Elise Andrew on why she loves science

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 1:35 PM - 0 Comments

Last week, science fans expressed shock at the news that the wildly popular “I F–king Love Science” Facebook page, which has over 4.3 million “likes”, is run not by a man, but a woman: Elise Andrew, a 23-year-old Brit who lives in Midland, Ont., to be precise. After Andrew posted a link to the page to promote her new Twitter profile, which included a photo of her, reader responses ranged from “F*ck me! This is a babe ?!!” to “holy hell, youre a HOTTIE!” Some had assumed IFLS was run by celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Taken aback by the reaction, Andrews tweeted: “Is this really 2013?”

Andrew works for LabX Media Group as social media content manager. A self-taught social media mogul, she launched IFSL in March 2012, and runs the site in her free time.

Q: Tell me about how you launched IFLS. What was the idea behind it? 

A: I started IFLS while I was in my last year of university [studying biology at the University of Sheffield]. I was three months away from graduation, so I really should have been focusing on other things, but I got addicted to this very quickly. I promoted it to my friends, and it just gained traction so quickly and it didn’t stop. We got thousands of subscribers in the first day. I keep expecting it to level off at some point, and it doesn’t. [When the page reached 100,000 "likes"], it scared me a little bit. At that point I was still in university, and 100,000 people just seemed a bit insane.

Continue…

Chris Hadfield learns to fly

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 11:47 AM - 0 Comments

What’s surprised you the most since arriving on the International Space Station? And what’s something you never could have trained for? These are the two questions we put to astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has been living aboard the Space Station since December, and as of March 13, will become its first-ever Canadian commander. Hadfield, who has been inspiring many as he documents his adventures orbiting Earth via Twitter and other social media, gave us some insight into life in space in these exclusive videos.

• See some of Hadfield’s stunning photos from space in the current issue of Maclean’s
• Read “Inside NASA with Chris Hadfield” to learn more about how he trained and prepared for this mission
• See our gallery of 60 Hadfield photos from orbit

The 2013 AAAS Meeting in 55 tweets

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 18, 2013 at 3:07 PM - 0 Comments

Big news on dark matter? Soon, scientists promise. Real soon.

By Kate Lunau - Monday, February 18, 2013 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments

NASA

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

The International Space Station isn’t just home to astronauts like Canadian Chris Hadfield, who’ll assume command in a few weeks’ time. It’s also an orbiting laboratory: hundreds of experiments are done there, looking into everything from human health to colloids. The ISS holds a $2-billion particle physics detector, called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is searching for signs of exotic stuff that makes up our universe, like dark matter. Big news might be coming soon. At the AAAS Meeting, Nobel laureate and AMS principal investigator Dr. Samuel Ting promised that the first results from the AMS detector should be published in two or three weeks’ time. “It will not be a minor paper,” he told a crowded room of reporters.

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The mystery of memory

By Kate Lunau - Sunday, February 17, 2013 at 2:07 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

A 3D print of famous memory patient HM's brain. (photography by Kate Lunau)

In 1953, at the age of 27, the man who later became known to scientists as “HM” lost his memory. Henry Gustav Molaison had suffered acute epileptic seizures, and as part of his treatment, he had part of his brain surgically removed, including much of the hippocampus. While the procedure helped alleviate his seizures, it left him unable to remember much of anything, including who he was. Before his death in 2008, HM partcipated in countless experiments, and helped give rise to an entirely new understanding of the human brain. At the AAAS Meeting, neuropsychologist Dr. Brenda Milner of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, who conducted pioneering studies of HM’s condition with her student Suzanne Corkin, discussed this famous case.

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Catching neutrinos

By Kate Lunau - Saturday, February 16, 2013 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

Scientists distributed out buttons featuring the neutrino sign, the peace sign and hearts for the "Neutrinos for Peace" effort, which is against nuclear proliferation. (Photo by Kate Lunau)

Did you know that about 100 billion neutrinos pass through your thumb every second? Catching a single one is like trying to grab at a ghost.

We heard about this today at an AAAS Meeting talk on these mysterious little particles. Neutrinos are one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe, like a photon (light particle), an electron, or the recently discovered Higgs boson; they come from the sun, from exploding stars (supernovae) and from cosmic ray collisions. Neutrinos, which carry no electric charge, hardly interact with ordinary matter and slip right through the Earth; you’d need a wall of lead “as thick as the solar system” to stop one from the sun, said André de Gouvêa in his introduction. But perhaps most importantly, they could tell us about why we’re here.

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The downsides of human evolution

By Kate Lunau - Friday, February 15, 2013 at 4:36 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

In a talk this morning on human evolution, I kept imagining that classic diagram of an ape transitioning to an upright human—and how it should show him hunched over in back pain, hobbling on a twisted ankle, on his way to the dentist to get his wisdom teeth removed. Evolution has put us at the top of the food chain, but “evolution doesn’t produce perfection,” anthropologist Jeremy DeSilva said today at the AAAS Meeting, where he spoke on a panel with others. Adapting to bipedal walking has left us with all sorts of aches and pains that no other animals seem to suffer, everything from hernias and flat feet, to fallen pelvic floors. He called these adaptations the “biological equivalent of duct tape and paper clips,” which affect us everyday.

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New worlds, brain machines, feathered dinosaurs and the Higgs boson

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is in Boston covering the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science meet to mix, mingle, and share their latest and greatest ideas. On Feb. 14-18, she’ll give you a sneak peak into the current research—everything from dinosaurs to neutrinos, from stem cells to extreme weather, and all sorts of sorts of stuff in between. Follow her on Twitter: @katelunau, #AAASmtg

Photo by Kate Lunau

As I landed in Boston bright and early this morning, and hopped on the subway to the Hynes Convention Center (host of this year’s meeting), I was gripped by a familiar feeling—one I remember from covering this event last year, too—the fear of missing out. The AAAS is the world’s biggest general scientific society, and their annual meeting is a scientific smorgasbord. Over the next few days, thousands of researchers, journalists, engineers, teachers and policy-makers will be here to talk about their work. The program is as thick as a paperback novel. How to attend all the sessions that have already caught my eye?

There are a few I know I’ll be attending: like one on exploring other worlds, and what they can teach us about our own; and another on brain-machine interfaces. There’s a talk on whale evolution, and another on China’s feathered dinosaurs—especially interesting given the newly discovered Yutyrannus huali, a massive feathered cousin of T. rex. (As we now know, feathered dinosaurs weren’t just in China; last year, Canadian paleontologists found them in Alberta, the first time we’ve seen such a thing in the Americas.) Another session, on science at the International Space Station, should be interesting given that Canada’s own Chris Hadfield is about to take command. And, of course, the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle,” makes an appearance on my list, too.

It’ll be an exciting few days in Boston, soaking up some of the biggest ideas in science. Follow me @katelunau and check back at Maclean’s for the latest.

Podcast: Hunting for planets

By Jessica Allen - Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 3:13 PM - 0 Comments

Astronomers recently discovered that our galaxy is filled with billions of planets. Now the race is on to see how fast we can get there.

In this podcast, Maclean’s writer Kate Lunau talks with Jessica Allen about Maclean’s cover story this week: The Biggest Discovery Ever.

Hear them discuss the possibility of interstellar space travel. Find out about the search for life-sustaining planets and what scientists are doing right now to get us to another star. Listen to Lunau explain what the discovery of a Tatooine-like planet that revolves around more than one sun could mean for Stars Wars fans across the galaxy.

Lunau’s feature story is in the current issue of Maclean’s, now on newsstands. Watch for it on the site next week.

While you listen to the podcast, use your cursor to scroll over the planets below.

60 of Chris Hadfield’s photos from orbit

By macleans.ca - Saturday, January 5, 2013 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

60 of Chris Hadfield’s photos from orbit: ‘So much of the world’s beauty is simply art itself’

‘Let’s use Twitter to communicate like never before,’ astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted on New Year’s Eve. ‘See the year and the world through each others’ eyes.’ In recent days, Hadfield has been sending photographs from orbit out to the Twitterverse:

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Sat, Jan 05 2013 13:45:02

@Cmdr_Hadfield tweets from space

By macleans.ca - Saturday, December 22, 2012 at 9:30 PM - 0 Comments

@Cmdr_Hadfield tweets from space

Chris Hadfield launched into space on Dec. 19. The Canadian astronaut has been documenting his expedition in 140-character bursts:

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine· Mon, Dec 24 2012 16:27:17

The biggest, craziest, gee-whizziest science stories of 2012

By Kate Lunau - Saturday, December 22, 2012 at 4:43 PM - 0 Comments

Rex Features/CP

It was a big year for science.

Chris Hadfield, Canada’s first International Space Station commander, blasted off on the mission of a lifetime.

The line between human and machine became ever finer, as a paralyzed woman ate a chocolate bar with a prosthetic arm controlled by her own mind.

There was bombastic Canadian filmmaker James Cameron’s record plunge into the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the world’s oceans; and the Curiosity rover’s nail-biter of a landing on Mars, where the one-ton robotic geologist is now seeking signs that our neighbouring planet could support life.

On the 35th anniversary of its launch, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft was set to break free of our solar system altogether, becoming humankind’s first interstellar emissary.

Stem cells were used to create eggs in mice, which gave birth to healthy offspring, hinting at human fertility treatments of the future.

And SpaceX’s Dragon capsule became the first private vehicle to dock with the Space Station, marking the start of a powerful new shift in how humans live and work in space.

The year’s most jaw-dropping moment, though, was the discovery of the Higgs boson—the so-called “God particle”—by a team of literally thousands of scientists from around the world, working for decades on one of the largest experiments ever conceived. A tiny bit of the universe, the Higgs boson particle explains why we all exist.

But as 2012 comes to a close, there’s enough lists out there. Instead of revisiting these major moments, here’s some of my other favourite science stories of 2012—stories that stuck with me —and a few things I’ll be watching in 2013.

1. A planetary bounty

Not so long ago, we didn’t know for sure if there were any planets outside of our solar system. Now we’re starting to see that other worlds might be more common than stars, and their variation is incredible. This year we learned about a massive diamond planet, a lonely rogue planet floating freely in space, and a place that resembles Star Wars‘ fictional Tatooine, but even more elaborate than anything George Lucas dreamed up: the two-sunned planet is orbited by two more stars, the only solar system of its kind ever seen.

Closer to home, the star Tau Ceti, a mere 12 light years away, might even host a planet that can support life.

Worlds in our own solar system have their own surprises, too: NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence that water once flowed on freeze-dried Mars, and on Titan—one of Saturn’s many moons—a “mini Nile river” was spotted flowing into a large sea. (Unlike our Nile, Titan’s river is probably full of liquid hydrocarbons; it’s the only place we know of, other than Earth, with liquid at the surface.)

It’s tempting to want to pay these other places a visit, but current technology could never get us as far as another solar system. That might not be true forever. In September, a scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center revealed he’s working on a real-life warp drive.

2. Dinosaurs: fast and feathery

Remember when dinosaurs were fat, slow, and scaly? That’s how we used to depict them in movies, books and museums, but our understanding of these creatures has undergone some seismic changes, and continued to shift in 2012. Today, we know that carnivorous theropod dinosaurs like T. rex were often active, agile—and, at least in some cases, feathered.

This year, scientists unveiled the incredible Yutyrannus huali, or “beautiful feathered tyrant,” a massive cousin of T. rex covered in plumage, and by far the biggest feathered dinosaur we’ve found. And a Canadian team announced specimens of ornithomimids, 75 million years old, that also show evidence of feathers, making them the first feathered dinos ever seen in the Americas. (Until now, most have come from China.) Some palaeontologists now wonder if all dinosaurs had feathers—a striking idea. But traditionalists can rest easy for now, at least at the movies: next year, Jurassic Park is scheduled for re-release in 3D, and while its special effects look better than ever, the preview shows charging ornithomimids still scaly and featherless.

3.  A personal factory, at home

Imagine being able to download whatever you like off the Internet, or even design it yourself—an electric guitar, maybe a full-size house—then print it off, in your own personal factory. That’s the promise of 3D printers, and this year, it seemed they were everywhere.

MakerBot, which sells a desktop 3D printer model for about $2,200, opened its first retail store in New York. Author Chris Anderson’s new book, Makers, spoke of a “new industrial revolution” as the DIY movement takes off, partly thanks to these devices. Beyond just metal and plastic, 3D printers are being dreamed up that could print everything from food, to human cells (maybe one day capable of turning out out a transplantable kidney) and body parts, too.

DNA pioneer Craig Venter talked about emailing downloadable vaccines around the world that could be produced on 3D biological printers. Washington State University scientists practised printing artificial lunar dust into various shapes, suggesting we could use 3D printers on the moon one day to make tools and other supplies instead of launching them from Earth. Of course, putting such a limitless technology in the hands of everyone, makes some people nervous. Defense Distributed, a Texas non-profit, wants to create a fully downloadable and printable gun, and this year they got very close to doing it, firing six rounds from a partially printed rifle before the gun broke apart.

4. Waking up to climate change (again and again and again)

This year, more than 62 per cent of the U.S. was plagued by widespread drought,  decimating crops and causing food prices to soar. Arctic sea ice was reported shrinking to record-low levels yet again, reaching the smallest ever recorded, and covering less than half of the area that would have been typical just four decades ago.

Off the West Coast of Canada, a a massive geoengineering experiment came to light, igniting debate on a controversial idea—that we could deliberately tinker with the climate through manmade means, to slow global warming—which some say could save the planet, and others insist could doom us for good. After the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in October, global warming briefly made an appearance in the U.S. presidential election: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, publicly backed President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election, saying he was a better choice to tackle the issue. Unfortunately, until then, climate change hadn’t come up once in the presidential debates.

5. Do animals qualify as non-human people?

In February I attended the annual meeting of the AAAS, the world’s biggest general scientific society, and got to hear talks on all sorts of fascinating stuff, like bizarre underwater creatures, and the science of superheroes.

One of the most well-attended was about “cetacean rights”—whether whales and dolphins should qualify as “non-human people.” By this point, we know that dolphins seem to understand numbers and abstract concepts. They’ve been observed using sponges as tools to find food. Whale species are said to have their own culture; I’ve previously written about the complexities of sperm whale language, and traditions passed down between generations.

As the movement to give cetaceans legal rights rolls on, we saw more news this year showing just how remarkably “humanlike” many animals can be: like an Asian male elephant, named Koshik, which can apparently speak in Korean. (Like dolphins and some other species, elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror.) Or a beluga whale that mimics human sounds, and orangutans and gorillas that love playing with iPads. We increasingly understand animals as intelligent, even moral, creatures. It could have all sorts of implications, maybe first and foremost for the meat industry. How’s that test-tube hamburger coming along?

Thanks to everybody who submitted suggestions for this list over Twitter @katelunau and @MacleansMag.

‘We have liftoff! God Speed @Cmdr_Hadfield!’

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 17, 2012 at 1:37 PM - 0 Comments

@Cmdr_Hadfield prepares for lift off

Chris Hadfield is about to become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station. In the days before his Dec. 19 launch he’s been busy documenting his preparations in 140-character bursts:

Storified by Maclean’s Magazine · Wed, Dec 19 2012 07:08:09

Astronaut Chris Hadfield readies for mission of a lifetime

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 5:28 PM - 0 Comments

Bill Stafford/NASA

What’s Christmas like on the International Space Station? Not entirely different from here on Earth, says Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who blasts off on Dec. 19, and will become the first Canadian to command the ISS in March. “It’s not like we can get a big roast turkey or a smoked ham,” but he and the others will be dining on turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, cornbread, “and we might have peach ambrosia for dessert.” Hadfield, who’s famous for his guitar-playing skills, will lead a Christmas carol singalong on the ISS’s own Larivvée guitar (built in Vancouver). And they’ll be able to talk with family at home.

After years of gruelling preparation, Hadfield is spending this last week in quarantine at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, gearing up to go. “I just checked my countdown app on my iPad, and I have a little over a week until we launch,” he said over the phone on Monday night, around 10 p.m. Kazakhstan time, the excitement clear in his voice. “It’s a pretty amazing time.” Hadfield has a lot to look forward to, like all the scientific experiments he’ll be running on the ship—about 130 are planned for the time he’s up there, researching everything from how the human heart adapts to microgravity, to totally different topics like dark matter and dark energy—and the views of Earth he’ll see. Hadfield hopes to photograph Sarnia, Ont., where he was born, and other scenes of Canada and the world from space. The view, he says, is incredible. “It’s like a present unwrapping itself the whole time you look out the window,” but what he’s most looking forward is being weightless. “It’s magic. The ISS is huge,” about the size of a football field, “and you can fly from end to end.”

Hadfield and his crew, including Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and American Tom Marshburn, will face plenty of challenges, both physical and psychological. If astronauts didn’t exercise and take other precautions, being up in space for a few months would do a lot of damage to the body, maybe the equivalent of 50 years of aging. To fend of bone and muscle loss, they spend two hours every day working out. Psychological challenges can be “harder to predict,” he says. The hardest difficulty the crew could face would be the illness or death of a family member back home, like what happened to American astronaut Daniel Tani, whose mother died in a car crash in 2007 while he was aboard the ISS. “That would be difficult to deal with psychologically, for the whole crew,” says Hadfield, who was the support astronaut for Tani’s family on Earth during that mission. The crew has talked through all these scenarios, and feels prepared for what comes their way. After all, the astronauts themselves are human experiments while they’re in space, as researchers track how they adapt to extreme physical and psychological challenges. It’s crucial information if we ever send humans to Mars or beyond; NASA recently announced plans to put a Russian and American on the ISS for an entire year.

Hadfield is spending his last week on Earth relaxing, taking a few refresher courses, and contemplating the incredible task before him. (Two days before the launch, he’ll also get a haircut.) His family—including his wife and three adult children—will come visit, although “a lot of it will be behind glass, so I don’t catch a cold before I launch,” he says. “We’ll share a traditional family Christmas in a very unusual set of circumstances.” When he flies, he’ll be taking small mementoes with him, including his wife’s wedding ring. Hadfield recalls nights in the old farmhouse in southern Ontario where he grew up. “When [my brother and I] were supposed to be sleeping, we’d pull our knees up like a control panel, and fly imaginary space missions all around the universe. For me it’s surreal that in just over a week, I’m going to climb into a Russian spaceship,” and not so long after that, he’ll be the one commanding the International Space Station.

For an inside look at how Hadfield trained at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, read Kate Lunau’s story.

Found: Alberta’s feathered dinosaurs

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

For the first time, the fossils of feathered dinosaurs have been found in the Americas—dug up in the Alberta badlands, by a Canadian team. A new study from paleontologists Darla Zelenitsky and François Therrien describe three specimens of 75-million-year-old ornithomimids, two adults and a juvenile. These ostrich-like dinosaurs famously appeared in Jurassic Park, fleeing in a massive flock from a bloodthirsty Tyrannosaurus rex. According to new research, that famous film got it wrong: instead of scales, these dinosaurs would have been coated in down-like feathers, even flapping their wings.

Adult ornithomimids weighed 330 pounds or more, far too heavy to fly. These dinosaurs grew large feathers on their forearms as they matured; their armspan would have measured two metres across, or longer. “We know their wings weren’t used for flight; they’re much too big for that,” says Zelenitsky, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Because only adults had wings, they might have been used to show off for potential mates, or maybe to protectively cover their eggs while brooding, she suggests (it isn’t known whether these fossils are male or female). It’s hard to say what colours ornithomimids would have displayed, although Zelenitsky hopes to study that in the future.

Until now, most feathered dinosaurs have been found in China, like the recently discovered Yutyrannus huali, a massive T. rex cousin with plumage. There, feathered dino skeletons have been dug up from ancient lakes and lagoons, which seemed to help preserve evidence of their feathers; but these sorts of locations are rare worldwide. “No one was expecting to find feathers preserved in the types of rocks [in Alberta] because it wasn’t the right type of environment,” Zelenitsky says, but her work has proven otherwise. “Once the news of this discovery spreads, paleontologists will start looking more carefully at specimens they’ve already collected,” looking for evidence of feathers, she predicts. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Of course, not everyone’s happy about all the feathery new dinosaurs turning up. As Maclean’s reported earlier this year, some dino fans miss the old days, when dinosaurs were big, fat, slow and scaly. Our knowledge of dinosaurs is being rewritten, and Canada has a new feathery dinosaur in its past: a large, downy, ostrich-like ornithomimid.

Rocket Man: a photo tour of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre with Chris Hadfield

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 2:31 PM - 0 Comments

For the past three days, Kate Lunau has been at NASA’s Johnson Space Center shadowing astronaut Chris Hadfield, set to become the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. Here are her behind-the-scenes photos:

• Read all of Kate’s posts from the JSC here.

of Photos

You know virtual reality helmets? I tried one on.

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 7:32 AM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with astronaut Chris Hadfield, set to become the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. Follow Kate on Twitter @katelunau and check out her photos on Tumblr for a behind-the-scenes look at how Canada’s most elite astronaut is preparing for the mission of a lifetime. Read all of Kate’s posts from the JSC here.

Kate Lunau with her VR helmet. (Photo: Kate Lunau)

In space, there’s no up or down—it’s a 360-degree world. And that can be extremely disorienting, as I learned shortly after getting suited up today at the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Virtual Reality lab, where I took a “spacewalk” with Jeremy Hansen, one of Canada’s newest astronauts. Despite feeling mildly seasick as I roamed the outside of the International Space Station, it was a thrill.

At Johnson’s VR lab, astronauts practice for all sorts of situations they might encounter in real life on the ISS. Canadian Chris Hadfield, who’ll assume command of the ISS in March, is working a lot in VR right now to master SAFER, a propulsive backpack that can save spacewalking astronauts should they drift away, one of the lab technicians told me. In the VR lab, there’s a console filled with monitors where astronauts can operate a virtual Canadarm; and there’s another area where astronauts donning VR helmets can practice climbing all over the ISS to do a repair. That second station was where Jeremy and I went.

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What happens to an astronaut’s heart during long space travel?

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 7:20 AM - 0 Comments

Kate Lunau is at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with astronaut Chris Hadfield, set to become the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. Follow Kate on Twitter @katelunau and check out her photos on Tumblr for a behind-the-scenes look at how Canada’s most elite astronaut is preparing for the mission of a lifetime. Read all of Kate’s posts from the JSC here.

Photo: Kate Lunau

Microgravity is thought to cause muscle atrophy and the heart, of course, is a muscle; but we still don’t understand exactly how it’s affected. When Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield arrives on the International Space Station in December, he’ll be giving ultrasounds to his crewmates—and today I got to watch him practice how to do it, in a full-size mockup of the ISS.

The training session took place in Building 9 at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, a cavernous, well-lit space filled with ISS modules, where astronauts do their drills (It’s also known as the Vehicle Mock-up Facility). This area is generally restricted to the public; I gained access only after being fingerprinted and ID’ed, and after applying for entrance several weeks ago. As we explored the room today, a tour group walked by through a glass-paneled hallway above, peering down on us with curiosity.

Continue…

Coming up today at the Johnson Space Center: Why does the heart shrink in space?

By Kate Lunau - Monday, September 17, 2012 at 10:48 AM - 0 Comments

Photo: Kate Lunau

Kate Lunau is at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with astronaut Chris Hadfield, set to become the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. Follow Kate on Twitter @katelunau and check out her photos on Tumblr for a behind-the-scenes look at how Canada’s most elite astronaut is preparing for the mission of a lifetime. Read all of Kate’s posts from the JSC here.

A few weeks ago, the Canadian Space Agency offered me the chance to visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center and shadow astronaut Chris Hadfield, who will be the first Canadian to assume command of the International Space Station. So yesterday morning I hopped on a plane to Houston.

After a few hours’ flight, I landed in hot, muggy Houston. As I skimmed around downtown, passing strip malls and palm trees, I knew I was headed in the right direction when I started seeing car dealerships with names like “Space City.” My hotel, just down the road from JSC, decorates its walls with framed photos of galaxies and star clusters.

The JSC, which is home to NASA’s astronaut corps, is the lead NASA center for the 16-nation ISS. By contributing robotics like the Canadarm2 to the Space Station, Canada earns a place for its astronauts to train here. Hadfield, a highly regarded member of the space community, is  also very musical guy: last time we met, he told me about how he liked to play his guitar in space. I was happy to see he plans to do so again on this mission.

Today and tomorrow I’ll be shadowing Hadfield and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Coming up today: We visit the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and the Human Research Facility, where scientists are studying why the heart muscle seems to shrink in long-duration spaceflight. Tomorrow I’ll be seeing the Virtual Reality lab.

The health story we’ve been missing

By Julia Belluz - Friday, September 7, 2012 at 10:47 AM - 0 Comments

(Photo by Co Rentmeester//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Last week, Science-ish met Dr. Lely Solari, a diminutive physician-researcher from Peru, at a World Health Organization meeting in Ethiopia. Dr. Solari described her country’s battle with a global health issue you don’t often hear about: “We are an upper-income country but we have areas of extreme poverty where anemia in children reaches 70 per cent of prevalence,” she said over lunch at the UN in Addis Ababa. Anemia may sound like a benign condition but it’s actually one of the world’s great public-health challenges. An estimated two billion of the six-something-billion people on this planet suffer from anemia, and that’s mainly due to poor nutrition and diets that are not rich in the essentials, like iron. Anemia makes people feel weak and dizzy. They can’t focus in the classroom or at work, and anemic children may sustain developmental delays.

But there’s good news: an effective treatment — micronutrient powder — has been identified, and the World Health Organization has robust guidance on how to administer these powders to decrease the prevalence of anemia in places where the problem is widespread. Yet in Peru, a pilot with micronutrient powder had to be stopped because it seemed to be doing more harm than good. Dr. Solari was asked to go in and find out why this was happening.

Through careful observation, she found that the problem wasn’t the powders; it was how people were taking them. The sachets of nutrients were being delivered by the Ministry of Health without any counselling and people didn’t know what to do with them. There also was no mechanism in place to monitor and evaluate the impact of the program, and little community participation and buy-in. In other words, the system by which an effective treatment was being delivered was broken so the treatment didn’t work. Dr. Solari took all these issues and her proposed solutions to the ministry, “and they were all taken up,” she told Science-ish with a smile.

Before she took a close look at how things were working on the ground, Peruvian health officials were missing the proverbial forest from the trees. Now, because of Dr. Solari’s work, not only is the micronutrient program in Peru saved, but it’s being scaled up to 14 regions in the country. Lives will likely be improved, even saved.

The take-home-message is this: Like Peru’s health ministry, we observers of health care and policy need to start taking a better look at the big picture—the forest—and holding our policymakers to account for systems-level failures.

Allow Science-ish to explain: There was a time when doctors and so-called treatments killed more people than they helped. As the history professor David Wootton so deftly describes in his book Bad Medicine, “If we define medicine as the ability to cure diseases, then there was very little medicine before 1865. The long tradition that descended from Hippocrates, symbolized by a reliance on bloodletting, purges, and emetics, was almost totally ineffectual, indeed positively deleterious, except in so far as it mobilized the placebo effect.”

But that’s simply not the case anymore. We have antibiotics, we have good treatments for anemia, and while we’re still looking to defeat cancers and migraines, along with small ailments like jet lag and the common cold, we have discovered how to manage HIV so effectively that positive patients can lead productive lives. One of the most important challenges we face now is figuring out how to get these treatments to everybody and how to do so effectively, both in terms of patient outcomes and how we use our health resources.

The research community is catching up. The study of what, in ivory-tower lingo, are called “health systems” is an emerging discipline, and this year Beijing will host the second symposium on the subject. This marks a shift from a focus on health programs, services and drugs to questions that take a big-picture approach, such as service delivery, health-information systems, and even financing and governance. As Dr. Luis Gabriel Cuervo, a senior advisor with the Pan American Health Organization, explained, “In health systems, you are looking at the whole cake, not just the prescriptions of the nurses or doctors or physiotherapists, but how do you get to access the hospital? Can I drive there? Will an ambulance take me there? When I arrive there, are the medications going to be in stock?”

We in the media need to catch up with this mind-set, as well. As Dr. John Lavis, director of the McMaster Health Forum, put it, “There’s huge amounts of news focus on the new breakthrough drug or the new clinical service that people are excited about. And that also is the focus of a lot of donations.” But there’s a lot less talk about how these breakthroughs fit into health systems. “If we’re not thinking seriously about … engaging the public in these difficult choices in how we best get these programs, services and drugs to people, then all these wonderful [interventions] are for naught.”

So when we talk about drug shortages in Canada, we should use the very sad stories of individuals who did not get the treatment they needed to look at the implications of the provinces coming together to purchase in bulk. When talking about stock-outs of malaria drugs in Africa, we should look at what’s rotten in the health systems that are failing to distribute the drugs effectively, especially when public money is involved. As Dr. Cuervo said, of pregnancy and childbirth in Latin America, “Women are dying because they did not reach the hospital in time. That’s a failure of the health system but it’s a failure that has little to do with the medical training or nurses’ training. It has to do with having the roads, ambulances, a system where you can call and request the service.” That’s the health story we shouldn’t be missing.

Science-ish is a joint project of Maclean’s, the Medical Post and the McMaster Health Forum. Julia Belluz is the associate editor at the Medical Post. Got a tip? Seen something that’s Science-ish? Message her at julia.belluz@medicalpost.rogers.com or on Twitter @juliaoftoronto

Why the Higgs boson discovery changes everything

By Kate Lunau and Katie Engelhart - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

NASA

For the past 22 years, Pierre Savard has, off and on, been searching for the Higgs boson particle. On the morning of July 4—shortly before physicists at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) were scheduled to present their historic findings—Savard, associate professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Toronto, awoke just outside Geneva, where CERN’s sprawling complex is nestled amidst lush vineyards, with the imposing peaks of Mont Blanc as backdrop. Buried 100 m underground is the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, built at a cost of $10 billion to help physicists unravel the mysteries of the universe.

By the time Savard arose (somewhat sluggishly, as he’d been working on “Higgs analysis” until 2 a.m.), the facility’s main auditorium was already full. The summer students at CERN had camped out all night. Aysha Abdel-Aziz, a University of Toronto undergraduate working on Higgs search data analysis, was monitoring Facebook at 12.30 a.m., which flashed news of a swelling crowd. “At 1:30, I thought, man, I’ve got to get over there,” she recalls. “I got there at 2 a.m., and I’m glad I did. Because by 4 it was too late.” Students hunkered down outside the auditorium to wait with sleeping bags and food and cameras.

Around 4:30 a.m., says Abdel-Aziz, a cluster of grey-haired physicists showed up. Discouraged by the lineup, which by then had snaked down the stairs and wound around the hall, they left. Savard, meanwhile, made his way to the lobby of his laboratory, where the morning’s events were being live streamed. The four screening rooms were full, but he managed to hustle a chair. Displaced by their youthful proteges, the world’s most seasoned particle physicists were relegated to back rooms, packed like sardines into satellite auditoriums around the complex. Some grasped bottles of champagne. Soon they would, most uncharacteristically, be shouting.

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Podcast: Kate Lunau on writing this week’s Higgs boson cover story

By Jessica Allen - Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 10:18 AM - 0 Comments

Our savvy science writer also explains in layman’s terms what the Higgs boson is, why physicist Neil Turok, director of the Canadian Perimter Institute is thanking his lucky stars, and what’s in store for the Large Hadron Collider–the world’s biggest machine–now. Also, there’s a reference to Superman III, which doesn’t happen every day.

Read reporter Katie Engelhart’s dispatches from CERN in Geneva here and here. And find Lunau and Engelhart’s eight-page special report on why the Higgs boson discovery does more than just explain why we exist on newsstands now. 

Scientists vs. Harper

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at 6:26 PM - 0 Comments

A protestor wearing a Grim Reaper costume stands on Parliament Hill during a rally on Tuesday July 10, 2012 in Ottawa to protest the federal government's cuts to science programs. (Fred Chartrand/CP)

When Science-ish heard about the “Death of Evidence” protest in Ottawa today, her first instinct was to jump on a plane and join the good fight. After all, Science-ish has spent the last year carefully documenting a number of incursions and abuses on science by governments—federal, provincial, and otherwise.

Over the phone, the University of Ottawa conference organizers told Science-ish that they are disturbed by what they believe is the government’s disdain for evidence. They also provided an impressive media backgrounder, obviously prepared by science nerds with a zest for evidence and footnoting. The alleged crimes included the scrapping of the mandatory long-form census, cutting the federal funding for Canada’s Ozone Network, closing the Experimental Lakes Area, as well as the elimination of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy and the position of National Science Advisor.

Such examples demonstrated “an erosion of the capacity of the federal government to actually collect evidence, and the capacity of civil society to bring evidence forward into public debate,” conference co-organizer Dr. Scott Findlay, said. This protest about the federal government’s anti-science stance seemed right on point.

But before creating nerdy “citation needed” placards and running to the Hill, Science-ish decided to take a breath and call scientists across the country to better understand what was happening. Did they really feel this government is systematically working against them, or was there a more nuanced story to be told?

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Dispatch from the Higgs boson cafeteria

By Katie Engelhart - Friday, July 6, 2012 at 3:26 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Katie Engelhart

A few days after the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced, the physicists who “found” it could be spotted sitting in patio chairs outside their main research site, eating heaping plates of cafeteria-prepared moules frites under a scorching Swiss sun.

Inside the massive cafeteria at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva), gaggles of 20-something graduate students navigate between breathtakingly overpriced food stations. Seated along smooth white tables, multi-generational and multi-ethnic clusters of physicists talk excitedly. Most are male; and most wear some variation of short-sleeved button-down and sneakers. Approaching 1pm, conversations linger over slices of cake and jars of apple juice.

The cafeteria is often where the magic happens, says Dr. Manuella Vincter, a physicist who works on ATLAS, one of the experiments that detected the Higgs boson. Offices at CERN are almost disconcertingly shabby, and the world’s top scientific theoreticians are often packed three or four to a cavernous, concrete room. The cafeteria offers physicists a respite from the darkness, and an open place to talk.

In fact, CERN physicists bristle when I offhandedly refer to the space as a “cafeteria.” It’s a “restaurant:” or “R1,” in the characteristically to-the-point parlance of its frequent customers.

The physicists, perhaps, have a right to be touchy about language. Many eat three meals a day in their “restaurant.” Just hours after the existence “the God particle” was announced to the public, most researchers found themselves back at R1, eating especially quickly to make up for time lost that morning. They were not, as one Maclean’s editor hypothesized, feting the long-sought-after boson with “nerd Mardi Gras” celebrations. They were, instead, back at work.

CERN, a massive complex of 1950s-era buildings that sits atop the Large Hadron Collider, is like a summer camp. Many researchers live on site: in one of a few “hostels” that are visible from R1’s patio. In the hostel occupied by summer students, residents are not permitted food or alcohol in their rooms. Longer-term researchers generally live off-site, but within walking distance, in apartment complexes occupied almost entirely by physicists. Dr. Anadi Canepa, a research scientist who works on antimatter, used to live a few kilometers away—but she moved back into a CERN hostel “to save time.” Canepa’s daily stops—office, cafeteria, and apartment building—are within steps of each other. In her first two years at CERN, the petite physicist took only seven days off.

So everyone relishes small vacations at R1. About a week ago, Dr. Peter Higgs himself, the boson’s namesake, was spotted at one of the restaurant’s tables. He was eating lunch alone.

Because they admittedly don’t get out much, many CERN physicists, like Canepa, are married to other CERN physicists. (Canepa’s husband also works in antimatter). They shake their heads when I ask if their first-borns will be named “Higgs.”

Around 7pm, the patio outside R1 is bustling again. Perhaps the next major discovery to come out of CERN is being plotted. But it doesn’t look like that.

If their shirts had sleeves, it would be fair to say the physicists have rolled them up for the evening. With no pubs within easy distance of the research facility, physicists often spend their evenings sipping beer in R1’s garden, with the peaks of Mount Blanc as a backdrop.

Some tell me they will go back to work later.