Researchers shine a (very) bright light on duck feathers, revealing a sensitive technique for environmental monitoring. Like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, birds of all kind can act as sentinels for toxic metals in the environment. Now agricultural and environmental scientists are discovering that birds – or more accurately their feathers – can...
Read More >>The CIC recently sent Queen’s University PhD chemistry student Bailey Smith to the virtual 2020 Canadian Science Policy Conference. Smith sampled panels on topics ranging from a green recovery to parallels between COVID-19 and climate change. Below, she offers her take on what she heard. By Bailey Smith One of the conference’s major themes was...
Read More >>Chemist partners with City of Kitchener on innovative air pollution study It’s not every day a chemist gets to directly affect government policy. So Wilfrid Laurier University chemistry Professor Hind Al-Abadleh, MCIC, is understandably excited about her school-based air pollution study in Kitchener. Al-Abadleh launched a pilot air-quality monitoring project earlier in 2020 in partnership with...
Read More >>In April 2019 Dominique Weis was at the Vancouver airport, in a plane waiting on the tarmac about to take off to Paris, when she found out that the city’s famous Notre-Dame cathedral was on fire. For Weis, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Geochemistry of the Earth’s Mantle, her first thought was for...
Read More >>