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Scars of the Earth

Posted by Hannah

Discover Forensic anthropologist Amy Mundorff wants to make the search for the missing safer and more successful. One morning in July 2005, Amy Mundorff rode into the Bosnian countryside, tagging along with a team from the International Commission on Missing Persons. The roads wound past forests, farmland and villages. The group stopped near a filed in a hilly area on the outskirts of a village to meet an informant. From the gestures and the translator’s comments, Mundorff understood that the ground beneath the field might hold bodies. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina had ended 10 years earlier, but thousands of people remained … Read more…

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The Manning Awards: how four Canadian inventors became market leaders

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For three decades, the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation has recognized Canadians who develop and market successful innovations. This year, the awards are about imagination and stamina, says David Mitchell, the foundation’s president. Each of the four winners created a homegrown, breakthrough product. (Two of the prizes, the Innovation Awards, go to those who haven’t had access to research facilities or advanced education in their fields). All of the inventors refined their ideas constantly—sometimes over decades—until they had something they knew would make a difference. Critical deliveries Encana Principal Award $100,000 In the mid-1990s, Geoffrey Auchinleck and his business partner Lyn Sherman … Read more…

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Canadian software helps Syrian activists avoid web censors

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Late last year, Syrian activists found their Internet connections blocked. In need of a way to communicate, they turned to a Canadian technology company to deliver the networking system. “The request was channelled through a number of different sources. They wanted a way of getting around Internet censorship,” says Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of the Psiphon Inc. In December, the company distributed Psiphon 3 to the activists. From his Ottawa headquarters, Rohozinski watched the number of online connections in Syria grow — to 30,000. The software enabled them to tunnel past Internet filters and barriers to websites, social media and other … Read more…

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Radioactive medicine without the nuclear headache

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The Globe and Mail A made-in-Canada solution to our medical-isotope problem could come from a machine with a name that could have been pulled straight from the pages of a science fiction novel: the cyclotron. “It was really pooh-poohed, this idea of using cyclotrons; they said there was no way we could produce enough in a commercially meaningful way,” says John Wilson, the cyclotron facilities manager at the University of Alberta’s Cross Cancer Institute. In mid-2010, scientists at the University of Sherbrooke and the University of Alberta made technetium-99m, the most commonly used medical isotope, without a nuclear reactor. Last … Read more…

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Think small

Posted by Hannah

The Canadian forestry industry could hinge on the most abundant nanomaterial on earth. A pale grey slurry roils about in a waist-high blue plastic drum at the centre of a garage-like space at the National Research Council’s Biotechnology Research Institute in Montreal. It looks a little like slush, but when it is dried it more closely resembles one of the fine white powders chefs stock in their kitchens. For the handful of chemists hovering about the room, it’s the stuff dreams are made of. For Canada’s faltering forestry industry, it is a beacon of optimism. Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) is nature’s … Read more…