Search for ""

Displaying 721-740 of 839 results
Article

Hydrofoil

Attempts to create a hydrofoil were made in England as early as 1861. A hydrofoil sustains its motion by the lift achieved by hydrofoil-plates that function in the water as airplane wings do in the air.

Article

British Columbia Eocene Fossils

Palaeontological and geological studies of these deposits go back about 130 years. These include work carried out by George Mercer Dawson in 1890 as part of his survey of British Columbia for the Geological Survey of Canada, with occasional research published in the 1920s and 1930s.

Article

The Internet and Music

The Internet began in the early 1970s as a "network of networks" involving several different US university and government computer systems. It quickly expanded to incorporate computer networks in other countries, including Canada.

Article

West Nile Virus

West Nile VIRUS, a member of the flavivirus family, is related to the viruses that cause dengue and yellow fevers. The effects of infection with West Nile virus range from no symptoms to severe illness and even death.

Article

Crops

Crops are plant species grown for human or animal consumption or for special purposes (e.g., flax, tobacco). In Canada, most major crops grown are used for food and feed.

Article

Nuclear Energy

Nuclear Energy is energy from the nucleus of an atom. In stars such as the sun, pairs of light atoms (mostly hydrogen) fuse together and release the radiation received on earth as solar energy.

Article

Telidon

Telidon, a combination of the Greek words meaning "to know at a distance," was a waypoint en route to the Internet and was an early demonstration of how technology can provide on-demand access to information.

Article

Cancer

Cancer is a term describing more than 100, possibly as many as 200, different diseases characterized by the common property of abnormal cell growth. Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in Canada and second only to accidents as a cause of death in children under 15 years of age.

Macleans

Wireless hang-up

Ottawa’s unprecedented efforts to woo Verizon have sparked a fierce backlash from Canada’s carriers, and questions about what’s really best for Canadian consumers

Article

Oil Sands

The Canadian oil sands (or tar sands) are a large area of petroleum extraction from bitumen, located primarily along the Athabasca River with its centre of activity close to Fort McMurray in Alberta, approximately 400 km northeast of the provincial capital, Edmonton. Increased global energy demand, high petroleum dependency and geopolitical conflict in key oil producing regions has driven the exploration of unconventional oil sources since the 1970s which, paired with advances in the field of petroleum engineering, has continued to make bitumen extraction economically profitable at a time of rising oil prices. Oil sands are called “unconventional” oil because the extraction process is more difficult than extracting from liquid (“conventional”) oil reserves, causing higher costs of production and increased environmental concerns.

Article

Fracking

​Hydraulic fracturing is a technique used in oil and natural gas production. It releases otherwise irrecoverable resources from certain geological formations by injecting water and additives at high pressure into the ground to create microfractures in the rock. Hydrocarbons can then flow through these fractures into a well. It has become controversial because of concerns that the technique, and well-drilling activity associated with its use, threatens groundwater, surface water, air quality, and other environmental values. Common in Alberta’s oil patch since the 1970s, the practice expanded greatly in this century, triggering gas rushes in British Columbia and Saskatchewan and resistance in several other provinces.

Article

Montréal Planetarium

​Montréal’s Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium is part of the Space for Life complex, which includes Montréal’s Biodome, Insectarium and Botanical Gardens. Space for Life is the largest natural science museum complex in Canada.