Henry de la Beche’s “Duria Antiquior,” an image of the carnage that must have taken place on the shores of the ancient Dorset. Years ago, when touring dino-mation exhibits were all the rage, my parents took me to “see the dinosaurs” at the Morris Museum. I was terrified. I had seen dinosaur skeletons before, but the moving, roaring beasts sent me scurrying around the corner, peeking around it as if from a blind. My father walked up to a Triceratops and touched it to show me I was safe, but even though I was so excited about seeing dinosaurs I…

“It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks…the public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when in full possession of the facts…”[1] In her crusade to galvanize the American public against what she considered an insidious enemy masquerading as progress, Rachel Carson combined rigorous science and compelling prose to convey her message. Her book Silent Spring, published in 1962, sparked public interest in, and outcry over, the growing use of chemical products for controlling plants and insects. Her work is considered a key catalyst of…

For ‘Dummies’ is a simple yet powerful publishing genre to alleviate the anxiety and frustration people feel about understanding complicated material by mocking them with insightful and educational descriptions, making difficult material interesting and easy to understand. One of the most widespread and complicated diseases affecting us today is cancer. Everyone’s heard about cancer, but how bad is it really? Super-duper bad. Canadian statistics alone state 4 in 10 Canadians will get cancer in their lifetime. That number is getting so high; almost everyone is going to know someone affected by cancer. This reality should be enough that everyone ought…

DNA is a curious thing. It might make sense for you to think about the DNA in your brain in terms of “brain DNA” and DNA in your blood in terms of “blood DNA”, but you’d be wrong. Strangely, the DNA in your skin cells sloughing off to make up a considerable proportion of common household dust is the exact same DNA found in the rest of the cells making up your body and bodily organs like your brain, heart, liver and muscles. So how does DNA know to make neurons or finger nails? How does it know what to…

Finland, Finland Finland, The country where I want to be, You’re so sadly neglected, And often ignored, Finland, Finland, Finland, Finland has it all. -Monty Python, “Finland” In modern society it is generally considered impolite to point out the intrinsic differences between ethnic groups; while it is true that people should be treated equally regardless of ethnicity in terms of employment, respect, rights etc, there are genetic differences between ethnicities that can provide invaluable medical information about disease processes. Throughout history there has been a vast amount of inter-ethnic mingling, this has made most genetic differences negligible at best however,…

Black holes are an astronomical phenomenon made popular through science fiction based entertainment. Due to its complex nature we often resort to our imagination when deciding upon what they are and what they can do. Instead of jumping into the topic of black holes directly, let’s start with the basics and examine gravity, the fundamental force behind them. The presence of gravity is obviously easy to observe. People knew that apples would fall from trees, catapulted rocks would eventually hit the ground and that something was keeping us relatively tethered to the earth. Sir Isaac Newton was the first person…

On the 24th of July 2007, 5 Bulgarian nurses and 1 Palestinian doctor were released from Libya after having been jailed for more than 8 years [1]. They were accused by the Libyan government of intentionally infecting over 400 children by injecting them with HIV at the state-run Al-Fateh Children’s Hospital in Benghazi, Libya in 1998. The medics claimed their innocence in this matter but some confessed under the extreme pressure by being repeatedly tortured [2]. Through the years, their case was seen by several courts and the medics were subjected to numerous trials in which they were sentenced to…