A May 17, 2021 posting on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio Ideas programme blog describes and hosts embedded videos and audio clips of space data sonfications and visualizations, After years of attempts and failures to get a microphone to Mars, NASA’s [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] latest rover, Perseverance, succeeded. It landed in February carrying two microphones.For Jason Achilles Mezilis, a musician and record producer who has also worked for NASA, listening to the haunting Martian wind…

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Before getting to the moon dust, it seems the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has undergone a communications strategy transformation. For example, there’s this whimsical video about the NIST’s latest on moon dust, An April 28, 2021 news item on phys.org offers a little more whimsy and moon dust from the NIST, Like a chameleon of the night sky, the moon often changes its appearance. It might look larger, brighter or redder,…

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This company is very secretive. Other than some information about the technology everything else is a mystery. From an April 28, 2021 news item on mining.com, Litus announced the launching of LiNC, a patent-pending lithium extraction solution initially developed at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.In a press release, the company said that the nanotechnology composite material within LiNC has very strong ionic affinity and lithium selectivity in the presence of high concentrations of…

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Australian scientists are calling on citizen scientists to help them understand why frogs in eastern Australia are dying in what seems to be record numbers. Here’s more from a July 28, 2021 essay by Jodi Rowley (curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum at the University of New South Wales [UNSW]), and Karrie Rose (Australian Registry of Wildlife Health – Taronga Conservation Society, University of Sydney) for The Conversation (can also be found as…

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This is a long read and covers a lot of ground including: a couple of highlights from the ‘Interior Infinite’ show, a reference to how modern galleries came to be what they are, the tension of hosting the unruly (carnivalesque) in a ‘white cube’ (art gallery), a brief history of Mikhail Bakhtin, and more. If you’re looking for a succinct article about ‘Interior Infinite’, I highly recommend Dorothy Woodend’s June 30, 2020 article (‘Interior Infinite’:…

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Caption: Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques tries the Bio-Monitor, a new Canadian technology, for the first time in space (January 16, 2019). The innovative smart shirt system is designed to measure and record astronauts’ vital signs. Credit: Canadian Space Agency/NASA Here’s a biosensor announcement from an April 27, 2021 Experimental Biology (annual meeting) news release on EurekAlert, A technology-packed tank top offers a simple, effective way to track astronauts’ vital signs and physiological changes…

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The Canadian Science Publishing contest: Visualizing SCIENCE 2021 edition opened on July 20, 2021 with a deadline of August 17, 2021 at 23:59 (ET). Fame, glory, and a couple of bucks could be yours should your image find favour with the judges. Here’s more about the contest from the Visualizing SCIENCE webpage, An image can capture a moment, communicate a message, and evoke emotion. From selfies and sketches to micrographs and modelling outputs, the Visualizing…

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‘Nanotraps’ are not vaccines although they do call the immune system into play. They represent a different way for dealing with COVID-19. (This work reminds of my June 24, 2020 posting Tiny sponges lure coronavirus away from lung cells where the researchers have a similar approach with what they call ‘nanosponges’.) An April 27, 2021 news item on Nanowerk makes the announcement, Researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of…

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It’s not often that I publish a posting meant for beginners since I tend to take an understanding of nanotechnology for granted. For anyone who has stumbled across this posting and needs an introduction to nanotechnology, M Cynthia Goh’s* (professor, Chemistry, University of Toronto) April 25, 2021 essay about nanotechnology and agriculture, on The Conversation website, provides a good entry point (Note 1: The excerpts are not in the order in which they appear in…

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As far as superstars for Canadian science communication go, there is only one candidate and that would be Timothy Caulfield, professor of Health Law and Policy a the University of Alberta. Not being Caulfield’s biggest fan, I stumbled onto some of his latest work by accident in a Tweet from Canadian Science Publishing (@cdnsciencepub). It sent me on a search that resulted in an open access paper (a pretty good one too or so I…

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