Over 500 species of plants and animals are considered at risk in Canada. The 2003 Species At Risk Act (SARA) was implemented to protect these species. However, out of those 500 species that are currently listed, only 150 have recovery strategies and only four have implemented recovery action plans.  It is clear that […]

On November 3rd, I witnessed one of the greatest examples of communicating science that I have ever seen. That evening, the University of British Columbia (UBC) was the lucky host to one of the most influential Canadians of our time: David Suzuki. He presented a lecture entitled “The Global Eco-crisis: Is it too late?”   […]

Not many news stations talk about Fukushima any more. After the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Northeast Japan, I remember being glued to the computer for hours and hours trying to get the most recent news on the situation in Japan. What is happening now? A quick search turned up a news headline on robot suits in […]

Plastic Bags and Landfills: A Perspective from SJSU NEWS on Vimeo. Even though plastic, which is present in many aspects of our lives, has many applications and usages, it is not biodegradeable. The reason of the continuation of manifacturing plastic is that it “only takes up 5 percent of the world’s oil supplies and, in […]

Everyone has adjusted their watches, clocks, phones and laptops an hour earlier on November 6th. It may be that we all got “25” hours on the day, but let’s face it and allow me to ask, what have we done with the extra hour? With all the assignments and projects from different courses, social events […]

  If someone approached you claiming their product would allow you to use 100% of your brain, would you buy it?   You are probably familiar with this scenario if you watched the thriller ‘Limitless’, released earlier this year, starring Bradley Cooper. The plot of ‘Limitless’ is based on one of the most commonly perpetuated […]

A large comet spanning 3-5 km in width, large enough to have severe consequences if it had crash landed on Earth’s surface. Theorists hypothesized that it would be similar to the events that led to the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. These events may include unnatural drop in Earth’s atmospheric temperature, nuclear winters, […]

Dr. Kevorkian dies at the age of 83 on June 3rd, 2011. (CNN blog-reports “Dr. Jack Kevorkian dead at 83”) Dr. Death is the name given to a pathologist Jack Kevorkian. He made the headlines of national news in early 1990s for his legislation of a “right-to-die”. Is Dr. Death a murderer? Early life Jacob […]

HAITI Most of us remember, back in January 2010, the devastating earthquake occurred in Haiti which caused over 250,000 deaths. Then came the outbreak of cholera, which is an infection of the small intestine that causes severe diarrhea and vomiting. This outbreak is due to lack of sanitation and clean water and has caused over […]

There is a communications in science course that I would like to share. This past summer, I heard about a Japanese researcher named Dr. Gensei Ishimura, and I found through his website that he is one of the leading members of a program for training effective science communicators. This program is called CoSTEP, or Communicators […]