The Chemistry Outreach Group has taken home the Principal’s Prize for Public Engagement through Media, winning the inaugural 'Collaboration' category for groups of undergraduate or graduate students that engage with the external community and/or the media.
The Prize recognizes the vital role outreach groups play in supporting the University’s commitment to being of service to society and engaging with the broader community.
A research team led by McGill University geochemist Peter Douglas has used a new method for measuring the rate at which methane is produced by microbes breaking down thawing permafrost. The breakthrough could lead to an improvement in our ability to predict future releases of the potent greenhouse gas as long‑frozen layers of soil begin to thaw.
With the federal ban of single-use plastics planned for this year, the demand for alternatives to everyday plastic products, such as straws, is set to increase. TreeMaTech, a startup company born through a collaboration between chemistry professors from McGill and Lakehead University, is betting on cellulose for making drinking straws that don’t suck for the environment.
A fossilised insect wing discovered in an abandoned mine in Labrador has led palaeontologists from McGill University and the University of Gdańsk to identify a new hairy cicada species that lived around 100 million years ago.
Maculaferrum blaisi, described in a study published in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, is the first hemipteran insect (true bug) to be discovered at the Redmond Formation, a fossil site from the Cretaceous period near Schefferville, Labrador.
Using a new microscopic "fishing" technique, scientists from the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM), Université de Montréal and McGill University have successfully snagged thousands of proteins that play a key role in the formation of the cell skeletons or cytoskeletons. Cell skeletons, whose primary function is to give the cells their shapes, are also involved in things like muscle contraction. They are made up of an interlocking network of protein filaments that connect the cell nucleus to the cell membrane.
By Cynthia Feng and Kira Smith
Office of Science Education team members Cynthia Feng and Kira Smith are working with members of the Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) on planning the next edition of the SUS’s highly anticipated Academia Week.
Astronomers in Europe, working with members of Canada’s CHIME Fast Radio Burst collaboration, have pinpointed the location of a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) first detected by the CHIME telescope in British Columbia in 2018. The breakthrough is only the second time that scientists have determined the precise location of a repeating source of these millisecond bursts of radio waves from space.
How can predators coexist with their prey over long periods without the predators completely depleting the resource that keeps them alive? Experiments performed over a period of 10 years by researchers from McGill University and the Universities of Oldenburg and Potsdam have now confirmed that regular oscillations in predator-prey populations can persist over very long periods
Cities and their rising impacts on biodiversity versity. To gain a clearer picture of the situation, an international group of scientists, including Professor Andrew Gonzalez from McGill’s Biology Department, surveyed over 600 studies on the impacts of urban growth on biodiversity. They published their findings today in Nature Sustainability.
Old habits are hard to break. A McGill-led study of replacement of traditional wood and coal burning stoves with clean energy in China suggests that, without a better understanding of the reasons behind people’s reluctance to give up traditional stoves, it will be difficult for policies in China and elsewhere in the world to succeed in encouraging this shift towards clean energy. The study was published recently in Nature Sustainability.
In November this year, around 400 people gathered at the McGill Faculty Club for the Faculty of Science’s annual scholarship reception. The evening’s celebration was an opportunity for donors to the Faculty to meet the students who have benefitted from their generous support.
Addressing the guests, Joëlle Begin Miolan, recipient of a McGill Alumni & Friends Undergraduate Research Award, described the opportunity to do research as a defining moment for her self-belief as an undergraduate physics student.
Scientists have been looking at pollution affecting the air, land and water around the Athabasca Oil Sands for some time. After looking at contaminants in snow taken from up-to 25 km away from the oil sands, a McGill-led scientific team now suggests that oil sand pollution is also affecting the weather patterns in the surrounding regions.
The Office of Science Education (OSE) is offering 10 conference awards – worth up to $2,000 each – to students, staff and faculty in the Faculty of Science. The awards will support members of the Faculty who would like to participate in scholarly exchange related to science education at the local, national or international level.
McGill University researchers have gained tantalizing new insights into the properties of perovskites, one of the world’s most promising materials in the quest to produce a more efficient, robust and cheaper solar cell.
The loss of biodiversity continues at an alarming rate despite decades of research and international policies setting out clear goals in the area. In an article published this week in Nature Sustainability, an international team of scientists including researchers from McGill identified seven key areas for future research in order to tackle, effectively, the root causes of the problem.
