What causes aging and how can it be altered? According to University of Toronto researchers, the loss of our tissues’ ability to develop and repair itself can be manipulated, leading to claims that the removal of TIMPs — tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases — could direct us toward a Fountain of Youth. Simplified, metalloproteins are responsible … Read more
In a finding that scientists are calling “beyond surprising,” the decades-long series of outbreaks of leukemia among clams on the eastern North American coast has been attributed the spreading of cancer from one clam to another. The finding has prompted scientists to reassess the assumption that contagious cancers are rare occurrences in nature. “I think the … Read more
Photo reportage by David Cordova. Mexico is in a deep human rights crisis as a result of its continuing mistreatment of Central American immigrants. The government has started a campaign with the objective of reducing the number of immigrants who attempt to cross the southern border of Mexico. Thousands of officials from the National Institute … Read more
“Made By Raffi” is a children’s book, by Craig Pomranz, inspired by a true-life incident, about a boy who is bullied by his classmates for being different and who becomes a hero for his skills, which are traditionally feminine. The nontraditional theme puts the book into a somewhat narrow classification. What may come as a … Read more
Usually, sound reflects off of the objects it encounters, bouncing some sound waves back in the direction from which they came — this phenomenon is familiar in the application of sonar. No technology has yet been developed that can provide sonar invisibility to any object, but a team of Singaporean researchers recently proposed a novel material surface that could do … Read more
It’s anyone’s guess… On Wednesday, March 18th, the Federal Reserve released an official statement and held a press conference regarding monetary policy and current economic conditions. In this statement, the Fed projected a decline in its inflation expectation, and revised projected GDP growth downward. These are both signs of a slowing economy, not the accelerating … Read more
The Ebola virus, which has taken the lives of over 4,000 people in Liberia over the past year, could be wiped out completely by the beginning of summer. It is not a foregone conclusion, but it is a realistic possibility, according to the researchers responsible for a new forecast based on new highly inclusive models. “I think the … Read more
According to recent work conducted by a joint team of researchers from James Cook University, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, the University of Heidelberg, and the National Institutes of Health, the body’s cells not only learn from the infections they encounter, becoming better able to deal with various infections throughout life, … Read more
Over 1.5 million people a month — almost 195 million people to date — have renounced their links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the Tuidang Movement (in mandarin Chinese Tuidang means ‘withdraw from the party’) was founded in January 2005, spurred by the publication of the ‘Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party’, an editorial … Read more
Wouldn’t it be much better if the Russians could be great friends with us in the West? It’s in our mutual interests, especially with the shared challenges we face together, yet we are getting ever more deeply locked in mutual antagonism and there is a risk that the war in Ukraine might escalate out of … Read more
A cognitive bias, the “illusion of causality,” has been explored by a joint team of scientists who found that the bias isn’t limited to false beliefs about whatever was originally learned; later on, the bias can prevent new information from being learned — even when the original information is false and the newer information is … Read more
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Jeanne Beker, a child of holocaust survivors, will lead the Azrieli Foundation Book Launch, with a reading of her parents’ memoir, “Joy Runs Deeper,” at the Museum of Vancouver on Thursday, Feb. 19. “Joy Runs Deeper,” by Bronia and Joseph Beker, is an important literary view of the way life was in Poland, … Read more