Manitoba students’ science projects aimed at eye health, wildfire prevention take top marks

More than 350 students in grades 4 to 12 took part in MSSS, the province’s largest annual science event, at the University of Manitoba.

Not consulted on Clear Lake motorboating: Chief

The chief of Keeseekoowenin Ojibway First Nation says he did not consent to the return of motorboats at Clear Lake.

Moon mission Earth photo could change your worldview

Having a photo of Earth — the whole Earth — taken by a human is an incredible thing, and now we have a new one. It’s a beautiful image. But it’s also a deeply moving one.

Artemis II astronauts make long-distance call to the space station as they head home from the moon

HOUSTON (AP) — Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made more history Tuesday: calling their friends aboard the International Space Station hundreds of thousands of miles away as they headed home from the moon.

It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.

"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.

Artemis II astronauts channel Apollo 8 with a striking Earthset photo

HOUSTON (AP) — The Artemis II astronauts are now forever intertwined with Apollo 8.

A day after the historic lunar flyaround, NASA on Tuesday released striking new photos taken by the U.S.-Canadian crew.

The four astronauts channeled Apollo 8’s famous Earthrise shot from 1968 with their own: Earthset, showing our planet setting behind the gray, pockmarked moon. Another photo captures the total solar eclipse that occurred when the moon blocked the sun from the crew’s perspective.

The three Americans and one Canadian are now headed home, with a splashdown in the Pacific set for Friday. In the meantime, scientists at Houston's Mission Control are poring over the stream of moon photos beaming down.

Canada’s Jeremy Hansen rockets toward the moon with Artemis II after engine burn

CAPE CANAVERAL - Canadian Jeremy Hansen is headed toward the moon as part of the Artemis II lunar mission after a nearly six-minute engine burn to bust out of orbit Thursday evening.

Hansen, serving as mission specialist for Artemis II, is the first non-American to travel beyond low Earth orbit.

Also on board the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, are veteran NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch.

After the spacecraft successfully completed a manoeuvre known as a translunar injection, Hansen had a message for the people of Earth.

Winnipeg dad, young son captivated by first mission to moon in more than a half-century

Father hopes witnessing the launch might leave an impression on his son who has developed a budding interest in astronomy.

The Latest: Artemis II astronauts reach orbit on historic mission to the moon and back

Four astronauts embarked on a high-stakes flight around the moon Wednesday, humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century and the thrilling leadoff in NASA’s push toward a landing in two years.

NASA's launch team loaded more than 700,000 gallons of fuel into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket early Wednesday, setting the stage for blast off in the evening at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Artemis astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are on board. They’ll hurtle several thousand miles beyond the moon, hang a U-turn and then come straight back. No circling around the moon, no stopping for a moonwalk — just a quick out-and-back lasting less than 10 days. NASA promises more boot prints in the gray lunar dust, but not before a couple practice missions.

Unlike the Apollo missions that sent astronauts to the moon from 1968 through 1972, Artemis’ debut crew includes a woman, a person of color and a Canadian citizen.

After 15 years of building North American brand, Winnipeg-based XiteBio Technologies Inc. eyes overseas markets

Out of the laboratory and into farmers’ fields.

If you had to describe Manas Banerjee’s career trajectory in fewer than 10 words, you could do a lot worse than that.

Banerjee is the CEO and founder of XiteBio Technologies Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company based in south Winnipeg, but before that, he was a researcher, scientist and professor at a number of institutions.

After earning a PhD in soil microbiology from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, Banerjee moved to Canada. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan, a research associate at the University of Manitoba and an adjunct professor at Western University (Ontario), publishing numerous papers and book chapters related to soil science.

David Suzuki is turning 90. Environmentalists may have ‘lost, big time,’ but he still has hope

David Suzuki admits defeat — at least in some respects.

The geneticist-turned-environmentalist, who is days away from his 90th birthday, reflected on his legacy as he prepared to release his latest book, "Lessons from a Lifetime," which compiles photos and stories from his life, as well as testimonials written by those he inspired.

"To me, the important legacy that I want to tell my grandchildren is, look, I tried. I love you. I did the best I could for you. And I tried," he said on a video call last month.

"The measure of a person is not whether they succeeded — because we've lost, environmentalists have lost, big time — but that we tried."

Pioneering scientist Suzuki reflects on his life’s work

It is hard to believe that Vancouver’s David Suzuki, an internationally renowned geneticist and environmental activist best-known in Canada for his popular television series The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, turns 90 years old on March 24.

Infrequent lunar eclipse performs Copper Side of the Moon early Tuesday morning

Stargazers in Manitoba have the chance Tuesday to watch the last total lunar eclipse on this side of the world until 2029.

The delicate art of pressing flowers

When early explorers travelled the four corners of the world in search of botanical treasures and plant knowledge, they faced many challenges collecting and transporting live plant material. In the 19th century, the development of the Wardian case — a glazed box that held soil and water — enhanced the survival rate of live plants on long sea journeys.

But highly detailed botanical illustrations also served as a visual record for early botanists and scientists to study plants from distant parts of the world. The technique of pressing and drying all the parts of individual plants on paper made it possible to preserve plant specimens.

Today, herbariums around the world, including those at Manitoba Museum and the University of Manitoba, house extensive collections of pressed, dried plants stored in specialized, climate-controlled conditions. Scientists use these specimens to determine the rarity of species and understand environmental changes.

Enduring art form

U of M partners with firm behind proposed sand mine to study Manitoba groundwater

University of Manitoba researchers will soon have a new, non-invasive tool to study the province’s vast groundwater resources after inking a partnership with Alberta-based mining company Sio Silica.

“If the technology works … it’s going to provide a mechanism to do real-time monitoring of changes in groundwater,” Ricardo Mantilla, an associate professor in the university’s civil engineering department and lead researcher for the project, said in an interview.

The emerging technology — called absolute quantum gravimetry — can measure changes in gravity caused by changes in groundwater levels, allowing researchers to better understand the flow and storage of underground water resources without the need for “expensive and disruptive” drilling, he said.

“That obviously has applications for (Sio Silica), but it can have very important implications for how we understand groundwater in aquifers in our province.”

First Nation says Hydro misuse of river diversion destroying sturgeon population

A northern First Nation is calling on Manitoba Hydro to alter its use of the Churchill River diversion to protect a lake sturgeon population allegedly decimated by hydroelectric operations.

Tataskweyak Cree Nation Chief Doreen Spence said the culturally significant species is facing extinction on the river system without immediate intervention, 50 years after Manitoba built the diversion to send water to large power generating stations.

“The diversion has artificially altered the flow of the water… so much that the river is barely able to sustain life as it once did,” Spence told reporters in Winnipeg Thursday.

“Manitoba Hydro must operate the diversion in sync with the natural flow regime of the river for the sturgeon to survive.”

U of M researchers studying whether genetic testing helps zero in on effective mental-health treatment meds

A team of University of Manitoba researchers is recruiting people seeking mental-health treatment for a study that could take the guesswork out of medication with the help of genetic testing.

The study will offer free pharmacogenomic testing — which predicts how a person may react to medications based on their genetic makeup — to 200 adults who are looking to start a new medication or switch their medication treating a mental-health issue.

“Someone with mental-health conditions, they (try) multiple medications, and sometimes it takes months or years to get to a point where those drugs work for them, or to have less side effects,” said Dr. Abdullah Maruf, the lead investigator on the study and assistant professor in U of M’s College of Pharmacy.

“Pharmacogenomic testing can find out how our body will respond to these kinds of medication.”

U of M over the moon about satellite’s lunar launch

A milk-carton sized satellite built by Manitoba researchers will go where no Canadian spacecraft has gone before — the moon’s orbit.

U of M chemist earns award for work on new drug candidate for treating Lou Gehrig’s disease

A University of Manitoba PhD candidate with a dramatic life story has been awarded the Mitacs Innovation Award for co-inventing an aspiring new drug candidate for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, announced Monday.

“I thought, like, it’s a spam call. Then someone told me that, ‘You have been selected for the (award),’ so I was numb for 10 to 20 seconds,” says medicinal chemist Nitesh Sanghai, currently pursuing a doctorate at the U of M’s college of pharmacy under the supervision of Prof. Geoffrey K. Tranmer.

Sanghai doesn’t talk about “rags to riches” but instead “grass to grace” in describing his trajectory. The 43-year-old from Jharia, a small town in the Jharkhand district of India, says he was the first person in his family to pass India’s Grade 10 board examination, a gateway to further secondary and post-secondary education.

“I thought of breaking the cycle and pursuing studies with passion and privilege, which my family never had,” he says.

Author goes far and wide on quest to document all plants native to Manitoba

When Diana Bizecki Robson was growing up in Saskatoon during the 1970s, she enjoyed riding her bike to parks and riverbanks where she spent hours studying the diversity of wild plants and their pollinators.

After deciding to become a biologist, Bizecki Robson worked for a few years as an environmental consultant which allowed her to conduct plant surveys. But it was when the opportunity to work at the Manitoba Museum came along — in October 2003 — that she could finally pursue the type of field work and research she loves.

Today, Bizecki Robson is the curator of botany at the Manitoba Museum. She oversees a herbarium which holds over 50,000 specimens.

“One of the things I discovered as part of a collection assessment project that I did when I first got here was that the museum did not have a specimen of every single species of plant or fungus or lichen (from this province) in its collection,” said Bizecki Robson.

Winnipeg-based organization injects federal funds into innovative, women-powered business in Bolivia

With practised grace, Antonia Olpo slides down the bank of the long, shallow pond and plunges fully clothed into the muddy water. On the grass above, other women and their male helpers unfurl the net, stretching it across the pond from edge to edge, and let it sink below the surface.

Three scientists at US universities win Nobel Prize in physics for advancing quantum technology

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for research on the strange behavior of subatomic particles called quantum tunneling that enabled the ultra-sensitive measurements achieved by MRI machines and laid the groundwork for better cellphones and faster computers.

The work by John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, who work at American universities, took the seeming contradictions of the subatomic world — where light can be both a wave and a particle and parts of atoms can tunnel through seemingly impenetrable barriers — and applied them in the more traditional physics of digital devices. The results of their findings are just starting to appear in advanced technology and could pave the way for the development of supercharged computing.

The prizewinning research in the mid-1980s took the subatomic “weirdness of quantum mechanics” and found how those tiny interactions can have real-world applications, said Jonathan Bagger, CEO of the American Physical Society. The experiments were a crucial building block in the fast-developing world of quantum mechanics.

Speaking from his cellphone, Clarke, who spearheaded the research team, said: “One of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work."

Ralliers decry Kinew’s pro-pipeline policy

Almost 300 people braved the rain Saturday afternoon to demand Premier Wab Kinew and the NDP government take action on climate change.

A crowd donning rain jackets and umbrellas gathered on Osborne Street in front of the Fort Rouge Leisure Centre next to Kinew’s constituency office with posters decrying proposed pipelines and Manitoba’s extreme wildfire season.

“Watching how the weather has changed due to climate change has been really concerning to me. I look outside every day and I think about it,” said Ashley Blackshaw, an environmental studies graduate who drove to Winnipeg from Starbuck to attend Saturday’s rally.

Blackshaw made a custom sign bearing lyrics from rock band Smashmouth’s hit “All Star” saying “The ice we’re skating is getting pretty thin.”

Reimagining the garden

Next week, close to 100 horticultural professionals from botanical gardens and conservatories across Canada and the U.S. will be in Winnipeg for the American Public Gardens Association’s 2025 Horticulture, Greenhouse, & Facilities Symposium, which will be hosted by Assiniboine Park Conservancy at The Leaf.

Will electric tractors gain traction? At a pilot event for farmers, researchers see possibilities

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — In the soft dirt of an indoor horseback riding ring last month, a group of farmers got ready to test drive a new piece of equipment: an electric tractor.

As they took turns climbing in — some surprised by its quick acceleration — they gave real-time feedback to the Michigan State University researchers who have been developing it for over two years.

The farmers remarked on the motor's quiet whir. Most were intrigued, or at least open to the idea. Some were concerned that the battery on the underside of the carriage would mean a lower clearance over the field, while others worried that it would simply be too expensive.

“What we hope to do when we retire is we want to get everything electric on the farm. The tractor is the last electric implement to get,” said Don Dunklee, one of the farmers to provide feedback. He runs a small organic vegetable farm that's relied on wind and solar for decades.