My father-in-law was a good-natured, outgoing man with a sunny disposition and gifted with a lively sense of humour. One of the many games he used to play with his daughter Jan and
From the simplest cells to complex creatures gifted with language, imagination and creativity, life has a beginning, interims and an ending. There’s no escape. Good genes, a healthy lifestyle, timely and effective intervention,
Science, the study of the natural world, evolved early, possibly in nascent forms long before the emergence of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Enabling traits would have been curiosity, imagination and learning by
Artificial intelligence seems to be taking over the world these days, what with repeated scary predictions in media, online and in science and medicine journals, where up to 10 per cent of the
Biology is far more complex than quantum physics and the study of the universe and stars. And in biology, the brain is the most complex system with the possible exception of the operations
This year’s Nobel Prize was awarded to Katalin (Kati) Karikó and Drew Weissman for their key role in the development of mRNA vaccines in the two decades leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Your father would expect better and so do I,” was what my organic chemistry professor told me in my second pre-medicine year at the University of Western Ontario. My father was a chemical
Dr. William Brown The Lake Report This is based on Michael Winter’s, “Lest We Forget: Walking with the dead,” about the slaughter of the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel. His piece appeared in the
In 2018, Canadian physicist Donna Strickland received the Nobel Prize for physics, alongside French scientist Gérard Mourou, her doctoral supervisor. Her contribution was related to successfully increasing the power of brief pulses of
I’m struck by how old some Nobel Prize winners are when they finally are honoured. In 2019, at the ripe age of 97, John Goodenough won a share of a Nobel for his
The process of choosing Nobel Prize-winning work and winners begins soon after the awards ceremony the previous year. Invitations are sent out for nominations to hundreds of experts around the world, including previous
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The Nobel series, an annual November-December review of the year’s Nobel Prizes announced in October, has been a success for the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library since it began in 2017. Sometimes it’s possible to
Well before Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier received their richly deserved Nobel Prize in 2022 for pioneering work on gene editing, it was obvious the practice held great promise for hundreds of hereditary
One of the things I enjoy and admire about science is that nothing is for certain. Hypotheses we thought were true may turn out to be wrong, or at least in heavy need
Unfortunately, strokes remain common. The most common are ischemic in origin – the result of a block in an arterial branch, whether a local blood clot or an embolus that deprives the affected
The three most important evolutionary changes on the way to modern humans were bipedalism, repurposing the forelimbs and especially the hands for fashioning and using tools, and a brain capable of symbolic thinking,
The perfect marriage, in a technical sense, was the relationship between the computer and artificial intelligence (AI) which began in the 1940s and 1950s. Like the best human marriages, it got better and
Despite his age, 36-year-old Novak Djokovic has been at the top of men’s tennis for a decade with no clear end in sight. So far, he has surpassed his rivals of the last
The brain is incredibly complex – so complex that some scientists – including Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist Steven Weinberg, were prompted to wonder whether humans will ever fully grasp how this marvellous organ
When I worked at the New England Medical Center in the 1990s, I was part of a sports medicine clinic that served professional and college athletes, and dancers in the Boston Ballet. Far
Patients who suffer from dementia, of which Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause, are usually looked after by a spouse or partner, with the help perhaps of nearby family members when that’s
Were any disease to be called cruel, Alzheimer’s disease would surely be near the top of the list. It wipes out a lifetime of memories, relationships with long-time partners and friends and toward
If you want to figure out how the brain works, there are several options. One classical method, which served clinical neurologists and neurosurgeons very well in the 19th and 20th centuries, was to
In the springtime of the initial four years we lived in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a female fox with a decided limp in her left leg took up residence in the culvert beneath our driveway. With
Twenty years ago, few people were aware of meditation and fewer still, the term mindfulness. These days, both are practiced by a growing number of Canadians. Recently, for example, a local family health
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