Science Policy News

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.

Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.

"Innovation is a broad North American endeavour, and expanding the frontiers of discovery depends on strong partnerships," said Minister of State Goodyear. "In an integrated North American economy, innovation on one side of the border has positive effects on the other. Never before has collaboration been so important to our two countries."

Calgarians got a glimpse of the first science centre to be built in Canada in a quarter century when Telus Spark opened on Saturday.

A Canadian-led team of scientists has turned the clock back by 100 million years on the emergence of oxygen-breathing life on land, shedding fresh light on a moment when Earth's earliest and most primitive organisms — including the microbes that would eventually develop into more complex creatures, including humans — took a major evolutionary step forward.