BYE -BYE MOONWALKS, HELLO TWEETS
It has been globally instructive watching Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield turn space flight into a performance art form and in so doing reconfigure what it means to be a successful astronaut. To appreciate this you had to begin by knowing two things… [MORE]

LEGAL LAG IN MEDICAL ADVANCES
A decade or two ago you would have been hard-pressed to come up with an area of scientific advance that seemed potentially more legally fraught than medical genetics. Indeed it was so disturbing that three British law professors glumly forecast… [MORE]

CANADIAN MEDICAL SCHOOLS SLOW TO INTEGRATE HEALTH INFORMATICS INTO CURRICULUM
In a world where Canada will spend billions to computerize all health records by 2016, it seems almost simple minded to ask if Canadian medical schools have begun training their students in how to create, understand and make best use of that data… [MORE]

PICTURE THIS: A NEW WAY OF SEEING RISK
Conveying the statistics of risk is often a classic head butt between patient and doctor. You say: Smokers have a 50% greater chance of dying younger than non-smokers. The patient responds: Yes, but my uncle lived until he was 95 and he smoked his whole life. Well, you say, we… [MORE]

THE BUZZ ON BEES
Ask Laurence Packer about why he doesn’t study honey bees and he responds in an instant. “All the world’s yearly research papers on honey bees would create a pile this tall,” he says, placing his hand at waist height – and a particularly high waist, since the pony-tailed York University… [MORE]

DEATH ONE: MEDICINE: NO SCORE
My 86-year-old father recently died after a lengthy and agonizing decline, and subsequently I found myself participating in the ancient, week-long Jewish mourning ceremony known as shiva. And I resolved after the traditional daily religious ceremony concluded to try to reflect to my fellow mourners in a brief speech something… [MORE]

THE POLYMATH PROFESSOR
Here are just a few of the questions that Marcel Danesi has fielded from reporters over the years: When did human models first come into the fashion world and when did they get so skinny? What was Paul Martin unconsciously conveying with his feet position as he left the prime… [MORE]

CLARA M. DAVIS AND THE WISDOM OF LETTING CHILDREN CHOOSE THEIR OWN DIETS
In June of 1939, a petite Chicago pediatrician strode to the dais of Montréal’s Windsor hotel and recounted to those attending the CMA’s 70th annual meeting the results of what is likely the world’s longest, most detailed and most ambitious dietary experiment. Clara Marie Davis’s Montréal description of what she… [MORE]

THE BARCODE OF LIFE TAKES FLIGHT
Stroll through Paul Hebert’s bustling laboratory at the University of Guelph and it’s easy to see how the past and future of species identification are visually colliding before your eyes. The past is what Dr. Herbert metaphorically describes as a “kaleidoscope of butterflies.” That is to say, display cabinets inside… [MORE]

ENRON LIES, POLITICAL SPIN FOUND IN LANGUAGE USE
Try this for a treacherously simple proposition: Use sophisticated computer word searches to uncover patterns of lies, spin and conspiracy in the unconscious way people use language. All we’ve got to do is develop indicators of how people use words when they’re trying to be deceitful. Then we apply statistical… [MORE]

LOOKING FOR THE MOTHERLODE? JUST POINT AND CLICK
Talk about a scary driver’s test. There I am in a 3-D, virtual reality world behind the wheel of a Load Haul Dump vehicle. Think of it as an elongated, elephantine bulldozer that can weigh as much as 14 tonnes and has a giant scoop that can lift 10 cubic… [MORE]

AN EYE ON BIG RESULTS WITH SMALL PRICE TAGS
One of Canadian research’s claims to fame is that it has been forced to learn how to do big science on a small budget (particularly compared with the US). A classic example is what its developers have nicknamed the Humble Space Telescope. More formally known as Most (Microvariability and Oscillation… [MORE]

BIG DOSE OF CAN-DO
The astronomers and space scientists gathered at the annual meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society last May could claim to be “number one.” Canada led the world in the number of times that its space science papers had been cited by others in their work. But there was good news… [MORE]

EXPLORING MARS ON EARTH
What do Canada and Mars have in common? The short answer is the huge area that exists above the tree line and is commonly known as the Arctic. While historically the Arctic has been of crucial interest to explorers looking for a Northwest Passage and to anthropologists studying the ability… [MORE]

JOIN THE DOTS IN A SPRAY-ON SOLAR FUTURE
How about laptops and MP3 players that charge themselves? Or cheap, non-polluting solar cells borrowed from the domain of space satellites and used as everyday energy solutions? Ted Sargent, a 32-year-old nanotechnology professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, is the force behind… [MORE]

OPEN HEARTS, OPEN MINDS AND AN OPEN DOOR
Ask Yanqin Wu why she and her husband decided to stay in Canada after considering research positions in the US and Europe, and her answer is positive and precise. “It was 75 per cent the quality of the centre here and 25 per cent Toronto,” says the theoretical physicist, who… [MORE]

SPOT THE SPECIES DIFFERENCE
Relishing high levels of collaboration – in particular international collaboration – seems almost a national trait for Canadian scientists. There is no better recent example of the “collaborative Canadian” than Paul Hebert and his deceptively simple idea about how to make species identification truly scientific, now transformed into a worldwide… [MORE]

GREEN MACHINES
In Quebec City, a greenhouse is chock full of alfalfa whose slender, green bodies contain antibodies to fight cancer. Outside of London, Ont., rows of tobacco plants are manufacturing a potential edible drug that could trigger the body’s immune system to fight type I diabetes, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis and… [MORE]

TESTING FOR GOD
In December of last year, Nature magazine, depending on how you view it either the first or second most important science publication in the world, published an article headlined “Buddhism on the Brain.” While most of the piece detailed a conference on the human mind held at the Dalai Lama’s… [MORE]