Canada urged to bolster aerospace industry

The aerospace sector is under threat from ambitious international competitors and the space agency has "foundered" for a decade, says a review of one of the country's biggest industries.

The aerospace report calls on the Harper government to beef up spending to develop space technology, diverting the money from other research programs.

It also urges Ottawa to be more aggressive in promoting Canada's aerospace industry abroad and to negotiate co-operation agreements with emerging industry players, such as China and India.

Canada should be proud of its status as a global aerospace power, said David Emerson, the former cabinet minister who led the wide-ranging review.

The country will lose its competitive position in the industry if it sits back and doesn't invest, he warned in the two-volume report.

"Times have changed," Emerson told a news conference.

"It's fair to say that the past, and our successes in the past, cannot simply be replicated going forward," he said.

"We're going to have to change and adapt to new global realities."

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., an Indian state-owned company, is heavily involved in building helicopters and plans to eventually develop its own fighter planes and commercial aircraft.

Industry watcher Suzanne Benoit, CEO of Aero Montreal, notes that Hindustan hasn't gone heavily into commercial markets yet, but it's only a matter of time.

The Chinese are also developing their own industry, although it could take 15 to 20 years to catch up to global competitors.

Focus on selling abroad

To maintain Canada's stature in the market, Emerson says the prime minister needs to sell new technologies abroad and use his position to make aerospace a top government priority.

"Presidents, prime ministers and senior officials around the world help open doors for their nations' aerospace firms by highlighting those firms' strengths and successes" says Emerson.

"The right combination of business acumen, cutting-edge research, and government policies will allow Canada to remain an aerospace power for decades to come."

Canada is currently home to the world's fifth-largest aerospace industry by a measure of gross domestic product.

The review recommends that Ottawa spend $10 million in each of the next three years to bolster the work of the Canadian Space Agency.

The money, says Emerson, can be found within the current budget of the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative.

The report, divided into two categories, makes 17 recommendations for supporting the country's aerospace sector and eight for its space industry.

One controversial recommendation is a call for a loosening of export controls on sensitive technologies, which carries with it the potential for leaks of intellectual property that could upset Canada's key aerospace partner, the United States. Such a move, if handled badly, could also threaten national security.

Those controls, however, may be "unduly sweeping and rigid," the review, said. This could lead to the loss of business to companies from countries with more balanced export-control regimes that are able to sell to Russia, China and elsewhere.

Space program has 'foundered'

Canada's space program must also be reinvigorated, said the second-volume of the report, suggesting that the Harper government doesn't always recognize the importance of space technologies and their benefits, particularly for national security and the broader economy.

"Over the last decade, the Canadian space program has foundered," said Emerson.

"There's been some lack of clarity around priorities and an uneven performance in the implementation of projects," he added. "This cannot continue."

The report recommends that the Canadian Space Agency's core funding be stabilized over a 10-year period.

The agency's budget for 2011-2012 was $442.3 million.

As well, the review recommended that the government allow for "space-related commercial activity" where it's safe to do so, including exploration projects and space tourism.

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Mercury's north pole has ice, NASA confirms

Mercury's north pole has frozen water according to data revealed Thursday by NASA scientists, confirming the long-held suspicion that the very hot planet closest to the Sun has ice lurking in the shade.

Data collected by NASA's Messenger probe indicates "the presence of one billion to one trillion metric tonnes of ice" at Mercury's poles, said Sean Solomon, principal investigator with the Messenger program.

"These are very exciting results... but there is more to come," he added.

The ice is in the permanently shadowed region of Mercury's north pole and is thought to be between 50 centimetres and 20 metres deep.

Scientists suspect there is also ice near the south pole, though the Messenger probe was unable to take a sufficiently close look. Messenger was launched in 2004 and arrived in orbit around Mercury in March 2011. It is the first spacecraft to orbit the planet — the Mariner 10 probe flew past in the 1970s — and has been studying the surface in unprecedented detail.

The presence of water raises the question of whether Mercury could house, or could ever have housed, life.

"No one is saying there's life on Mercury," said Solomon, though he admitted the planet is now much more "astro-biologically interesting."

The findings, he said, are more likely to shed light on the early processes of how life formed on Earth and might form elsewhere.

"In the book of life there are early chapters and Mercury may well inform us about those early chapters," he said.

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Greenland glacier melting 5 times faster than in 1990s

Scientists have definitive new evidence that shows all but one of the world's major ice sheets are shrinking.

The study, which will be published in the magazine Science on Friday, marks the first time scientists have come up with a way to measure the changing size of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica that they can all agree on.

Ice sheets are massive continental glaciers larger than 50,000 square kilometres that are found only in Greenland and Antarctica.

The study is a key step towards understanding how those massive melting glaciers are causing rising sea levels and how those levels can be measured in the future.

"Our new estimates are the most reliable to date and provide the clearest evidence yet of polar ice sheet losses," said the head researcher of the international study, Dr. Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds in the U.K.

"They also end 20 years of uncertainty regarding changes to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. They are intended to be the benchmark data set for climate scientists from now on."

The study shows Greenland's ice sheets are melting at a rate five times faster than they were in 1990s. In contrast, Antarctica is more or less stable, although the research shows there has been a 50 per cent increase in ice loss since 1992. The melting is affecting ice sheets in the west side of Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula.

The only ice sheet that hasn't melted significantly is on the east side of Antarctica, which appears to gradually be growing in size, partly because climate change is causing more snow to fall in that region. However, this increase isn't enough to make up for the larger losses in the rest of the continent.

Until now, there has been disagreement about what is actually happening to the mass of ice stored in polar ice sheets because of conflicting research. Since 1989, there have been 30 separate studies that have interpreted satellite data in different ways and over varying lengths of time.

This study brought together 47 scientists from 26 key labs that have conducted studies in the past. They used data gathered from 10 different satellites, including Canada's RADARSAT, over the last two decades. They ended up with 50 years of overlapping satellite observations and then calibrated the information so that they were comparing "apples to apples."

Rising sea levels

The result is confirmation that the ice sheets are indeed melting at an accelerated rate and that sea levels are rising.

"When combined, the full record of satellite data shows that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have contributed just over 11 millimetres to global sea levels since 1992," said Shepherd. "This amounts to one-fifth of all sea level rise over the same period."

Surface melt water rushes along the surface of the Greenland ice sheet. (Image courtesy Ian Joughin)

Scientists say the Greenland ice sheet is being influenced by climate change that is dramatically affecting Arctic regions in particular.

This year, rising temperatures have caused the ice cap on the Arctic Ocean to shrink to the smallest size ever recorded. However, melting arctic ice doesn't contribute to sea level rise because it's already floating on the surface of the ocean, just as melting ice cubes in your drink don't cause the glass to overflow.

Even so, 11 millimetres doesn't appear to be a large rise in sea level globally. But the scientists involved in the study say it can have huge effects on coastal cities.

They use the example of the recent damage to the eastern U.S. and Canada by superstorm Sandy. It's the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history, estimated at $50 billion US. Dr Erik Ivins from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the co-authors of the study in Science, says 11 millimetres can translate into massive damage because of the storm surge that can develop in extreme storms.

"When you have 11 millimetres of increased sea level, if you compute the amount of mass that's capable of coming onshore during a storm surge, that's a lot of mass," Ivins told reporters. "And small changes in sea levels in certain places mean very big changes in the kind of protection of infrastructure that you need to have in place."

The data from this new study will also be included in the next major report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that will be published in 2014.

Ultimately the scientists are hoping these measurements will help them better understand how the ice sheets are being affected by climate change. But they say they still need to do a lot more research into the complicated dynamic between the melting glaciers at opposite ends of the world and rising sea levels before they can start to predict what might happen in the future.

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'Pac-Man' spotted on Saturn's moons

Pop culture references continue to pop up on the subject of Saturn's moons, where scientists have spotted — not once, but twice — what appears to be the videogame character Pac-Man.

The Cassini-Huygens probe turned up the distinct image while reading the surface temperature of Tethys, one of Saturn's numerous moons. It resembles the iconic character that once ate pellets and quarters in video arcades around the world.

Cassini recorded a similar image when it pointed its infrared spectrometer at Mimas, another of Saturn's moons, in 2010.

Mimas was already known to star-gazers and fans of 1980s pop culture as the "Death Star" moon because of its resemblance to the massive space station seen in the Star Wars movies.

The latest Pac-Man sighting and its significance were reported this week in the journal Icarus.

The image indicates higher temperature areas on the surface of the moons caused, researchers theorize, by high-energy electrons from the sun. The electrons bombard and alter the icy surface, causing sections to warm up and cool down at different rates.

Researchers say the findings shed new light on the processes that shape planets and moons.

"Finding a new Pac-Man demonstrates the diversity of processes at work in the Saturn system," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. "Future Cassini observations may reveal other new phenomena that will surprise us and help us better understand the evolution of moons in the Saturn system and beyond."

The Cassini probe is a joint effort by groups including NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the European Space Agency.

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Should the UN govern the internet?

A United Nations conference is set to debate whether the international body should play a larger role in governing the internet, stirring criticism from technology companies and rights groups who say the proposal holds potentially dire implications.

The World Conference on International Telecommunications is set to begin Monday in the United Arab Emirates, a country that has been criticized for restricting online dissent and where internet users often encounter "surf safely" warnings upon visiting government-blocked websites.

For the first time in nearly a quarter-century, the summit will update a treaty governing how the world's telecommunications infrastructure connects people in 178 signatory countries. Another key item on the agenda is a proposal that would change the way internet users pay for content online.

A long-standing campaign by member countries of the International Telecommunications Union, the group affiliated with the UN that's organizing the summit, to play a larger role in managing how the internet runs has overshadowed other aspects of the event.

'This breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet because the signal hasn't travelled up their long necks.'—Vint Cerf, Google's chief internet evangelist

At the meeting next week, a group of countries including Russia are reportedly planning to push for the UN body to take over governance duties from the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit organization that oversees internet naming.

That proposal has garnered sometimes colourful criticism from the collection of stakeholders who have traditionally helped govern the internet, as well as from experts or activists concerned with internet freedom.

Vint Cerf, a vice-president at Google who helped design the architecture of the internet, described the campaign by ITU members in a recent interview with Reuters as "evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet because the signal hasn't travelled up their long necks."

During a speech in Ottawa last May, the organization's secretary general Hamadoun Toure dismissed notions that the ITU might take over the internet, and said he expects "a light-touch regulatory approach to emerge" as his organization updates its technical standards framework for the first time since the advent of the web.

But critics of the ITU say it's too closed-off to the public so that civil society groups would have little say on important decisions, or that an inter-governmental agency is too slow to keep up with the fast pace at which the internet moves.

Others believe the ITU as an internet regulator would help legitimize governments who are moving to control web access and restrict what users can say online.

Andy Sellars, a lawyer with the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard University, said he worries that regulating the online world through the UN group "could mean more aggressive, centralized control of the internet" and more restrictions on free speech, which together would "seriously change what we understand the internet to be."

Spate of arrests

Observers say it's unlikely the ITU campaign will succeed in the short-term because there is too much opposition, including from the United States and the European Union.

But Ron Deibert, a cybersecurity expert and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, says the recurring push at the ITU to wield more control over the web is part of a bigger trend "towards greater state control of cyberspace and an older internationally governed system of telecommunications."

He points to the backdrop for the conference — and a long list of recent cases in which people in the Gulf region and elsewhere have been jailed for posting messages on social media — as evidence.

'A number of governments are sort of rushing to pass more laws that make more things illegal online.'—Internet censorship expert Rebecca MacKinnon

Last month in Iran, four people were arrested for posting messages on Facebook that were deemed insulting to officials. Four Kuwaitis were jailed for purportedly using Twitter to criticize the country's ruler earlier in November. And in the most publicized recent case, two women in Mumbai were arrested for posting and "liking" a comment on Facebook admonishing supporters of late nationalist Hindu politician Bal Thackeray.

Rebecca MacKinnon, an internet censorship researcher at the New America Foundation, says it's becoming easier for many governments to censor or jail people for what they say online because new laws are being enacted that "are making it harder and harder for citizens to have public conversations online about politics without repercussions," particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring, she said.

"In a lot of countries they didn't really have laws dealing with online speech before and didn't clarify what was illegal, so a number of governments are sort of rushing to pass more laws that make more things illegal online," she said.

The United Arab Emirates, for example, took a tougher stance against online dissent earlier this month when it passed a new law that means anyone can be imprisoned for using the web to criticize the oil-rich Gulf country's rulers or its institutions.

Deibert says some of the new laws are aimed at "downloading policing responsibilities onto the private sector," forcing technology companies or internet service providers to report forbidden behaviour by users.

He also suggests there's a growing demand for online surveillance tools – some of which are made by Western companies – which can make it easier for authorities in autocratic countries like the UAE or democracies such as Canada to track what's being said on the web and to take action as their laws allow.

In the case of Russia, which is reportedly spearheading the push to make the ITU an internet regulator, it launched a beefed-up online surveillance system on Nov. 1. According to an investigation by the CitizenLab and two other rights groups, and reported by Wired magazine, the new system could be running on software from a Canadian firm.

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Canadian scientists look for quicker E. coli, listeria tests

Canadian scientists are being asked to find faster ways to test for two dangerous bacteria that can be found in our food — E. coli and listeria.

Possible E. coli contamination was the reason behind a recent beef recall in Alberta. Listeria was the bacteria behind the outbreak that killed 22 people in 2008 in seven provinces.

Genome Canada awarded one contract for a new listeria test in October. The one for E. coli will be finalized in January.

Pierre Meulien is the president and CEO of Genome Canada.

"Hopefully we can do this much more rapidly," he said. "We're talking about what would be useful is less than an hour, maybe 15 minutes."

That's a dramatic contrast to the current sitation. It now takes 10 hours for a lab to confirm E. coli, five days for listeria. And Meulien pointed out that a genetic test can be done on site.

"So that you could many times in any particular food processing operation test a carcass, cheese, milk whatever kind of product you're in the process of making," Meulien said.

Dr. David Chalak is a veterinarian in Alberta. He's also chair of the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, which is chipping in for part of this research. He says better testing helps industry find more foreign markets.

"Consumers in foreign countries have the same concerns as Canadians," Chalak said.

He was involved in the latest recall in Alberta, with XL Foods, and he said getting timely results can be difficult.

"When the plant is in Brooks [Alberta] and you've got to take the samples to Calgary, there is travel time. I mean a 10-hour test is when it goes on the Petri dish. So 10 hours? Don't take that literally. You're basically looking at 24 hours."

Both projects have tight deadlines. The scientists must finish their project within 18 months. Meulien hopes one day there will be similar tests for other harmful bacteria, such as C. difficile in hospitals.

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What's the secret to Gangnam Style's success?

With Korean lyrics delivered by a cartoonish rapper riding an invisible horse, Gangnam Style was an unlikely candidate to become a worldwide phenomenon.

But on the afternoon of Nov. 24, the colourful and wacky video for PSY's pop tune became the most-watched YouTube clip of all time, racking up more than 805 million online views. (Justin Bieber's mega hit Baby previously held that title.) At last count, Gangnam Style views had surpassed 834 million.

Korean pop stars and record label executives the world over are no doubt eyeing the tune and its quirky choreography for clues on how to duplicate its success.

Experts say that while Gangnam Style has all the key elements of a pop hit – including a catchy hook – its success is the sum of many elements, producing a "fluke" that will be tough to duplicate any time soon.

"I don't think any other Korean or Asian artist is likely to repeat this," said Jason Anderson, arts writer and film critic for The Grid newspaper in Toronto.

"I think just having that kind of hit song is such a freak incident. To have a song of this scale, it doesn't create any kind of precedent. It's a scientific fluke. A kind of perfect storm of pop music comes together every once in a while to create this kind of song."

Numerous parody videos

The video for Gangnam Style, which was first posted to YouTube in July, has spawned countless parodies, with everyone from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to Britney Spears to the CBC's own Peter Mansbridge galloping and throwing an imaginary lasso to PSY's infectious synth beat.

Korean rapper PSY, right, teaches UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, left, how to dance to his massive hit Gangnam Style during a photo opportunity at the UN headquarters in New York. (United Nations, Eskinder Debebe/Associated Press)

"One of the surprising things about that song is that the lyrics are mostly in Korean ... [it's] proved that you can have a global song phenomenon that's not English-language lyrics," said Mark Simos, associate professor of songwriting at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, a school PSY himself once attended.

"There have been plenty of cases of songs with English lyrics breaking into international markets. Much fewer cases going the other way."

Gangnam Style is not the first international pop track to capture a global audience.

'A hit song can't have the same impact that it used to. Except in this case.'—Arts writer Jason Anderson

Some of its predecessors include Los del Rio's Macarena, a ubiquitous '90s ditty that also featured a signature dance, and Austrian musician Falco's Rock Me Amadeus, in the 1980s.

But in today's fractured pop music landscape, it's more difficult for songs – in any language – to reach the kind of critical mass that Gangnam Style has, said Anderson.

"It's got a lot to do with the way the pop music industry is these days," he said. "It's very polarized. A hit song can't have the same impact that it used to. Except in this case. Hit songs don't have that kind of penetration any more."

English-lyric hook a factor

One key element that helped is the explosion of Korean pop music – so-called "K-pop" – in recent years.

The growing base of fans of that genre inside and outside Korea likely helped give Gangnam Style a boost, said Simos.

"I would imagine that there was a pretty large Korean-speaking population that was a foundation … if you get millions of views from one constituency, that's certainly going to get you on the map and give you a chance of breaking in more globally," he said.

PSY joined Madonna and her dancers onstage to perform his hit song Gangnam Style during her MDNA concert in New York on Nov. 13. (Guy Oseary/Associated Press)

However, the fact that Gangnam Style is a rap song may have also helped it cross over to Western markets, he added.

"You have the rhythmic aspect of the lyrics to engage you there. I don't know if it would have worked as well with a sort of sweet Korean-language pop song or ballad. I'm not sure it would have swept in the same kind of way. You can kind of just listen to the [Gangnam Style] lyrics almost like like a rhythmic track."

The song also has a catchy hook with just enough English – "Heyyyy, sexy lady" – to keep those who don't understand Korean interested, he added.

"Who wouldn't want to sing that?" said Simos, adding that "the way in which it's put together [isn't] all that unusual in that style of pop music."

A 'throwback' to dance craze songs of '50s, '60s

The song's throbbing beat is in line with the European-style techno sounds that are ever-present on Top 40 charts in Western markets.

But there are also song production techniques that PSY used well within the song, said Simos. He points to a portion of Gangnam Style where the fast flashes of sound speed up to an unexpected pause before the music and the rapping reappears.

"That pause is just a little bit out of time… It doesn't come in quite where you expect it. It's a cool musical effect," said Simos. "This is not the first song where something like that happens. But he's used a lot of these kind of production and writing techniques. And it's done well and it creates an exciting dance pop song."

The horse dance is also a key element. Gangnam Style is a throwback to the dance craze songs of the '50s and '60s such as the twist, said Simos.

"Look at the 900 or so imitations of [Gangnam Style] that have sort of sprung up. That particular dance and the moves, that's a lot of what's gone viral," he said.

'Not your typical pop star'

The character PSY himself is an affable "anti-pop star," said Simos.

"There is no doubt that part of the charm of the video is the quirky character that is not your typical pop star. Not in his looks —he's kind of nerdy. And the dance itself is a little nerdy," he said. "Some of the charm of that is going against type."

The song's lyrics poke fun at the posh district of Gangnam in Seoul, South Korea. The four-minute video is a barrage of glossy, ridiculous scenes ranging from the South Korean rapper riding a children's carousel to PSY emphatically rapping while seated on a toilet — the kind of quirky clips that tend to go viral online, said Simos.

'It's the fact that he's both adopting pop culture and mocking [it] at the same time.'—Mark Simos, songwriting professor at Berklee College of Music

"It sort of looks like a spoiled rich guy trying to act really hip, and being a little hapless about it … It's the fact that he's both adopting pop culture and mocking [it] at the same time," he said.

"In a way, it's a very ironic video. The kind of thing that plays really well on YouTube."

Ken McLeod, an associate professor of music history and culture at the University of Toronto, said this kind of pop music sensation could be duplicated, but it's highly unlikely.

"Everyone once in a while, there's a song like Nena's 99 Luftballons that catches people's imagination," he said. "People don't understand, but they like something about it… It will happen again, but it won't happen tomorrow."

With files from CBC News and the Associated Press

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Alaska's Columbia glacier to stop retreat in 2020

he Columbia Glacier calves icebergs into Columbia Bay west of Valdez, Alaska. (James Balog/exremeicesurvey.org)

Alaska's Columbia glacier, one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world, is expected to cease its retreat in less than 10 years and stop calving icebergs, which have contributed to an increase in sea levels all over the globe.

The glacier, covering some 1,100 square kilometres, has been retreating at a rapid rate starting in the 1980s — something scientists have attributed to global warming. When it was first documented in 1794, it was 66 kilometres in length. By 1995, that had shortened to 58 kilometres, and 55 in late 2000.

Since 1989, the Co-operative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, heaquartered in Boulder, Co., has been monitoring and analyzing the glacier.

That data was put through a computer model, which predicts that it will stabilize in 2020 and stop its retreat. That would mean the glacier would be about 42 kilometres long and about 24 kilometres upstream from where it was in the late 1980s, according to the study published in the online journal Cryosphere, which is supported by the European Geophysical Union.

If the glacier does stabilize, that should slow the massive discharge of ice into ocean water that started in the 1980s and accelerated with the warming trend, the study's authors said.

"Presently, the Columbia glacier is calving about two cubic miles [about 8.3 cubic kilometres] of icebergs into the ocean each year — that is over five times more freshwater than the entire state of Alaska uses annually," said the report's lead author William Colgan. "It is astounding to watch."

Over the years, Colgan's team has witnessed massive pieces of ice detach from the glacier, made famous in the documentary Chasing Ice, and float away.

Colgan was inspired to examine the glacier more closely due to the work of James Balog, an American photographer, mountaineer and founder of the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS). Balog is featured in Chasing Ice.

The EIS set up cameras at 18 glaciers around the world, from Greenland and Alaska to the Andes and the Himalayas. Through time-lapse photography, the EIS was able to document the rapid retreat of those glaciers.

Colgan says the results of the computer prediction has surprised scientists who are trying to estimate the rise in sea levels in the future. Those estimates involved calculating the amount of ice cracking away from glaciers.

Colgan says it's evident now that those forecasts will be unpredictable as ice breaking from a single glacier can be "turned on" suddenly and then "turned off" just as rapidly as glaciers stabilize.

Located 150 kilometres east of Anchorage, the Columbia glacier has been the focal point of research into how tidewater glaciers react to a warming climate.

Water from the glacier flows south out of the Chugach Mountains and towards Prince William Sound.

Since studies began on the glacier there had been hope that its retreat could be stopped much earlier. But Colgan says those hopes are past.

"It is really sad," he said. "There is virtually no chance of the Columbia Glacier recovering its pre-retreat dimensions."

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Household flame retardants potentially ineffective, dangerous

Some chemical flame retardants used in home furnishings may not help in a house fire, and can pose health hazards, a CBC investigation has found.

A probe conducted by Marketplace tested the effectiveness of chemical retardants in upholstered furniture and also examined their potential health risks. Previous research has cast doubt on the retardants' ability to slow or stop fires, particularly in furniture foam.

Environmental and health researchers are also concerned that some of the chemicals are linked to a wide range of health problems.

Flame retardants are found in a wide array of household items, including upholstered furniture, electronics and children's toys. The problem, says fire scientist Vyto Babrauskas, is that these supposed lifesavers have no benefit for the average consumer.

"It's a really sad situation, because [consumers] get enough fire-retardant put in there to do toxic harm to the environment, to the people, and yet it's not enough to do any good in terms of quenching the fire," he says. "Flame retardants in the home do not help. That is regrettable, but true."

Chemical industry's 'blatant falsehoods'

The problem isn't that fire retardants don't work, Babrauskas says, but that household items typically don't contain enough retardants to do the job.

In 1987, Babrauskas led a study that found flame retardants can vastly increase escape time from a fire.

Chemical manufacturers point to this study as proof that flame retardants save lives, but Babrauskas says the claims are a "blatant falsehood" and that the industry is "totally misrepresenting what we had done."

The original test evaluated flame retardants for military use, meaning there was far more fire retardant than used in household items.

Flame retardants can work very well, but only when used in very large amounts, Babrauskas explains. The problem is that more retardants add up to a larger price tag.

'[Consumers] get an ineffective amount of fire retardant put into the furniture.'—Fire scientist Vyto Babrauskas

"If you are some sort of institution or military … you have a very deep pocketbook, and you can buy exceedingly wonderful fire retardants that completely stop the fire dead in its tracks," he says.

"That is not what Mr. and Mrs. Consumer get when they go to their local shop and buy some furniture or consumer articles. If they buy furniture which has fire retardants in it, they get an ineffective amount of fire retardant put into the furniture."

But even small amounts can create a big danger when they burn. Smoke from burning fire retardants can contain elevated amounts of carbon monoxide as well as dioxins and furans, toxic chemicals that can cause immune disorders, liver problems, skin lesions and certain types of cancer.

Dangers in dust

Toxic smoke is just one of the potential threats from chemical flame retardants, since tests have found they pose potential health risks even if they aren't burning.

"It's a tremendous problem … that these are really noxious chemicals that are being put in [furniture]," Babrauskas says. "If you have a sofa with that type of a foam, every time you sit up and down on it, you're basically beating some of the material out of the foam."

Flame retardants can end up in household dust, which researchers say is a major route of exposure. And some flame retardant chemicals bioaccumulate, meaning they gradually build up in the body.

Retardants are found on so many household products that they're nearly unavoidable.

University of Toronto chemist Miriam Diamond has found traces of chemical retardants all over Toronto homes.

"We found them everywhere, everywhere from the kettle, to the computer, TV, couches, chairs, the backing on your carpet," she says. "They're in every room, in every location."

A study released Wednesday also found that that chlorinated Tris, a retardant banned from baby pyjamas in 1977, was the most common retardant in couches tested in the U.S.

Some chemicals banned

Diamond was also surprised to find potentially toxic retardants in children's toys.

A recent U.S. study found that children with higher levels of an older class of flame retardant chemicals called PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, showed lower IQs, shorter attention spans and weaker motor skills than those with lower levels.

Studies have found young children tend to harbour the highest levels of such chemicals since they tend to play on carpets and furniture, increasing their exposure. Some classes of toxic flame retardants, like many other chemicals, are also transferable through breast milk.

PBDEs and similar retardants are also linked to altered thyroid functions in pregnant women, as well as increased difficulty in conception.

The Canadian government has already banned two classes of PBDEs, but critics say that more action is needed. Environment Canada has announced it plans to ban a third class of PBDE by 2012, but legislation hasn't been introduced.

As older chemicals have been banned or phased out, a new generation of flame retardant chemicals has come into increasing use. Environmental and health researchers worry that new chemicals have not undergone enough toxicological scrutiny to properly assess their safety.

Watch Marketplace's episode, Burned, Friday at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador) for more on the potential dangers of flame retardants.

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Astronauts chosen for rare year-long stint on space station

Scott Kelly and Mikhael Komienko will be heading to the International Space Station in the spring of 2015 for a year-long stay. (NASA)

An American and a Russian astronaut will spend a rare year-long stay on board the International Space Station, according to NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Scott Kelly and Mikhael Komienko will head off into space in the spring of 2015, according to Monday's announcement.

Their goal will be to gather more data about how weightlessness affects humans over long periods in space.

"We have chosen the most responsible, skilled and enthusiastic crew members to expand space exploration, and we have full confidence in them," said the head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin.

Ultimately, by becoming guinea pigs, the pair will help reduce the health risks for future long-term missions to the moon and also, perhaps, to Mars.

Data on the effects of gravity on muscle mass, strength, vision and bone density will be collected.

Until now, crews have only spent up to six months at the space station. But there have been previous studies on the physiological and psychological effects of long-term human spaceflight.

Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent nearly 438 consecutive days — from January 1994 to March 1995 — in space aboard the Mir Space Station. Also, in 2011, six volunteers from Europe, Russia and China spent 520 days confined in a capsule at a research institute in Moscow.

Kelly, 48, is a U.S. Navy captain who first served as a pilot on a space shuttle mission in1999 and was a commander in 2007.

In 2010, he was the flight engineer on the International Space Station Expedition 25 and served as commander of Expedition 26 in 2011. He has logged more than 180 days in space.

Kornienko, 52, is a former paratroop officer and graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute as a specialist in airborne systems. He has worked in the space industry since 1986 and was trained as an International Space Station Expedition 8 backup crew member.

As as a flight engineer on the station's Expedition 23/24 crews in 2010, he has logged more than 176 days in space.

The pair will begin a two-year training program starting early next year.

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No link between full moon and mental problems

Eighty per cent of nurses believe psychological disorders are more prevalent during the full moon, which the Montreal study says is not the case. (Gary Hershorn/Reuters)

The long-held view that a full moon or even a new moon triggers psychological problems has been debunked by a study from Montreal.

Researchers at the University of Laval's School of Psychology evaluated patients visiting Montreal's Sacré-Coeur Hospital and Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis between March 2005 and April 2008 and found no correlation between anxiety disorders and the phases of the moon — despite, it seems, what 80 per cent of nurses and 64 per cent of doctors surveyed believe.

These researchers analyzed 771 individuals who had shown up at the emergency room with chest pains for which no medical cause could be determined.

Psychological evaluations indicated many were suffering anxiety, panic attacks, mood disorders or suicidal thoughts. The time of their visit was then correlated with the phase of the moon at that moment.

"We observed no full-moon or new-moon effect on psychological problems," said lead researcher Genevieve Belleville whose study is published in General Hospital Psychiatry.

The study went on to suggest that health professionals may think there are more mental problems during a full-moon phase due to "self-fulfilling prophecies."

These are the moon phases:

• New moon: when the moon is positioned between the earth and the sun, so the dark side of the moon is facing us.
• Full moon: when the earth, moon and sun are in approximate alignment and the moon is on the opposite side of the earth so the lit-up side of the moon is facing us.
• First quarter and third quarter moons: also known as half moons happen when the moon is at a 90-degrees in relation to the Earth and the sun so, half of the moon is shadow and half is illuminated.

According to the study, there is no link between incidences of psychological problems and the four lunar phases, with one exception: for some reason anxiety conditions dropped by 32 per cent during the last lunar quarter.

"This may be coincidental or due to factors we did not account" for, said Belleville.

Belleville said the study was done to "put the idea to rest" among many health professionals who believe a full moon exacerbates mental conditions. Belleville points out that 80 per cent of nurses and 64 per cent of doctors surveyed in her study believe this to be the case.

"This misperception could … colour their judgment during the full moon phase," she points out. "Or, on the other hand, make them less attentive to psychological problems that surface during the remainder of the month."

The more interesting aspects that came out of the study was that researchers discovered panic attacks seemed to happen more often in the spring, while there was a spike in anxiety disorders in the summer months. There was no explanation provided for these trends.

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CO2 levels threaten marine food chain, study says

The pteropod, which inhabits the top 200 metres of oceanic waters, is a key source of food for other marine animals. (Nina Bednarsek )

As the oceans become more acidic due to high carbon dioxide levels, marine life is being visibly affected, according to a study of Antarctic marine snails.

Called pteropods, the snails are a key link in the ocean's food chain, a vital source of nutrient for fish and birds A team of international researchers has discovered the high acidity of the waters is corroding the pteropods' shells.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, was a combined project involving scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other institutions.

The burning of fossil fuels has spewed additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which, in turn, is absorbed by the oceans. scientists say. This changes the chemistry of the waters, which become more acidic over time.

"The corrosive properties of the water caused shells of live animals to be severely dissolved, and this demonstrates how vulnerable pteropods are," said lead author Nina Bednaršek from the NOAA.

The study marks the first time an acidification analysis was conducted on live specimens in their natural environments.

The scientists were concerned, in particular, with the effects of upwelling on the snails. Upwelling occurs when deep sea water is forced to the surface by extreme winds, and climate models have indicated that upwelling will become more common in the future.

The combination of upwelling and the more acidic nature of the surface water have served to make the environment more corrosive. Pteropods live at the surface of the oceans to a depth of 200 metres.

According to the NOAA, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by 30 per cent since the Industrial Revolution. At the current rate that CO2 levels are rising, the waters could be almost 150 per cent more acidic by the end of the century, scientists estimate.

Dr. Geraint Tarling of the British Antarctic Survey and the study's co-author said the research team will now undertake a "more comprehensive" study looking at the effects of ocean acidification on a wider range of organisms.

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Last Canadian asbestos mine gets 2nd life as Mars stand-in

Canada's last asbestos mine, now winding down its operations, may have a new celestial calling — as a stand-in for planet Mars.

Quebec's Jeffrey Mine hosted nearly two-dozen scientists recently for a simulated Mars mission initiated by Canada's space agency.

The scientists from four universities made a pair of trips to the Asbestos region, this year and last year, accompanied by a micro-rover.

"There are definitely areas [on Mars] that are much more like what we have at Jeffrey Mine," said Ed Cloutis, a University of Winnipeg professor who participated in the project.

The new vocation won't exactly replace the once-mighty asbestos industry as an economic lifeblood for the region.

The mine had been counting on a $58 million government loan to renovate and keep operating. The simulated Mars mission, on the whole, cost $800,000 — and some local officials, including an alderman and the town's director general, didn't even appear to be aware of the project when contacted by The Canadian Press.

Searching for "key indicators" of life

The goal of the project was to simulate as closely as possible a Mars rover mission to detect the presence of, and determine the source of, methane on Mars.

Cloutis, an expert in planetary geology, said the scientific missions to the Asbestos region could be Canada's ticket to future trips to the red planet.

"One way to search for life on Mars [is] you look at the gases that might be produced or used as a food source by bacteria on Mars," Cloutis said in an interview.

The mine had been counting on a $58 million government loan to renovate and keep operating. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press)

Methane gas, which can be found at the mine on the edge of the town of Asbestos, is one of two key indicators of life. The other is water.

Jeffrey, with a diameter of over two kilometres and 350 metres deep, was one of the largest open-pit mines in the world. The mine hosts serpentinite, a rock which is prone to bacteria — the ultimate life form. Methane gas is a byproduct of bacteria.

Methane has already been detected in the Martian atmosphere and scientists are hoping NASA's Curiosity rover will find it on the planet.

The Asbestos project was spearheaded by MPB Communications Inc., a Montreal-area firm and the prime contractor, which also developed a micro-rover named Kapvik. The waist-high rover, whose robotic arm was developed by engineers at Ryerson University, was put to work during the research.

The mission employed a team of about 20 people at Jeffrey Mine in June 2011 and again at nearby Norbestos, in June 2012, while the Canadian Space Agency in Longueuil, Que., acted as mission control.

Cloutis was joined on the project by other scientific investigators from McGill University, Carleton University and the University of Toronto.

Cancelled loan ensured asbestos mine closure

Their initial site is looking even more desolate and Mars-like than usual, these days.

The new Parti Quebecois provincial government has cancelled a $58 million loan, which would have kept the controversial industry alive. Cancelling that loan, signed in July by the former Liberal government, was a PQ election promise.

Asbestos town councillor Serge Boislard says that, since the cancellation, the number of personnel at the mine has dropped down to about 20 workers who are only doing basic maintenance and providing security.

'It would take a miracle to reopen the mine in the coming years.'—Asbestos town councillor Serge Boislard

He says the last of the mine's managers and engineers were laid off several weeks ago. He recalls the days when that mine employed about 2,000 people — back in the industry's heyday, before the international pressure mounted to ban asbestos because of its links to cancer.

"It would take a miracle to reopen the mine in the coming years," he said. Like some other local officials, Boislard hadn't heard of the Mars project.

The effort got rolling when the Canadian Space Agency contracted MPB's space division to develop the so-called "analogue" mission.

Wes Jamroz, the director of MPB Communications, says the Jeffrey Mine has a bright future as a Mars substitute.

"This mine is a very real environment to practice future deployment on Mars because you have the same rocks (and) you have the same environment," he said in an interview.

"During these two deployments we were able to find out that there were natural traces of methane as well, so you have all the factors that you need."

More promising than Curiosity probe?

Jamroz suggests the Quebec project might even, in some ways, be on a more promising track than NASA's famous Curiosity rover.

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover has been sending photos of the red planet, which has similar properties to the Jeffrey Mine. (NASA/Associated Press)

He says the huge NASA lab is using laser-based instruments to "sniff" for methane on rocks and cracks, which mixes very quickly with the atmosphere.

"The chances of sniffing things, and that you are going to find an opening, are very low — but this is my opinion," Jamroz said.

He says the tests carried out in Quebec indicate it would be much more effective to look for certain kinds of rocks and cracks on the Martian surface.

"You have a set of cameras that can recognize certain geological features and you go to the spot and then you measure methane," he said.

Jamroz also said using his small micro-rover for a future Mars mission would be far less expensive than Curiosity, which is the size of a small SUV.

"Remember, Curiosity weighs one ton and the rover we are playing with is between 30 and 40 kilos," he said. "We estimate that this kind of mission, with international co-operation from partners like the Brits and Americans, you can do it with $100 million instead of several billion."

NASA says Curiosity, which weighs 900 kilograms, cost $2.5 billion.

Cloutis told a recent Canadian space summit in London, Ont., that his group is lobbying for additional rover trials at Asbestos.

"Our rationale is that the moon and Mars will continue to be targets of interest for the deployment of rovers," he said.

"In terms of waving the Canadian flag, if we have all this great experience, we'll be better positioned to participate in some of these [future] international missions."

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Cyber Monday, Black Friday sales could trump Boxing Day

As hype surrounding Cyber Monday and Black Friday spreads north of the border, experts say the burgeoning weekend-long holiday sales event could soon surpass Boxing Day as the busiest shopping period of the year.

With the frenzy of what could be Canada's biggest-ever Black Friday over, deal-seekers are turning their focus to Cyber Monday, a day of deep online discounts held the Monday after the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S.

For years, both events were largely U.S. phenomena that had Canadians who wanted to participate visiting American websites or making cross-border trips on the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, which marks the start of the crucial holiday shopping season when retailers turn profits, or go "into the black."

But a combination of factors — U.S. competitors setting up shop in Canada, Canadian retailers trying to keep sales local, Canadians' shifting shopping habits and tight-fisted consumers with shaky confidence in the economy — are helping to establish the events on Canadian soil.

Willy Kruh, global chairman in retail markets at KPMG, said he wouldn't be surprised if the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday soon overtake Boxing Day, now expanded to Boxing Week, as the best period for retailers in Canada.

"On Boxing Day, Christmas is over and they've got to deep discount (merchandise), now you're selling to those who are looking for Christmas presents for deals," he said.

"I'd much rather kick start the season with significant sales this early and I know where my inventory's going to end up, I know where my margins are, I can calculate it more, I can create a greater excitement for the retail season doing it in November than when the season's over."

Cyber Monday growing faster than Black Friday

He says Cyber Monday — which cropped up in Canada just three years ago — is growing at an even faster pace in Canada than Black Friday, as retailers look for new ways to fight back against U.S. competitors eating into their profits.

Last year, Canadian Black Friday sales were up 8.5 per cent from 2010, while Cyber Monday sales grew at 15.4 per cent, according to KPMG research.

Cyber Monday emerged with the advent of online shopping in the 1990s as shoppers wanting to continue their Black Friday spree logged-in at home, as well as at work on the following Monday.

Retailers began to notice a spike in traffic on the day, which is now the busiest online shopping day in the U.S.

Experts and retailers expect this Cyber Monday to be the biggest Canada has ever seen.

"The level of awareness around Cyber Monday last year was fairly limited, savvy web shoppers would know about it, but in terms of mass appeal in the Canadian population…it was nowhere near where we expect it to be this year," said Thierry Hay-Sabourin, director of e-commerce for Future Shop and Best Buy Canada.

Cyber Monday is becoming nearly as popular in Canada as Black Friday, said Kelly Askew, managing director of retail management consulting at Accenture in Canada.

And while e-commerce penetration is lower in Canada than in the U.S., "we're seeing a bit of a tidal change in how Canadians regard internet shopping now," he said, adding that selection, security and shipping at Canadian retailers are improving.

And Canadian chains are seizing opportunities to pull some of their sales forward, he said.

"I suspect we may start to see some declines in the heavy reliance that Canadian retailers have traditionally had on Boxing Day to make their annual numbers."

10% of retail sales online

Kruh pointed out that online shopping makes up just 10 per cent of total retail sales in Canada, but he sees it growing at a much more rapid pace this year and over the next few years.

Canadian consumers are adopting the trend, in part by shopping at sites south of the border that ship across the border, and a growing number of Canadian retailers are realizing they need to offer similar promotions to keep their customers.

This year marks the first time Toys 'R' Us Canada is putting a big emphasis on Cyber Monday, as the company strives to be one of the first in Canada to jump on board in an effort to keep spending local.

"For the past three to four years, Toys 'R' Us, and Canadian retailers in general, have been upping the ante every year…to entice Canadian consumers to stay local and make purchases on .ca and not .com," explained Toys 'R' Us Canada spokeswoman Victoria Spada.

As both Canadians' shopping habits and retailers' online offerings evolve, e-commerce is becoming a real force that could threaten bricks and mortar shops that don't adapt.

A recent American Express poll found that 56 per cent of Canadians plan to shop online for at least some of their gifts this season, up five per cent from 2011. And 23 per cent of those surveyed appeared so averse to crowded malls, long lineups and busy parking lots that they would rather clean their toilets than visit a mall the week before Christmas.

I think it's indicative of the fact that Canadians are becoming more comfortable shopping online," says consumer technology expert Marc Saltzman.

Saltzman believes online shopping will eventually eclipse trips to the mall as a web-savvy generation of young people comes of age.

"I think its a generational thing and increasingly as the younger generation grows up shopping online they're going to be very comfortable doing it, and there's going to be less of a reason to go in and touch and feel the product."

With files from The Canadian Press

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Haida Gwaii earthquake yields new data

Scientists are installing new seismometers and highly precise global positioning receivers in the area. (Curt Petrovich/CBC)

A team of federal government scientists that descended on Haida Gwaii following last month's 7.7 magnitude earthquake is getting new insights into the fault that caused it — and the fear it generated.

Seismologist Alison Bird is one of about a dozen experts from Natural Resources Canada who were dispatched to the archipelago when the shaking started.

"My heart was in my throat until I started reading the reports, and started realizing that everyone's fine," Bird said.

There were no physical injuries from the most severe Canadian quake in more than 60 years, and Bird says the worst building damage may have been a cracked foundation and a crumbled chimney.

After spending the better part of three weeks debriefing Haida elders, school children, teens and adults about the experience, Bird says most handled it well — but it's clear not everyone came through the event unscathed.

"It really depended on the person ... There were some people who were extremely rattled. It's almost like a post-traumatic stress they're going through," Bird said after touring the region.

"Some people had to take time off work. Some children had trouble and needed to be comforted at school, and thankfully it's the kind of community [where] that was at their fingertips."

NRC seismologist Alison Bird documents how people felt the quake. (Curt Petrovich/CBC)

Weeks after the quake, Haida Nation Coun. Cindy Boyko is spooked by any creak or groan in her house in Skidegate.

She still has a bag packed by her door, and a truck in the driveway is loaded and ready to go.

"That night was terrifying," Boyko said. "It's the scariest thing I've ever been through in my life."

Boyko says she expected the shaking to stop after a second or two. When it didn't, she was paralyzed with panic.

"I knew I had to just move, so I did. I got up and made a run for the hallway, hanging on to the moving walls, walking on the moving floor. So I ended up in the doorway just hanging on, screaming for my husband. "

Boyko described the sound of the quake like a freight train coming from beneath her floor.

Human sensors

Bird is paying close attention to experiences like Boyko's.

She says they will help planners understand the psycho-social impact of natural disasters, and how they might play out in a more severe event in a more populated area.

But descriptions of how the quake felt are also giving scientists a clearer picture of the geological event itself.

"The information I'm getting from these people can actually be translated into intensity," Bird said.

"We've been doing intensity maps for decades, and what it does is it gives you an idea of the level of ground motion, or level of movement in those different communities. From that we can gain a lot of information about the characteristics of the earthquake."

She says the people of Haida Gwaii have become human sensors.

"We only have really a handful of seismometers around the Haida Gwaii region," Bird said. "But we've got 4,000 people so if they tell us how they experienced the earthquake, it's almost like they become another seismometer."

Thousands of quakes

Geophysicist Mike Schmidt was first on the ground after the initial quake.

Geophysicist Mike Schmidt installs GPS receiver on Hot Springs Island. (Curt Petrovich/CBC)

"It's exciting and I think a lot of us are saying this is probably a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing."

Schmidt oversaw the installation of seven new seismometers throughout the island chain, which relay data in real time to scientists in Ottawa and Sidney, B.C.

As well, six new highly precise global positioning receivers Schmidt's team placed will measure every heave and sigh of the earth's surface as small as a millimetre.

"I mean people are feeling it," Schmidt said of the continuing aftershocks.

"Every day I come into the restaurant in Queen Charlotte City and people say, 'Well did you feel it last night?'. And so there are still earthquakes out there, people are feeling them. If you take all of them, including the tiniest ones, we're into well over two or three thousand earthquakes right now."

It wasn't easy finding suitable sites for the new sensors on short notice — the equipment had to be mounted on bedrock, and Schmidt and his team had to use helicopters to hop islands.

Schmidt also had to make sure the Haida Council was comfortable with the placement of satellite dishes, solar panels and other gear in places like Gandll K'in Gwaayaay, or Hot Springs Island, a sacred site in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve that's also a carefully managed tourist attraction.

Hot Springs vanished

"Well it's funny," Schmidt said. "Right after the earthquake and laying out the preliminary plans, of course everybody was saying 'OK, let's go put one on Hot Springs Island.' Everybody was volunteering to go there."

Carey Bergman of Parks Canada stands in a once overflowing hot spring, now dry. (Curt Petrovich/CBC)

But right after the quake, the bathing pools which are fed by 30 C water heated several kilometres under ground abruptly dried up. Now the basins collect only cold rain water.

Some people have now taken to referring to the retreat as Not-Springs Island, and everyone's asking Schmidt if their measurements will tell them if the hot water will return.

"We just don't know," Schmidt said.

"The plumbing changed when the earthquake happened. We do know that after other earthquakes, other hot springs in other parts of the world have gone dry and have come back. We just don' t know what's going to happen here."

Predicting the next quake

Schmidt must also disappoint anyone looking for a definitive answer about when the next major quake will rumble through the region.

He says the data they're collecting won't yield any clues, but will ultimately help people prepare for the next one.

"All this work we're doing is to try to get a sense of the type of earthquake [it was] ... what kind of shaking, how long the shaking will take, what kind of G-forces we're likely to experience," Schmidt said.

"All of that information is then taken and we give it to the engineers and that goes into the building codes. From that we just get a better infrastructure."

The data is also helping researchers get a picture of what happened.

A GPS receiver at Sandspit that was active during the quake recorded a shift of 20 centimetres.

But seismologist John Cassidy says closer to the epicentre along the Queen Charlotte fault, the Pacific tectonic plate may have moved as much as four metres in a rare and violent collision, rather than a routine slipping of the plates against each other.

"Our thought at this point is that this earth quake represented the Pacific plate being pushed beneath Haida Gwaii," Cassidy said.

It's a theory that could take specialists with Natural Resources Canada several months to verify as they pore over the data flowing from the newly installed sensors.

Boyko had hoped all the science being done on her doorstep would ultimately find a way to give her increased warning time.

"So we aren't sitting around all scared, just waiting for the next shake to happen ... so we can be prepared and get out of the way if we do have a tsunami," she said.

There's not much earthquake scientists can do to predict the next big one but Boyko is still glad to see them study the last one so closely.

"I think Hot Springs was a small price to pay for what we went through," she said.

"I think it was a wake-up call. I have to evaluate what's important to me, and not take it all for granted. I love Haida Gwaii. I want to protect her. But in the end it's my family that's important — my family and the people we live with."

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Oil spill detection goes high-tech with aerial crew

Environmentalists worry the projected tanker traffic increase if two major B.C. pipeline projects are approved means the response to oil spills flagged by a high-tech aerial team will be inadequate.

The Marine Aerial Reconnaissance Team (MART), a joint project of Environment Canada and Transport Canada, has been using sensors in a high-tech aircraft to spot oil spills along B.C.'s rugged coastline for six years.

The team covers the coastline about two or three times per week.

But with tanker traffic along B.C.'s coastline projected to quadruple if the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion are approved, some worry there aren't enough resources in place to respond when spills are flagged.

"The resources for oil spill cleanup are some really talented people, some very hard-working people who could not possibly hope to protect this entire coast from what it's already facing — much less a massive increase in volume or number of ships," says Jay Ritchlin with the David Suzuki Foundation.

While MART is tasked with spotting spills, notification about them passes from the coast guard to a small flotilla of mostly commercial clean-up vessels funded by the major oil companies and centered in larger ports.

The team recently spotted a 100-metre slick in B.C.'s Georgia Strait.

Circling in their bright red patrol aircraft, specialists on board determined the spill below was caused by just four litres of fuel.

"It's just a bit of a shock when you see that," said Bob Whitaker with MART.

"You think that it's gonna be thousands of litres or something when it's less than four litres … doing all that damage."

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Missing island may have been caused by digitizing error

A Pacific island that seems to have disappeared from the Coral Sea between Australia and New Caledonia may simply have been created by human error in the first place, a scientist says.

Sandy Island, which is seen on numerous maps, nautical charts and even Google Earth, has captured the popular imagination after a team of geologists travelling by ship through the area found to their amazement that it wasn't there.

'The maps of Mars and the moon are much higher resolution and coverage than what we have of our own oceans.'—Sabin Zahirovic, geologist

Now one of the Australian scientists involved says mistakes made by those who transferred cartographers' charts to digital form may be at the root of the mysterious island's appearance and disappearance.

"It's completely possibly that it was a human error in digitizing these maps at some stage," geologist Sabin Zahirovic of the University of Sydney told Reuters.

"And it's just entered the databases once, and it's stuck around inside the databases, because no scientific vessels have actually been in that region for a very, very long time."

Zahirovic explained that, like much of the world's oceans, the Coral Sea is actually a poorly explored area.

"The maps of Mars and the moon are much higher resolution and coverage than what we have of our own oceans," he said. "So we really need to go back and send more vessels and research vessels out there to map the ocean floor and better understand what's out there."

Sandy Island appeared to lie about 1,200 kilometres due east of the Queensland, Australia, coast toward the French-held archipelago of New Caledonia.

A team of geologists from the University of Sydney, led by Marie Seton, made a 25-day voyage through the area aboard a research vessel, ending earlier this month. They were exploring and compiling information about the sea floor.

When they came to the area where Sandy Island should have been visible, however, they found only blue sea.

"We became suspicious when the navigation charts used by the ship showed a depth of 1,400 metres in an area where our scientific maps and Google Earth showed the existence of a large island," Seton told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The project gathered 197 different rock samples and mapped more than 14,000 square kilometres of the ocean floor.

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Wolverine-tracking project puts out call for volunteers

A team of wildlife scientists is looking for people able to carry a beaver carcass long distances through the heavy snow to help track wolverines in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks this winter.

Volunteers will help researchers by nailing beaver carcasses and barbed wire to trees in order to attract wolverines and collect their fur.

Calvin Sime worked on a similar project in the Columbia Valley two years ago.

"[You get] fantastic views … in a mountainous terrain," he said. "Once you get up, there's some pretty nice views and some nice features to enjoy while you're volunteering."

Researchers are hoping to map wolverine migration patterns across 6,000 square kilometers.

"There is something about wolverines that just fascinate people. A lot of people are interested in helping out on a research project like this, getting out skiing in the winter time," said Tony Clevenger, who is spearheading the project.

Clevenger says the goal is to see how the Trans-Canada Highway is affecting the animals' movements.

"It's an exciting project," he said. "We had more than 40 people sign up two years ago and I'm expecting a similar amount this year."

Volunteers need to be able to ski long distances through heavy snow in frigid temperatures.

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Oil spill detection goes high-tech with aerial crew

Environmentalists worry the projected tanker traffic increase if two major B.C. pipeline projects are approved means the response to oil spills flagged by a high-tech aerial team will be inadequate.

The Marine Aerial Reconnaissance Team (MART), a joint project of Environment Canada and Transport Canada, has been using sensors in a high-tech aircraft to spot oil spills along B.C.'s rugged coastline for six years.

The team covers the coastline about two or three times per week.

But with tanker traffic along B.C.'s coastline projected to quadruple if the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion are approved, some worry there aren't enough resources in place to respond when spills are flagged.

"The resources for oil spill cleanup are some really talented people, some very hard-working people who could not possibly hope to protect this entire coast from what it's already facing — much less a massive increase in volume or number of ships," says Jay Ritchlin with the David Suzuki Foundation.

While MART is tasked with spotting spills, notification about them passes from the coast guard to a small flotilla of mostly commercial clean-up vessels funded by the major oil companies and centered in larger ports.

The team recently spotted a 100-metre slick in B.C.'s Georgia Strait.

Circling in their bright red patrol aircraft, specialists on board determined the spill below was caused by just four litres of fuel.

"It's just a bit of a shock when you see that," said Bob Whitaker with MART.

"You think that it's gonna be thousands of litres or something when it's less than four litres … doing all that damage."

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Missing island may have been caused by digitizing error

A Pacific island that seems to have disappeared from the Coral Sea between Australia and New Caledonia may simply have been created by human error in the first place, a scientist says.

Sandy Island, which is seen on numerous maps, nautical charts and even Google Earth, has captured the popular imagination after a team of geologists travelling by ship through the area found to their amazement that it wasn't there.

'The maps of Mars and the moon are much higher resolution and coverage than what we have of our own oceans.'—Sabin Zahirovic, geologist

Now one of the Australian scientists involved says mistakes made by those who transferred cartographers' charts to digital form may be at the root of the mysterious island's appearance and disappearance.

"It's completely possibly that it was a human error in digitizing these maps at some stage," geologist Sabin Zahirovic of the University of Sydney told Reuters.

"And it's just entered the databases once, and it's stuck around inside the databases, because no scientific vessels have actually been in that region for a very, very long time."

Zahirovic explained that, like much of the world's oceans, the Coral Sea is actually a poorly explored area.

"The maps of Mars and the moon are much higher resolution and coverage than what we have of our own oceans," he said. "So we really need to go back and send more vessels and research vessels out there to map the ocean floor and better understand what's out there."

Sandy Island appeared to lie about 1,200 kilometres due east of the Queensland, Australia, coast toward the French-held archipelago of New Caledonia.

A team of geologists from the University of Sydney, led by Marie Seton, made a 25-day voyage through the area aboard a research vessel, ending earlier this month. They were exploring and compiling information about the sea floor.

When they came to the area where Sandy Island should have been visible, however, they found only blue sea.

"We became suspicious when the navigation charts used by the ship showed a depth of 1,400 metres in an area where our scientific maps and Google Earth showed the existence of a large island," Seton told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The project gathered 197 different rock samples and mapped more than 14,000 square kilometres of the ocean floor.

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Wolverine-tracking project puts out call for volunteers

A team of wildlife scientists is looking for people able to carry a beaver carcass long distances through the heavy snow to help track wolverines in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks this winter.

Volunteers will help researchers by nailing beaver carcasses and barbed wire to trees in order to attract wolverines and collect their fur.

Calvin Sime worked on a similar project in the Columbia Valley two years ago.

"[You get] fantastic views … in a mountainous terrain," he said. "Once you get up, there's some pretty nice views and some nice features to enjoy while you're volunteering."

Researchers are hoping to map wolverine migration patterns across 6,000 square kilometers.

"There is something about wolverines that just fascinate people. A lot of people are interested in helping out on a research project like this, getting out skiing in the winter time," said Tony Clevenger, who is spearheading the project.

Clevenger says the goal is to see how the Trans-Canada Highway is affecting the animals' movements.

"It's an exciting project," he said. "We had more than 40 people sign up two years ago and I'm expecting a similar amount this year."

Volunteers need to be able to ski long distances through heavy snow in frigid temperatures.

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South Pacific island is missing, scientists say

An island long believed to be in the middle of the Coral Sea, about 1,200 kilometres due east of the Queensland coast toward New Caledonia, exists on charts and maps but not in reality, Australian scientists say.

"Sandy Island" appears to be an error that has been propagated through numerous maps and charts, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Maria Seton, a geologist at the University of Sydney, was chief scientist on a 25-day voyage through the area that ended earlier this month. When she and her crew sailed past aboard the RV Southern Surveyor, they found nothing but blue sea — though the captain was exceedingly cautious.

"We became suspicious when the navigation charts used by the ship showed a depth of 1,400 metres in an area where our scientific maps and Google Earth showed the existence of a large island," Seton told the Herald. "Somehow this error has propagated through to the world coastline database from which a lot of maps are made."

The project gathered 197 different rock samples, geographical data from more than 6,800 kilometres of coast and mapped more than 14,000 square kilometres of the ocean floor.

"We all had a good giggle at Google as we sailed through the island," said Steven Micklethwaite of the University of Western Australia. "Then we started compiling information about the seafloor, which we will send to the relevant authorities so that we can change the world map."

The RV Southern Surveyor is Australia's Marine National Facility research vessel, the Herald reported.

Corrections and Clarifications

• Sandy Island is shown as east of the coast of Queensland, Australia. Incorrect information appeared in an earlier version of this story. Nov. 22, 2012 | 3:15 p.m. ET

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HootSuite gets new Vancouver digs

The City of Vancouver says keeping companies like HootSuite is the key to attracting other businesses. (HootSuite)

Vancouver digital media company HootSuite is slated to move into a new larger head office at a city-owned office building in Mount Pleasant — a move the city says is key to bringing more jobs into the city.

HootSuite is leasing new office space at 5 East 8th Avenue with an option for ownership. The company is moving from its Railtown office because it needs more space.

Coun. Andrea Reimer says the move is good news for the city.

"There's a race on the planet right now to attract and create these hubs, which themselves — they're like magnets attracting buisness," she said.

"Having HootSuite stay here means that our magnet gets a bit bigger and we're able to attract more digital media jobs over time."

HootSuite is slated to move into its new office in early 2013.

"Since we first started HootSuite in Railtown in 2008 ... we've been proud to call Vancouver our home," said HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes.

"The city's digital media sector is strong and continues to grow, and we're excited to have found a new location that allows us to stay and expand here."

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Oil spill detection goes high-tech with aerial crew

Environmentalists worry the projected tanker traffic increase if two major B.C. pipeline projects are approved means the response to oil spills flagged by a high-tech aerial team will be inadequate.

The Marine Aerial Reconnaissance Team (MART), a joint project of Environment Canada and Transport Canada, has been using sensors in a high-tech aircraft to spot oil spills along B.C.'s rugged coastline for six years.

The team covers the coastline about two or three times per week.

But with tanker traffic along B.C.'s coastline projected to quadruple if the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion are approved, some worry there aren't enough resources in place to respond when spills are flagged.

"The resources for oil spill cleanup are some really talented people, some very hard-working people who could not possibly hope to protect this entire coast from what it's already facing — much less a massive increase in volume or number of ships," says Jay Ritchlin with the David Suzuki Foundation.

While MART is tasked with spotting spills, notification about them passes from the coast guard to a small flotilla of mostly commercial clean-up vessels funded by the major oil companies and centered in larger ports.

The team recently spotted a 100-metre slick in B.C.'s Georgia Strait.

Circling in their bright red patrol aircraft, specialists on board determined the spill below was caused by just four litres of fuel.

"It's just a bit of a shock when you see that," said Bob Whitaker with MART.

"You think that it's gonna be thousands of litres or something when it's less than four litres … doing all that damage."

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Greenhouse gases in atmosphere up 20 per cent, UN says

A UN report on rising greenhouse gas emissions reminded world governments Wednesday that their efforts to fight climate change are far from enough to meet their stated goal of limiting global warming to 2 C.

The report by the UN Environment Program, released just days ahead of a major climate conference, said the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen about 20 per cent since 2000.

Scientists say those emissions are contributing to climate change and that failure to contain them could have dangerous consequences, including rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

'The sobering fact remains that a transition to a low-carbon, inclusive green economy is happening far too slowly.'—Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director

Emissions levels, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, need to drop by 14 per cent by 2020 for the world to reach a pathway that could keep the global temperature rise below 2 C, compared with pre-industrial levels, UNEP said.

That's the stated goal of UN climate negotiations, which resume next week in Doha, Qatar.

But it won't happen if countries don't come ahead with more ambitious plans to cut emissions than what's currently on the table.

The UN agency said if no swift action is taken, emissions are likely to hit 58 gigatonnes in 2020 — 14 gigatonnes too much to have a chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees. The projected gap is now bigger than it was last year and in 2010.

Transition to 'green economy' happening slowly

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said bridging the gap remains doable, and that there are many "inspiring" actions at the national level on renewable energy, energy efficiency, protecting forests and vehicle emissions standards.

"Yet the sobering fact remains that a transition to a low-carbon, inclusive green economy is happening far too slowly and the opportunity for meeting the 44 Gt target is narrowing annually," Steiner said.

The report confirmed scientific observations that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is growing, not shrinking. On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization reported that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high last year.

Climate activists said the reports underscored the urgency in advancing clean technologies, such as wind and solar power.

"The only way we are going achieve the necessary cuts in emissions is to move away from fossil fuels and towards a world of renewable energy," said Kaisa Kosonen, climate policy adviser at Greenpeace.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial countries, expires this year.

Talks in Doha will focus on extending it for another term while negotiators work on a more comprehensive climate pact that would also include developing countries, whose share of global emissions is growing.

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U.S. transportation board switches to Apple from RIM

BlackBerry smartphones are being dropped by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board in favour of the new iPhone 5, with "performance issues" cited as the reason.

The Washington-based board, the latest American government agency to turn away from the BlackBerry, said it needs reliable devices for its employees to investigate accidents, often in remote locations.

'Due to performance issues with the BlackBerry devices, the NTSB desires to transition to a different device under Verizon's device refresh program."—U.S. National Transportation Safety Board

"These Apple devices will replace the NTSB's existing BlackBerry devices, which have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate," the transportation board said in a recent document.

Research In Motion has lost several other U.S. departments and agencies as clients. They include the Defence Department, the Transportation Security Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which have also chosen the iPhone.

Although the National Transportation Safety Board didn't go into many details about why it's dropping BlackBerry smartphones, RIM has had two email and text message service outages in the last year.

"Due to performance issues with the BlackBerry devices, the NTSB desires to transition to a different device under Verizon's device refresh program," the safety board said.

The latest switch by a U.S. government agency comes before the launch of RIM's new BlackBerry 10 operating system in early 2013 — widely considered a make or break product launch for the company.

Research In Motion said on Wednesday that government organizations around the world can continue to trust the reliability and security of BlackBerrys.

"We have one million government customers in North America alone who depend on BlackBerry, and more than 400,000 government customers worldwide upgraded their devices in the past year," said Paul Lucier, vice-president of global government solutions at RIM.

"We are committed to the mobility needs of government agencies around the world and will continue to meet these needs with BlackBerry 10," Lucier said in a statement.

RIM recently announced it had won U.S. government security clearance for its devices with its BlackBerry 10 operating system.

The Waterloo, Ont., company expects the new operating system, with an improved web browser, will enable it to better compete against the iPhone and smartphones with the Android operating system.

RIM's latest outage was in September, the same day that Apple's new iPhone launched in stores. In October 2011, RIM's outage lasted several days affecting millions of users globally.

Will it survive?

Telecom analyst Anil Doradla said RIM's two service outages should been seen as a key factor in the NTSB's decision, and the board is likely also taking a long-term view of the company.

"Will this company survive in five years, in four years?" said Doradla, of Chicago-based William Blair & Co.

"You have to look at what happened in the context of their network outages, which by the way, we cannot guarantee will not happen again," he said.

Doradla said the iPhone is now considered about as secure as the BlackBerry.

The safety board also said the use of iPhones will be compatible with the use of Apple iPad tablets by its employees.

Having an iPhone is just an extension of having an iPad, Doradla noted.

Outages didn't help

"The NTSB requires effective, reliable and stable communication capabilities to carry-out its primary investigative mission and to ensure employee safety in remote locations," the board said in a filing posted on the U.S. Federal Business Opportunities website.

Queen's University business professor John Pliniussen said the outages didn't help RIM and the transportation safety board likely has high security standards and decided to make the switch.

"The competition is just offering a better package," he said from Kingston, Ont.

"I've never heard of a security issue related to the iPhone 5, or any iPhone product," said Pliniussen, associate professor of innovation and Internet marketing.

Pliniussen said "this isn't the first and it won't be the last" client dropping RIM.

"It seems like to have the best now, it means start dropping RIM."

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Facebook drops user vote on privacy policy

Facebook is proposing to end its practice of letting users vote on changes to its privacy policies, though it will continue to let users comment on proposed updates.

The world's biggest social media company said in a blog post Wednesday that its voting mechanism, which is triggered only if enough people comment on proposed changes, has become a system that emphasizes quantity of responses over quality of discussion.

Users tend to leave one or two-word comments objecting to changes instead of more in-depth responses.

Facebook said it will continue to inform users of "significant changes" to its privacy policy, called its data use policy, and to its statement of user rights and responsibilities. The company will keep its seven-day comment period and take users' feedback into consideration.

"We will also provide additional notification mechanisms, including email, for informing you of those changes," wrote Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice-president of communications, public policy and marketing, in the post.

Facebook began letting users vote on privacy changes in 2009. Since then, it has gone public and its user base has ballooned from around 200 million to more than one billion. As part of the 2009 policy, users' votes only count if more than 30 per cent of all Facebook's active users partake. That did not happen during either of the two times users voted and it's unlikely that it will now, given that more than 300 million people would have to participate.

Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-backed think-tank in Washington, said the voting process was a "noble experiment" that didn't lead to informed debate.

Facebook said in June that it was reviewing how to get the best feedback from users on its policies.

Not truly hidden

Facebook is also proposing changes to its data use policy, such as making it clear that when users hide a post or photo from their profile page, the "timeline," those posts are not truly hidden and can be visible elsewhere, including on another person's page.

Polonetsky called Facebook's data use policy "kind of a good handbook" and a "reasonable read" on how to navigate the site's complex settings.

But most people don't read the privacy policies of websites they frequent, even Facebook's.

"I certainly recommend that people read it, but most users just want to poke someone and like someone and look at a picture," Polonetsky said.

Facebook's task, he added, will be to continue to evolve its user interface — the part of the site that its users interact with — so that answers to questions are obvious and people don't need to wade through the policy.

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Paralyzed dogs walk again with injections

Paralyzed dogs in a U.K. study have been restored to mobility thanks to injected cells, letting Cambridge University scientists dare to hope that the technique could eventually aid the treatment of humans.

In experiments done by the U.K. Medical Research Council's Regenerative Medicine Centre and Cambridge University's Veterinary School, 23 hobbled dogs who had suffered spinal injuries were injected with cells grown from the nasal passages of healthy dogs. The cells were injected into their spines.

A neutral control substance was injected into 11 other injured dogs. No improvement occurred in the control group, but many of the 23 cell transplant dogs were able to walk again on a treadmill with the help of a harness.

"Our findings are extremely exciting, because they show for the first time that transplanting these types of cell into a severely damaged spinal cord can bring about significant improvement," the BBC quoted Prof. Robin Franklin, a regeneration biologist at the Wellcome Trust-MRC Stem Cell Institute and report co-author, as saying.

"We're confident that the technique might be able to restore at least a small amount of movement in human patients with spinal cord injuries, but that's a long way from saying they might be able to regain all lost function."

The results were published in the November issue of the neurology journal Brain.

According to the BBC, researchers say the transplanted cells regenerated nerve fibres across the damaged region of the spinal cord, allowing the dogs to regain use of their back legs and co-ordinate front-leg movement.

However, the restored nerve fibres only stretched over short distances, which calls into question the applicability in humans.

"This is not a cure for spinal cord injury in humans — that could still be a long way off," Prof. Geoffrey Raisman, chair of Neural Regeneration at University College London, told the BBC. "But this is the most encouraging advance for some years and is a significant step on the road towards it."

Autologous Olfactory Mucosal Cell Transplants (PDF)
Autologous Olfactory Mucosal Cell Transplants (Text)

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Greenhouse gases in atmosphere up 20 per cent, UN says

A UN report on rising greenhouse gas emissions reminded world governments Wednesday that their efforts to fight climate change are far from enough to meet their stated goal of limiting global warming to 2 C.

The report by the UN Environment Program, released just days ahead of a major climate conference, said the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen about 20 per cent since 2000.

Scientists say those emissions are contributing to climate change and that failure to contain them could have dangerous consequences, including rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

'The sobering fact remains that a transition to a low-carbon, inclusive green economy is happening far too slowly.'—Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director

Emissions levels, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, need to drop by 14 per cent by 2020 for the world to reach a pathway that could keep the global temperature rise below 2 C, compared with pre-industrial levels, UNEP said.

That's the stated goal of UN climate negotiations, which resume next week in Doha, Qatar.

But it won't happen if countries don't come ahead with more ambitious plans to cut emissions than what's currently on the table.

The UN agency said if no swift action is taken, emissions are likely to hit 58 gigatonnes in 2020 — 14 gigatonnes too much to have a chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees. The projected gap is now bigger than it was last year and in 2010.

Transition to 'green economy' happening slowly

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said bridging the gap remains doable, and that there are many "inspiring" actions at the national level on renewable energy, energy efficiency, protecting forests and vehicle emissions standards.

"Yet the sobering fact remains that a transition to a low-carbon, inclusive green economy is happening far too slowly and the opportunity for meeting the 44 Gt target is narrowing annually," Steiner said.

The report confirmed scientific observations that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is growing, not shrinking. On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization reported that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high last year.

Climate activists said the reports underscored the urgency in advancing clean technologies, such as wind and solar power.

"The only way we are going achieve the necessary cuts in emissions is to move away from fossil fuels and towards a world of renewable energy," said Kaisa Kosonen, climate policy adviser at Greenpeace.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial countries, expires this year.

Talks in Doha will focus on extending it for another term while negotiators work on a more comprehensive climate pact that would also include developing countries, whose share of global emissions is growing.

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