Arctic rhetoric and actions don't match, environment commissioner finds

In her first report as Canada's environment commissioner, Julie Gelfand finds a stark contradiction between the government's words and actions when it comes to Canada's plans for the Arctic.

Despite the Conservative government's much vaunted "Northern Strategy," Gelfand's report found problems with a lack of Arctic marine charts, navigation aids and ice-breaking services.

"Overall, we found that there is no long-term national vision or co-ordinated departmental strategy to support safe marine transportation in the Arctic," Gelfand wrote in her report.

Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand's report released Tuesday found 'no long-term national vision or co-ordinated departmental strategy to support safe marine transportation in the Arctic.' (Office of the Auditor General)

The chapter titled "Marine Navigation in the Canadian Arctic" was one of six in her fall report to Parliament.

It focused on Transport Canada, Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the department that oversees the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Hydrographic Service that makes marine charts.

The report found Arctic waters were inadequately surveyed and, on top of that, there isn't sufficient capacity to make charts.

It also took aim at the Canadian Coast Guard and its icebreaking services.

"The Canadian Coast Guard's icebreaking presence in the arctic is decreasing while vessel traffic is increasing," she wrote.

The report's five other chapters include:

• Implementation of the 2012 Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
• The government's plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
• The joint Alberta-Canada Oil Sands Monitoring project.
• Progress implementing sustainable development strategies in certain departments.
• Environmental petitions from ordinary Canadians.

The chapter on CEAA 2012 found some serious issues with transparency. In particular, the commissioner didn't understand how the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency chose projects to assess.

"Overall, we found that the agency's rationale for identification of projects for environmental assessment is unclear," wrote Gelfand.

For instance, in the new regulations, diamond mines and railway yards are to be scrutinized, but wind turbines and in situ oilsands are not.

"Most of the agency's processes and the rationales on which recommendations are based are not made public. As the intent of the new legislation is to focus on projects that have the greatest potential for enviro effects, it is important for the agency to have a clear, transparent basis for identifying those projects," she said in her report.

Gelfand's audit of the government's 2020 greenhouse gas reduction plan added to a growing canon of criticism.

Gelfand looked into four areas that Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Transport Canada are working on to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets. They are:

• Measures to reduce greenhouse gases.
• Assessing success of measures.
• Working with provinces and territories.
• Developing plans to hit 2020 targets.

"Federal departments have made unsatisfactory progress in each of the four areas examined," was the finding.

She also drew attention to the fact the federal government does not know what Environment Canada's role will be in oilsands monitoring after March 2015.

Overall, Gelfand found the government rudderless in many areas of environmental concern.

"In many key areas that we looked at, it is not clear how the government intends to address the significant environmental challenges that future growth and development will likely bring about," she said.

The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development is part of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. The commissioner's office generally releases two reports to Parliament a year.

Gelfand was appointed in March, replacing Scott Vaughan, who left the office in 2013.

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Lunar eclipse tonight may see hunter's moon turn blood red

The full moon will darken and grow reddish tonight during a total lunar eclipse that may help a fall meteor shower shine.

The edge of the Earth's shadow will begin to pass over October's full moon, traditionally called the Hunter's Moon, at 1:15 a.m. PT or 4:15 a.m. ET. It will cover the moon for a total lunar eclipse starting 3:15 a.m. PT or 6:15 a.m. ET and lasting 59 minutes.

At that time, the moon will darken to a colour that could vary from orange to brown to red. Lunar eclipses are sometimes called blood moons — particularly fitting, perhaps, for a Hunter's moon shortly before Halloween.

The timing of tonight's eclipse means that part of it will take place after moonset in Eastern Canada, but Western Canada should get a nice view.

This particular lunar eclipse could give skywatchers an additional treat, by bringing out the meteors of the Draconid meteor shower, which is expected to peak tonight. The annual fall meteor shower produces relatively few meteors compared to the summer's Perseids, and the full moon is expected to wash out most of them. But the eclipse will temporarily darken the full moon and the night sky.

"That's the perfect time to look for meteors," said J. Randy Attwood, executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

The Draconid meteors will appear to originate from the constellation Draco the Dragon, in the north to northwest sky.

Of course, the main event is still the eclipse.

"I get kind of excited about them because they're really cool to watch," Attwood said. "You're seeing motion in the sky, you're seeing it slowly creep into the Earth's shadow."

The best part is that they don't require any special knowledge or equipment.

"Anyone who sees the moon can see the eclipse," he said.

And unlike solar eclipses, they can be viewed without any eye protection.

"It's perfectly safe to look at an eclipse of the moon with your regular eyes or binoculars."

Because the eclipse takes place close to moonset in eastern Canada, Attwood recommends that viewers in eastern provinces scout out a spot with a clear view of the southwest horizon, so that trees and buildings don't block their view.

Those in Western Canada will get a better view, but will probably need to set an alarm.

He recommends trying to photograph the moon with a zoom lens and, if possible, a tripod.

"Once the eclipse is total, then you may need an exposure of several seconds."

The reason the moon turns reddish during a lunar eclipse is that during the event, the Earth's shadow blocks almost all sunlight from hitting the moon. The exception is a small amount of light bent around the Earth by its atmosphere.

The atmosphere scatters most of the blue light, leaving only the red to hit the moon — causing it to appear red.

"It's the same reason why the sky is blue… and why sunset is red," Attwood said.

The amount of red colour depends on the weather in the part of the atmosphere the light is passing through, he added. If it's clear, the moon will be brighter and redder, but if it's stormy and cloudy, the moon will be darker and more brownish.

The final two total lunar eclipses of this tetrad will take place next April 4 and September 28.

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Astronauts resume routine spacewalks after 2013 near-drowning

Two astronauts performed a spacewalk 420 kilometres up Tuesday, NASA's first routine maintenance outside the International Space Station in more than a year.

American astronaut Reid Wiseman and German spaceman Alexander Gerst worked to move a broken pump into its proper storage location, a long overdue job.

U.S.-based spacewalks were curtailed in July 2013 after an Italian astronaut nearly drowned because of a flooded helmet. NASA solved the problem with the suit's water-cooling system. Then concern arose over the spacesuit batteries.

New batteries arrived late last month, clearing the way for Tuesday's spacewalk and another one scheduled for next week.

The 350-kilogram pump on the move Tuesday is about the size of a double-door refrigerator. It ended up in temporary storage during urgent spacewalking repairs to the station's ammonia-cooling system last December; NASA did not want to waste time back then putting the pump in the correct long-term location, given all the spacesuit worries.

This was the first spacewalk ever for Wiseman and Gerst. Wiseman's exuberance was evident as he emerged from the hatch into the vast darkness over the Pacific.

"Wow, looks like we've almost got a full moon out here. It's beautiful," Wiseman said. When the glow of sunrise started to appear several minutes later, he shared his excitement again with Mission Control.

A follow-up spacewalk is scheduled for Oct. 15 to further whittle down NASA's lengthy to-do list, on hold since the 2013 close call. That spacewalk will be conducted by Wiseman and fellow American Butch Wilmore, a newcomer.

A week after that, two of the three Russians on board will perform a spacewalk on their country's side of the orbiting outpost. The Moscow-led spacewalks were unaffected by NASA's spacesuit troubles.

NASA considered December's U.S. spacewalks — to replace the failed ammonia pump and thereby restore full cooling to the space station — too important to wait. The same went for a critical spacewalk by Americans in April to replace a dead computer.

The helmets used by Wiseman and Gerst contained absorbent pads and makeshift snorkels in case of water leakage. The items became mandatory following last year's close call experienced by Italian spacewalker Luca Parmitano, safely back on Earth for nearly a year now.

As for the spacesuit batteries, NASA sent up replacements on the latest SpaceX cargo ship and Russian Soyuz capsule. Ground testing uncovered a potential fuse problem earlier this year, and NASA opted to switch out the batteries on board.

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Ebola outbreak: The limitation of airport screenings

The arrival in Dallas of Thomas Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., has raised concerns over air travel's potential to spread a deadly disease across countries and continents.

Duncan's case has prompted some U.S. lawmakers to demand screening procedures at U.S. airports, while others, like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, have called on the government to impose a travel ban from Ebola-stricken countries. 

The case also illustrates the possible limitations of airport screening along with its reliance on passengers to follow the honour system.

"We do rely on people to be honest," said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre. "When someone isn't truthful about their contact with Ebola patients, we are limited by that."

This Oct. 2, 2014 photo shows a copy of a passenger health screening form filled out by Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, which was obtained by the Associated Press from the Liberia Airport Authority. (Kiichiro Sato/Associated Press)

So far, because Ebola is not an airborne disease and can only be transmitted by direct contact with the body fluids of a person who is sick, the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control have been opposed to any kind of travel ban. 

During the outbreak of SARS in 2003, a disease that is spread more easily by airborne transmission like coughing, the risk of contracting that disease in an aircraft was found to be very low, WHO said. 

It also said that the risk of contracting Ebola from a plane is the same as contracting it in any confined space, including a movie theatre, bus, train or at the office.

The Ebola virus can be destroyed by disinfectants, but it can also survive on contaminated surfaces outside an infected person for several hours, some studies have found.

In West African countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria, departing passengers are subject to exit screening, which includes taking a person's temperature multiple times prior to them boarding an aircraft. Taking the temperature more than once increases the likelihood of detecting a fever, one of the symptoms of Ebola. 

Screeners can use different types of thermometers, the most common being ones that take the temperature through the ear or that is pointed at the individual like a gun. Thermal full-body scanners have been used in the past, including at some Asian airports during the SARS epidemic. 

But taking an individual's temperature is hardly a foolproof way to detect whether someone has Ebola, as the symptoms for the disease may not develop for days. This means an infected individual may not show any signs of fever. 

In Duncan's case, his temperature had been taken three times at the airport, and all his readings were considered to be within normal levels.

The effectiveness of screening has been questioned by some researchers. Last year Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, released a study that suggested airport screening for disease control rarely makes sense.

"In most situations, screening doesn't make sense. In a handful of situations, it may be justifiable," Khan told the Canadian Press last year. "And if you are going to consider screening, doing it as people leave the source area is a much simpler and a much more efficient way of doing it than when people arrive" somewhere.

The research, based on a study of air travellers departing from Mexico in the early days of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, found that screening was a poor use of resources.

"The fever-screening instruments run low and aren't that accurate," infection control specialist Sean Kaufman, president of Behavioral-Based Improvement Solutions, a bio-safety company in Atlanta, told Reuters.

"And people can take ibuprofen to reduce their fever enough to pass screening, and why wouldn't they? If it will get them on a plane so they can come to the United States and get effective treatment after they're exposed to Ebola, wouldn't you do that to save your life?"

Other problems arise when connecting airports do not screen. For example, Kaufman said he flew from Monrovia to Casablanca to London to Atlanta. He was fever-screened in Monrovia and Casablanca, but not London's Heathrow, he said, and not when he arrived in Atlanta.

"At Heathrow, there were no questions about where I had come from," he said. "I offered the information to the official in Atlanta, and he said, 'Thank you. Be safe.'"

While Adalja, the infectious disease doctor, believes exit screening can be effective, he said entry screening is "like finding a needle in a haystack. A lot of false positives. Different strategy than exit screening which is to prevent people from leaving."

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Nobel medicine prize goes to 3 scientists for 'inner GPS' work

A U.S.-British scientist and a Norwegian husband-and-wife research team won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering the brain's navigation system — the inner GPS that helps us find our way in the world — a revelation that could lead to advances in diagnosing Alzheimer's.

The research by John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser represents a "paradigm shift" in neuroscience that could help researchers understand the sometimes severe spatial memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease, the Nobel Assembly said.

"This year's Nobel Laureates have discovered a positioning system, an `inner GPS' in the brain, that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space," the assembly said.

O'Keefe, 74, a dual U.S. and British citizen at the University College London, discovered the first component of this system in 1971 when he found that a certain type of nerve cell was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. He demonstrated that these place cells were building up a map of the environment, not just registering visual input.

Thirty-four years later, in 2005, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, married neuroscientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, identified another type of nerve cell — the grid cell — that generates a coordinate system for precise positioning and path-finding, the assembly said.

Monday's award was the fourth time that a married couple has shared a Nobel Prize and the second time in the medicine category.

"This is crazy," an excited May-Britt Moser, 51, told The Associated Press by telephone from Trondheim.

"This is such a great honor for all of us and all the people who have worked with us and supported us," she said. "We are going to continue and hopefully do even more groundbreaking work in the future."

Her 52-year-old husband didn't immediately find out about the prize because he was flying to the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, to demonstrate their research. Edvard Moser told the Norwegian news agency NTB he only discovered he had won after he landed in Munich, turned on his cellphone and saw a flood of emails, text messages and missed calls.

"I didn't know anything. When I got off the plane there was a representative there with a bouquet of flowers who said `congratulations on the prize,"' he was quoted as saying.

The Nobel Assembly said the discoveries marked a shift in scientists' understanding of how specialized cells work together to perform complex cognitive tasks. They have also opened new avenues for understanding cognitive functions such as memory, thinking and planning.

"Thanks to our grid and place cells, we don't have to walk around with a map to find our way each time we visit a city, because we have that map in our head," said Juleen Zierath, chair of the medicine prize committee. "I think, without these cells, we would have a really hard time to survive."

O'Keefe told the AP he was working at home when his office called to say "there's a gentleman from Sweden who wants to have a word with you."

Professor John O'Keefe speaks in an interview Monday after he was named a co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in medicine. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press)

"Before I called him, I took a long, deep breath," O'Keefe said, speaking at his office at University College London.

O'Keefe was born in Harlem and raised in the South Bronx. "If you can survive the South Bronx, you can survive anything," he said.

He moved to England for postdoctoral training and found the place cells in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. The Mosers, meanwhile, identified the grid cells in a nearby section of the brain known as the entorhinal cortex.

O'Keefe said his work could be used as a basis for investigating Alzheimer's, for example, by designing tests to try to pick up the first signs of the disease.

"So we can not only use brain imaging to see the earliest signs of the disease in this part of the brain, but we can begin to see how it is affecting their memory, particularly their spatial memory," he said.

David Foster, a neuroscientist who studies place cells at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said O'Keefe's discovery of place cells was controversial in 1971 but became widely accepted over the next few decades as more researchers began to study it.

"He founded the field," Foster said.

All three Nobel laureates won Columbia University's Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize last year for their discoveries. They will split the Nobel prize money of 8 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million Cdn), with half to O'Keefe and the other half to the Mosers.

The Nobel awards in physics, chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week and the economics prize will be announced next Monday. Created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901. The winners collect their awards on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

Last year's medicine award went to researchers who discovered how substances are transported within cells, a process involved in such important activities as brain cell communication and the release of insulin.

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Lime does not harm lobsters or other marine life, study shows

The use of lime to control tunicate populations has little or no impact on lobsters and other marine life, according to a new government study.

Tunicate can completely cover a mussel sock, making it difficult for them to feed. (CBC)

Tunicate are an invasive species that are a serious threat to the mussel industry. Tunicate attach themselves to mussel socks, completely covering them and making it difficult for the mussels to feed.

Lime is used in the mussel industry to remove tunicate from the lines. Lime is also used in the oyster fishery, mainly to remove starfish.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the P.E.I. Department of Fisheries have been working on a multi-year project to study the impact of lime. Neil MacNair, director of the aquaculture division with the province, said some of the tests included species such as lobster larvae.

"There is very, very low impact, or of no concern," said MacNair.

"The other thing they did in the lab is that they showed that lobster larvae can avoid detecting, avoid high concentration of lime, so if there ever was a high concentration of lime in the environment,  they would avoid it, but we don't see that , those levels at all in the marine environment."

MacNair said tests also show the lime had no permanent affect on the water.

The federal government is still doing dives around P.E.I. to measure the amount of lime on the ocean floor.

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Water on Earth found to be older than the Sun

The water you're sipping may taste fresh, but a lot of it is very, very old — older than the solar system itself.

"Half the water in our oceans is in fact older than the Sun," science columnist Torah Kachur said in an interview with CBC's Homestretch.

"What that means is a lot of the water that exists on our planet was made before our solar system and it came from a different part of our galaxy altogether."

The sun is 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion years old.

Scientists led by Ilse Cleeves, a theoretical astronomer from the University of Michigan, figured out the approximate age of the water on Earth by conducting computer simulations of two chemical processes that are known to form water in deep space.

CBC science columnist Torah Kachur

One is a reaction between individual hydrogen and oxygen atoms that takes place on tiny dust grains. The other is a hotter reaction that takes place in stars and involves molecules of hydrogen gas.

The colder reaction generates water that contains more deuterium, a heavier form of hydrogen.

"Think of it as hydrogen's fat cousin," Kachur said.

When Cleeves and her colleagues compared the results of their calculations with the amount of deuterium on Earth, they concluded that 30 to 50 per cent of Earth's water was made through the cold process. That means it must have been made before the hot sun was formed.

They published their results in the journal Science.

Scientists have evidence that water was carried to Earth by comets that bombarded the planet about 3.8 billion years ago.

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Physical labels no longer required for smartphones, wearable devices

Serial numbers no longer need to be visible on the surface of devices such as smartphones or wearable technology such as smartwatches in Canada, thanks to new electronic labelling regulations.

The new rules are "opening Canada's markets to the latest wireless wearable devices such as Google Glass and Apple Watch," Industry Canada announced in a news release today.

Previously, Canadian regulations required information such as serial or model identification numbers, registration numbers for terminal equipment devices and certification number for radio equipment to be printed directly on the device or attached with a sticker.

That meant some devices marketed in other parts of the world couldn't enter Canadian markets, the news release said.

Under new regulations effective immediately, high-tech devices with a non-removable screen can carry that information on an "e-label" instead.

Typically, that means it would be accessed through the device's software, either through its display or apps managing the device.

Devices that can carry e-labels include tablets, smartphones, smartwatches and wearable glucose monitors.

Steve Woods, engineering director of Google Canada, said in a statement that "the new generation of wearables places a premium on space and makes increasing demands of technology and design. E-labelling will produce cleaner products and make more information available for consumers." 

Industry Canada noted that the e-labels will be able to include information not included on physical labels, such as warranty information, and can be updated remotely if needed to address inaccuracies.

According to the Consumer Electronics Marketers of Canada, e-labels reduce costs and waste associated with physical labelling and etching and reduce the time it takes for new devices to go to market.

However, some concerns have been raised about e-labelling. For example:

The new regulations try to address these concerns by requiring:

• A copy of the e-label information to be printed on the packaging that the device comes in when someone buys it.
• Manufacturers to make sure e-labels can't be modified or removed during the course of normal activities that a typical user might perform, such as installing apps or accessing menus.

User manuals, packaging inserts and product websites will also be required to give users instructions about how to find the e-label.

Under the new regulations, users must be able to access the e-label without having to go through more than three steps in the device menu and without using any special access codes or accessories.

According to Industry Canada, e-labelling is already accepted in the United States, Australia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Costa Rica.

Google declined to comment on whether labelling regulations previously prevented Google Glass from being sold in Canada, saying only that "every electronic device faces regulatory requirements, including labelling."

However, Google Canada spokesman Aaron Brindle confirmed, "Glass has regulatory approval from Industry Canada and we're super excited to bring Glass north of the border."

He added that the company could not say when the device will be available in Canada.

In 2010, Canada began allowing e-labels for imported medical devices sold to health-care professionals, but not the general public. Those e-labels were allowed in the form of a CD or DVD accompanying the device.

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Bees, birds may suffer long-term consequences from common pesticides

A raft of new research published over the summer is posing ever more serious questions about whether neonicotinoids, the most common insecticides in the world, are affecting birds and bees more widely than previously thought.

The research is looking into more subtle, long-term effects from the insecticides – rather than instant direct kills – that may still harm bird and bee populations.

Through a four-week study on bumblebees, Nigel Raine, an expert in pollinator conservation at the University of Guelph, found that the neonicotinoids, which are neurotoxins, affect bumblebees' ability to find and collect food.  

"When the neonicotinoid-treated bees go out of the colony for the first time to look for flowers, something about their exposure to that pesticide means that they're less able to collect as much pollen as the bees that are untreated," he told the CBC Radio program Quirks & Quarks.

"And that impact only gets worse over time, because the untreated bees improve their performance and their ability."

The Ontario government is considering a plan to reduce or eliminate use of some neonics. (Reuters)

In turn, that leads to smaller colonies, which in turn means that fewer queens are produced, a phenomenon that decreases the number of new bumblebee colonies.

Pollinators, including honeybees and wild pollinators, are in decline around the world, Dr. Raine said, adding that a host of factors is thought to be responsible.

Pierre Petelle, vice-president of chemistry at CropLife Canada, told Quirks & Quarks that the industry's studies suggest that neonicotinoids are not one of them.

The insecticides — known as "neonics" for short — are responsible for some bee deaths in Ontario and Quebec in 2012, after dust kicked up from their application reached some colonies.

Petelle said both manufacturers and farmers are working to make changes to the way the pesticide is applied and are resolving those problems.

The European Community has banned some neonics for two years and the Ontario government is considering a plan to reduce or eliminate some of them.

Beekeepers in Ontario have launched a $400-million lawsuit against neonic manufacturers.

When it comes to birds, the question is whether neonics are such an effective insecticide that they are killing off the aquatic bugs that birds need to eat, leaving too little food for them.

Christy Morrissey, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, found last year that 90 per cent of prairie potholes were laced with small amounts of neonics in the spring before farmers planted their fields. That means the chemicals stay in the soil and then wash into the water through rain or snow.

"Insecticides or pesticides in general are not supposed to be on the market if they persist [in the environment]," Morrissey told Quirks & Quarks from her research site in Saskatchewan.

"We do not want chemicals that are designed to kill lasting in the environment for weeks, months or years. …You want pesticides to be applied, do their job, kill the pest and then be gone."

Now, Dr. Morrissey is in the midst of a study in the field studying exactly how different levels of neonics affect aquatic insects in prairie potholes, in tandem with a long-term study examining the health of tree swallows nearby.

It's a bid to examine whether neonics are affecting the bugs and, consequently, the birds that rely on them. Her early results show that birds living near treated fields are slightly delayed in laying their eggs, and the chicks are not as healthy.

'We do not want chemicals that are designed to kill lasting in the environment for weeks, months or years.'- Christy Morrissey, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan

A Dutch study by Caspar Hallmann ​at the Institute for Water and Wetland Research at Radboud University in the Netherlands,​ and others published this summer found larger annual declines in insect-eating birds in areas with higher surface-water concentrations of the most popular type of neonic, imidacloprid.

It concluded that the impact of the chemical is "reminiscent of the effects of persistent insecticides in the past."

CropLife Canada's Petelle said the concentrations of neonics Dr. Morrissey is finding in the field are too low to affect aquatic insects.

He said neonics are the safest chemical solution that has been introduced in a long time, one reason that agriculture has never been more sustainable than today.

"And so the studies that have been conducted on these products in field conditions show that at those concentrations, there is no risk for aquatic insects or other wildlife," he said.

Dr. Morrissey told Quirks & Quarks, however, that the industry is relying on studies conducted on the water flea, Daphnia magna, an aquatic crustacean.

While it is the industry standard for testing, it happens to be almost uniquely insensitive to neonics. Compared to other insects tested, it is an average of 1,000 times less sensitive, and compared to the aquatic insects birds like to eat, it is between 10,000 and 100,000 times less sensitive, she said.

Neonics, which are derived from nicotine, are the newest class of insecticides and they are used in a new way: as a coating for crop seeds rather than mainly as a spray on growing crops.

In Canada, all canola and corn seeds planted are coated, as well as half of soybeans and some seeds of other crops. They are systemic pesticides, which means they infuse every cell of the plant as it grows, right from the roots to the leaves, seeds, nectar and pollen.

And they are used as a prophylactic, whether there is a pest infestation or not.

An analysis of 800 studies released this summer, called the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, concluded that the chemicals, including neonics, are having widespread effects on ecosystems around the world beyond their intended function of killing crop pests.

The scientists who conducted the review study said governments should plan for a global phase-out or at least a plan for farmers to use them only when their crops are actually threatened by insects.

Listen to Quirks & Quarks here.

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Physical labels no longer required for smartphones, wearable devices

Serial numbers no longer need to be visible on the surface of devices such as smartphones or wearable technology such as smartwatches in Canada, thanks to new electronic labelling regulations.

The new rules are "opening Canada's markets to the latest wireless wearable devices such as Google Glass and Apple Watch," Industry Canada announced in a news release today.

Previously, Canadian regulations required information such as serial or model identification numbers, registration numbers for terminal equipment devices and certification number for radio equipment to be printed directly on the device or attached with a sticker.

That meant some devices marketed in other parts of the world couldn't enter Canadian markets, the news release said.

Under new regulations effective immediately, high-tech devices with a non-removable screen can carry that information on an "e-label" instead.

Typically, that means it would be accessed through the device's software, either through its display or apps managing the device.

Devices that can carry e-labels include tablets, smartphones, smartwatches and wearable glucose monitors.

Steve Woods, engineering director of Google Canada, said in a statement that "the new generation of wearables places a premium on space and makes increasing demands of technology and design. E-labelling will produce cleaner products and make more information available for consumers." 

Industry Canada noted that the e-labels will be able to include information not included on physical labels, such as warranty information, and can be updated remotely if needed to address inaccuracies.

According to the Consumer Electronics Marketers of Canada, e-labels reduce costs and waste associated with physical labelling and etching and reduce the time it takes for new devices to go to market.

However, some concerns have been raised about e-labelling. For example:

The new regulations try to address these concerns by requiring:

• A copy of the e-label information to be printed on the packaging that the device comes in when someone buys it.
• Manufacturers to make sure e-labels can't be modified or removed during the course of normal activities that a typical user might perform, such as installing apps or accessing menus.

User manuals, packaging inserts and product websites will also be required to give users instructions about how to find the e-label.

Under the new regulations, users must be able to access the e-label without having to go through more than three steps in the device menu and without using any special access codes or accessories.

According to Industry Canada, e-labelling is already accepted in the United States, Australia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Costa Rica.

Google declined to comment on whether labelling regulations previously prevented Google Glass from being sold in Canada, saying only that "every electronic device faces regulatory requirements, including labelling."

However, Google Canada spokesman Aaron Brindle confirmed, "Glass has regulatory approval from Industry Canada and we're super excited to bring Glass north of the border."

He added that the company could not say when the device will be available in Canada.

In 2010, Canada began allowing e-labels for imported medical devices sold to health-care professionals, but not the general public. Those e-labels were allowed in the form of a CD or DVD accompanying the device.

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