Category: syn·op·sis beta

Imagine the room you’re sitting in, only 4.0°C warmer. Maybe you’re a little uncomfortable. The planet, 4.0°C warmer, is in crisis. Considered an extremely dangerous outcome by climate scientists, it would likely entail massive sea level rise, food and water scarcity affecting billions of people, and the collapse of the biosphere (Kemp et al. 2022;…

Quick! You have an assignment due in 1 hour. What’s the first thing you’re doing? Well, for those of us with long hair, we’re probably tying it up into a ponytail. Now with your hair out of the way, suddenly you’re ready to take on the challenge. Have you ever wondered why that is? I…

Alcohol and athletics are both deeply ingrained in various cultures and in many cases, intertwined. Old photographs depict Tour de France cyclists drinking beers mid-race, whereas modern examples include spraying champagne from a Formula 1 podium or opening an expensive bottle of wine to celebrate an athletic achievement. This raises the question of whether alcohol…

If you’ve seen me around campus, you’ve almost certainly seen my laptop with a huge butter sticker. But have you ever stopped to wonder why humans love butter so much?  Milk To understand butter’s appeal, we need to start with milk. Butter is primarily made of milk fat, separated from other cream components through churning.…

A small strip of land between the Atlantic and Pacific ocean might seem like an odd place to look for answers about evolution. But, the Isthmus of Panama is considered to be one of the most important pieces of evidence in questions that involve the triggering of the last Ice Age, the separation of marine…

Poppy plants have become widely recognized in Canada as a symbol for Remembrance Day Poppy plants have become widely recognized in Canada as a symbol for Remembrance Day as they inspired the highly acclaimed poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. However, poppies also have medicinal uses that continue to be used to…

Imagine waking up at 3 a.m. to find a shadowy figure standing in the corner of your bedroom. You try to scream, but nothing comes out. You try to move, but your body refuses to cooperate. At this moment, you might be thinking that you need an exorcist. However, before jumping to conclusions, you might…

The vast majority of us have played a video game at least once in our lives, whether it be the likes of Jetpack Joyride or a more technically demanding game like Tomb Raider. One thing’s for sure: science doesn’t really mean much to Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Drake is…

When you picture a surgeon, you probably don’t imagine one that’s barely a centimetre long, with six legs and a pair of antennae and yet in 2024 researchers found that Florida carpenter ants amputate the infected legs of their nestmates to save their lives. This makes them the first non-human animals to use amputation to…