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	<title><![CDATA[InnovationCanada.ca » Showcasing Research Excellence in Canada]]></title>
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	<link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca</link>
	<language>en</language>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:22:23 -0500</lastBuildDate> 
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    <title><![CDATA[Particle accelerating … in high school]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[For Palak Suryavenshi, the grade-12 science lab was the first step in a journey that led to a chance to test a hypothesis on one of North America’s most advanced particle accelerators. In 2007, Suryavenshi and her classmates from Saskatoon’s Centennial Collegiate worked with researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Light Source (CLS) to explore the effects of nitric acid rain on Quebec’s boreal forest. The students used one of the synchrotron’s beamlines that converts X-rays into frequencies ideal for analyzing soil samples. Their results suggested that nitric acid rain selectively leaches certain types of aluminum from the soil and can then transport it through the soil — an insight that any established researcher would have been happy to make. “I got a real feel for the research and developed the critical-thinking abilities a scientist needs,” says Suryavenshi, now a first-year science student at the university. Suryavenshi’s...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/particle-accelerating-in-high-school</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[Nose jobs]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[(Courtesy of Carleton University Magazine) People around the world ask the same question on a daily basis: “Is the milk bad?” A quick sniff gives us a fast and reliable answer. The sense of smell is very powerful and often taken for granted. We simply follow our nose, because it always knows…but so does an electronic nose (e-nose). E-noses, first developed in Britain in the 1990s for use in the food industry, mimic the olfactory system by using a series of sensors that can be trained to detect specific odors and even bacteria that may be present in the food we eat. Adrian Chan, associate professor in the department of systems and computer engineering, sniffed out an opportunity to develop such a nose in partnership with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). With outbreaks of food-borne illnesses making headlines across the country—E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria—it is a natural partnership that presents many public health benefits. “We are...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/nose-jobs</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[Faces of aggression]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[Even if you can’t distinguish NHL enforcers Todd Bertuzzi and Chris Neil from a referee, you’d probably know at first sight not to mess with them. And not just because of their physical size. The men employed to intimidate the opposition tend to have wide faces, and that, Brock University’s Cheryl McCormick has discovered, is characteristic of a more aggressive nature. “Even in just a fraction of a second, people can assess, with some accuracy, how aggressive someone is,” says the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Neuroscience and professor at Brock’s Centre for Neuroscience and department of psychology. “It may be part of the fight-or-flight response — knowing who to take on and who not to. It’s likely especially meaningful in encounters with strangers. Even so, we were pretty surprised that this is happening.” McCormick and her graduate student Justin Carré started looking into the relationship between face shape...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/faces-of-aggression</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[Snow fall]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[To the average Canadian, a research station getting completely buried in snow more than 1,500 metres high in the Cariboo Mountains might indicate that snow levels at this altitude are not at risk from global warming. But University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) professor Stephen Déry says looks can be deceiving.  “We know that snowmelt is occurring almost 30 days earlier compared with 30 or 40 years ago,” he says. “The amount of snow is diminishing. We need to better understand by how much.” As the Canada Research Chair in Northern Hydrometeorology, Déry spearheaded a campaign with UNBC in 2006 to set up four research stations at high elevations in the Cariboo Mountains. One winter, one of the stations was completely buried in snow. While sophisticated computer models and remote-sensing satellites are telling scientists there is already significant snow loss at these elevations, there is little field data to back it up. Having the research...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/snow-fall</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[The STEALTH advantage]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[The average Olympic ski race lasts between 90 and 110 seconds, with skiers clocking speeds of up to 130 kilometres per hour. The difference between a gold-medal performance and a 10th-place finish is often measured in hundredths of a second. As University of Calgary geomatics engineering professor Gérard Lachapelle succinctly puts it, “It’s just insane.” Lachapelle should know. In 2006, he and his University of Calgary colleagues at the Schulich School of Engineering’s Position, Location and Navigation (PLAN) Group were approached by the Canadian Alpine Ski Team to develop new technologies to help prepare racers for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The result was the Sensor for the Training of Elite Athletes (STEALTH), an ultraprecise, ultralight device that is allowing Canadian skiers to shave precious fractions of a second off their training runs by utilizing information gleaned from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals. The first device of its kind...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/the-stealth-advantage</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[An accidental soft landing]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[In February 2005, Aaron Coret was a third-year engineering student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) with a passion for snowboarding. His goal was to turn pro some day, but that dream changed instantly when he crashed while snowboarding in a Whistler Blackcomb terrain park, a playground of huge ski jumps, and was left quadriplegic. While he lay in a hospital bed reconsidering his life, he discovered his new passion: reinventing safety for the sport he loves. With the help of his snowboarding buddy Stephen Slen, Coret developed the Landing Pad, a huge inflatable pad designed to soften bad landings in terrain parks. The duo is now working to take the pads to market. “We want to change the way people learn tricks,” says Coret, who is 24 years old and uses a motorized wheelchair to get around. “Right now, there’s no safety standard. It’s a free-for-all, with kids trying all the tricks they see in the movies with little regard for safety.” At...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/an-accidental-soft-landing</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[Biology in motion]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[InnovationCanada.ca sits down with Queen’s University psychology professor and biological motion expert, Nikolaus Troje. In his Biomotion Lab, Troje and his colleagues study the cognitive processes that occur in the mind to help us recognize emotional and mental health through human movement.]]></description>
    <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/biology-in-motion</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[Rethinking the pine beetle]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[When he talks about the fight against the mountain pine beetle, Joerg Bohlmann likes to use a medical analogy. “Imagine we’re trying to combat malaria,” says the genome biologist based at the University of British Columbia, “but we don’t know the makeup of the disease-causing parasite, so we leave it out of the equation. We just look at the mosquito and humans. We’re missing an essential part of the triangle.” Until now, the research conducted on the mountain pine beetle, which has affected nearly 15 million hectares of lodgepole pine forest in British Columbia and is threatening to spread across Canada, has largely focused on the tree and the beetle, but not so much on a pathogenic fungus that works in symbiosis with the beetle. The fungus rides with the beetle to new host trees and then makes the nutrients in the tree more accessible to the beetle. Together, they kill the tree. “Is it really so different from a human disease system?”...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/rethinking-the-pine-beetle</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[A Partnership of peoples]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[(Courtesy of Frontier magazine, University of British Columbia) Forget what you may have heard about anthropology: it is not solely a science of lost cultures, dusty relics and ancient peoples. This widely misunderstood discipline provides a critical link to contemporary history, and its contributions to preserving and advancing culture cannot be understated — especially in nations as diverse as Canada. That's why, for the past 60 years, the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC has been building relationships with Indigenous communities and working closely with them on cultural renewal projects. "Unlike other museums, we have always tried to democratize our practice, and work directly with communities to represent communities and let communities represent themselves," says Anthony Shelton, Director of MOA, who for more than five years has overseen a $55.5-million renewal of the Museum entitled A Partnership of Peoples. "The Partnership brings together, strengthens and consolidates...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/a-partnership-of-peoples</link>
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    <title><![CDATA[Decade in review]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[The first decade of the 21st century will be remembered as a decade of breakthroughs in science and technology. “It’s well known that discoveries in science are often drivers for important technological developments; for example, fuel cells,” says Thomas Ellis, director of research at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron in Saskatoon, Sask. “Over the past decade, new technological developments — robotics, high-performance computers, microscopes, gene sequencers, accelerators — also ended up being drivers for scientific discoveries.” And with the advent of the Internet as a part of everyday life in the developed world, these breakthroughs reached more people than ever. As we enter into 2010, we look back at 10 innovations we think will make science history. Decoding the human genome The submission of a rough draft of our DNA road map in July 2000 opened more doors than any other science story of the decade. Details of our genome and the genomes...]]></description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
    <link>http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/decade-in-review</link>
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