CNN | Mysterious repeating fast radio burst traced to nearby galaxy
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space. Individual radio bursts emit once and don't repeat. Repeating fast radio bursts are known to send out short energetic radio waves multiple times.
MONTREAL GAZETTE | The American kestrel is in free fall, and no one knows why
“It’s like a big black hole — we have no idea why they’re declining,” said David Bird, professor emeritus of wildlife biology at McGill and a former bird columnist for the Montreal Gazette, who created and ran the university’s prolific breeding colony. “We saw after a while that they were breeding well, but the youngsters weren’t coming back. They weren’t surviving. What’s particularly interesting is that the story of the kestrel is happening to other bird species.”
BNN BLOOMBERG | Quebec raising legal age for cannabis to 21, the strictest in the country
Daniel Weinstock, director of the institute for health and social policy at McGill University, said it's clear where the Quebec government is coming from, citing research that shows a risk factor for developing brains.
CBC | A loss of consensus: Why the last decade saw growing polarization
"The word that captures the last decade is polarization, and you can see it in a domestic context in different liberal democracies ... [and] on a global level", said Jennifer Welsh, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University. She is also the author of several books, including The Return of History: Conflict, Migration and Geopolitics in the 21st century.
CBC | The backlash against migration in the 2010s and bold ideas for the future
"What happened in the last decade is that people have realized that migration was an important human phenomenon and that it would not stop. Migration is not a tap that you can turn on and turn off. Migration is something that happens, that has always happened and that will continue to happen. Migration is a normal reaction to political, social, economic stress," François Crépeau told The Sunday Edition's host Michael Enright.
NATURE | This AI researcher is trying to ward off a reproducibility crisis
Joelle Pineau doesn’t want science’s reproducibility crisis to come to artificial intelligence (AI). Spurred by her frustration with difficulties recreating results from other research teams, Pineau, a machine-learning scientist at McGill University and Facebook in Montreal, Canada, is now spearheading a movement to get AI researchers to open up their methods and code to scrutiny.
COSMOS MAGAZINE | What does it mean to be human?
The pace of biotechnology research is blurring the bounds of humanity so rapidly that two US scholars are calling for a rethink on what it means to be legally human.
Writing in the journal Science biomedical law experts Bartha Knoppers, from McGill University in Canada, and Henry Greely say technologies that mix non-human and human cells, such as CRISPR, xenotransplantation and chimeras, mean a less stringent definition of “human” will be needed going forward.
THE NEW YORK TIMES | What We Don’t Know About I.V.F.
Most existing research has been able to compare only the postpregnancy health of women who have conceived using fertility treatments with that of those who did not. “But, of course, that crude comparison is not comparing apples to apples,” says Dr. Natalie Dayan, an obstetric internist and assistant professor of medicine at McGill University. “It’s comparing women with infertility who have tried multiple times and then became pregnant through A.R.T.
CTV NEWS | McGill puts call out to seek replacement for their men's varsity team name
The Men's Varsity Teams Naming Committee is asking students, staff, alumni, coaches or other athletes at McGill to send ideas for a new name after the committee met Nov. 26 to discuss the process after the Redmen moniker was dropped.
MONTREAL GAZETTE | The draw of nicotine: With rise in youth vaping, history repeats itself
Michael Pollak, an oncologist and director of the McGill University-Jewish General Hospital Cancer Prevention Centre, says vaping should be sold by prescription and only to those trying to quit smoking.
“I would expect (vaping) to be less carcinogenic than tobacco. But the flavours, after they have been heated, are there carcinogens in there that might cause trouble five or 10 years later?
BNN BLOOMBERG | Miracle Cancer Drugs Are Making Big Pharma Billions. Others Are Getting Left Behind
Only about 1 in 20 cancer patients participates in trials of experimental therapies. Doctors and drugmakers should be prudent about continuing to test products in desperate, hard-to-find patients when they haven’t shown significant benefits in multiple earlier studies, said Jonathan Kimmelman, a biomedical ethicist at McGill University in Montreal.
MONTREAL GAZETTE | Christopher Labos: Why people with lower incomes have more heart disease
Many studies have shown that low socioeconomic status is tied to cardiovascular disease. To put it simply, if you have more money, you are less likely to have a heart attack. There are many possible ways to explain this association. It might be that more money means you can afford better medical care.
CBC | Astronomers surprised to find a star similar to our sun devouring the atmosphere of a giant planet
Eve Lee, an assistant professor in McGill University's physics department, is intrigued by the findings. "It tells us about the future possibility of how our solar system will look," she said. It also sheds light on different stellar systems and their possible planets. "We know stars evolve and they come in many different varieties," Lee said. "It is interesting to look at what is the evolution of the planet in tandem with the evolution of the star."
RADIO CANADA INTERNATIONAL | Artificial turf playing fields and crumb rubber toxicity
The original concept of artificial turf held a theoretical number of advantages. The tiny pellets of rubber infill made from recycled tires diverted thousands of those tires from landfill sites, while the fields eliminated the need for pesticides, fertilizers and watering. Since the arrival of artificial turf however, there have been ongoing concerns about the toxicity of crumb rubber. That concern has been increased through a new study by researchers in Montreal.
THE NEW YORK TIMES | Fractured Forests Are Endangering Wildlife, Scientists Find
A study published on Thursday may help resolve what has been a strident debate, showing why many species are vulnerable to the fragmenting of forests while others are not. Animals in places with a long history of disturbances are relatively resilient, the researchers found. Species that have existed in stable habitats for thousands of years are far more sensitive.