Tag: research

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Cottage Life

New research sheds light on fertilizer’s impact on bees

By RonnySchoene/Shutterstock

Want to create a paradise for bees in your garden? Experienced gardeners know to select plants that are attractive to pollinators, emphasizing flowers with enticing colours, shapes, and smells. But gardeners should also ensure they aren’t unwittingly turning bees away from their flower beds.  

New research from the University of Bristol shows that applying chemical sprays of fertilizers to plants can discourage bees from visiting flowers. The researchers also found that it’s not the appearance or smell of the chemical fertilizers that’s a turn-off for bees; instead it’s a change in the flower’s electric field that bees are not a fan of.

“It’s basically static electricity,” explains the study’s lead author Ellard Hunting, a research associate for the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol. Flowers are typically electrically charged, and slightly more negative than the ground, Hunting says. Bees tend to have a positive charge.

While a flower’s electrical field is not noticeable to humans, it’s a different story for bumblebees. The insects can detect the electrical field thanks to their small body size and fine, sensitive hairs. A flower’s electrical field can provide important information and cues to a visiting bumblebee. 

But a communication breakdown occurs when synthetic fertilizers get added to the mix. The researchers found that applying sprayed synthetic fertilizers altered the electric fields of flowers by causing physiological changes in the stressed out plants. Wild bumblebees were less likely to land on the affected flowers.

Hunting compares the altered electric field as sensory overload for bumblebees. “If you look into the sun, it’s too bright, it’s too blinding,” he says. “And I think that’s what’s happening with the bees. The elevation in the electric field and the dynamics are just too much information. They decide this is not nice, and they move on.”

A negative experience at a flower could lead to bigger consequences. “Bees really learn rather quickly,” says Hunting. “If bees arrive at a field, and it was treated with chemical fertilizers, the entire hive might actually decide not to go there anymore,” he adds.

To avoid confusing bumblebees and other pollinators, Hunting suggests choosing fertilizers made from natural sources like manure or seaweed. He also encourages gardeners to apply fertilizers in the evening when no pollinators are around.

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Mobile Syrup

Ericsson partners with three Montreal universities on AI research project

Ericsson Canada announced a research program led by three Montreal-based universities, École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Concordia University, Polytechnique Montréal, as well as with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

The research program will explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can help minimize the energy consumption of 5G networks. Moreover, the research aims to help communication service providers reduce their carbon footprint and operational costs.

Ericsson says that data scientists from its Global Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (GAIA) in Montreal will support the three-year research project alongside seven professors and 27 researchers from the three universities. Moreover, Ericsson says it will bring its global expertise in the area to steer the group and push towards industrialized solutions the company can use in its products.

“5G networks are the technological backbone of our society and they represent an opportunity to
digitalize industries and significantly reduce global CO2 emissions,” said Erik Ekudden, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Ericsson, in a press release.

Moreover, the outcomes of the research are expected to help strengthen ECCC’s greenhouse gas modelling solutions for the telecom sector.

Contributions from the Quebec government (through Innovation en Énergie Électrique (InnovÉÉ)) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) will help support the project.

Header image credit: Shutterstock

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Cottage Life

What does this tiny sea creature have to do with energy-efficient windows?

By Tarpan/Shutterstock

When Raphael Kay and his colleagues at the University of Toronto were considering ways to redesign windows to make them more energy efficient, they looked no further than the natural world. Specifically, they took inspiration from a tiny sea creature. Krill, perhaps best known as whale food, has an ingenious way of protecting itself and its organs from harsh sunlight. Kay explains, “they basically have a bunch of dots, of pigments, and they store them within cells along their skin.” When it is dark out, these dots of pigment are tucked away in the centre of the cell. But when the sun is bright, a signal is sent that rallies these dark pigments which spread across the surface of the krill and protect it from the ultraviolet light and radiation.

Scientist accidentally discover that puffins have glowing beaks

So, what does any of this have to do with windows? “When we think about shading buildings,” Kay explains, “we use bulky solid components.” Shutters, blinds, exterior shades. But the concept of biomimicry examines how nature performs its tasks, such as protecting the krill from sunlight. Kay and his colleagues considered that what they were trying to achieve—reduce how much sunlight got through windows, thereby reducing the heat in a building and boosting energy-efficiency—and mimicked how krill respond. The result? A window that uses a thin layer of liquid pigment between two glass panes to affect how much sunlight gets through.

Why you need to upgrade to modern windows

Kay and his team are currently playing with prototypes, testing out different patterns and viscosities of pigment, as well as various ways to trigger the pigment. They’re also considering their prototypes’ thermal and optical properties, as well as using sophisticated energy modelling to determine how these windows might warm (or not) in a real building. The team is excited about the results, noting that early predictions show that these windows can achieve an energy savings of between 30 and 43 per cent.

Insulation upgrades to keep your cottage cozy

While you won’t find these windows at your neighbourhood building store in the very near future, don’t be surprised if your future cottage is equipped with these energy-saving options. And such a future is only possible because a tiny sea creature long, long ago figured out how to protect itself from the sun—and some astute determined researchers took notice.

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Cottage Life

The secret every paddler should know: the science of gunwale bobbing

By marekuliasz/Shutterstock

Perhaps you too were routinely chastised by a camp counsellor for standing up in a canoe. But a group of scientists wants you to forget all that and take a stand on gunwale bobbing.

Gunwale bobbing (pronounced “gunnel”—“one of the delights is its funny spelling,” says Stephen Morris, a physics professor at the University of Toronto) is an odd pursuit with little purpose beyond novelty, the glee of thumbing your nose at dictatorial camp counsellors, and the chance to test a theory of quantum physics.

At least that was partly the motivation of Jerome Neufeld, a professor of earth and planetary fluid dynamics at the University of Cambridge and a cottager on Muldrew Lake. Neufeld remembered gunwale bobbing from his childhood—the goal then was to see who ended up in the lake first—and decided to pass down the pursuit to his kids.

Is the canoe the most beloved icon of the cottage?

Gunwale bobbing involves standing up in a canoe and creating waves by bouncing up and down, then riding those waves to move the canoe forward. Or, more academically, it’s “a phenomenon in which a person jumping on the gunwales of a canoe achieves horizontal propulsion by forcing it with vertical oscillations,” as described in the American Physics Society’s journal Physical Review Fluids.

Neufeld routinely finds himself “explaining fluid phenomena in the natural world,” he says. Gunwale bobbing turned into the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how a particle can be both a wave and a particle, a vexing ancient problem in quantum mechanics.

Physicists came up with a demonstration a few years ago, using liquid. The demo showed that if you shake a layer of fluid, and you put a little droplet of fluid on its surface, instead of just falling into the fluid, the droplet bounces up and down. “And that little bouncy drop can start to ‘walk’, to move across the fluid,” says Morris.

It was Jerome, Morris says, who noticed that the reason that the droplet moves is simply that it makes waves and then “surfs” on those waves. Neufeld summarizes it this way: “Long story short, the droplet and its wave then behave like a quantum particle/wave, and so can mimic many nanometre scale phenomena.”

How to calculate distance over water using physics

Fast forward to Neufeld holidaying and gunwale bobbing at his Muskoka-area cottage. The canoe, he realized, was doing the same thing as that surfing droplet. The physicists, great fans of wordplay, call it the “quantum canoe.”

When Neufeld, Morris, and their research colleagues got together to produce their paper on the bouncing droplet, the Powers That Be at the journal in which it was published wouldn’t greenlight mention of the quantum canoe. But it does use the same math, Morris says.

Though I, a Canadian, had never heard of it, Morris insists that “gunwale bobbing is a Canadian thing.” And it’s a Canadian thing that fellow Canadian, Neufeld, thought “needed an explanation.”

The applications of this research varies from better understanding the energy created by boat wake (and thus shoreline issues) or even ways that Olympic canoeists can increase their speed.

But, says Neufeld, “Being able to explain the physics of the phenomena is, honestly, mostly fun and I’m delighted there are fun new ways the kids can viscerally explore waves when they’re playing in the water at the cottage.”

Watch Jerome Neufeld’s one-minute video on gunwale bobbing.

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Cottage Life

Science working on solutions for ice cream melting

Photo by Elena Veselova / Shutterstock

Ice cream is the perfect summer treat. Except when it’s melting over your hands. Luckily, there’s potential good news for those of us tired of dealing with sticky fingers. Two separate groups of researchers have recently released papers on additives that could be included in ice cream recipes to keep your treats colder longer.

Stop the drip

A chemical engineer in Columbia named Jorge Velásquez Cock has been working on finding ways to recycle banana tree waste. A thick stalk attaches each bunch of bananas to the trunk of the banana plant. The cellulose-rich woody stalks are usually thrown out.

Velásquez Cock’s research developed a method to extract the cellulose from the stalks and added it to ice cream. In controlled lab conditions, the extract prevented ice cream delayed the melting by 20 minutes at 20°C.

The cellulose extraction process is too time-consuming and costly to be commercially viable for now, but Velásquez Cock and his colleagues are looking at ways to make it more efficient.

Freezer burn no more

There’s one place where your ice cream is melting that you might not expect: inside your freezer. Every time you open the door, warm air rushes in. Even when you leave the door shut, the temperature eventually starts to rise which is why you periodically hear the motor kick in.

As the inside of the freezer warms, ice crystals in your ice cream start to melt. Each time the crystals refreeze they grow slightly larger. Large ice crystals are what gives ice cream that gritty, freezer-burned mouthfeel.

Ice cream makers often add stabilizers, such as guar or locust bean gum, to the mix. A group of researchers at the University of Tennessee was looking for a better stabilizer and settled on cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs for short). CNCs are microscopic strand of cellulose.

Their initial conclusions, reported in the American Chemical Society’s Biomacromoclecules, showed that the CNC additive could significantly delay and inhibit the growth of ice crystals. Again, more research has to be done before CNCs end up in your dessert.

In the meantime, the experts at Ben & Jerry’s have several to tips on how to prevent freezer burn including stashing it at the back or bottom of the freezer underneath other items to shelter it from the warmer air.

Of course, there is an alternative solution: scarf down your cone as fast as possible and finish the whole container in one sitting. If you do that, you may want to read our Q&A in our August issue about how to cure ice cream headaches!

 

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Mobile Syrup

McMaster, TeraGo partner to build private mmWave 5G network for research

McMaster University has partnered with Canadian company TeraGo to jointly build and deploy the first university-based 5G millimetre wave (mmWave) private network for research. With a private 5G mmWave network, the two entities can develop new technologies for manufacturing and ‘Industry 4.0’ in Canada.

As a quick refresher, mmWave (or high-band 5G) is one of a few types of 5G. The main difference between high-, mid- and low-band 5G is the spectrum they use. In Canada, carriers recently purchased chunks of 3,500MHz spectrum, which is part of mid-band (or Sub-6) 5G. High-band 5G can offer much higher speeds than mid-band 5G, but the radio waves can’t travel as far. Ultimately, high-band 5G will likely help spark innovative new technologies that benefit from the high speeds and lower latency, such as what TeraGo and McMaster will experiment with on their private mmWave network.

Those interested in the differences between mmWave and Sub-6 can learn more here.

McMaster and TeraGo say that the high speeds and low latency of mmWave 5G are a “prerequisite to advanced manufacturing and logistics.” Leveraging mmWave’s benefits along with machine learning, remote automation, edge computing and other technologies will help improve current manufacturing processes.

Further, McMaster is the first university in Canada to adopt the technology, and students will be able to leverage it in classrooms. McMaster researchers Dr. Stephen Veldhuis, Dr. Ali Emadi, Dr. Saiedeh Razavi, Dr. Natalia Nikolova and Dr. Tim Davidson will spearhead the project.

Source: TeraGo

Categories
Pets Files

What is your dog thinking? Brain scans unleash canine secrets

American researchers have developed a new methodology to scan the brains of alert dogs and explore the minds of the oldest domesticated species. The technique uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), which is the same tool used to unlock the secrets of the human brain.

A new type of inter-species communication
“It was amazing to see the first brain images of a fully awake, unrestrained dog,” said Gregory Berns, lead researcher on the dog project. “As far as we know, no one has been able to do this previously. We hope this opens up a whole new door for understanding canine cognition and inter-species communication. We want to understand the dog-human relationship, from the dog’s perspective.”

Berns is a neuroeconomist who normally uses fMRI technology to study how the human mind works. His human brain-imaging studies have looked at everything from why teens engage in risky behavior to how adults decide to follow or break established rules of society.

The idea for the dog project came to him about a year ago, when he learned that a U.S. Navy dog had been a member of the SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden. “I was amazed when I saw the pictures of what military dogs can do. I realized that if dogs can be trained to jump out of helicopters and airplanes, we could certainly train them to go into an fMRI to see what they’re thinking.”

Two dogs participated the first phase of the project: Callie a two-year-old mutt, adopted by Berns at nine months from a shelter, and McKenzie, a three-year-old border collie who was already well-trained in agility competition by owner Melissa Cate.

Both dogs were trained to wear earmuffs to protect them from the noise of the scanner, and taught to hold their heads perfectly still on a chin rest during the scanning process to prevent blurring of the images while researchers measured their neural activity.

Do dogs understand language?
Researchers ultimately hope to get at questions like: Do dogs have empathy? Do they know when their owners are happy or sad? How much language do they really understand?

For the inaugural experiment, the dogs were trained to respond to hand signals: one signal meant the dog would receive a hot dog treat, and another signal meant it would not receive one. The caudate region of the brain, associated with rewards in humans, showed activation in both dogs when they saw the signal for the treat, but not for the no-treat signal.

“These results indicate that dogs pay very close attention to human signals,” Berns said. “And these signals may have a direct line to the dog’s reward system.”

Cat people vs. dog brains
Although dog lovers may not need to be convinced of the merits of researching the minds of our canine companions, “to the skeptics out there, and the cat people, I would say that dogs are the first domesticated species, going back at least 10,000 years, and by some estimates 30,000 years,” said Berns.

“The dog’s brain represents something special about how humans and animals came together. It’s possible that dogs have even affected human evolution. People who took dogs into their homes and villages may have had certain advantages. As much as we made dogs, I think dogs probably made some part of us, too.”