From Our Own Borealis Blog

Kids and COVID-19: How other coronaviruses may be giving them a leg up

Science Borealis Leave a comment Biology and Life Sciences, Health, Medicine, and Veterinary Science
Image by EpicTop10.com, CC BY 2.0

Jenna Finley, Biology and Life Sciences co-editor Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve all been aware that exhibiting symptoms […]

Continue reading


Blog Feeds

Right Turn: Are we getting any closer to a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease?

Various bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Health, Medicine and Veterinary Science
Let’s play a game. If you could choose, what would be your superpower? Invisibility is a popular one, as are super strength, the ability to read minds, and time travel (but we know that messing with time can be dangerous). This list of the best superpowers of all time ranks them in the context of helping a person win a battle and save lives. But what if we are choosing our superpower for everyday life?…

Continue reading

Technology for mopping up oil spills

Maryse de la Giroday Science in Society, Technology and Engineering
It’s a little disheartening to write about technology for mopping up oils spills as there doesn’t to be much improvement in the situation as Adele Peters notes in her June 4, 2021 article (A decade after Deepwater Horizon, we’re still cleaning up oil spills the same way) for Fast Company (Note: Links have been removed), Off the coastline of Sri Lanka, where a burning cargo ship has been spilling toxic chemicals and plastic pellets over…

Continue reading

Rocks in the Playground

Matt Hall Environmental and Earth Sciences
It’s debatable whether neural networks should feature in an introductory course on machine learning. But it’s hard to avoid at least mentioning them, and many people are attracted to machine learning courses because they have heard so much about deep learning. So, reluctantly, we almost always get into neural nets in our Machine learning for geoscientists classes.Our approach is to build a neural network from scratch, using only standard Python and NumPy data structures — that…

Continue reading

Fellow Creatures: What is Caregiver Burden for People with Pets?

Zazie Todd Biology and Life Sciences, Health, Medicine and Veterinary Science
I've got a new post on my Fellow Creatures blog at Psychology Today.Photo: Meruyert Gonollu/ShutterstockBy Zazie Todd, PhDWe tend to have a rosy perspective on pets and think of the many benefits they can bring to our lives. But for many people, sooner or later there comes a point where the pet is sick or has a behavior issue. As well as being hard for the pet, this is difficult for the pet guardian too.So…

Continue reading

iNatting Big Creek Provincial Park, British Columbia

chloevanloon Biology and Life Sciences, Communication, Education and Outreach, Environmental and Earth Sciences
In the spring of 2020 and 2021 my husband and I went backpacking in the Big Creek Provincial Park. We spent five and six days respectively, spanning most of the park. But we still have creeks to cross and ridges to walk on the to-do list. Something will always pull us back, and if history keeps repeating it will be a rare plant or insect that lures us back.  While most people recreating in the…

Continue reading

Carbon nanotubes can scavenge energy from environment to generate electricity

Maryse de la Giroday Science in Society, Technology and Engineering
A June 7, 2021 news item on phys.org announces research into a new method for generating electricity (Note: A link has been removed), MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them.The liquid, an organic solvent, draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive chemical reactions or…

Continue reading