Science Policy News

K* Conference takes place next week!

Next week, practitioners working across the knowledge-policy interface will gather in Hamilton, Canada for the 2012 K* Conference to foster connections between knowledge intermediaries and advance K* theory and practice to help improve science-policy linkages. CSPC is a Community Partner in the Conference, and CSPC Chair, Dr. Mehrdad Hariri has been a member of the International Advisory Committee for the conference and will represent CSPC at the event. In this blog, CSPC Advisory Committee Member and K* Conference Chair Dr. Alex.

The United Nations (UN) could soon have its own chief scientist or panel of science advisers, the Planet Under Pressure conference in London heard last week. In a video address to the conference, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the UN, said that he is taking forward a recommendation to appoint a chief scientific adviser or scientific board, as suggested to him by a panel of experts on global sustainability.

One of the world's leading scientific journals has criticized the federal government for policies that limit its scientists from speaking publicly about their research. The journal, Nature, says in an editorial in this week's issue that it is time for the Canadian government to set its scientists free.

The Canadian government has been accused of "muzzling" its scientists.  Speakers at a major science meeting being held in Canada said communication of vital research on health and environment issues is being suppressed.

To make electricity from sunlight you can convert it directly, using a photovoltaic cell. Or you can use the heat of that sunlight to boil water, and then drive a turbine with the resulting steam. These are both established technologies. But there is, in principle, a third way: use heat directly, without steam or turbines. In this case, unlike a standard solar cell (which is sensitive to some frequencies of light, but not others), almost all of the incident energy is available for conversion. Yet unlike the boiling-water method, no messy mechanical processes are involved.

Scientists finally know the date — and hence the likely cause — of a massive extinction that wiped out 95 per cent of life in the oceans and 70 per cent of life on land more than 200 million years ago. The precise timing coincides with a huge outpouring of carbon dioxide and methane from volcanic lava flows in northwest Asia, as determined by an international team of scientists including Charles Henderson, a geosciences professor at the University of Calgary

Canada needs to adopt science and innovation policies that allow it to compete in the 21st century.

Canada expects to face international pressure at upcoming climate change talks over its refusal to sign on for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, Environment Minister Peter Kent says.