“Navdeep Bains, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development of Canada, recently revealed a $950 million budget to fund two superclusters in downtown Toronto in collaboration with the University of Toronto (U of T).”
Category: Science & Tech
Outer Space: Closer Than It Seems?
“Even though these private spaceflight companies are currently quite small when compared with governmental agencies such as NASA, big things are in store in their future. In fact, the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket proved that private space companies can also achieve great things in the field of space exploration, and they can do it in a more cost-effective way.”
Test-Tube Baby Back Ribs
“Unlike traditional methods where animals have to be fed, grown, and then slaughtered, cultured meat is produced by growing stem cells of an animal in a Petri dish containing nutrients and growth hormones. Cultured meat is produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicine.”
Conspicuous Care
“Medical spending is 12% of Canadian GDP. That’s more than $242 billion or $6,600 per Canadian. In comparison, Spain and Italy both have lowered levels of spending ( about $3,300/person) than Canada, yet their population’s life expectancy is the same or higher. There is no question that medicine is critical to our health, but do increased levels of spending lead to improved survival outcomes?”
Where Does Our Water Go?
“As global temperatures rise, climate change will definitely threaten to bring more extreme weather. Yet, across the world, developing nations are getting increasingly urbanized. This means more forests and natural habitats will be cleared to make way for urban development.”
Coffee-Drinking: A Personality Trait?
“Regardless of where students come from, many students start to drink coffee once they are here at the U of T. This is, in part, a result of group-think and mimicry. Once they are here, they hear upper-year students claim coffee helps them stay awake. Articles on social media give them “coffee hype,” and then they no longer drink coffee because they need it, but because coffee is cool.”
Robots… In Our Houses?!
“Thermostats ensure that our houses cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Similarly, our ovens are robots that bake food at pre-set temperatures. Some homes are equipped with blinds that open and close at the flick of a switch.”
How Tech Innovation is Redefining Transportation
“As the pace of urbanization continues to accelerate, existing infrastructure and services in place become limiting in the needs of today and tomorrow.”
The Philosophy of Science, Truth, and the DIY Movement
“Today, most of the scientific research is based on empiricism (deduction), where an additional step is added to test out the hypothesis through experimentations. The key point is that the theories proposed now have to be testable and falsifiable, which was not the case in pure induction. This adds a large certainty in our acquired knowledge, especially the ones that last for a longer time, since they withstand more trials of testing.”
The Exciting World of Autonomous Vehicle Research
“The absence of a driver behind the steering wheel will allow the computer driving the car to perform a number of diverse measurements mimicking the five human senses in order to quickly detect an external stimulus faster than human reaction times, which adheres to road signs and lane dynamics.”