Blog

Being at the top of the food chain is no guarantee of a species survival. Not only are many of these so-called apex predators susceptible to human impacts, they also are slow to recover from them, which makes these animals vulnerable despite their high-ranking ecosystem status.

A U of T Engineering team has designed a simpler way to keep therapeutic proteins where they are needed for long periods of time. The discovery is a potential game-changer for the treatment of chronic illnesses or injuries that often require multiple injections or daily pills.

With climate change already close to an irreversible tipping point, urgent action is needed to reduce not only our mean (carbon) footprints but also the “number of feet” – that is, the growing population either already creating large footprints or aspiring to do so, argues a leading physician and environmentalist in The BMJ today.

An expansive bed of underwater grass at the mouth of the Susquehanna River has proven it is able to “take a licking and keep on ticking.” A recent study has found that the submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) bed at Susquehanna Flats, which only recently made a comeback in the Chesapeake Bay, was not only able to survive a barrage of rough storms and flooding, but it has proven a natural ability to protect and maintain itself.

The view that the rich are highly mobile has gained much political traction in recent years and has become a central argument in debates about whether there should be “millionaire taxes” on top-income earners. But a new study dispels the common myth about the propensity of millionaires in the United States to move from high to low tax states.

Researchers at UCLA’s Voice Center for Medicine and the Arts have recently examined the speech patterns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina in a variety of settings to determine whether the presidential candidates followed the same voice modulation strategies. They researchers found that despite the politicians’ varied messages, their vocal delivery remains the same.

Dark matter is a mysterious substance composing most of the material universe, now widely thought to be some form of massive exotic particle. An intriguing alternative view is that dark matter is made of black holes formed during the first second of our universe’s existence, known as primordial black holes

A team of scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET), and the Prokhorov General Physics Institute have proposed a theoretical model that explains the unexpectedly high values of the linear magnetoelectric effect in BiFeO3 (bismuth ferrite) that have been observed in a number of experiments. The team also suggests a way of enhancing the effect

The livestock sector now has a piece of software enabling farmers to make an accurate environmental assessment of their farms. Known as Batfarm, it has been developed jointly by the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development NEIKER-Tecnalia, INTIA, IRSTEA, TEAGASC, the Higher Institute of Agronomy of Portugal, and Glasgow Caledonian University.

A new study, the largest of its kind, has systematically examined International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies over the past three decades. It found that—despite claims to have reformed their practices following the global financial crisis—the IMF has in fact ramped up the number of conditions imposed on borrower nations to pre-crisis levels.