadron Collider
by Jamieson Findlay, guest contributor The European home for big-horizon science is, fittingly, surrounded by an impressive mountainscape. To the north is the Swiss range of the Jura Mountains; to the south, the French Alps. On a clear day, you can see the radiant face of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest peak, beckoning to tourists and […]
From chaotic to biotic
By Jamie Miller, guest contributor from the Nature Conservancy of Canada There’s a new breed of problem emerging, and these problems are making a lot of people uncomfortable. Aptly named “wicked problems” because of their complex and high uncertainty, they’re defined by having multiple contradicting values, high uncertainty, high stakes and require urgent decision-making. They’re […]
Cash is on the way out, so what’s in your wallet?
Sri Ray-Chauduri, Technology & Engineering editor With the holiday season just around the corner, merchants are already enticing customers with the promise of deep discounts during sales such as Black Friday. Last year, more than 90 billion dollars were injected into the Canadian economy from retail sales in November and December alone. However, with cash […]
Is extinction really forever?
Robert Gooding-Townsend, Science in Society co-editor Can biotechnology bring back extinct species? If it can, should it? In her new book Rise of the Necrofauna, Britt Wray chronicles the nascent movement to bring back extinct species. She calls these resurrected creatures “necrofauna”, conjuring images of undead mammoths, passenger pigeons, and more. As compelling as the […]