Drones starting to tackle everyday tasks, from industry to farming

Drones have been used as military weapons and hobbyist toys for years, but now unmanned aerial vehicles designed to do a range of everyday jobs are going mainstream and Canada is among the best-placed countries in the world to profit from the commercial boom.

Canada's technology epicentre is Waterloo, Ont., and smart minds who used to work for BlackBerry got together and moved across town to form Aeryon, one of Canada's better-known drone makers. Its two models are being used by customers to cut the time and cost of doing a variety of tasks.  

Police, for example, use them to investigate accident scenes in a fraction of the time it normally takes. They're also used by power companies seeking a less expensive way to inspect tall electrical towers without having to send a worker climbing up, which comes with a high degree of danger.

The National

Watch David Common's report about the many ways Canadian industry and agriculture are exploiting drone technology. Tonight on CBC TV's The National, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern.

"One of our customers from the U.K. had to turn the power lines back on and they had to check an insulator on the other side of a river," Aeryon president Dave Kroetsch explains, "so they would have had to find some way across the river, a boat, get across, climb up. Instead, they flew a drone up there."

The Aeryon Skyranger quadrocopter drone can leap skywards and send a live image back to the operator on the ground. Thermal imaging helps them identify any problems in power-line insulators.

​Previously, utility companies hired helicopters that burned $1,500 of fuel an hour. The drone runs on a rechargeable battery. And it flies itself -- the operator simply enters where he wants the drone to go, using a Google Earth-like display on a tablet. The drone figures out instantly how to get there and safely back.

"A lot of companies in the past built products to be run by pilots," says Kroetsch.  "We designed a product for the backpack of a soldier, the trunk of a police car, or the back of a pickup truck for hydro operators."

Aeryon's Ian McDonald pilots the company's Skyranger quadrocopter drone. It can send a live image back to the operator on the ground, and thermal imaging helps identify any problems in power-line insulators much faster and more cheaply than using helicopters or sending inspectors to climb electrical towers. (CBC)

Drones are now being used to inspect pipelines and railroad tracks, and help icebreakers navigate through heavy ice, including the crucial effort to break through heavy ice to resupply Nome, Alaska in the midst of a brutal winter. They're being used to film movies and commercials, such as the octocopter that chased a Nissan sports car down a running track. They're providing aid agencies with a way to map devastation after natural disasters, notably in the levelled city of Tacloban after a massive typhoon wiped out the Phillippines last year. And they're even helping to walk dogs (seriously).

Canada's advantage

The big prize for manufacturers is a military contract, but so much of that market is dominated by American firms. Their counterparts in Canada focus on non-military uses, and have several advantages. The U.S. companies cannot export their product or technology without government approval. Canadians can.

What's more, the Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S. heavily restricts the use of drones in American airspace. In Canada, it's much easier — so long as the drone is not out of the operator's eyesight.

Aeryon Labs president Dave Kroetsch (right) demonstrates the features of the company's Skyranger quadrocopter for CBC's David Common. The drone runs on a rechargeable battery and can fly itself. (CBC)

One major market is the business of agriculture. Farmers crave data as much as bankers do. But they haven't been able to get real-time information easily — they've had to rely on records of the past performance of their land, rather than have a perfect measure of the crop as it stands.

"We produce a system that allows people to get data, valuable data," Ernie Earon of Precision Hawk explains.

The company's fixed wing drone flies autonomously, snapping photos over planted fields. When the images are analyzed, light green patches on the picture indicate stress points on the crop. Previously, a farmer would have had to walk the whole crop to find these problem areas -- a task that could take hours.

Precision Hawk is working on cameras which can 'see' to a plant's sub-cellular level. That will allow farmers to, for example, detect disease in a plant before it shows any visible sign. And to determine which areas that need more or less fertilizer.

Precision Hawk president Ernie Earon (right) says his company's drone can snap photos of crops and show stress points that previously a farmer would have had to walk the whole crop to find. (CBC)

"The aircraft will be actively looking for problems, not just doing a big survey of the field. So you have a system, no one is there to tend to it, no one is there to monitor it, it just launches, gathers and comes back."

And researchers are working on ways to expand the role of agricultural drones beyond simple data-gathering work. Bee populations are in such dramatic decline, for examle, so Harvard scientists have created tiny winged "Robobee" drones for the biologically vital function of pollinating flowers. The Micro Air Vehicles Project got started five years ago, at first to replicate bee behaviour, but designers now envision using them for high-altitude weather monitoring and traffic management.

Cost is a barrier to any company or individual. But advanced commercial-grade drones are now available in the low five figures — depending on the capabilities desired. Within a decade, it's expected the global demand will exceed $30 billion.

Canada's drone makers stand to benefit from the fast-growing industry, but they'll face increasing global competition. Sophisticated drone production has has been largely limited to Europe and North America but Asia is making up for lost time — led by China, which is focusing largely on military uses.

[Watch David Common's report about the many ways Canadian industry and agriculture are exploiting drone technology. Tonight on CBC TV's The National, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern.]

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Scientists help design giant spaceship as humanity's 'lifeboat'

A group of scientists, designers and architects is developing over the next 100 years a spacecraft that will allow humans to live permanently in space, even though they'll never live to see it.

"It's a worldship, which means that basically is a fully self-sustaining spacecraft that has a complex ecosystem, that has simulated gravity, a propulsion mechanism to allow it to orient and move through space, and ultimately a habitat for humans so that we can live up there," said CBC science columnist Torah Kachur in an interview with CBC Radio's Homestretch.

She said the ultimate goal is to continue human space exploration and settlement in space.

CBC science columnist Torah Kachur

"But also if there was to be some sort apocalypse — some sort of nuclear war, some sort of flood, meteorite coming down to rain down on us — this would be our little lifeboat."

The project was started last year by Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit foundation started in Alaska with the goal of sending humans on space journeys between the stars by 2100.

The ship envisioned by the group, which has members around the world but mainly in the U.S. and Europe, is a giant cylinder about 20 kilometres long and five kilometres in diameter that could support 50 to 500 people.

One of the key components will be a habitat that can sustain life and grow food in space. That component is the responsibility of Project Persephone, led by Rachel Armstrong, a professor at the University of Greenwich in the U.K.

She is developing a synthetic soil that could support plants, microbes, and other things necessary for a self-sustaining ecosystem in space.

"Essentially it's about growing an ecology there that isn't just something that's been ripped up off the Earth, but has been grown specifically for that particular environment," Armstrong told Kachur.

Humans would live in underground burrows in the soil, connected by tunnels and passageways.

Scientists have proposed sending just 50 or 100 people to begin with, to leave room for them to reproduce. Kachur said there has also been talk of sending up a "seed ship" with sperm, eggs and embryos that could be grown in artificial wombs – a technology that isn't close to reality yet.

Other challenges faced by the project include figuring out a way to propel and steer a ship that big through space.

And over its 100-year lifetime, the project could cost billions or trillions of dollars, Kachur said.

In any case, is it crazy to think we can live on a starship in 100 years? Kachur asked Armstrong that question, and she didn't think so.

"The 100-year mark is really an acknowledgement that in the next phase in astronautical exploration," Armstrong said, "That, you know, we'll need to up our game and think even bigger than the way that we're thinking now."

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Arctic sea ice polluted with microplastics

Arctic sea ice has sopped up and stored large quantities of microplastic pollution from populated areas in the south, a new study has found.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic from microscopic to fingernail-sized that have been found polluting oceans and lakes around the world over the past decade, but not so far north as the Arctic Ocean. Scientists are concerned about them because they tend to suck up and concentrate other pollutants in the environment, which enter the food chain when animals swallow microplastics.

While much of the sea ice in the past has stayed frozen for many years, locking up pollutants and sediments trapped in them, more and more of that 'multi-year' ice is melting as the Arctic warms as a result of climate change. (Canadian Press)

Rachel Obbard, a materials scientist at Dartmouth College in New Hamphire, discovered that Arctic sea ice was contaminated with microplastics by accident when she melted the ice in order to count diatoms – microscopic algae that live under the ice.

"I was really shocked and saddened," she told CBC's Quirks & Quarks in an interview that airs Saturday. "I guess I, like most people, still consider the Arctic to be a pristine and remote area and clearly, our pollution has reached even it."

When the melted ice was filtered, the filter paper trapped not just sand and diatoms, but also a variety of brightly coloured particles.

"I saw a lot of small threads, some solid chunks in oranges and reds, and a bunch of small blue nodules," Obbard recalled.

Microplastics were found in all ice cores taken from four different locations in the Arctic that were far apart, suggesting that the microplastic contamination is widespread.

Obbard estimated that there were between 38 and several hundred pieces of microplastic per cubic metre of sea ice.

A chemical analysis found the particles included a variety of different plastics, including polyethylene, polycarbonate and rayon.

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed open access scientific journal Earth's Future.

Obbard suspects they were carried into the Arctic by currents from populated areas in the south. She added that particles, including microplastics, tend to be concentrated by ice as it freezes.

While much of the sea ice in the past has stayed frozen for many years, locking up pollutants and sediments trapped in them, more and more of that "multi-year" ice is melting as the Arctic warms as a result of climate change.

"This suggests that there will be microplastic particles dumped back into the Arctic Ocean that have been entrapped in ice for several years," Obbard said.

She is now surveying the Arctic ice to find out how widespread the microplastic pollution is and what types of ice tend to concentrate it. She hopes to be able to identify the source of some of the microplastics, and also to find out how they are affecting Arctic organisms.

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New spacecraft can take 7 astronauts into orbit, land like a helicopter

SpaceX unveiled its Dragon V2 spacecraft Thursday night, promising it will be able to carry seven astronauts to the International Space Station and back to Earth again, landing with the precision of a helicopter.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the new spacecraft marks a "big leap forward," for the private space company. Among the key improvements on the new Dragon spacecraft are new rocket engines that will allow the capsule to touch down gently.

"You'll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter," Musk promised.

After showing a demonstration of the capsule blasting back into Earth's atmosphere before hovering to its landing, Musk smiled and told the crowd: "That is how a 21st century spaceship should land."

The Dragon V2 has other key features, too, including: the ability to dock autonomously with the International Space Station without using The Canadarm, an improved heat shield and seating for up to seven astronauts.

The California-based rocket maker is one of several private companies vying to develop "space taxis" for NASA to replace the retired space shuttle fleet.

Musk also showed off the interior of the Dragon V2, which houses two rows of seats inside its metal walls along with one bank of screens and controls. The space is clean and minimal, almost with the appearance of a futuristic rollercoaster ride.

The Dragon V2 — some of which is fabricated with 3D printed parts — will also be reusable, Musk said, something he hopes will cut down on the cost barrier of space exploration. He did not say how much the new spacecraft cost to build. 

Since the shuttle retired in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian rockets, paying nearly $71 million per seat. The space agency has said it wants U.S. companies to fill the void in several years.

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How practical is Google's driverless car?

Google has been teasing consumers with tidbits about its driverless cars for several years now, but it wasn't until this week that it revealed what this futuristic technology would actually look like.

The prototype is a subcompact car that looks like a computer mouse, has no steering wheel or gas and brake pedals and reaches a maximum speed of roughly 40 kilometres an hour. 

Google says that 100 of these prototypes will be built in the Detroit area, and the company expects them to be on the road by next year. 

At the Code Conference in Los Angeles this week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the self-driving car concept "is about changing the world for people who are not well-served by transportation today."

The futuristic car clearly has its backers, but some analysts, while intrigued, are skeptical about whether this concept is as game-changing as Google thinks.

While they acknowledge a driverless car would have immediate benefits for seniors and the disabled, a self-driving car raises a number of legal and regulatory issues.

Here's a look at some of the applications — and complications — of putting Google's driverless car on the road.

Increased mobility for seniors and people with disabilities

The prototype, which was revealed on Tuesday, has buttons that a passenger presses to begin and end the ride. The passenger sets the route by identifying the destination on a map or by using spoken commands.

In lieu of human operation, the vehicle is outfitted with sensors and cameras mounted on the roof that allows it to analyze what surrounding cars are doing and react accordingly.

The most obvious beneficiaries of a self-driving car would be seniors or the disabled, who may not be able to operate a conventional automobile.

This image provided by Google shows a very early version of Google's prototype self-driving car. The two-seater won't be sold publicly, but Google on Tuesday said it hopes by this time next year, 100 prototypes will be on public roads. (Google / Associated Press)

A car such as this would go a long way in restoring some independence for someone with a physical disability, says Tony Dolan, chair of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and a partial quadriplegic.

As a person with disabilities, he says, "you're always striving for that ability to live as normally as you can." And often as cheaply as you can.

Dolan owns a retrofitted Dodge Caravan minivan, which has a powered ramp, a modified driver's seat, hand controls for acceleration and braking, and a spinner knob on the steering wheel.

It cost him $43,000 US, and he says he had to buy it in the U.S. because the cheapest comparable vehicle he could find in Canada would have cost $68,000 CDN.

Dolan acknowledges that Google's self-driving car would alleviate some of the issues that prohibit many disabled people from driving, but he is concerned about the potential cost. (Google hasn't announced a price tag.)

"The first thing a person with a disability would say about the Google car is, Oh, that's great – but can I afford it? How am I going to pay for that?"

Not necessarily a fun ride

Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst with the Gartner consultancy group, says that with a current top speed of 40 km/hr (25 mph), the Google car would not make a particularly effective or fun consumer vehicle.

While there is undoubted curiousity about a car that drives itself, most people still prefer to drive themselves. Koslowski cites a recent poll that showed 35 per cent of respondents would be interested in purchasing such a vehicle, while the rest still preferred a traditional car.

Koslowski says he sees a greater potential for the Google car as an automated taxi or a means to transport goods. He also believes that it could be a valuable mode of transport in low-traffic areas, such as universities, factories or airports.

"There is an opportunity for these kinds of self-driving vehicles to be used at lower speeds on campuses or very specific city areas," says Kozlowski.

And while there may well be greater consumer interest in the future, he suggests those vehicles "would have to look very different from the prototype that was shown" this week.

Street legal?

Champions of driverless cars say they would nullify speeding, drunk driving and distracted driving, the prime causes of automobile accidents.

However, there are currently very strict regulations governing the use of these sorts of vehicles on the streets in both Canada and the U.S.

Koslowski points out that the state of California recently announced that in order for a self-driving car to be on the street, there must be two certified engineers sitting in the front seat in order to assume control in case things go awry.

Peter Henein, a product liability lawyer and partner at the Toronto firm Cassels Brock & Blackwell, also sees a number of liability issues with a concept such as this.

Because the vehicle is wholly automated, Henein says the most obvious concern is computer error or failure. As well, because the car relies on an internet connection to identify and navigate to its destination, a drop in the signal could bring the car to a halt — possibly in a very precarious situation.

"If the map is being updated remotely, and there's a lack of connectivity, the car may not know where to go and then the car may not move," says Henein.

Henein also points out that the current prototype is a small car with little apparent safety protection, and would be unlikely to survive a collision with a large truck.

"That doesn't make the [driverless] vehicle dangerous, but it means you have to carefully regulate where it can be driven."

Another question with the car is the liability when a vehicle such as this gets into an accident — would it be the fault of the passenger, the owner or the manufacturer?

A spokesperson for the Insurance Bureau of Canada says it's "too early for us to comment on the insurance implications of the Google driverless car."

Henein says determining liability in the case of an accident between a driverless car and a conventional car would be no different than a collision between two conventional automobiles.

It would require an investigation of the specific circumstances and a determination of whether the accident was created through the actions of the people in the vehicle or a malfunction of the vehicle itself.

'A whole other set of data'

Because the car is fully automated and reliant on geo-location information to determine its routes, the vehicle's computer — and, by extension, Google — will inevitably gather data on passengers habits, Matt Braga, a Canadian tech journalist, told CBC News.

Google currently collects data on consumers through its search engine and email services, which it sells to third parties. Braga says that the self-driving car could provide Google with even more personal information.

"You have this company that already knows things like your purchasing behaviour and who you talk to.

"They'll now have this extra data. They'll know things like, 'Stacy goes to the gym every Thursday,'" Braga said.

"It's a whole other set of data that could be exciting or terrifying."

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Google starts taking requests to erase search results

Google opened a web page late Thursday to accept requests from Europeans to remove certain pages containing personal information from search results. (Rene Tillmann/Associated Press)

Google is starting to accept requests from Europeans who want to erase unflattering information from the results produced by the world's dominant search engine.

The demands can be submitted on a web page that Google opened late Thursday in response to a landmark ruling issued two weeks ago by Europe's highest court.

The decision gives Europeans the means to polish their online reputations by petitioning Google and other search engines to remove potentially damaging links to newspaper articles and other websites with embarrassing information about their past activities.

Google's compliance thrusts the company into the prickly position of having to balance privacy concerns and "the right to be forgotten" against the principles of free expression and "the right to know."

It will also create a divide between how Google generates search results about some people in Europe and the rest of the world. For now at least, Google will only scrub personal information spanning a 32-nation swath in Europe. That means Googling the same person in the United States and dozens of other countries could look much different than it does from Europe.

Google extends right to 4 non-EU countries

Although the court ruling only applied to 28 countries in the European Union, Google is extending the "right to be forgotten" to four other countries — Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. More than 500 million people live in the area affected by Google's potential purge of personal information from its European search results.

It's unclear when the whitewashing will begin. So far, Google has only said it will happen soon.

First, though, the Mountain View, California company is trying to establish some guidelines to steer its censorship decisions.

To do that, Google is setting up a seven-person advisory committee to navigate through the ethical shoals. The group includes Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, as well as five outsiders. They are: Luciano Floridi, an information ethics philosopher at the Oxford Internet Institute; Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder; Jose Luis Pinar, former director of Spain's Data Protection Authority; Peggy Valck, a privacy rights activist and director of the University of Leuven law school; and Frank La Rue, a special United Nations representative specializing in free speech.

Google will designate another team of its employees to sift through the requests to remove personal information from search results and decide which have grievances that should be honoured under the European court ruling. The company won't decide how many employees will be assigned to this task until it gets a better sense of how many removal requests are likely to pour in from Europe.

Depending on the volume, it could turn into a monumental headache, even for a company with the financial resources and technological resources of Google.

Investors so far haven't given any sign of being worried about the new realities facing Google in Europe. The company's most widely traded class of stock has climbed six per cent since the European court issued its game-changing decision. The shares closed at $570.56 Thursday, leaving Google with a market value of about $385 billion.

Rivals must also abide by new rules

Europe is one of the biggest markets for the online ads that generate most of Google's revenue. But implementing the "right to be forgotten" isn't expected to drive traffic away from Google because its major rivals must also abide by the new rules in Europe.

Imposing more limitations on what kind of personal information Google and other search engines can show in Europe has raised fears about the censorship affecting everything from elections to the safety of children. For instance, politicians might be able to block damaging information from showing up in search results. Other critics of the ruling have warned that even pedophiles might be able to delete past convictions from their results.

Supporters of the European court ruling, though, argue that people should be able to remove some information about youthful indiscretions, financial missteps and arrests that never resulted in convictions.

Google says that whenever it scrubs personal information from its European search results it will include a notice about some links being omitted, just as it has previously done when laws in countries such as China have required the company to censor data.

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Energy firms warned over communication about climate change

Environmental groups are taking inspiration from the legal fight against tobacco to fire warning shots at major energy companies over their alleged role in funding climate change denial and blocking climate-friendly legislation.

Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have sent letters to dozens of Canadian and international energy companies asking them about their guidelines for public communication and lobbying practices on climate change. The groups have also asked if corporate officers are insured against the possible spread of misinformation about the impact of greenhouse gases.

It's the opening salvo in an attempt to hold the industry accountable for what the environmental groups say is its role in slowing efforts to fight global warming.

"We're laying the groundwork for court cases to come," Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada said Wednesday. "In many ways, the oil industry is right now where the tobacco industry was back in the 1980s."

Martin Olszynski of the University of Calgary law school said legal scholars take seriously a link between the legal actions that extracted big payouts from tobacco companies and the position of the energy industry over climate change.

"It's a live issue," said Olszynski, who, with his colleague Sharon Mascher, hopes to publish research on the topic later this summer. "It definitely has some potential and it can't be discounted."

The letter has gone out to 32 companies.

The list includes both oil and gas majors as well as other large greenhouse gas emitters such as cement producers and coal companies.

As well as energy multinationals with large Canadian operations such as ConocoPhillips and Total, it has gone to five Canadian companies: Suncor (TSX:SU), Talisman Energy (TSX:TLM), Husky Energy (TSX:HSE), EnCana (TSX:ECA) and Canadian Natural Resources (TSX:CNQ).

The letter asks: "Has your company implemented a clear and specific policy to make sure it is not involved in distorting the public's, investor's, regulator's, insurer's or policy-maker's understanding of the risks of climate change?"

The letter is accompanied by documentation from government and media sources that suggests industry has funded groups that are spreading doubt about climate science. It also indicates they have obstructed advocates for greenhouse gas reduction and lobbied government against regulating and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The letter also asks if corporate officials have fully informed insurers of their involvement in any such activities.

A separate letter has gone to 44 insurance companies, including several Canadian firms, asking about their exposure in case clients are found to have helped spread misinformation.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers dismissed the letters as a "stunt."

"Our member companies are not out there publicly questioning climate science, nor is CAPP," said spokeswoman Geraldine Anderson.

"Canada's oil industry publicly advocates for carbon policy that is effective and maintains an eye to industry's competitiveness. I think it's just Greenpeace's goal to shut down the industry and they're only interested in climate policy that would render Canadian oilsands unable to compete."

Kelli Stevens of Suncor denied her company sows doubt about climate change.

"Our president and CEO has gone on record — in multiple public forums — to say that climate change, as caused by humans, is a concern of his and of Suncor's," she wrote in an email. "We also meet regularly with non-governmental organizations (Greenpeace included) to discuss this and other issues."

Stewart said the idea is to encourage CEOs and directors to consider whether their activities could be exposing their companies to lawsuits.

"There can be consequences for this," he said. "Those corporate executives need to start taking that into account when they decide on where they're going to put their shareholder dollars."

Stewart has a point, said Olszynski, who noted several similarities between the climate change and tobacco issues.

"It's all about identifying some kind of wrongful conduct," he said.

"In the tobacco context, efforts to deny the link between tobacco consumption and cancer seems to have played a fairly significant role. That's the analogy that Greenpeace is trying to draw."

Olszynski said it took enabling provincial legislation before tobacco companies could be taken to court. Given the difficulty of linking specific climate change effects to specific companies, that's likely to be the case here as well.

"In our view, it is extremely likely that, should current predictions with respect to the impacts of climate change bear out, future legislatures will seek to alter the legal landscape to ensure that the relevant industries do not escape liability," Olszynski wrote in his research summary.

"The identification of this potentially significant source of future liability should inform and influence present-day government policy and corporate decision-making."

Such changes would probably take years, Stewart acknowledged. But that's OK, he said.

"This will be an ongoing saga."

Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada says the letters are the first step in a long-term campaign to use the law to prevent the energy industry from delaying action on climate change.

He says the strategy was inspired by the ultimately successful campaign to make tobacco companies liable for sowing doubt about the health effects of their products.

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Sexting, pornography findings in youth survey a new warning

One in five high school students surveyed say they received a sext of someone that was forwarded to them by someone else,  with the practice more common in  higher grades.

That is one of the results from a survey of young Canadians released today that may worry their parents when it comes to sexting and pornography, with more teens saying they are seeking it online compared to the results of a 2005 study.

But this new survey might also be reassuring for parents on the question of internet privacy, as it appears that teens are increasingly  aware of how to control access to their social media sites

In what is billed as the largest and most comprehensive study of internet use by young Canadians, the Ottawa-based group MediaSmarts found that 32 per cent of boys in grades 7-11 say they have received a  "sext" -- which they define as "sexy, nude or partially nude photos" -- created by the sender, as have 17 per cent of teenage girls.

Overall, eight per cent of the students said they have sent a sext of themselves, with the proportion rising in tandem with the grade number.

Matthew Johnson, MediaSmarts research director, says 'We have to start including ethics and empathy as a core part of the advice we give to our kids.' (MediaSmarts)

The study, called "Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age," asked 3,158 grade 7-11 students questions about sexting and pornography, and  a total of 5,436 students in grades 4-11, completed the rest of the survey. The participants were recruited through schools and school boards across Canada.

MediaSmarts does research, education and public awareness with the goal of helping youth develop critical thinking skills for interacting with media.

The numbers on sexting are only for youth with access to a cellphone, which is the case for 87 per cent of the older students surveyed.

Sexting and consent

"Sexts of boys are more likely to be forwarded than sexts of girls," the report says, and the boys are also twice as likely to report having received a forwarded sext.

Legislation is now before the federal Parliament to make it a crime to transmit intimate images of a person without their knowledge or consent.

In the survey, about a quarter of the youth say that a sext of themselves that they sent was then forwarded to someone else, while 15 per cent say they forwarded a sext that someone else sent them.

"This definitely shows that in our interventions we have to be considering boys as authors as well as recipients of sexts," says Matthew Johnson, the education director at MediaSmarts.

The young people who are forwarding these images "don't see it as an ethical question, they don't see it as an issue of respect," he says, adding they also don't seem to feel empathy for the person portrayed. "We have to start including ethics and empathy as a core part of the advice we give to our kids."

More students seeking porn

More young Canadians today also say they are actively seeking pornography online, compared to the results of a 2005 MediaSmarts survey. That number increased from 16 to 23 per cent.

As expected, the survey finds that teenage boys are much more likely to say they have searched the web for pornography.

Johnson says this is the most striking gender difference in the survey. But he was somewhat surprised that the frequency of seeking out porn is also different for young males.

While it's a minority of teenage boys who say they look up porn online, "those that are, are doing it often."

Johnson cautions that it's possible that the increase in the number of boys who say they are seeking out porn on the internet simply means that they are now less inhibited about admitting it.

Privacy and romance online

When it comes to their online life, Johnson says, "young people absolutely do care about privacy, but they conceive of privacy mostly in terms of controlling access."

MediaSmarts' research finds that many Canadian youth skillfully use their social networks' tools to selectively block content in order to control which of their contacts will see a particular item they post.

As they get older, fewer students say they want their parents and family members to be be able to see what they post on social media, for example.

"It was surprising to us how low romantic partners were on that list," Johnson told CBC News. "Young Canadians' online socializing is primarily focussed towards friends and family, and romantic relationships very much take a back seat," he adds.

As he sees it, romance is something that teens seem to be engaged in primarily offline. "Romantic relationships are a relatively small part of their online lives."

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Bacon: What makes it smell so good

What makes bacon smell so irresistible? The American Chemical Society has put out a two-minute video revealing the answer.

The video, released this week, uses animation to illustrate the chemistry that happens in your frying pan when you add heat and bacon, and ultimately pinpoints the main source of that alluring aroma. (By the way, if you've ever worked with this compound in a chemistry lab, you will probably be surprised because on its own, it smells pretty horrible.)

The video is part of the society's Reactions series about the chemistry of everyday life. The series has previously covered topics such as:

• The science of Siracha hot sauce.
• The cause of morning sickness.

On mobile and unable to see the video below? Click here.

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Don Pittis: The iHome expected to be Apple's answer to HAL 9000

"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it," says the talking computer in the movie 2001 to the only human he hasn't bumped off yet.

Anyone who has watched that 1968 science fiction flick might not be too pleased with the idea of accommodation that talks back, but next Monday could be the day the Jetson-style talking house moves from the unlikely to the inevitable.

The talking computer's name, HAL, is constructed of the three letters that precede IBM in the alphabet. But the way it looks now, it won't be IBM, but Apple or Google that will be in the race to create the talking, thinking house.

Communication capabilities have been growing and getting closer to human-like intelligence, the CNIB's Debbie Gillespie says. (CNIB)

According to a report in the London Financial Times, Apple's next Worldwide Developer Conference, which starts June 2, be will be the moment the company that brought us consumer- friendly devices like the iPod, iPhone and iPad will unveil its plan for the iHome. The name has not been announced yet, but it seems a good guess. Google has already signalled its interest, paying a cool $3 billion for Nest, a maker of centrally controlled home devices. 

The richest man in the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, was famous for having a computerized house that responded to his every whim. But in its next iteration, experts say, the talking house will not be just for the very rich. 

"This is really a hobbyist market today," tech analyst Jan Dawson tells Tim Bradshaw at the Financial Times.

Dawson says Apple, with its experience selling well-designed mass-appeal gizmos, could be just the company to make the talking house popular.

Blind in a sighted world

It's an idea that Debbie Gillespie likes. Blind from just after birth, Gillespie is the CNIB's expert in Braille, but she keeps abreast of the latest ways for the visually impaired to make their way in a sighted world.     

She already uses Apple's VoiceOver to "read" emails and articles. But while she tries Apple's voice program Siri for occasional searches, Gillespie finds that keyboards are still more reliable for writing.  

"We're almost at the level where you can have a regular conversation with a device," she says.

"I see voice, two-way, live, as becoming very common in the next five years not only for people who have vision loss," says Gillespie. "Home security is a great place [to use it]. Walk into a room and say 'lights on.' Or you tell your oven to turn on at 3 o'clock and set for 350."

Nearly 2,000 experts polled by the U.S. think-tank Pew Research agree. A report titled The Internet of Things will Thrive by 2025 says talking houses are just one way that we will be connected to the inanimate world. 

"Computation capabilities have been growing, and accelerating research into human-computer interfaces and the development of human-like artificial intelligence are expected by many experts to advance communications capabilities over the next decade," says Pew Research. 

"There are a variety of ways that the internet of things will show up in people's lives," said the report's author, Lee Rainie in a recent interview. "We will wear connected devices. Our clothes and our pieces of jewelry are going to be giving information about us and trying to be responsive to us, our homes are going to be a lot more connected."

Consumer battleground

Individual devices like those produced by Nest are already on the market. There are already connected refrigerators, thermostats, lights and household music systems. The battleground for consumer giants like Apple and Google and Samsung will be to create the central hub or "platform" that will be the connecting point for a house full of devices, making them all work together smoothly.

Also at stake will be the competition for the communication tool to link you to the platform, whether iPhone, Google Glass or the Samsung Smart Watch.

But with all that information rattling around from house to smart watch to thermostat, not all the experts Pew heard from think it's a good idea to share our personal information so promiscuously.

"Topmost in people's minds is privacy." says Rainie. "All these systems will be getting readings from us, will be capturing data from us, will be putting together material profiling us using algorithms to anticipate our needs."  

Avner Levin, director of Ryerson's Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute, says that's dangerous. With almost Weekly reports of data theft from giant corporate computer systems, and news about the NSA listening in to private conversations, Levin's view does not seem crazy.

What about privacy?

"We're not concerned just about governments," Levin told Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC's The Current earlier this year. "We're concerned about criminal elements. And we're concerned from a privacy perspective about where the information goes. Does it go to... my employer? ... to my insurance company?" 

Gerald Penn is a scientist at the University of Toronto who has been working on computer speech for years. He says the science is moving so quickly he can hardly keep up with his graduate students. And he thinks devices that really talk are on their way. But the question remains, will we want to talk to them?

"It used to be that speech engineers used to think that if we could just get this thing working everyone will start using it without really any careful consideration of why someone would want to speak to a toaster," says Penn.

And if you do decide to try out the Smart Home, and then if you change your mind and decide you don't want Hal the House knowing all your secrets? Will he let you turn him off?

Don Pittis is on Twitter @don_pittis.

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Dads who do housework have more ambitious daughters

Maybe you've told your daughter she can grow up to be an engineer or CEO if she wants to, but she may not really believe it if her dad doesn't cook or clean, a new study suggests.

A group of psychologists at the University of British Columbia found that when a father performs a greater share of household chores such as cooking, cleaning and childcare, his school-aged daughter is less likely to say she wants to pursue a stereotypical female career such as nursing, teaching or staying at home with the kids, and more likely to aspire to more gender-neutral (and often higher-paying) careers, such as becoming a doctor or lawyer.

A mother's stated views on gender equality were linked to her children's views. However, a father's share of housework made a difference even if both he and the girl's mother explicitly endorse gender equality, reported the study that will be published in the journal Psychological Science this week.

Boys tended to choose gender-stereotyped careers regardless of their father's role at home.

'You may not realize how much kids are watching and observing and taking in beyond just what we're telling them,' says Alyssa Croft, lead author of the study. (Martin Dee/UBC)

"What this is suggesting is that when girls, specifically, are seeing their parents enacting a traditional division of labour at home, it may be limiting their own ambition," said Alyssa Croft, a PhD candidate who was the lead author of the study, in an interview with CBC News.

"It may just be restricting what they see themselves as capable of doing.… You may not realize how much kids are watching and observing and taking in beyond just what we're telling them."

Croft acknowledged that researchers don't know how the career aspirations of the children will be linked to what they end up doing when they grow up. However, she said they are a good indication of how children see themselves in the context of gender roles.

She said the effects seen in the study of 326 children aged seven to 13 and their parents were "definitely very significant, meaningful effects."

She advised parents to be aware of how they're dividing their labour at home, if they say they believe in gender equality and really do believe in it.

Croft said she undertook the study because most previous studies about children's gender stereotypes look mainly at the role of their parents' jobs. She thought what parents do around the house might be more important, since children were more likely to see that.

To find out, she ran a series of tests on children recruited at Science World in Vancouver, along with at least one of their parents. For example, some part of the tests included descriptions of two people — one with more gender stereotypical characteristics and one with less — and asked the participant which one he or she was more like.

In a video interview produced by UBC, Croft said she thinks the findings of the study are important because "despite our best efforts to try and create gender egalitarian workplaces, women are still underrepresented in leadership and management positions." She added that the study suggests equality at home may inspire girls to pursue careers that they have traditionally been excluded from.

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Microsoft demos universal real-time translator for Skype

Microsoft has unveiled a new feature for Skype that's almost straight out of Star Trek's science fiction world — an app that translates conversations between speakers of different languages in real time.

"It's going to make sure you can communicate to anybody without language barriers," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella while introducing the new feature at the Code Conference in San Francisco.

"In fact, it's the most human of things."

The feature will be available as a Windows 8 beta app before the end of this year, Microsoft's Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice-president of Skype and Lync, wrote on the Microsoft Official Blog.

At the conference, Pall showed off the new feature during a Skype video call. He spoke to Microsoft colleague Diane Heinrichs in slightly Indian-accented English, and she responded in German.

After each of Pall's sentences, he paused, and a computerized male voice repeated the sentence in German as written subtitles appeared on the screen. A computerized female voice repeated each of Heinrich's sentences in English.

Mostly, the translation seemed to go well, except for a small glitch as the system translated the second reason Heinrichs was coming to the U.S.:  "I take the opportunity to see her fiancé my." That drew some laughs from the audience.

"As you saw from my conversation with Diana, it is early days for this technology, but the Star Trek vision for a Universal Translator isn't a galaxy away, and its potential is every bit as exciting as those Star Trek examples," Pall wrote in a post on the Official Microsoft Blog.

"Skype Translator opens up so many possibilities to make meaningful connections in ways you never could before in education, diplomacy, multilingual families and in business."

Nadella said Microsoft's Machine Translation group has been working on the problem since the group was formed 15 years ago. Their work combines speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis.

Nadella said the team noticed that each time the system learns a new language, it gets better at the language it already knows.

"Quite frankly, none of us know exactly why," he said. "It's magical."

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Could a stricter YouTube have stopped California shooting rampage?

One of the most chilling aspects of Elliot Rodger's killing spree in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Friday was that he foretold his actions in a YouTube video posted earlier that day.

Despite the ease with which people can post and view online video, cyber-law experts say it's impossible to monitor a site such as YouTube in the hopes of preventing similar crimes.

"It would take thousands of people working 24-7 to even dip into that … torrent of stuff," says David Fraser, an internet and privacy lawyer with the Halifax firm McInnis Cooper.

And it is not just a matter of volume. "It becomes a very difficult exercise in trying to figure out what is real and what is hyperbole, what is an extreme political position and what is hate speech," he adds.

On Friday night, Rodger, a 22-year-old living in southern California, killed six people in the Isla Vista community of Santa Barbara before killing himself. Thirteen others were injured during the rampage.

In a video posted to YouTube earlier on Friday entitled "Elliot Rodger's Retribution," he said he had been "forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires."

A YouTube video in which Elliot Rodger, pictured, foreshadowed his killing rampage in Santa Barbara, Calif., on May 23 was removed by the site the next day. (Reuters/Phil Klein)

Speaking into the camera, he said, "You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you have not been attracted to me, but I will punish you for it.

"I'll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you," he said.

Viewers police site

YouTube removed the video on Saturday. Since the incident, authorities have determined that Rodger had posted at least 22 YouTube videos in the last year.

One of the recurring questions since Friday has been whether the tragedy could have been averted, given that Rodger had posted a number of threatening videos on YouTube.

Fraser says this is nearly impossible, given the sheer amount of content posted on the site. According to a YouTube spokesperson, 100 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute.

The site's user guidelines disqualify videos on the basis of graphic violence or sexual activity, hate speech and copyright infringements.

In fact, YouTube has developed an automated system that identifies videos that infringe on copyrighted material. It's called Content ID, which allows copyright owners such as film studios and record companies to identify their own material on YouTube.

According to a tutorial posted on Google, which owns YouTube, videos "uploaded to YouTube are scanned against a database of files that have been submitted to us by content owners."

When another work is posted to the site that matches a work posted by, say, a film studio, the owner of the second video receives a notice saying that their clip contains copyrighted material. The copyright owner can then decide whether or not to ask YouTube to remove the video.

But there doesn't appear to be a similar system for offensive content. YouTube relies on crowd-sourcing to monitor offensive content.

Review team

"Videos threatening violence are against YouTube's guidelines and we remove them when they are flagged," a YouTube spokesperson said in an email statement.

"We encourage anyone who sees material that they think crosses the line to flag it for us."

Each YouTube video contains a "Report" button that allows users to send a complaint to the site if they see a video they deem offensive.

Google did not elaborate on how it arbitrates YouTube complaints, but in a New York Times piece published on the weekend, a Google representative said that after a video is flagged, it is scrutinized by special review teams that determine whether it will ultimately be taken down.

Reporting an offensive video is no guarantee that it will be removed, says Toronto internet lawyer Gil Zvulony, who has dealt with a number of clients who have complained about libellous material on YouTube.

"I've had clients come to me and they've reported stuff [posted online] that was really bad and nasty about them, and YouTube's done nothing about it," says Zvulony.

Freedom of expression

Google told the New York Times that Elliot Rodger's video had been taken down because it violated the service's guidelines against threats and intimidating behaviour.

Fraser says that part of the problem is that freedom of expression laws in Canada and the U.S. protect "everything that is speech, short of a death threat."

Images of Christopher Martinez are displayed as part of a memorial in front of the IV Deli Mart, where part of Friday night's mass shooting took place in the Isla Vista beach community of Santa Barbara, Calif. (Chris Carlson/Associated Press)

Freedom of speech is "your right to say things free from government interference," says Fraser. But a platform such as Facebook or an internet service provider can nonetheless impose restrictions on graphic material and threatening posts in their terms of use.

Facebook uses a combination of tools to weed out troublesome content, including automated keyword searches and an "active reporting team devoted to filtering through requests" from Facebook users, according to a Facebook spokesperson.

Even so, Fraser says there is still a challenge in pinpointing the difference in intent between millions of hateful online rants and a video such as Rodger's, which foreshadowed a massacre.

To illustrate the difficulty of discerning a person's true intent, Fraser cites a recent example from Nova Scotia, where an individual announced on Twitter that they were going to commit suicide.

The social media community spotted the tweet and mobilized to alert police, only to discover the crisis was a hoax.

"There is a lot of stuff out there that on the one hand might appear to be a literal threat, but is really not," Fraser says.

"I would not want to be in the position of having to make those judgment calls on a daily basis."

Zvulony acknowledges that Rodger's case has again shone a spotlight on the role of social media in crime prevention, but he cautions against trying to change cyber law based on a "freak occurrence" such as this, where an individual broadcasts his intent to kill right before doing so.

"I don't know if we should be making policies based on these freak occurrences," Zvulony says.

"This is a difficult case, and it was very public, but I don't think we should be looking at YouTube as the culprit here."

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Watch Dogs gives gamers a hacker’s-eye view

With the swipe of his finger across a smartphone, a man collects the name, occupation and salary of someone standing next to him at a bus stop. He hacks into the victim's bank account and steals hundreds of dollars. He listens in on a private conversation and then walks on. The victim is none the wiser.

The fear of being hacked in broad daylight feels ripped from today's headlines, but this is actually a scenario from Watch Dogs, gaming firm Ubisoft Montreal's latest potential blockbuster, being released today.

Though the above scene isn't real life, the storyline may hit uncomfortably close to home given recent news coverage about online security breaches and the ability of hackers to access your personal information.

In Watch Dogs, players portray Aiden Pierce, an expert hacker who can access all parts of CtOS, the central operating system of a fictionalized Chicago. This access enables manipulation of the city's infrastructure, its security systems as well as the personal information of every citizen who carries a cellphone.

Fantasy becomes reality

The origin of Watch Dogs goes back to 2009 — before Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency leaks hit the mainstream news. At the time, lead game director Jonathan Morin and many of his friends were early adopters of emerging technology. Social media and smartphones were in their infancy compared to their prolific use today.

"We were in the sweet spot where we were looking at what we thought would be the next generation of living in a connected city, at a time when most of my family and friends — most of the people I knew — were not yet into smartphones," he said.

'It turns out our take was even a little bit soft compared to what can be done in real life.'- Jonathan Morin, Watch Dogs lead game director

But even he was surprised by how quickly real-life technology began catching up with his designers' ideas.

"We brainstormed something we wanted to do in the game and then the next week or next month, there was literally that news on the web. And we were like, 'Jesus.'"

One such idea (which did not make it into the final game) involved hacking into a U.S. prison's security system, releasing the inmates and inciting a riot. During a demonstration at Def Con, the annual Las Vegas-based hacking conference, Morin learned that without the right security measures in place, a skilled hacker could indeed pull it off.

"It turns out our take was even a little bit soft compared to what can be done in real life," he said, though he wouldn't detail any specific scenarios that made it into the game to avoid spoilers.

Anticipation builds

The hype for Watch Dogs has been building for nearly two years. First unveiled at 2012's Electronic Entertainment Expo, gamers have been inundated with preview articles, developer interviews and dozens of trailers showing off the beefy technology behind the project.

As the first title in what's slated to be an all-new franchise — this isn't an extension of Ubisoft's existing hits such as Assassin's Creed or Splinter Cell — there are high expectations and reputations at stake for Watch Dogs, especially since it arrives more than six months later than originally planned.

Initially set to debut last winter, alongside Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4, the game was touted as a technical showcase for the expanded capabilities of the pricey new consoles.

But in October, Ubisoft announced Watch Dogs would be delayed until this year. It missed the retail bonanzas of Black Friday and Christmas, and left the brand new consoles' library of games sorely lacking at launch.

What happened? The lead developers said they needed to take more time to "polish" Watch Dogs, including making various tweaks, nips and tucks to the gameplay.

Real life potential?

According to Ubisoft's Morin, nearly everything Watch Dogs' Aiden Pierce can do in the game — from hacking into a pedestrian's phone to remotely raising a drawbridge — can be achieved in real life. Of course, that doesn't mean you can do it with one touch of your smartphone, like he does.

Watch Dogs is rated for gamers 17 years of age and over. (Ubisoft)

"The act of hacking is a lot more extensive work," Morin explained.

"In real life, you would need hours and hours, sometimes days … just to get that access working."

Bending the rules of hacking is in service of the game, since a player likely wouldn't be as interested in the actual, minute programming work required as much as seeing the effect it causes in the game's world, he said.

Part of what separates Watch Dogs from reality is the CtOS, which connects every device in the fictionalized city to one operating system. Such a phenomenon is unlikely to appear in the real world any time soon: legacy technologies are often integrated into newer systems, but never in the simplified, top-down way that Watch Dogs presents.

"The reality of our actual world is that there are multiple contracts, companies and technologies. A mono culture would make things easier to run, while increasing the risk of something like Watch Dogs coming into reality," according to  Mark Nunnikhoven, vice-president of cloud and emerging technologies at security firm Trend Micro.

That said, the most common target of Watch Dogs' hacker protagonist is personal smartphones and the device is at the heart of many people's concerns about cybersecurity.

In the last few years, cybersecurity experts have been warning the general public about just how simple it can be for hackers to access the wealth of personal and financial information held on our phones.

"Could you easily do [things like change traffic lights or raise a drawbridge] with the press of a smartphone button? Probably not. But is it feasible to hack into someone's smartphone? Absolutely," says Brian Bourne, co-founder of Toronto's annual SecTor cybersecurity conference.

"A high percentage of Android phones do get compromised. It's shockingly easy."

A positive message?

Could a game like Watch Dogs, then, raise awareness about the potential weaknesses in existing online security and how our personal privacy may be compromised in this constantly connected world? Experts are divided.

Dave Lewis, a global security advocate at content delivery and web security firm Akamai, believes that the prolific depiction of hacking — mostly by stereotyped characters — can send the wrong message, depending on the audience.

In Watch Dogs, for instance, Aiden Pierce is conspicuously dressed in a long trench coat and scarf that covers his face. His hacker partners include a woman with sleeve tattoos, piercings and a Mohawk, while another is a dreadlocked, alcoholic outcast.

"In a lot of other popular media, the term 'hacker' has become synonymous with the criminal element," Lewis said.

"All of these roles have their place in the ecosystem, but the reality is that this doesn't do anything to raise awareness. It does more to glorify it."

It's nothing new, however for fringe characters or communities to be idealized for the sake of entertainment, said Trend Micro's Nunnikhoven.

"People understand that it is a game and it is taking liberties just like movies do," he said.

"I hope that Watch Dogs can sort of raise the awareness around how much electronic and information technology has infiltrated our daily lives and that, while it's enabled so many wonderful things, we need to be well aware of the limitations of it as well — and that security is a big aspect of it."

'People understand that [Watch Dogs] is a game and it is taking liberties just like movies do,' says Mark Nunnikhoven of security firm Trend Micro. (Ubisoft)

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Check back soon for our game review of Watch Dogs.

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Gay dads' brains act like both mom and dad

Having a baby alters new mothers' brain activity, researchers have found, and a new study adds the first evidence of such changes in the brains of gay men raising children they adopted through surrogacy.

The men's pattern of brain activity resembles that of both new mothers and new fathers in the study.

The research, reported on Monday, could feed into the debate over whether gay men should be allowed to adopt children. Many U.S. adoption agencies will not work with same-sex couples, and some states prohibit them from adopting.

The current study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted in Israel, and builds on work by neuropsychologist Ruth Feldman of Bar-Ilan University and others, who showed that the brains of new mothers become hyper-reactive to their child's cries and other emotional cues.

It was not clear if that pattern is a result of the hormonal and other changes that accompany pregnancy or a response to the experience of motherhood.

To find out, Feldman and her colleagues videotaped 89 new mothers and fathers interacting with their infants at home. They then measured the parents' brain activity while watching the videos in an MRI tube, and again (to establish a baseline) while watching videos that their kids did not star in.

In the 20 mothers in the study, all primary caregivers, watching their babies triggered heightened activity in the brain's emotion-processing regions, particularly in a structure called the amygdala, which was five times more active than at baseline.

"These are regions that respond unconsciously to signs of an infants' needs, and that derive deep emotional reward from seeing the baby," Feldman said.

For the 21 heterosexual fathers — who were very involved in raising their baby but whose wives took the parenting lead — watching their infant increased activation of cognitive circuits, particularly a structure that interprets a baby's cries and non-verbal cues. It is the region that knows which squirm means "I'm about to scream" and which means "change me."

The 48 gay fathers raising children with their husbands seemed to be both mom and dad, brain-wise. Their emotional circuits were as active as those of mothers and the interpretive circuits showed the same extra activity as that of heterosexual fathers'.

Ideally, scientists would perform neuroimaging on men and women before and then after they became parents, to show definitely that any heightened activity followed junior's arrival and was not present before. Until they can do that, Feldman said, she is confident that the telltale brain activity results from parenting.

One clue: in gay fathers, but not heterosexual ones, the brain also had extra communication lines between emotional and cognitive structures. The more time a man spent as primary caregiver, the greater the connectivity. It was as if playing both parental roles caused the brain to integrate the structures required for each.

"Fathers' brains are very plastic," Feldman said. "When there are two fathers, their brains must recruit both networks, the emotional and cognitive, for optimal parenting."

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Ontario surgeons ready to perform Canada's 1st hand transplant

Surgeons at Toronto Western Hospital say they are ready to perform Canada's first hand transplant, as soon as a suitable candidate for the intensive procedure can be found.​

Dr. Steven McCabe, director of the University of Toronto hand and upper extremity program, was on a team of surgeons that carried out North America's first hand transplant in the 1990s.

The patient who underwent that operation, Matthew Scott, was expected to have use of the hand for about six months to a year. Nearly 15 years later, his transplanted hand remains fully functional.

"It's very exciting because it offers something for patients that really have no other choices," McCabe told CBC News.

"It recreates a sense of wholeness for the person. If we can get a good functional result in transplantation it probably will be better than any available prosthetic."

There are currently about 18,000 people in Canada living with amputations, according to War Amps statistics.

The transplantation procedure has yet to be performed in Canada, despite success in the U.S., because of ethical concerns.

Unlike lung or heart transplants, a hand transplant is not a life or death matter and patients are required to take medication every day for the rest of their lives to prevent their immune systems from rejecting a new hand, McCabe said.

But the time is right to begin performing the procedure in Canadian hospitals, said McCabe. Candidates must go through an extensive physical and emotional screening process in order to be considered for a transplant.

Toronto Western Hospital told CBC News they are currently in talks with the family of an eight-year-old boy who is a possible candidate for the surgery, and said the procedure could happen within the next six months. 

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Meteors and night skies: Photography tips and tricks

Night photography, or astrophotography, is easier than you may think. It really boils down to a little planning and knowing a thing or two about how a camera works. 

Here is a simple guide to capturing shots of the night sky, and some simple tips and tricks that will open up a whole universe of potential for anyone with a camera and a tolerance for late nights under the stars.

The basics

While a camera with manual controls, a fast wide lens, RAW capabilities and a big sensor does make a big difference, stunning night sky shots of meteors, the Milky Way and star trails can be captured using just about any camera these days.

Equipment aside, here is what you, the aspiring star shooter, need to know.

Night sky shots can be lumped into two main categories:

1. Shots where the stars appear as stationary specks or points of light.
2. Shots where stars appear as streaks, taking advantage of the rotation of the Earth.

To capture meteors (or the Milky Way), exposing for points of light is generally best because it allows the shooting stars to track across the frame — an effect that requires the camera to remain totally still and the exposure time relatively short.

The 500 Rule

The wider your lens, the longer you can leave the shutter open without turning stars into streaks.

A handy but rough tool for figuring out how to avoid noticeable blur, or unwanted star trails, is the 500 Rule. Take the number 500 and divide it by the focal length of your lens (whether it's a digital SLR or a point and shoot, this is typically displayed in millimetres). The result is the maximum time in seconds before trails will appear.

For example, a 14 mm lens gives you a maximum exposure time of 36 seconds. A 24 mm lens allows you a 21-second exposure, and so on.

A Perseid meteor flashes across the constellation Andromeda during the 1997 incarnation of annual August spectacle. The one-off Camelopardalid meteor shower Friday night could put on a 'very nice display' comparable to major meteor showers such as the Perseids, astronomers say. (Rick Scott and Joe Orman, SkyandTelescope.com/Associated Press)

Note that because camera sensors have improved, the traditional 500 Rule is no longer one-size-fits-all, and you may see it referred to as the 450 or 600 rule, depending on your camera. But 500 can still be used as a rough guide, then you can experiment to see what works best for you.

If your camera lets you adjust the aperture, you can do some more fine-tuning. Combined with an aperture of 2.8 (remember, the smaller the number, the bigger the aperture hole and the more light the lens is allowing to pass through to the sensor) and an ISO setting that isn't introducing too much grain into the image (let's just say somewhere between ISO 3000 and 6400, which is generally safe on most modern dSLRs and point-and-shoots), the 500 Rule should yield a pretty satisfactory first frame.

From there, you will need to fine tune based on what looks good to you, the amount of ambient city light affecting your shot, and the characteristics of your particular camera.

While its easy to get bogged down in the technical aspects of camera settings and exposure times, keep in mind that the most significant factor when shooting the night sky, or anything, is light. All you can do is control how much or how little light reaches the camera's sensor. Shooting is like cooking and the amount of spice is up to you.

The darker the better

Getting away from bright city lights will dramatically increase the chances of getting a crisp, dark sky against which the stars will really pop out.

Use a heavy tripod with a locking ball head to keep the camera as still as possible during the exposure. You don't want a shaky camera blurring the stars, so this means no holding the camera in your hands while you're shooting.  

Don't have a tripod or a bulb-release to trigger the shutter?

Make a small sandbag out of an old sock or use a shoe as a support. Even a pile of rocks or the ground can work really well to prop your camera at the right angle to catch the patch of sky you're after.

Using your camera's timer function, frame up the shot as best you can, hit the shutter, put the camera down on the support (or back away from the tripod), then wait for the click before touching the camera and checking your capture.

Many cameras, including most dSLRs, allow for exposures up to 30 seconds — plenty of time to capture the night sky and, if you're lucky, a shooting star or two will have streaked across the frame.

If its a meteor shot you want, employing the 500 Rule to get the maximum exposure time without trails in combination with a high rate of fire increases your chance of capturing a shooting star, or several. An interverlometre (basically a timer sold separately for most major camera brands, or sometimes built-in to the camera and accessed through menu settings) will allow you to shoot continuously without touching the camera.

Star trails

To get a circular effect in the stars in your photo (taking advantage of the rotation of the Earth), look for the 'B' for bulb release on your shutter control dial (or in the manual control settings of many new digital point and shoot cameras). Use that setting with an old-fashioned bulb-release cable (or your interverlometre) to hold the shutter open as long as you like.

A higher f-stop or aperture, or a lower ISO setting, can come in handy here if you are after a shot of the stars completing a full rotation or stretching all across the frame.

A cool technique for star trails is to focus on the North Star, Polaris, and to keep the shutter open for several hours such that the stars appear to trail in a full circle around the fixed point.

There are also techniques involving shorter exposure times (employing the 500 Rule) and editing software to 'stack' dozens or even hundreds of images taken over several hours to give the appearance of movement in the stars. This technique will allow for a final image that includes both star trails and shooting stars.

Quick recap:

1. Get to a dark location, away from sources of starlight-killing city lights. The Dark Sky Finder is a handy tool for determining how far off the beaten track you'll need to get.

2.  Keep your camera steady with a solid tripod. Shooting at night requires holding the shutter open longer — for several seconds, minutes or even hours — as opposed to the 10ths or 100ths of a second needed for your typical daylight shot.

And to find out the best angle to capture the sky from any point on the planet, download the Photographer's Ephemeris.

Happy shooting.

[If you get some good shots of the meteor shower or night sky, we'd love to see them. You can upload them to CBC here.]

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

Review: How latest activity-tracking fitness watches compare

They're sleek, connected and promise a smarter way to work out. Fitness watches are part of a hot 'wearable tech' trend that even Apple is said to be getting into, but with different features and software, not to mention the different commitments these devices demand from wearers, can they actually help you get the most from exercise?

We spent some time with three of the models available in Canada to see how effective they are at encouraging a healthier lifestyle. Here's a look at the Garmin Vivofit, TomTom Runner Cardio and Samsung Gear Fit.

Strap yourself in

All three models are "watches," in that they tell the time as a basic function and are worn on the wrist. But they're aimed at anyone wanting to track their fitness lifestyle, and offer different features.

In terms of hardware, the Garmin Vivofit is very comfortable. The thin, flexible, interchangeable band houses a small display that makes it look no different than a digital watch.

Garmin's Vivofit. (CBC)

​It's not an LCD or a touchscreen, and doesn't even have a backlight, so don't expect it to be useful during a nighttime jog. However, that also means a stellar battery life; the power cell only needs the be replaced once a year.

​Next to the display is a single button. You can switch between step count, step goal, distance travelled, calories burned, time and date.

Everything about the design says simplicity. Fitting, considering it's only capable of measuring movement (while awake or asleep).

The TomTom Runner Cardio is a little more specific, as its name suggests. Runners will find the thicker strap very comfortable and find the bigger display — with a backlight — more useful.

​The interface is not simple, though. A clunky four-way directional button moves you through menus. There are a lot of options and a lot of clicking before you can get going.

That's partly due to the fact that it does more than the Vivofit. An onboard GPS accurately maps your run. It also has a heart rate monitor and measures things like pace, elevation and number of strides.

TomTom's Runner Cardio. (CBC)

​The battery life is also great — about 10 hours when using the GPS, but it can go longer in treadmill mode. For the average wearer that could mean weeks between charges, although the drawback to the power system is that it awkwardly charges through a USB dongle.

In terms of a premium feel, the Samsung Gear Fit has the other two beat. The most noticeable element is its curved, rectangular touchscreen. Bright and easy to use, the Gear Fit doesn't look like a traditional watch or a fitness device — it looks like a hot, new tech accessory.

A single power button wakes it from sleep, and you navigate the menus using touch controls. It tracks your steps, your heart rate, your location (if your phone is nearby with GPS activated), your movement during sleep and can let you control your phone's music and read notifications.

All these features consume power, which means you can expect to charge the Gear Fit (also with an awkward dongle) once every two days.

Working out

Features aside, the goal of these devices is to help you achieve a better workout. The watches all measure your workout data and sync to online services or apps.

Samsung's Gear Fit. (CBC)

​The Runner Cardio is not designed to be worn all day, so you need to remind yourself to put it on before you hop on the treadmill or go for a run outside. Then it takes a few button presses to actually start it tracking, and a few more to tell it you've stopped.

The Runner Cardio takes that workout data and can either sync to an app (iPhone only) or upload to a computer. You can choose to use TomTom's easy-to-understand MySports service or upload to popular running trackers like RunKeeper. TomTom's device is aimed at people who care about running, but anyone can jump in and start using it.

The Gear Fit is a different beast that requires some extra investment. Firstly, you need a Samsung Phone to even use it. We were provided a review unit of the Samsung Galaxy S5.

Working out with the Gear Fit takes just a few taps to get going. Using Samsung's S Health app, the data is transferred to your phone at regular intervals. You can track your progress in great detail without having to worry about manually uploading anything, and it even awards medals for reaching certain workout goals.

The Vivofit — with the fewest features on paper — is surprisingly good at getting you moving. The most helpful feature is a red line that appears on the display when you've been stationary for too long.

Since all the Vivofit does is measure steps, all you need to do when working out is … go. Handy if you work a desk job and need a little reminder to take a walk once in a while.

It syncs with either the Garmin Connect app or with a tiny Bluetooth USB stick. Both are a quick process, but like MySports and S Health, require an account to be set up.

Will it actually help?

All three devices are capable of kickstarting your workout, but there are some stark realities that become apparent as you use these devices.

The truth about step counters (and, to a lesser extent, heart monitors) is that they will never be 100 per cent accurate. Both the Gear Fit and the Vivofit inadvertently encouraged the wearer to swing their arms while walking, lest a measurement be missed, for example.

The Vivofit syncs the information it gathers about your physical activity with the Garmin Connect app. (CBC)

On rare occasions, both the Gear Fit and Runner Cardio gave heart readings that were at lower levels than my actual heart rate. At one point I was running at full tilt and the Runner Cardio said I was at 85 beats-per-minute, when it should have read more than 140 bpm. After resetting it and shuffling it on my wrist, it began to work properly again. I had a similar experience with the Gear Fit. But again, these were one-off anomalies.

And measuring movement during sleep is fine, but what do you do once you know you move too much after you doze off?

It seems, in the end, using these devices to quantify data about your body's activity requires a belief that the numbers are meaningful. Olympians and astronauts can see a direct benefit from having their heart rate and breathing monitored, but can the average person?

"When you are self aware, when you are able to train in the right zone, that does make your workout more effective," says Dr. Greg Wells, a sports scientist at the University of Toronto. "Wearable technologies can provide insight to where you're at and where you need to be."

Knowing that right 'zone' can take professional help to understand. Wells points out that recent studies into fitness devices indicate they tend to be like gym memberships: They spark a surge in activity, followed by a drop-off. Still, he remains optimistic about the usefulness of these devices when they're used in tandem with a fitness regime.

TomTom's Runner Cardio can sync and store information using the easy-to-understand MySports service, or it can upload data to popular running trackers like RunKeeper. (CBC)

"Putting a watch on yourself and measuring a bunch of metrics won't make you fit. It takes consistency over a long period of time. [But]

if gathering information about yourself can help you track your progress and help you figure out where you need to be — fantastic. It's wonderful and extremely helpful."

And that's what these three devices can do: Help you be the manager of your own health.

However, that management comes at a cost. The cheapest watch is the Garmin Vivofit at $190. Next comes the Gear Fit at around $200 — and remember, this requires having a Samsung smartphone as well. Finally, the Cardio Runner can run you — pun intended — $300. These gadgets are a big financial commitment for someone looking to just go for a run.

That being said, as the field of biometrics (measuring your body's signals) expands into consumer technology, we will likely see more of these fitness products hitting the market in the near future. They will promise a lot, but people need to remember that just like a gym membership, having one doesn't automatically give you a healthy lifestyle.

As Wells puts it, when it comes to exercise: "You still need to actually do it."

22.12 | 0 komentar | Read More

New meteor shower, the Camelopardalids, expected tonight

A meteor shower that has never been seen before is expected to hit tonight and into the morning, and it could be spectacular.

A Perseid meteor flashes across the constellation Andromeda during the 1997 incarnation of annual August spectacle. The one-off Camelopardalid meteor shower Friday night could put on a 'very nice display' comparable to major meteor showers such as the Perseids, astronomers say. (Rick Scott and Joe Orman, SkyandTelescope.com/Associated Press)

The Camelopardalids is a one-time shooting star show.

NASA predicts it will peak from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. ET Saturday morning, but says "outbursts" could happen any time all night.

It recommends looking near the North Star at the faint constellation Camelopardalids, or "the giraffe," located between Ursa Major (which includes the Big Dipper) and Cassiopeia.​

Peter Jenniskens, a senior research scientist with the SETI Institute who first predicted the new meteor shower a couple of years ago, says meteors from this shower are expected to make a stately glide across the sky compared with those from other meteor showers.

"They will really stand out," he said.

"We expect it to be a very, very nice display," said Paul Wiegert, an associate professor with Western University's Meteor Physics Group, who thinks the Camelopardalids will be comparable with other major meteor showers such as the Perseids, an annual August spectacle that can produce up to 100 meteors per hour during its peak.

Here is the location of Camelopardalis, relative to the familiar constellation Cassiopeia, as it will look in the north sky as seen from Toronto at 3 a.m. this Friday. Click for a bigger version including the Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major), Ursa Minor, and Cepheus. (Stellarium/Duk Han Lee, CBC)

However, he acknowledges that not everyone agrees.

"There have been predictions from we won't see anything through to a meteor storm of more than 1,000 meteors per hour."

That's because the source of the Camelopardalids meteor shower is a comet called 209P/LINEAR discovered just 10 years ago that scientists don't know much about.

Meteors are small particles of dust and rock from space — usually no bigger than a pea — that hit the Earth's atmosphere and burn up as they travel through it, giving off a bright light that makes them appear as "shooting stars."

While individual meteors can be seen on any given night, meteor showers with lots of shooting stars take place when the Earth passes through the dust and debris left behind by a comet.

'It's a great science opportunity because we can peek into the past.'—Peter Jenniskens, SETI Institute

As comets orbit the sun, they "drop these little rocks kind of like bread crumbs behind them as they travel around," Wiegert said. "Because they keep travelling in the same path over and over and over again, you eventually start to build up more and more of those little rocks."

Even rocks dropped "many laps ago" tend to keep moving along the same path as the comet. That's why annual meteor showers such as the Perseids in August are so reliable — the comet has dropped a lot of debris over the years, and the Earth passes through it every year.

However, there generally tend to be more rocks and dust closer to the comet.

That's why the Camelopardalids have the potential to be amazing — Comet 209P/LINEAR will be coming closer to Earth than any other comet since 1983 (when IRAS-Araki-Alcock, passed within 4.5 million kilometres of Earth), said Peter Jenniskens, a senior research scientist with the SETI Institute.

Comet 209P/LINEAR shines faintly among the stars of Ursa Major in this April 30 image from the NASA Marshal Space Flight Center 20" telescope. The comet will make its closest approach on May 29. ( NASA/MSFC/Bill Cooke)

Jenniskens was one of the two scientists who first predicted the Camelopardalis meteor shower two years ago. He saw that Comet 209P/LINEAR would pass within eight million kilometres of Earth on May 29, 2014 (about 21 times the distance between the Earth and the moon). The Earth would therefore pass through the comet's dust field five days earlier.

On the other hand, since it was discovered, the comet hasn't been very "active" —  it hasn't been dropping a lot of rocks or dust lately.

That means it's dim and hard to see, even with a telescope. And there may not be a lot of debris to create meteors, unless it was left behind on previous orbits a couple of centuries ago.

"What did this thing do in the 19th century? That's the big question," Jenniskens told CBC News. "If this comet was dormant, then there won't be anything. If, on the other hand, something dramatic happened in the 19th century, it could be quite a spectacular show."

In fact, astronomers are awaiting the comet's close approach with anticipation, because they want to learn about the comet's history.

"It's a great science opportunity because we can peek into the past," Jenniskens said.

It may also help answer some questions about comets that astronomers don't know much about, such as why their activity changes over time.

Wiegert said his team will be monitoring the meteor shower with cameras that will be able to measure the exact colours of the meteors. The colours of the light produced as the comet particles burn up depend on what they're made of, so they will reveal the comet's ingredients.

Because comets are "essentially leftovers from when the planets were formed" and are thought to have brought water to Earth, information about their composition can help scientists learn more about where the Earth came from, Wiegert said.

This is a unique opportunity to study the comet, as it won't be coming back this way until June 2019, and at that time, it won't come nearly as close.

It's also probably the only chance you'll ever get to see the Camelopardalis meteor shower.

Since we don't know whether it will be a good show, Jenniskens advises you to "keep your expectations low."

"On the other hand," he said. "It's something you don't want to miss."

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Meteors and night skies: Photography tips and tricks

Night photography, or astrophotography, is easier than you may think. It really boils down to a little planning and knowing a thing or two about how a camera works. 

Here is a simple guide to capturing shots of the night sky, and some simple tips and tricks that will open up a whole universe of potential for anyone with a camera and a tolerance for late nights under the stars.

The basics

While a camera with manual controls, a fast wide lens, RAW capabilities and a big sensor does make a big difference, stunning night sky shots of meteors, the Milky Way and star trails can be captured using just about any camera these days.

Equipment aside, here is what you, the aspiring star shooter, need to know.

Night sky shots can be lumped into two main categories:

1. Shots where the stars appear as stationary specks or points of light.
2. Shots where stars appear as streaks, taking advantage of the rotation of the Earth.

To capture meteors (or the Milky Way), exposing for points of light is generally best because it allows the shooting stars to track across the frame — an effect that requires the camera to remain totally still and the exposure time relatively short.

The 500 Rule

The wider your lens, the longer you can leave the shutter open without turning stars into streaks.

A handy but rough tool for figuring out how to avoid noticeable blur, or unwanted star trails, is the 500 Rule. Take the number 500 and divide it by the focal length of your lens (whether it's a digital SLR or a point and shoot, this is typically displayed in millimetres). The result is the maximum time in seconds before trails will appear.

For example, a 14 mm lens gives you a maximum exposure time of 36 seconds. A 24 mm lens allows you a 21-second exposure, and so on.

A Perseid meteor flashes across the constellation Andromeda during the 1997 incarnation of annual August spectacle. The one-off Camelopardalid meteor shower Friday night could put on a 'very nice display' comparable to major meteor showers such as the Perseids, astronomers say. (Rick Scott and Joe Orman, SkyandTelescope.com/Associated Press)

Note that because camera sensors have improved, the traditional 500 Rule is no longer one-size-fits-all, and you may see it referred to as the 450 or 600 rule, depending on your camera. But 500 can still be used as a rough guide, then you can experiment to see what works best for you.

If your camera lets you adjust the aperture, you can do some more fine-tuning. Combined with an aperture of 2.8 (remember, the smaller the number, the bigger the aperture hole and the more light the lens is allowing to pass through to the sensor) and an ISO setting that isn't introducing too much grain into the image (let's just say somewhere between ISO 3000 and 6400, which is generally safe on most modern dSLRs and point-and-shoots), the 500 Rule should yield a pretty satisfactory first frame.

From there, you will need to fine tune based on what looks good to you, the amount of ambient city light affecting your shot, and the characteristics of your particular camera.

While its easy to get bogged down in the technical aspects of camera settings and exposure times, keep in mind that the most significant factor when shooting the night sky, or anything, is light. All you can do is control how much or how little light reaches the camera's sensor. Shooting is like cooking and the amount of spice is up to you.

The darker the better

Getting away from bright city lights will dramatically increase the chances of getting a crisp, dark sky against which the stars will really pop out.

Use a heavy tripod with a locking ball head to keep the camera as still as possible during the exposure. You don't want a shaky camera blurring the stars, so this means no holding the camera in your hands while you're shooting.  

Don't have a tripod or a bulb-release to trigger the shutter?

Make a small sandbag out of an old sock or use a shoe as a support. Even a pile of rocks or the ground can work really well to prop your camera at the right angle to catch the patch of sky you're after.

Using your camera's timer function, frame up the shot as best you can, hit the shutter, put the camera down on the support (or back away from the tripod), then wait for the click before touching the camera and checking your capture.

Many cameras, including most dSLRs, allow for exposures up to 30 seconds — plenty of time to capture the night sky and, if you're lucky, a shooting star or two will have streaked across the frame.

If its a meteor shot you want, employing the 500 Rule to get the maximum exposure time without trails in combination with a high rate of fire increases your chance of capturing a shooting star, or several. An interverlometre (basically a timer sold separately for most major camera brands, or sometimes built-in to the camera and accessed through menu settings) will allow you to shoot continuously without touching the camera.

Star trails

To get a circular effect in the stars in your photo (taking advantage of the rotation of the Earth), look for the 'B' for bulb release on your shutter control dial (or in the manual control settings of many new digital point and shoot cameras). Use that setting with an old-fashioned bulb-release cable (or your interverlometre) to hold the shutter open as long as you like.

A higher f-stop or aperture, or a lower ISO setting, can come in handy here if you are after a shot of the stars completing a full rotation or stretching all across the frame.

A cool technique for star trails is to focus on the North Star, Polaris, and to keep the shutter open for several hours such that the stars appear to trail in a full circle around the fixed point.

There are also techniques involving shorter exposure times (employing the 500 Rule) and editing software to 'stack' dozens or even hundreds of images taken over several hours to give the appearance of movement in the stars. This technique will allow for a final image that includes both star trails and shooting stars.

Quick recap:

1. Get to a dark location, away from sources of starlight-killing city lights. The Dark Sky Finder is a handy tool for determining how far off the beaten track you'll need to get.

2.  Keep your camera steady with a solid tripod. Shooting at night requires holding the shutter open longer — for several seconds, minutes or even hours — as opposed to the 10ths or 100ths of a second needed for your typical daylight shot.

And to find out the best angle to capture the sky from any point on the planet, download the Photographer's Ephemeris.

Happy shooting.

[If you get some good shots of the meteor shower or night sky, we'd love to see them. You can upload them to CBC here.]

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More