news 2022

This green process could be used to valorize other food remains rich in cellulose or lignin The banana is an excellent source of energy, nutritionists will tell you unanimously. So is the peel, according to Marie-Josée Dumont, but in the fuel sense of the term. The professor from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Laval University and her colleagues at McGill University have just taken a new step towards a fuel based on banana peel by substantially improving the efficiency of an existing chemical process.

Science, Health & Technology Lou Corpuz-Bosshart Chronic ship noise can lead to stress, hearing loss and feeding problems for marine mammals like whales, dolphins and porpoises. UBC researchers are diving in to help address the issue. According to project lead Dr. Rajeev Jaiman , an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering, propeller noise accounts for much of the acoustic barrage from ships.

To better understand the evolution of flowers, researchers from Montreal are harnessing photogrammetry - a technique commonly used by geographers to reconstruct landscape topography. This is the first time scientists have used the technique to study flowers. The team, including researchers from McGill University, Université de Montréal, and the Montreal Botanical Garden, published the results of their work in the journal New Phytologist .

Cities are responsible for almost 1/5 of the global methane emissions caused by human activities. But most cities don't capture information about the full range of sources of this powerful greenhouse gas. In 2020, a team led by McGill University, measured methane emissions from various sources across the city of Montreal.

Does evolution follow certain rules? Can these rules be predicted? Southeast Asia's tree shrews break multiple rules when it comes to body size variation - with an unexpected twist - according to researchers from McGill University, University of Cambridge, and Yale University. The findings shed new light on the effects of climate change on the evolution of body size in animals.

Drylands are experiencing increasingly levels of degradation and desertification, changes that could put already vulnerable populations at greater risk. A research team, including Natasha MacBean , conducted an examination of dryland productivity and its important role in global carbon and water cycling, to understand the impact of climate change and human activity on future dryland ecosystem functioning.

Scientists from Simon Fraser University are part of an international team of researchers that has developed a new science-based indicator to assess the state of health of the oceans-and the possible risk of extinction of their species. Recent biodiversity studies show an unprecedented loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity on land, but the extent to which these patterns are widespread in the oceans is not yet known.

The discovery of a 460 km river under the Antarctica ice sheet could be the missing link to climate models. A team of researchers led by Dr. Christine Dow, a professor in the department of Geography and Environmental Management and cross-appointed to the Department of Applied Mathematics, discovered the river from a series of airborne radar surveys and modelling.

The World Health Organization's most recent estimates (2016) are that over 4.2 million people die prematurely each year due to long-term exposure to fine particulate outdoor air pollution (often referred to as PM 2. A recent study involving McGill researchers now suggests that the annual global death toll from outdoor PM 2.5 may be significantly higher than previously thought.

Higher exposure to a certain type of traffic-related air pollution called particulate matter may be linked to an increased risk of dementia, according to a meta-analysis by Western researchers published this week in Neurology , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. While at Western, graduate student Dr. Ehasan Abolhasani specifically looked at fine particulate matter which consists of pollutant particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter suspended in air.

Sampling seawater just below the surface of a seagrass bed in Quatsino Sound, British Columbia. Credit: Mike McDermid What can a bottle of seawater tell you about the fish living below? Seawater holds -memories- in the form of DNA from fish and invertebrates that have recently passed by. This information, called environmental DNA or eDNA, can be used by scientists to track species across space.

If the past is any indication, the face of the boreal forest will not change dramatically in the coming decades Boreal forest trees are sensitive to climate change, but their migration in response to temperature fluctuations is not at a gallop. That's according to a study published today in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States), where a research team calculated how fast jack pine and black spruce moved north after the last ice age.

Under certain conditions, salmon caught and released have proportionally fewer offspring than salmon that were not caught by anglers Under certain conditions, catching and releasing a salmon would result in a decrease in the number of offspring it produces. This is what researchers from Laval University and their collaborators have shown in a study published in the journal Fisheries Management and Ecology .

A large-scale study of 47 species of monkeys and lemurs has found that climate change and deforestation are driving these tree-dwelling animals to the ground, where they are at higher risk due to lack of preferred food and shelter and may experience more negative interaction with humans and domestic animals.

New technology makes the process of turning CO2 into valuable chemicals economically viable for industrialization New technology developed at the University of Waterloo could make a significant difference in the fight against climate change by affordably converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels and other valuable chemicals on an industrial scale.

Over a 50-year period, logging on B.C.-s Central Coast preferentially targeted the highest value locations on the landscape, according to new research from Simon Fraser University. The systematic depletion of high-value components of the environment raises concerns about future sustainability and intergenerational access to natural resources.

A study supervised by Audrey Smargiassi of UdeM has found that environmental noise is associated with increased risk of stroke among people aged 45 and over in the Montreal area. Every 10-decibel (dBA) increase in outdoor noise raises the risk of stroke by 6% for people aged 45 and over living in the Montreal area.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have identified the mechanism responsible for the formation of temperature and salinity "staircases" in the Arctic Ocean, resolving a mystery that has confounded oceanographers and climatologists alike for more than half a century. Understanding how these vertical structures work promises to shed more light on the causes and consequences of rapid Arctic sea ice loss amid climate change.

Researchers from Université de Montréal and the University of Minnesota have developed a fast, nondestructive way of estimating how millions of dried plant specimens interacted with their environment. CONTENU - Within the cabinets and drawers of the world's herbaria are nearly 400 million dried plant specimens.

Researchers at Western's Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources (ICFAR) a nd collaborators from academia, government and industry are identifying and treating 'forever chemicals' in water systems, an ever-increasing environmental concern which affects more than 2.5 million Canadians.