The support of volunteer mentors helps students built their confidence
Abigail Brodhead considers herself a quiet person, shy about striking up conversations and asking questions. So when the COVID-19 pandemic shelved the University of Alberta student’s in-person practicum in the spring of 2020, she was concerned about making a go of it online. “I worried about how I would take control of my own learning,” said Brodhead,…
University of Alberta students will get cross-disciplinary, work-integrated learning in one of Canada’s fastest-growing industries, thanks to a major grant announced on Thursday. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) has awarded $1.6 million to the U of A for the Sensory-Motor Adaptive Rehabilitation Technology (SMART) CREATE training program to train up to 120 graduate and…
Why are we biting the hand that saved us?
For some people, no good deed deserves to be rewarded – at least not by making a profit, which they treat as if it were a dirty word. Even saving millions of lives, as pharmaceutical companies have undoubtedly done by delivering safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines to market in record time, is no excuse for…
New decision tool on cannabis use may help provide the answer
People with arthritis are more likely than others to use cannabis for pain, mood and sleep disorders, but few studies have examined whether the products effectively treat the disease. But that is about to change. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Alberta is developing a cannabis use decision tool for the estimated…
Star Trek-like scanners may be on the verge of becoming a reality
Futuristic handheld scanners that can instantly diagnose all that ails us are on the verge of becoming a reality, thanks to a University of Alberta researcher whose use of artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint a growing host of disorders landed him an unprecedented research chair. Jacob Jaremko, a pediatric and musculoskeletal radiologist and researcher in…
Canadian Nightjar Survey recruits volunteer citizen scientists for the study of nocturnal birds
Ten years ago, University of Alberta PhD candidate Elly Knight started a volunteer citizen science program. Since then, the Canadian Nightjar Survey has grown from a single volunteer in southern British Columbia to several hundred citizen scientists across the country – and more volunteers are needed. Their mission? To monitor the nightjars that breed in Canada. These fascinating,…
Lise Gotell was living in Toronto in 1986 when a serial rapist, later dubbed the “Balcony Rapist” because he broke into homes by climbing onto balconies, started attacking women. Gotell, a graduate student, remembers following the case of one of his victims, who sued the police force for not warning women about the violent attacks…
Increased visits play a role in a decrease in overdose deaths
Researchers have found a link between increased visits to supervised consumption sites in Alberta and decreased fentanyl-related overdose deaths. Using publicly available opioid-response reports from the province of Alberta, the University of Alberta researchers looked at the number of fentanyl-related overdose deaths by quarter from 2017 to 2020, as well as the number of visits…
The future possibilities for helium seem infinite
By Pat Price Reporter Troy Media/TNW Avanti Energy Inc. (TSXV:AVN) (OTC:ARGYF) has assembled an expert team of former oil and gas employees, including eight people from the former Encana Corp. Several of those employees were part of the team during the early stages of the discovery of the Montney Formation, one of the premier natural…
Alberta-based 48Hour Discovery works with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to streamline the process
With the cost of drug development beginning to skyrocket in the 1990s, pharmaceutical giants thought the path to better economics lay in high-throughput screening facilities that would test libraries that ranged in size from a few thousand up to million compounds at a time. “Separate shelves, many rooms, with the emphasis on robotics and automation…