It’s not happening next week but it is a promising step forward if you’re looking for nancellulose applications. From a February 7, 2024 news item on Nanowerk, Note: A link has been removed, For the first time, a hydrogel material made of nanocellulose and algae has been tested as an alternative, greener architectural material. The...

Continue reading

The 4th gathering was in Montréal, Québec, Canada (as per my August 31, 2021 posting). Unfortunately,this is one of those times where I’m late to the party. The 5th International Conference on Governmental Science Advice (INGSA2024) ran from May 1 – 2, 2024 bu there are some satellite events taking place over the next few...

Continue reading

Ingenium (Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation corporation) announced a new exhibition and provided information about current exhibitions in its Ottawa-based Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM) in a May 2, 2024 announcement (received via email), Opening soon: Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste What is the world’s most limitless, underrated natural resource? That’s right –...

Continue reading

It took a while (until December 2023) for the OECD’s (Organization for Economic Cooperation Development) to release its latest (2022) PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores. Where Canada is concerned the scores seem to be a case of ‘the same old same old as per my October 9, 2013 posting about Canada’s then latest...

Continue reading

Caption: Nanogel – Scheme of selective drug treatment in the central nervous system. Credit Politecnico di Milano – Istituto Mario Negri A February 14, 2024 news item on Nanowerk provides some context for the image in the above, Note: A link has been removed, In a study published in Advanced Materials (“Synergistic Pharmacological Therapy to...

Continue reading

Unfortunately, there isn’t a punch line but I appreciate the effort to inject a little lightness into the description of a fairly technical achievement, from a February 12, 2024 news item on Nanowerk, Note: A link has been removed, Electrons carry electrical energy, while vibrational energy is carried by phonons. Understanding how they interact with...

Continue reading

De-extinction (also known as resurrection biology) has been mentioned here before (my January 18, 2019 posting). It’s essentially a ‘Jurassic Park’ fantasy that some people want to turn into reality and it seems they are now one step closer where woolly mammoths are concerned. The breakthrough has to do with Asian elephant stem cells, Caption:...

Continue reading

This April 24, 2024 Black Girls Do Engineer (BGDE) news release popped up in my email with an abbreviation I haven’t seen in a while, HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Black Girls Do Engineer recently signed an Education Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the [US] National Security Agency in an effort to continue playing a key...

Continue reading

I have posted about this April 30, 2024 event on Zoom previously (see my January 16, 2024 post) so this constitutes a reminder. From an April 23, 2024 Simon Fraser University (SFU) Café Scientifique announcement (received via email), SFU CAFÉ SCIENTIFIQUE: Overtraining and the Everyday AthleteTuesday, April 30 [2024], 5:00 – 6:30 pm over ZoomWhat happens when...

Continue reading

Given that it was Earth Day yesterday (April 22, 2024), this seems like a good second act. From an April 18, 2024 news item on phys.org, A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition—titled “String Quartet No. 1 “Polar Energy Budget”—is based on over 30 years...

Continue reading