Flying is fundamental to the survival of birds. It’s how they migrate, find food, mate, and escape predators. Along with its benefits, flight comes with unique risks as well: One wrong maneuver and a bird could plummet out of control. So, how exactly do birds become the masters of flight[Read More…]
Science & Technology
The latest in science and technology.
Tribune Tries: Visiting Montreal’s Biodome
Montreal’s Biodome is part of the Space for Life complex, a network that includes four other museums––the Biosphere, the Botanical Garden, the Insectarium, and the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium. The network aims to provide educational and research opportunities that prioritize sustainability and biodiversity protection. Researchers at the Biodome have access[Read More…]
The gendered accessibility problem with HPV vaccines
While COVID-19 vaccination continues to dominate public consciousness, the rate of vaccination for other diseases has decreased. In Canada, recent estimates show that up-to-date routine vaccine coverage was five per cent lower in children compared to the pre-pandemic rate. The fear of contracting COVID-19 at the doctor’s office is one[Read More…]
AI will train the new generation of expert surgeons
How do we quantify the skill of a surgeon? Dr. Rolando Del Maestro, McGill’s William Feindel professor emeritus in neuro-oncology and director of the Neurosurgical Simulation Research Centre at The Neuro, has been asking himself this question for much of his career. After nearly two decades of research into surgical[Read More…]
Astronomers identify new a star coated in helium-burning ashes
A recent discovery among the stars has caught the global attention of many astronomers and astrophysicists, as its existence challenges the fundamental theories of stellar astronomy. The new star is coated in oxygen and carbon, elements that form when helium is burned, as discovered by German astronomer Klaus Werner and[Read More…]
Excavating Earth’s history through ancient rock formations
Scaling mountainous terrain or keeping an eye out for grizzly bears and moose while wading through the flowing rivers of the Yukon may not seem typical of academic work. But these were only some of the many challenging conditions McGill researchers endured while conducting a recent study looking at oxygen[Read More…]
Six McGill undergrads win UofT international artificial intelligence competition
A team of six undergraduate McGill students placed first in the International Artificial Intelligence Competition ProjectX, which ran from Sept. 1 to Jan. 31. Hosted by the University of Toronto, the annual competition challenges students to develop new models of machine learning with practical, real-world applications. Of the three categories[Read More…]
Socio-economic factors affect a country’s ability to cope with extreme temperatures
With the steady rise of global temperatures on Earth, many countries are experiencing more intense and frequent heatwaves—periods of extremely high temperatures that can last from several days to several weeks. A new study conducted in collaboration with researchers from McGill found that people in low-income countries are more likely[Read More…]
Canadian nail salon workers exposed to high levels of hazardous chemicals
Imagine a workplace where employees are exposed to toxic chemicals on a regular basis. And imagine that for the majority of these chemicals, there is little, if any, information regarding their effects on human health. Now imagine that quite a few have been suspected to cause health problems such as[Read More…]
A potential cure for HIV: Right under our belly buttons?
At the 2022 Conference for Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, Yvonne Bryson, an infectious disease researcher and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, announced that a woman of mixed race had been cured of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). After undergoing an umbilical cord stem cell transplant to treat[Read More…]
