How it is that brains shed memory, while sparing lyrics and music, is one of neuroscience’s great mysteries. Can hardy music circuits jog cognition and speech? Hopes are high.
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A first-of-its kind web portal helps clinicians and geneticists around the world to match symptoms they’ve never seen before with known mutant genes — and to provide firm counseling to patients in search of answers.
Air & Water QualityAir QualityConsumerismEnvironmental healthFast ForwardGarbageHealthHuman habitatIndustryPodcastsToxics
Bacteria and fungi, Earth’s quintessential biochemists, are famous for the odd molecules they produce. But human beings are no slouches. According to one estimate, global commerce swells with thousands of industrial chemicals, many completely novel, some very toxic
Rob Kendrick — aka Shakydad — is a highly successful guy with Parkinson’s Disease. Listen to him reflect on the challenges and changes Parkinson’s has offered up, for worse and for better.
Camphill residents would never describe their community as an institution. It’s home, community, and a way of life.
Up to twenty percent of working musicians get struck by focal dystonia at some point. So do writers, athletes, craftspeople … an estimated 300,000 North Americans. The underlying problem? Normal brain plasticity gone rogue.
You are what you eat — so the saying goes. In fact, the trillions of bacteria inhabiting your gut also eat what you eat, and turn meals into molecules that affect your brain.
An estimated ten percent of Canadians struggle with depression, flashbacks and panic attacks associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). So do 14,000 Canadian veterans. Locked brain circuits may be to blame.
Insomniacs are more than just lonely. Their brains are less flexible. A good night’s sleep re-wires grey matter and sheds chemical waste, boosting healthy brain activity in the day.
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Recent studies report that a glass of wine in the evening is good for your heart. This may be so, but a bottle of wine is not something you’d expect to buy at a hospital. In the French city of Strasbourg, you most definitely can.
The fortieth anniversary of America’s hasty retreat from Vietnam is upon us. A true memetic moment, that frantic, April 25, 1975 escape from the US Embassy rooftop is engraved in popular consciousness. The toxic legacy of the war is less known.
BiodiversityBiologyEconomic developmentEuropeInfectious DiseasePodcastsSci-TechVoicesWaste Management
Picture a landscape buried beneath a sky-high heap of dead plants and animal corpses. This is what Earth’s surface would look like if it weren’t for fungi. Fungi are the biosphere’s recyclers. Human society depends on them absolutely.
There’s a quiet killer living in the walls of traditional adobe houses in Central and South America. You can’t see it; you can’t hear it. It sneaks out at night, crawling or tumbling into your bed.
Activism & SolidarityAir & Water QualityAir QualityEnergyEnvironmental healthHealthHuman habitatIndustryMiningToxics
In the rolling foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where cattle peacefully graze and ranchers retire to handsome chalets, a purple haze hovers. Fracking is being blamed not only for air pollution, but for a litany of health complaints.
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Of all the medical afflictions a person or family can suffer from, none is as burdensome as a rare genetic condition that hasn’t even been named. Winnipeg physician-geneticist Cheryl Greenberg advocates for patients.
Rosie Redfield spat in a tube and mailed it to a Mountain View, California outfit called 23andMe. A month later, the University of British Columbia geneticist and MOOC instructor received the results by email.
Tom Hudson is a busy guy. Few have contributed more to our understanding of how the human genome works — and how to map it, using ‘haplotypes’ — than this congenial native of Arvida, Quebec. .
There’s hardly a facet of drug action that isn’t determined in some way by our DNA — by our genome. On a recent trip to Vancouver, I visited the offices and labs of the Canadian Pharmacogenomics Network for Drug Safety.
Have you ever popped the recommended dose of an over-the-counter analgesic, and it did absolutely nothing? Or perhaps you suffered a life-threatening adverse reaction. If so, you’re in large company.
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Diana Daunheimer and her husband Derek were a typical young couple pursuing their dreams — raising kids and growing good food at their Alberta homestead. But in 2008, a nastier crop sprouted around her property.
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