Author: isci
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Champagne Problems: The Challenge of Effervescence
Whether it is the sweet taste of ripe grapes or the dry flavour of crisp apples, often the first thought that comes to mind when considering champagne are the bubbles, that sparkling signature of facetiousness. What you might not think about is where champagne comes from and its production. What is really in a bottle…
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Cooking Therapy
In a perspective piece written for the Health and Wellness section of the Washington Post, one woman described her struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and the positive, therapeutic effect that cooking provided her (Friedlander, 2020). She explained how she used cooking as a coping strategy to ease her anxiety during extremely stressful times in her life, such as her parent’s divorce, her father-in-law’s hospitalization…
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Whale Hello There
In the 2003 film Finding Nemo, the character of Dory is portrayed as a high-energy, extroverted, amnesia-ridden Blue Tang fish who cannot be relied on for anything more than companionship. However, at one point in the film, she encounters a large blue whale of whom she attempts to communicate with by stringing together an arrangement of random words and sounds (Video #1). While the scene is meant to be exaggerated, actual (unanimated) aquatic…
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Too Hot to Handle: Ecological Responses to Wildfire Disturbance
The steady increase in area burned by wildland fires in Canada is projected to double as climate change increases, making it really too hot to handle (Government of Canada, 2020). While this can be scary to us as humans, the local wildlife is left helpless as the flames consume their homes. This disturbance prompts community…
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Here for a Good Time or a Long Time?
For the goldfish in Cootes Paradise, there isn’t much of a choice. In 2017, a study investigated the impacts of anthropogenic contamination in multiple sites downstream of a wastewater treatment plant (Simmons et al., 2017). This water discharges into Cootes Paradise Marsh, leaving it polluted with various pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Simmons et al.…
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A Vine of the Times: The Impact of Climate Change on Viticulture
In 2019, the Oxford English Dictionary chose “climate emergency” as the word of the year. A pertinent sentiment, climate change is the defining issue of our time. Viticulture, the study of grape cultivation (Oxford English Dictionary, 2020), is highly dependent on climactic conditions. The slightest changes in temperature, humidity, and time can dictate how sweet,…
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The Exciting Future of Electrified Medicine
Within the medical community, the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) has remained a challenging and unresolved endeavour. The history of PD is extensive; despite being discovered by Dr. James Parkinson over 200 years ago, researchers are yet to find a cure (Goetz, 2011; Rizek, Kumar and Jog, 2016). However, due to advancements in modern-day technologies…
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Seismic Consideration in Structural Design
Like puzzle pieces, Earth’s outermost layer is composed of tectonic plates that shift and collide against one another, accumulating stress over time. As the friction is overcome, an accumulation of seismic energy is suddenly released in the form of an earthquake (Kukowski, 2016). But while natural quakes destroy buildings, how have engineers worked to create…
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Behind the sport: figure skating
A successful figure skater must have a combination of steady balance, speed, strength, control, and grace. The seemingly effortless jumps and spins can be deceiving until you give them a try yourself. Exploring the rigorous forces involved in every maneuver, the intense psychological aspect, and the conditioning techniques gives us a behind-the-scenes look at a…
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Tree Man Illness
The name ‘tree man illness’ is a reference to the yellow-brown growths, as seen in Figure 1, which resemble tree bark that develop as a symptom of Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV) (Swati, et al., 2017). EV is a disease that results from a mutation on the EVER genes (McDermott, et al., 2009). Mutations that occur in…