Federal researchers using driftwood to study and track seabird deaths off N.S. coast

HALIFAX - Federal researchers want to know where dead seabirds off the coast of Nova Scotia are most likely to wash up, and they’re using a low-tech solution to find out: driftwood.

Environment and Climate Change Canada has dropped about 600 wooden blocks in the ocean this summer. Coated in non-toxic, bright orange paint and affixed with contact information, the floating blocks are essentially standing in for bird carcasses.

Researchers are hoping birders and beachcombers who find them will report their date and location, ultimately helping to create a picture of where seabirds might drift after a mass death in the ocean.

“So you release these blocks and they help you figure out where carcasses could drift and what proportion of the carcasses end up on shore," Rob Ronconi, a biologist and wildlife emergency response coordinator for the federal environment department, said in an interview.

Wonders of science never cease

Scientific study, however specialized, can bring a huge variety of benefits — sometimes, from something as simple (and occasionally irritating) as a ground squirrel.

Researchers put hail under microscope, take stock of June 9 storm

Jack Hamilton, a researcher with the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory, and his team have been gathering evidence and data from the June 9 storm that brought record rainfall to Winnipeg and surrounding communities

Grade 7 students learn about environment in Seine River cleanup

On a rainy Wednesday morning, Grade 7 students from École Lacerte traded their classroom desks for rubber boots as they headed out along the Seine River to help plant native shrubs, test water quality, and clean up the riverbank.

JJ Swidersky, one of about 40 students taking part in the work, says protecting the environment is important to him and his classmates.

“Planting the trees, planting the shrubs,” Swidersky said when asked about his favourite part of the effort. “Just trying to keep the river clean, trying to keep it as clean as we possibly can.”

The planting Swidersky is referring to is part of the Niakwa Trail Rain Garden, which is located next to the St. Anne’s Superstore.

Confronting the scourge of polio

From 1928 to 1953, polio epidemics occurred in Manitoba every three to five years. The pain for the young victims was often excruciating. The vast majority of children recovered, yet many experienced lifelong disabilities from the disease.

Close encounters of the amphibian kind

Frogs, snakes and horses, oh my!

Liam Peterson, an 11-year-old outdoor enthusiast, encountered all of those during summer camp last year at Circle Square Ranch.

“There were always frogs hopping around our cabin, and I let one in because I wanted it to have company because it was bored — it was just sitting there,” recalled Liam.

“And then my friend freaked out because it was on top of (his foot) in the morning. Everyone in the cabin woke up and he woke up with a red bump on his head after hitting his head on his bunk.”

Archaeology team unearths ‘prototype’ of world-famous Stonehenge monument just a few miles away

LONDON (AP) — Archaeologists revealed Thursday that they have discovered a structure near the prehistoric stone circle of Stonehenge in southern England that may have served as a “prototype” for the 5,000-year-old Neolithic monument.

A team from the British firm Wessex Archaeology said the structure would have consisted of two wooden poles 120 meters (394 feet) apart and aligned to point directly at the rising sun during the summer solstice and the setting sun at the winter solstice.

Researchers said the discovery predated Stonehenge by around 500 years.

The team was led by archaeologist Phil Harding, who is well known in the U.K. through his many years of excavations for Channel 4 TV series “Time Team.”

Manitoba’s role in a distant Ebola outbreak

Across parts of Central and East Africa, a familiar threat has returned. The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, one of the rarer and generally less fatal variants of the virus, has emerged again in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

CancerCare MDs, staff call attention to specialist’s resignation, warn of dire consequences

A group of doctors and medical staff has warned the possible departure of a highly specialized Health Sciences Centre physician would be “devastating news” that could spark an exodus of skilled medical professionals from Manitoba.

The 14 doctors and medical staff at CancerCare Manitoba wrote a letter May 7 about the pending resignation of interventional radiologist Alessandra Cassano-Bailey.

The document, which was addressed to three members of the organization’s senior leadership, said Cassano-Bailey tendered her resignation after efforts to introduce a liver cancer procedure — which is available elsewhere in Canada — were ignored for years.

“It will be a huge loss to the province if such an excellent and compassionate doctor leaves,” reads the letter, obtained by the Free Press.

Online therapy developed in Montreal helps seniors sleep better, study finds

MONTREAL - For many older adults, a restless night can be an unwelcome part of aging, but new research suggests that help may be just a few clicks away.

Researchers at a Montreal-based institute of geriatrics found that participants who completed an online program designed to treat insomnia and anxiety slept better and reported fewer symptoms of insomnia compared with when they started the treatment.

The study, published in May in the peer-reviewed journal "Age and Ageing," followed 80 adults aged 65 and older with insomnia symptoms. Participants completed the therapy through an online platform called e-SPACE Aging Well.

Researchers found that the treatment program improved participants' sleep efficiency — the amount of time spent asleep while in bed — by 11.46 per cent. Five participants met the study’s criteria for remission and no longer met the threshold for insomnia, say the researchers with Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal.

School science changes spark concerns

Calls for more teacher training, consultation and updating Manitoba’s overhauled science curriculum are growing ahead of a mandatory rollout planned for the fall.

The Education Department is in the process of adjusting what scientific concepts students must learn and experiment with between kindergarten and Grade 10.

The new curriculum calls on teachers to regularly integrate Indigenous perspectives into their lessons and focus on building scientific literacy while leaving a lot up to professional discretion.

A pair of local researchers who’ve been surveying pilot participants have found “mixed responses.”

NASA lays out moon base plans with landers, buggies and drones at the top of the list

NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II's record-breaking lunar flyaround.

Winnipeg pair look to launch EyeMirage device for sale in Canada in fall, with eyes to follow on international markets

By winter, a pair of Winnipeg entrepreneurs aim to have portable vision and concussion-screening products circulating Canada.

“Designing a device that is portable, affordable and AI-based and smartphone-based is a puzzle,” Dr. Behzad Mansouri said, a prototype of the device on the desk in front of him at the Brain, Vision and Concussion Clinic off St. Anne’s Road on Monday.

He’s a neuro-ophthalmologist at the clinic. He’s also the co-founder of Neuroptek, the medical technology company behind headsets meant to help diagnose concussions and other vision and neurological injuries and disorders.

The products look like virtual reality headsets. Instead of games, users take visual tests they’d find at a doctor’s office. They might try to read letters or identify colours.

What you don’t know can, in fact, hurt you

‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

It’s an interesting maxim, accurate in some settings.

But equally accurate might be, “What you won’t know, can hurt you.”

The last few years of politics — particularly in the United States but in other places as well — have been remarkably fractious and absolutist. You’re on one side or the other. You choose who to listen to, and what to believe in. People you don’t agree with are obviously stupid.

As permafrost thaws, some headwaters in Canada’s North turn orange and toxic: study

Ancient bedrock exposed by disappearing permafrost is releasing toxic metals into Canada's northern rivers, a new study says, with once-pristine subarctic streams now comparable in some cases to highly acidic, contaminated mining sites.

The findings out of Yukon point to an "unfolding environmental disaster," one co-author said, and adds to alarm over the rapid climate-fuelled changes in the North.

"We don't know the end point, but there's nothing about this that gives me any feeling of like, 'oh, we're going to be OK'," said co-author Sean Carey, a professor at McMaster University.

"I'm not even a gloomy person. This looks pretty gloomy."

Pair of bird books offer fascinating insight into the avian world

These two newly-released bird books couldn’t be more different. Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane’s The Book of Birds is artful and poetic; Louis Lefebvre’s A Bird’s IQ is analytical and academic. Each would make an attractive addition to the libraries of people interested in birds — but not without certain provisos.

The subtitle of The Book of Birds is deceptive — it’s not really a “Field Guide” in the usual sense, too substantial and beautiful to carry along on a bird outing. In hardback with a blue cloth spine and a blue-ribbon page-holder, it’s more like a church song missal than toteable identification helper. It’s best kept inside, protected from wind and weather and damp fingerprints.

The Book of Birds is a follow-up to Morris and Macfarlane’s previous collaboration The Lost Words. When the Oxford Junior Dictionary dropped a bunch of words connected to the natural world (such as acorn, otter, fern, newt and wren), the renowned artist and celebrated author created a “spell book” to conjure back 20 of those words and bring increased awareness of the things the words describe. It proved to be immensely popular.

Here they focus on 49 birds, presented alphabetically from avocet to kestrel to sparrow to yellowhammer, that are in danger of disappearing completely from the natural (European) world. Morris provides the spectacular bird illustrations, and Macfarlane waxes poetic on each of them in the hopes readers will not just identify birds, but “identify with them.”

Parade of ghostly icebergs brings joy and wonder to Newfoundland and Labrador

ST. JOHN'S -

At the top of Signal Hill in St. John's, N.L., on Tuesday afternoon, a steady stream of people walked around a rocky cliff and gasped.

Some cheered, some took out their phones to capture the moment — a rush of awe as an iceberg floated in the ocean below, cleaved off from a Greenland glacier and delivered by the Labrador current on a cloudless spring day.

It's a banner year for icebergs in Newfoundland and Labrador, where tourists and residents alike are gathering on shores across the province to welcome the ancient visitors.

Thorn in their side: Assiniboine Park asks for help to remove invasive plant

Assiniboine Park Conservancy is rallying the troops to stop the invasion.

Saturday will be a bad day for European buckthorn at the park, as forestry staff are hoping 100 volunteers will show up to help clear the problematic plant.

“It’s a big issue and there’s a lot of it,” said Barret Miller, the park’s manager of education and programming.

This is the first time the conservancy is asking for help from the public to remove the invasive weed from the Winnipeg green space. The section being targeted is in the heart of the park, just south of the cricket fields.

What to do with inconvenient wildlife

Their flocks darkened the skies, over a mile wide and hundreds of miles long. It would take hours or even days for them to pass over a fixed spot. They were a common Manitoba resident, nesting as far north as York Factory. In the 1860s, one hunter trapped 80 dozen in a net near St. Andrews.

B.C. ‘chemical fingerprint’ scheme to track illicit drugs is likened to DNA tests

VANCOUVER - Tucked in the basement of the chemistry building at the University of British Columbia, an arm-sized robot carries out the repetitive task of collecting and weighing colourful vials as machinery whirrs in the background.

It's part of a unique blend of robotics, chemistry and artificial intelligence aimed at helping police and health officials trace the path of batches of illicit drugs.

Police hope the "chemical fingerprinting" program is a game-changer in B.C.'s battle against toxic illicit drugs, with one senior officer likening it to DNA testing.

The provincially funded program will use technology developed at UBC by Aidos Innovations that looks at the chemical makeup of drugs and calculates their method of production, which police say could help them learn how drugs move over time.

‘Extraordinary’: Back on Earth, Jeremy Hansen describes his long journey in space

HOUSTON - When Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen first floated to the window after the Orion capsule's bone-rattling launch into space early this month, what he saw and felt left him grasping for words.

He saw the sweep of the ocean first, and then, drifting into view, the rich, dusty red of Australia. And behind it all was the vastness of space, with the edge of Earth's atmosphere shining like a bubble of blue glass in the black.

"It was pretty extraordinary," Hansen told The Canadian Press at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Thursday.

The enormity of what Hansen and his Artemis II crewmates experienced is still settling in a week after they returned to Earth, splashing into the Pacific Ocean following a 10-day lunar fly-around.

Crop-enhancement firm eyes potato prosperity

Of all the research labs in all the cities in all the world, Kinneret Shefer walks into St. Boniface Hospital’s.

The researcher and entrepreneur is the co-founder of GeneNeer Ltd., an agricultural biotechnology company from Israel. Earlier this year, the company established its North American operations at the Albrechtsen Research Centre in the central Winnipeg hospital.

“We moved to Canada because our technology developed, we are moving to implementation and we have some business agreements in negotiation,” said Shefer, who holds a PhD in genetic counselling from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

GeneNeer launched its Canadian operations in January. The company converted laboratory facilities at the research centre and had them operating within two weeks, allowing research activities to begin almost immediately.