The number of American kestrels has dropped sharply. That goes against the trend for birds of prey, broadly seen as a conservation bright spot.
Hypotheses about the decline abound. In a newly published special issue on kestrels in The Journal of Raptor Research, Dr. Smallwood and David Bird, an emeritus professor of wildlife biology at McGill University in Montreal, list seven possible factors for kestrel declines that they argue merit more research, in no particular order.
Sixty per cent of roughly 1,600 Canadians who took part in a new study from McGill's School of Human Nutrition say their lifestyle habits either stayed the same or improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the flip side, 40% of participants say they adopted less healthy lifestyle habits, including worsened eating habits, sleep quality, decreased physical activity and weight gain.
Professor Ryan Mailloux has been appointed Director of the School of Human Nutrition (SHN) effective from June 1, 2023, for a five-year term.
Dr. Mailloux earned his Ph.D. in Biomolecular Sciences from Laurentian University in 2007. He joined McGill in 2019, previously serving as an Assistant Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Ronholm was among three highly accomplished early career researchers who received a significant McGill distinction: The Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers.
McGill’s valedictorians are outstanding students whose strong academic performance, leadership and community involvement has earned the respect of their peers. This year’s cohort is remarkable for its diversity, each having vastly different backgrounds, experiences, passions and goals.
What they do share is ambition, curiosity, and a desire to have a positive impact on the world.
McGill’s valedictorians are outstanding students whose strong academic performance, leadership and community involvement has earned the respect of their peers. This year’s cohort is remarkable for its diversity, each having vastly different backgrounds, experiences, passions and goals.
What they do share is ambition, curiosity, and a desire to have a positive impact on the world.
The most abundant animals on farms—and everywhere on land, in fact—are microscopic worms called nematodes. Some kinds benefit the soil, but others parasitize crops, inflicting more than $100 billion in losses worldwide each year. Although pesticides can get rid of harmful nematodes, they inflict collateral damage on other life.
Around the world, food is grown on land of all sizes and all types, but that diversity means farmers often fail to take into account landscape complexity and soil variability, according to Chandra A. Madramootoo, a professor of Bioresource Engineering at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada.
He says that one solution is precision farming, an approach that “enables the selection of crops, and chemical and water applications within spatially similar land and soil zones.”
Five offices across disciplines and campuses embrace sustainability at work and beyond through the Sustainable Workplace Certification program
What motivates sustainable change?
A team led by two recent McGill bioengineering graduates, Alexander Becker and Cynthia Hitti, has made it through to the final phase of the Deep Space Food Challenge (DSFC) with their system for rearing crickets as a food source for long-haul space voyages.
Congratulations to two Macdonald Profs who have received funding through the New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration stream, which supports high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research: Hamid Akbarzadeh (BRE) for Origami-inspired deployable sensoriactuator soft robots and Mehran Dastmalchi (PltSci) for Plant-derived biosynergists to enhance pesticide efficacy.
Research published in Ecology took a closer look into the candy-striped spider’s diet and behaviour and found that these spiders use a variety of tactics to take down prey much larger than themselves, including sleeping bees and wasps.
A research team led by William Dawson Scholar and Assistant Professor Jen Ronholm (AnSci/FdSci) has received $1.65 million for an NSERC CREATE in One Health Against Pathogens (OHAP). Ten co-applicants from McGill, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Guelph, and l’Université du Québec à Montréal will collaborate.
