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Canadian biofuel plans derailed

Iogen cancels a pioneering facility to turn crop waste into ethanol. A leading biofuels company whose products have powered Formula 1 racing cars has hit a major bump in the road. Canadian company Iogen Energy in Ottawa announced on 30 April that it has shelved plans to build a large-scale facility in Manitoba to produce fuel ethanol from cellulose, the long molecular chain of sugars that forms the fibrous material in plants. Instead, the company will “refocus its strategy and activities”, leading to a smaller development programme and the loss of 150 jobs, its joint owners Royal Dutch Shell and … Read more…

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Frozen Assets

Maclean’s Ice cores tell the history of Canada’s climate, but now the government doesn’t want them anymore.

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Canada’s ice cores seek new home

Confusion over fate of valuable climate record chills researchers. An unusual ‘help wanted’ advertisement arrived in the inboxes of Canadian scientists last week. The e-mail asked the research community to provide new homes for an impressive archive of ice cores representing 40 years of research by government scientists in the Canadian Arctic. The note was sent out by Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) in Ottawa. He claimed that the collection faced destruction owing to budget cuts at Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the government department that runs the survey, and a “radical downsizing” of the Ice Core … Read more…

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Despite Canadian government woes, neuroscience should win out

MONTREAL — When Canada’s Conservative government presented its 2011 budget in late March, the fiscal plan didn’t contain too many surprises for science funding. Like previous budgets, the proposal offered modest increases to the country’s national research agencies and replenished the coffers of Genome Canada, its genomics and proteomics outfit. But the budget also contained a flashy and unprecedented new move: a multimillion-dollar earmark for neuroscience research. Under the Conservatives’ proposed scheme, the government would contribute up to C$100 million ($105 million) over several years to the Canada Brain Research Fund, a public-private partnership led by the Brain Canada Foundation … Read more…

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Taxonomy in Trouble in Canada

Canada is at risk of losing its taxonomic expertise, according to a report released today. The report details stagnant research funding, greying experts, a lag in digitization and a lack of support for national collections. This is threatening Canada’s understanding of its biodiversity, and the ecosystem services it provides, the report concludes. “Canadian contributions to describing new species has dropped from being 6th in the world to 14th in the last decade,” says Thomas Lovejoy, Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, who chaired the panel of 14 Canadian and international experts who authored the report. “The … Read more…