Phage Crusade

“Jeff Summerhayes knows the drill. The bleak hospital corridors, the calls on the intercom, the IV tubes in his arms dangling from their holders like chandeliers—all have been familiar since Summerhayes’s childhood. But the bug was still in him and all the antibiotics had failed. Now he was lying in a bed at Vancouver General Hospital with his sister sitting beside him, both expecting to hear, once again, that he didn’t have long to live.”

Mark Czarnecki – Maisonneuve – January 2020

‘NASA North’ or Final Frontier fantasy?

“A confluence of factors make the Nova Scotia site ideal for a spaceport, Matier said. Despite its remote location, the 340-acre site on a swath of provincial Crown land between the communities of Canso, Little Dover and Hazel Hill is well-serviced with access to water, electricity and paved roads nearby and, thanks to a wind farm recently built in the area, the company had an up-to-date environmental assessment to reference — all of which could save MLS ample time and money. Overlooking thousands of kilometres of open ocean, it is far from large populations that could be affected by a launch failure.”

 

Catherine McIntyre – The Logic – January 2020

Using Pop Science to Build the Perfect Workforce

“Recent Canadian stats are harder to find, but we know that in 2013 almost 30 percent of small and medium Canadian businesses reported using them. By relying on these tests, employers can ask questions that would be inappropriate—or at best bizarre—in a traditional interview. At Michaels, a North America–wide arts-and-crafts supply store, for example, Canadians who applied for a job online in March 2017 were directed to a questionnaire that asked them to assess themselves in reference to around 200 items.”

 

Sebastian Leck – The Walrus – August 2019

Can Climate Change Be Reversed?

“By the time he got to Calgary, he’d come to view climate change from an astonishing array of perspectives. Over the course of his seven years at U of C, Keith taught in the departments of chemical and petroleum engineering, economics, environmental design and physics and astronomy. He was the kind of person who kept people like Bill Gates up to date on the latest climate research.”

 

Arno Kopecky – Alberta Views – July 2019

The climate crisis: These are Canada’s worst-case scenarios

“At first there’s only the blue of the sea divided from the green of the countryside by an emblematic stripe of red sand beach. Then, right on cue, a lobster boat moseys into the frame, heading homeward to nearby Savage Harbour, P.E.I., with the morning’s haul. It’s just Prince Edward Island doing its job—delivering the sweet illusion that here, at least, everything remains just the way it’s always been.”

 

John Geddes – Maclean’s – July 2019

A River in the Sky

“Above the waters of the North Pacific a ribbon of moist air some 800 kilometres wide and 5,000 kilometres long spins off from swirling winds. To the naked eye this ribbon may be no more than a sea of wispy clouds, disguising an atmospheric river that carries 25 Mississippi Rivers worth of water vapour – and it’s headed for B.C.’s south coast. When it collides with land, it will release tremendous rains that could last for a couple of days and trigger devastating landslides, floods, and fatal avalanches.”

Ainslie Cruickshank – Star Vancouver – May 2019

Nuclear Winter

“Spinning out of control, the satellite came to its journey’s fiery end in January 1978, just four months after its launch. After weeks in a decaying orbit, it re-entered the atmosphere near Haida Gwaii, then known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Soviets had intended, in such a scenario, for the reactor onboard to disengage from the satellite’s body and safely burn up seperately. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the remains of Cosmos 954 streaked across northern Canada and the reactor broke apart, spilling its radioactive contents into the air.”

Lorcan Archer – Maisonneuve – January 2019

https://maisonneuve.org/article/2019/01/29/nuclear-winter/

The Riddle of the Roaming Plastics

“Codfish eat everything. ‘Everyone here has a story about the Barbie doll they found in a cod,’ quips Max Liboiron, referring to St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, her home. So the geography professor at Memorial University in St. John’s thought she knew what to expect in 2015 when she conducted the first study on plastic ingestion among cod in Newfoundland’s inshore waters. The results surprised her; in contradiction of the local lore, the data showed one of the lowest rates of plastic ingestion by fish in the world.”

Matthew Halliday – Hakai Magazine – December 2018

Bitter Pill

“Sherman also spends a small fortune on litigation—a full 50 per cent of what he invests in research. Generic manufacturers like Apotex live or die by the speed with which they can plunge into the market­place with copycat versions. So they make it their business to shorten the duration that brand name companies hold on to drug monopolies, weighing potential profits against the risk of lawsuits. It’s not unusual for Apotex—probably the country’s biggest litigator—to be engaged in 100 court cases simultaneously.”

 

Geraldine Sherman – Toronto Life – July 2008

Keepers of the spotted owl

“McCulligh knew the breeding centre could not afford to lose this newborn. At that point in time, in April 2017, there were only six spotted owls left in B.C.’s wild, even though scientists had been sounding the alarm for decades about widespread destruction of the species’ ancient rainforest habitat. Ten years into operation, the breeding centre had hatched just eight other spotted owls — and one was blind, couldn’t fly and laid eggs in her water dish. ‘It was the most stressful thing of my entire life,’ McCulligh remembered. ‘It was at the point where I just didn’t know what to do anymore.'”

 

Sarah Cox – The Narwhal – November 2018