Tag: Canada

Sports

R. A. Dickey’s Pitches, And Life, Like A Rollercoaster

When the new pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team – R. A. Dickey – throws a pitch, it goes up and down like a rollercoaster.

A rollercoaster: just like his childhood, his career and his life. Although it’s been a bumpy ride, he’s now in a good place as one of the best pitchers in the major leagues.

This year, he signed a contract for three years, for more than $25-million.

That’s a long way from the $11,000 a year he used to make as pitcher in the minor leagues.

At that time, around 2005, Dickey was a struggling pitcher throwing fastballs. But the batters were able to hit them, and sometimes knock them out of the park.

News Politics

Justin Trudeau New Leader Of Federal Liberals

Justin Trudeau is the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Justin Trudeau is the son of Pierre Trudeau, who was the charismatic Prime Minister of Canada for more than 15 years in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

A new kind of Trudeaumania swept the Liberal Party on Sunday, where Justin Trudeau won the leadership of the party by a landslide.

He took more than 80 per cent of the vote, winning handily on the first ballot.

Trudeau has a big challenge—to get the Liberal party focused again, and eventually to get it back in power.

He wants to be Canada’s next prime minister.

Animals Science

Unlocking The Mysteries Of The Monarch Butterfly’s Incredible Journey

Every year, Monarch butterflies fly more than 4,000 kilometres from Canada to Mexico.

Until recently, no-one was sure how the Monarch butterfly knew the exact path to take that would ensure it would end up at its intended destination after such a long flight.

Now Canadian scientists believe they have discovered the secret to the butterfly’s internal sense of direction.

Scientists wanted to know if the Monarchs used a type of “internal compass” or an “internal map.” Some animals and birds have both.

To find out, researchers tested the butterflies by starting them different locations than they normally would. Ryan Norris, an associate professor of biology at the University of Guelph, started them on their journey from Guelph, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta.

News

Montreal To Put A New Spin On “Street Food”

Montreal is known for its fine and unique culture. Visitors flock to the city for its art galleries, high fashion and excellent cuisine.

Now, people in Montreal have a special treat in store for them.

The city’s mayor, Michael Applebaum, recently announced that the ban on food trucks has been lifted. That means that people may now be able to sample the city’s unparalleled cuisine from special food trucks on the street.

In many big cities, street vendors offer hot dogs and sausages from food trucks.

In typical Montreal style, the food trucks in that city will be a little different. The “street food” in Montreal will be “of a quality that is going to be highly respected and renowned,” the mayor said at a news conference, according to the Globe and Mail newspaper.

After the announcement, the mayor approached a food vendor called Grumman 78, which served him a Vietnamese-style taco and tomato salad with cornbread croutons.

Health Science

Calgary Student Wins National Science Prize For Cancer Therapy Research

A high school student from Calgary has won the Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada competition for his research into an experimental cancer therapy.

Arjun Nair, 16, is a grade 11 student at Webber Academy. His winning experiment involved photothermal therapy (PTT), which is used to treat cancer.

With PTT, a patient is injected with gold nanoparticles. A nanoparticle is a microscopic particle of a substance, less than one-millionth the size of a grain of sand.

The gold nanoparticles collect in the patient’s cancerous tumours. When the tumours are bathed with laser light, the nanoparticles heat up and kill the cancer cells.

Animals Science

Camel Fossils Found In Canada’s Arctic

Scientists have discovered fossilized bone fragments belonging to a prehistoric camel that lived in Canada’s High Arctic about 3.5 million years ago.

The fossils were found on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, in a site near the Strathcona Fiord.

Scientists have also found the fossilized remains of mammals such as bears, beavers and deerlets (small deerlike animals) in this area.

The site is a polar desert now, but during the Pliocene era – the time when the when the camel was alive – it would have been a forest. The average temperature in the Arctic was 14 to 22 degrees warmer then, so it was warm enough for trees to grow, but still cold, snowy and dark for much of the year.

News

Learning How To Write A Great Essay Could Pay Off

If you can write an excellent persuasive essay, you may be able to get a three-bedroom house for $100.

Calvin and Diana Brydges live in Aylmer, Ontario but they plan on moving to Barrie, Ont.

For the past two years, they have been trying to sell their house, without luck.

Then they had a creative idea.

They would hold an essay contest, with the house going to the winning entry.

The winning entry will be the essay that best answers the question, “why will this home benefit you?”

The house is worth about $300,000. The Brydges will sell their home to the writer of the winning essay, as long as they get 3,000 essays. Each essay writer will pay $100 to submit their essay.

If the couple doesn’t get 3,000 essays by the end of August they will give everyone their money back.

Health

Toronto Kids Need More Exercise

Ninety-nine percent of children living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) don’t get enough exercise, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University tracked the physical activity of 856 grade five and six students in the GTA for one week.

The students wore accelerometers – tiny devices that are similar to pedometers, but which measure all types of motion – for about 16 and a half hours a day.

The information recorded by the devices showed that, on average, boys got about 35 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day. Girls got about 24 minutes of activity per day.

Experts* recommend that children aged five to 17 should get 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day.

News Science

Commander Hadfield’s Son, Evan, Helps Bring Space To Earth

Chris Hadfield is the Canadian astronaut living and working on – and commanding – the International Space Station.

He’s the first astronaut to bring the “space experience” to Earthlings in the form of regular tweets, photos, Facebook posts, videos and even songs.

Hadfield lets us know what experiments he’s working on, what the Earth looks like from his vantage point and what it’s like to live in space.

Hadfield has three children, Kyle (30), Evan (27) and Kristin (26).

Evan lives in Darmstadt, Germany.

He has been helping his father communicate with Earth, via Twitter and other social media websites such as Facebook, tumblr and Soundcloud.

News

T-Rex Vs. T-Tops – Who Would Win?

In a clash between Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, who would win?

There is scientific evidence that the two did fight and in a new exhibit at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, you can decide for yourself who would come out on top.

Spectators can compare the dinosaurs’ eyesight, defences and natural weapons.

The show is called Battle of the Titans and it offers an exciting new perspective on the prehistoric beasts and the world they inhabited.

The exhibit is the brainchild of “paleo-artist” and self-proclaimed dinosaur geek Hall Train.

He collaborated with paleontologists, biochemical engineers, curators and museum designers to create some of the most scientifically authentic re-creations ever made.