In about 24 hours last week a natural phenomenon near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, developed from a minor inconvenience into a potentially life-threatening hazard. It’s not unusual for underwater currents in the Queen Maud Gulf, south of Cambridge Bay, to cause small fissures in sea ice. But last week a fissure opened that was large enough to…

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has put pressure on social media platforms to try to deal with floods of misinformation. Even getting a handle on the size of the problem is tricky because while social platforms are publicly keen to tackle the problem, they’re less forthcoming with numbers that might show how much false information is…

After trudging through the thick layer of snow blanketing his farmland, Brent Preston shovels some aside and begins digging into the soil.  Under the snow, the ground is unexpectedly green, with a medley of peas, sunflowers, clover and oats alive and thriving in the dead of winter. “One thing we like to say is: there’s…

Invasive green crabs that have caused major problems for native species like eelgrass at Nova Scotia’s Kejimkujik National Park Seaside could be the latest solution to reducing plastic pollution in the ocean. Parks Canada has teamed up with a McGill University professor to find a way to turn the shells of the pesky crabs into a…

Thanatotheristes degrootorum, seen in this artist’s impression, is the first new tyrannosaur species named in Canada in 50 years. (Submitted by Julius Csotonyi) A new species of tyrannosaur — the oldest ever found in Canada — has been discovered in Alberta. Thanatotheristes degrootorum was as long as two cars lined up bumper to bumper and would have towered…

Canadian privacy advocates are calling on all levels of government to create specific regulations around police use of facial recognition technology. Canada doesn’t have a policy on the collection of biometrics, which are physical and behavioural characteristics that can be used to identify people digitally. Because of that, there are no minimum standards for privacy, mitigation of…