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How A Nano-suit Can Be A Life-Saver

When is a suit a lifesaver? My dad, who was a tailor, would threaten to kill me if I didn't wear...

Why a Student Flipped Over a Dissection

Decades ago, I used my home microscope to examine some water on top of a barrel's lid in my backyard...

Harry Wilson: Too Good To Play For The Textbook Giants

Harry Wilson was far more than a textpert-college chemistry teacher. Despite his different...

The Coarse Language of Wine and Racial Colors

Depending on how much light is scattered and transmitted, clouds assume different colors. And be...

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Enrico UvaRSS Feed of this column.

After majoring in chemistry at Concordia University I worked briefly at Fisheries and Oceans' Arctic Biological Station and in the food industry. I subsequently did an education degree at McGill... Read More »

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Overextended, uncivil in spirit and costly, elections in both the United States and Canada are ironically becoming insulting to both democracy and thought.

The 2011 Canadian election cost about $300-million - up from $198-million in 2000. Per capita, that amounts to about $9. This year's American elections will cost an estimated 5.8 billion dollars or $18 per capita. And while Canadians have been flabbergasted by 50% election-cost inflation over a little more than a decade, the rate of increase south of the border has been a whopping 80%.
Alcohol is categorized as a class 1 cancer-causing substance. Does that make it as dangerous as other proven human carcinogens such as benzene and heavy cigarette smoking? Generally, no. However, it doesn't mean that the findings should be overlooked, especially with regard to certain types of cancers. Not surprisingly, the risk tends to increase with the overall amount of ethanol consumed and, with certain cancer types, females are more at risk. How small amounts affect anything, however, has not been quantified.

Dr.

When it comes to homework, French President François Hollande said "it should be done during school hours rather than at home, in order to establish equal opportunities." The wealthy are more likely to have a good working environment at home with devoted parent helpers, he argues. His solution? A proposition to ban homework. By the same reasoning then, the French should also prohibit its wealthier citizens from owning personal libraries.  
We often associate awards with recent accomplishments, which is far from the case with Nobel Prizes. They're more akin to Hall of Fame inductions than batting titles. For some time they have been awarded for discoveries that are between one to five decades old. The committee tries to reward an achievement that has withstood the test of time, one that has created a key concept in the field and has opened up new avenues in research and science-related technologies.
At both the macroscopic and micro levels, not all organisms get equal attention. Because of their sheer numbers, there are still undiscovered species of plants and roundworms at the feet of botanists and zoologists, respectively. Other specimens have been named but little is known about them. At the astronomical level we come across two factors: an overwhelming number of stars and bodies, compounded by a detection limit.
Here are more revelations from a crystal ball of science. Again, it may be just a peek through a window of science-spiced fantasies.  I'm, of course, also aware that one person's utopia can be another's nightmare, but writing can never be much fun if we are consistently overcautious.