Alberta’s Premier said this week that she was not sure the provincial government would raise the minimum wage to $15 after all, citing the state of the Alberta economy and the possibility that raising the minimum wage might lead to job losses. The NDP came to power in May, the first non-Conservative party to govern … Read more
“Virgin soil” hypothesis of African tuberculosis burden now challenged by new “European wave” hypothesis Ethiopia is a hotspot for tuberculosis infection, ranking third among African countries and eighth in the world for TB burden according to the World Health Organization. But, say researchers who have analyzed the genomes of 66 TB strains and reported their … Read more
Many of the body’s processes follow a natural daily rhythm or so-called circadian clock, so there are certain times of the day when a person is most alert, when the heart is most efficient, and when the body prefers sleep. Even bacteria have a circadian clock, and in a December 10 Cell Reports study, researchers … Read more
Pretty much everything happening in the brain would fail without astrocytes. These star-shaped glial cells are known to have a critical role in synapse creation, nervous tissue repair, and the formation of the blood-brain barrier. But while we have decades of data in mice about these nervous system support cells, how relevant those experiments are … Read more
ISIS will be eliminated in about six months, Assange predicted, who blamed both Russia and Turkey for the jet downing last month Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange spoke via live video stream on a panel on security and surveillance featuring terrorism expert Philip Giraldi, political activist Raymond McGovern, and strategic analyst Gregory Copley Thursday. At the end of the discussion, … Read more
Report by Cambridge professor’s takes a critical look at economics of immigration The current large-scale immigration policy of the UK will result in small gross economic benefits while creating serious negative consequences, according to a UK economics professor who has just published a report on his research. The moral and practical questions related to controlling … Read more
Late in 2013, a novel variant of the Ebola virus emerged in Western Africa to start what would become the largest human epidemic on record. In a study published December 9th in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers used genome sequencing to trace the introduction and spread of the virus in Liberia–the second worst-affected country. The … Read more
Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt is considering using technology to filter out internet content it checks for “hate and harassment” Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc (formerly called Google), published an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he expressed his thoughts on “the raw reality of the internet,” writing that Google … Read more
The number of coalition UAVs in the skies over Syria has increased three-fold over the last few days, according the the Russian Ministry of Defense, which released a video this week of a Russian drone filming an American drone from above. With now more than 50 UAVs, often all in the sky at the same time, … Read more
In the month of November, Islamic violence in 30 countries took the lives of over 1,455 people and critically injured 1,706. The record, kept by watch group The Religion of Peace, has been maintained since the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001. Several attacks took place every day of the month in the … Read more
Vancouver is a city of 100,000 bike rides per day — higher than any other Canadian city — and these cyclists are also the safest, according to a recent report. “There are more streets in Vancouver that have cycling lanes than in any of the other cities,” said Nithya Vijayakumar, senior advisor at the Pembina … Read more
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest starring role — the first limited release of the film will air this Christmas to be followed by nationwide releases in January — was a process unlike any the actor had previously experienced, he said. “It’s all a beautiful blur to me,” DiCaprio commented on the brutal B.C. winter in which the cast rehearsed … Read more