Content warning: human trafficking Thank you to all who have followed my blogs on the cultural influences of alcohol use. I hope you’ve had a chance to reflect on how your culture has shaped how you view alcohol. I’d like to transition and finally introduce another area of research that I’m passionate about and am […]
The immune system is one of life’s most important evolutionary achievements, and its proper functioning is critical to enable healthy and disease-free living. The intricate actions of the immune system depend on highly specialized cells that use molecular signaling pathways to communicate with each other. As discussed in previous blog posts, a major function of […]
While normally I write about animals and/or their brains, today I’ll be talking about something that’s neither of those: Venus flytraps. Venus flytraps are a plant native to the eastern coast of the US Carolinas. It lies at the intersection of a few peculiar plant categories, as it’s both carnivorous and capable of ‘rapid’ movement […]
This article was originally published in The Conversation Canada on November 21, 2021. Indica and sativa are commonly used to describe cannabis strains, but what’s the difference between these two labels? Almost half of all Canadians have tried cannabis at some point in their lives. If you’re one of them, you’ve probably been confronted with […]
A new Canadian ecolabel launched earlier this month that promotes winter wheat as a bird-friendly crop from the Canadian prairies. Winter wheat is planted in the fall and starts growing as soon as the weather allows in the spring, providing critical habitat for returning migratory waterfowl. This new ecolabel is a partnership between Cereals Canada […]
We have strong evidence showing that intensive animal farming is one of the major contributors to antimicrobial resistance dissemination. Therefore, the demand for raised without antibiotics (RWA) meats and produce is increasing. We are witnessing more RWA products on our grocery shelves every day, but how feasible is the RWA production of food long-term? The […]
When I listen to nurses tell their stories, I am often reminded of the practice of lingchi, or the ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts.’ This practice was a gruesome form of torture thought to originate in China, and involves exactly what it sounds like, multiple cuts made into the flesh of a person until death […]
Sense is any of the means by which living beings perceive the physical world. As children we were were schooled in our five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Sensibility, on the other hand, refers to the ability to sense, feel, or perceive and thus has a high emotional quotient, including the capacity for […]
This month’s blog is the second of a pair, so I suggest you first read last month’s if you haven’t already done so. The previous blog asked a simple question: what can we take from fiction generally, and from dystopian literature specifically, to apply to the problem of ecological destruction and the climate crisis? I […]
A runaway trolley is barreling down the tracks towards five people. You are standing next to a lever. Pulling this lever will cause the trolley to switch tracks before it hits the five people, saving them from certain death. But it will divert the trolley towards one person on the other set of tracks. If […]
