A sampler of 10 Canadian genomic initiatives to watch By Jana Manolakos Despite a slower pace than other countries, Canada’s genomic research landscape is expanding, powering up Canada’s contributions to genetics and biotechnology in health, agriculture and the environment.From precision health, which harnesses the potency of genome sequencing to diagnose and determine treatment of genetic conditions, to the barcoding of …

Photos courtesy of the University of Guelph Can we establish a global bio-surveillance system? Can we avert a planetary mass extinction? Helping to answer these and other large-scale questions about life on Earth is the goal of Bioscan, a project awarded $24 million in federal funding this past January according to a University of Guelph news article.Led by Paul Hebert, …

Last fall, the sun spewed a violent mass of fast-moving plasma into space that came crashing into the planet’s magnetosphere, igniting the sky with shimmering coils of dramatic colour – a light show we know as the Aurora Borealis. And as lovely as the sight was, the event could have been far worse. In 1989, a similar geomagnetic storm caused …

At the University of British Columbia, there’s a study that offers new evidence that protected natural areas promote mammal diversity. Researchers at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry analyzed data from a global data set drawing from 8,671 camera trap stations spanning four continents, the largest number of wildlife cameras ever analyzed in a single study.They found more mammal diversity in survey …